The friendship which subsisted between Mrs. Boswell and Mrs. Stuart, wife of the second son of John, third Earl of Bute, has been referred to. Boswell was, we have seen, also a favourite with Mrs. Stuart. To her regard for him Boswell delighted to refer, however, inopportunely. In his Boswelliana he relates that Lord Mountstuart having remarked that he resembled Charles Fox, Colonel Stuart (Mrs. Stuart’s husband) ejaculated, “You are much uglier.” Boswell replied, looking his tormentor in the face, “Does your wife think so, Colonel James?” Colonel Stuart knew Boswell intimately, and, in common with his wife, enjoyed his humour and excused his egotism. Being in command of the Bedfordshire Militia, he invited Boswell to accompany him and the regiment to London and some other stations. Boswell readily complied. He delighted “to accompany a man of sterling good sense, information, discernment, and conviviality,” and he hoped in his society “to have a second crop, in one year, of London and Johnson.”
On Monday, 4th October, Boswell waited on Dr. Johnson, thereafter attending him daily during a fortnight’s residence in London. On the 18th October he departed for Chester, in company with Colonel Stuart. He tarried a few hours at Lichfield, where he visited some of Dr. Johnson’s relatives. His proceedings at Chester are related in the following letter to Mr. Temple, dated Edinburgh, 4th January, 1780:—
“From London, after an excellent fortnight there, I accompanied Colonel Stuart to Chester, to which town his regiment was ordered from Leeds, and there I passed another fortnight in mortal felicity. I had from my earliest years a love for the military life, and there is in it an animation and relish of existence which I have never found amongst any other set of men, except players, with whom you know I once lived a great deal. At the mess of Colonel Stuart’s regiment I was quite the great man, as we used to say; and I was at the same time all joyous and gay. Such was my home at Chester. But I had the good fortune to be known to the bishop, who is one of the most distinguished prelates for piety and eloquence, and one of the most pleasing men in social life that you can imagine. His palace was open to me, morning, noon, and night; and I was liberally entertained at his hospitable board. At Chester, too, I found Dean Smith, the translator of ‘Longinus,’ with whom you and I were so well acquainted when we were studying under Mr. John Stevenson. I was surprised to find him, for I somehow had imagined that he was an ancient English author, comparatively speaking. He is very old, but is quite cheerful and full of anecdotes. He lives very retired, with a disagreeable wife, and they told me I was the only man who had been in the deanery for a long time. I found too at Chester Mr. Falconer, a gentleman of fortune and extraordinary learning and knowledge, who is preparing a new edition of Strabo, at the desire of the University of Oxford; he was exceedingly obliging to me.”
At Chester Boswell found the young ladies to be especially charming. Forgetting that he and his correspondent were both married, he informed Mr. Temple that several of the ladies had “capital fortunes.” He wrote to Dr. Johnson that he had complimented Miss Letitia Bainston, niece of one of the prebendaries, in these words:—“I have come to Chester, madam, I cannot tell how; and far less can I tell how I am able to get away from it.” In his journey from Chester to Scotland Boswell lingered at Carlisle. He wrote to Dr. Johnson that he had received the sacrament in the cathedral, and that it was “divinely cheering to him that there was a cathedral so near Auchinleck.” Dr. Johnson reminded his correspondent that Carlisle cathedral was at least one hundred and fifty miles from Auchinleck, adding, “If you are pleased, it is so far well.”
In the spring of 1777 Boswell obtained a connection with the London Magazine. He then commenced in its pages a series of papers, which he styled “The Hypochondriack.” These papers are generally short, and often disconnected; they abound in allusions to the writer’s personal tastes and peculiar opinions, while classical quotations are interspersed without point and without purpose. But Boswell was pleased to see himself in print, and so he complacently reports to Mr. Temple, in January, 1780, that his “Hypochondriack gets on wonderfully well.” In his paper for March, 1780, he thus alludes to his love of dissipation:—
“I do fairly acknowledge,” he writes, “that I love drinking; that I have a constitutional inclination to indulge in fermented liquors, and that were it not for the restraints of reason and religion, I am afraid I should be as constant a votary of Bacchus as any man.”[67]
At the close of his letter of January he informs Mr. Temple that his father had been ill of fever, with his pulse at ninety-five; he then begs a loan of £200, to satisfy a demand which his father could not be informed of. The loan was not granted, and Boswell afterwards sought repayment of an advance made to his friend at a former period, and which remained undischarged.
In September Boswell experienced a family loss in the death of Dr. John Boswell, his father’s brother. Of his deceased relative he writes to Mr. Temple that he was “a good scholar and affectionate relative,” but “had no conduct.” He adds, “He had a strange kind of religion, but I flatter myself he will be ere long, if he is not already in heaven.” This passage might imply that in abandoning the Romish faith he had not abjured the doctrine of purgatory; yet that doctrine is inconsistent with the following aspiration contained in the same letter:—
“I comfort myself with the Christian revelation of our being in a state of purification, and that we shall, in course of time, attain to felicity. It is delightful, Temple, to look forward to the period when you and I shall enjoy what we now imagine. In the meantime let us be patient, and do what we can.”