He determined to remain in London. Plans for the disposal of his children were, after much wavering, at length resolved upon. Alexander, his eldest son, having “begun to oppose him,”[90] was removed from Soho Academy to Eton. He was afterwards to be sent to the University of Edinburgh, and latterly to Holland and Germany for the study of civil law. James, the second son, described to Mr. Temple as “an extraordinary boy, much of his father,” was to be educated as a barrister. Meanwhile, being in his eleventh year, he was to be continued at the Soho school. Veronica, the eldest daughter, was kept in London under the charge of Mrs. Buchanan, a widow. Euphemia, the second daughter, was sent to a boarding-school in Edinburgh; and Elizabeth, the youngest, was placed in an educational institution at Ayr. By thus dispersing the members of his family, Boswell secured himself against any interference with his habits. For his children the arrangement was salutary, since they could not have profited by the exhibition of his weaknesses.
Amidst incessant place-hunting and a round of social indulgences, the “Life of Johnson” proceeded slowly. The public were meanwhile entertained by Mrs. Piozzi’s Anecdotes.[91] This work and the “Life of Johnson,” by Sir John Hawkins, seemed to satisfy general curiosity. The latter work, which appeared in 1787, deeply mortified Boswell; he was mentioned in it only once, and then as “Mr. James Boswell, a native of Scotland.”[92] Indignation inspired him with energy. As specimens of his forthcoming work, he issued in quarto form two portions of its contents, with these titles:—“The Celebrated Letter from Samuel Johnson, LL.D., to Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, now first published, with notes by James Boswell, Esq. London: Printed by Henry Baldwin for Charles Dilly, in the Poultry, 1790. [Price Half a Guinea.]” “A Conversation between His Most Sacred Majesty George III. and Samuel Johnson, LL.D., illustrated with Observations by James Boswell, Esq. London: Printed by Henry Baldwin for Charles Dilly, in the Poultry, 1790. [Price Half a Guinea.]”
The former of these fasciculi occupied four, and the latter eight quarto pages. Intimating to Mr. Temple that “a part of his magnum opus was ready for the press,” he added that Hawkins should not be spared. His labours were interrupted by Mrs. Boswell’s illness and his return to inebriate habits. On the 28th November he wrote to Mr. Temple:—
“Let me first address you from Cato:—
‘Thou best of friends,
Pardon a weak distemper’d soul that swells,
In sudden gusts, and sinks again in calms.’
Your last letter supposes too truly my situation. With grief continually at my heart, I have been endeavouring to seek relief in dissipation and in wine, so that my life for some time past has been unworthy of myself, of you, and of all that is valuable in my character and connections. For a week past, as the common phrase is, ‘I have taken up,’ and by a more regular and quiet course find myself, I think, rather better.”
As in the case of his “Tour to the Hebrides,” Boswell submitted each successive chapter of the “Life of Johnson” to the revision of Mr. Malone. In his letter to Mr. Temple of the 28th November he remarks:—
“The revision of my ‘Life of Johnson’ by so acute and knowing a critic as Mr. Malone is of most essential consequence, especially as he is Johnsonianissimus; and as he is to hasten to Ireland as soon as his Shakspere[93] is fairly published, I must avail myself of him now. His hospitality and my other invitations, and particularly my attendance at Lord Lonsdale’s, have lost us many evenings; but I reckon that a third of the work is settled, so that I shall get to press very soon. You cannot imagine what labour, what perplexity, what vexation I have endured in arranging a prodigious multiplicity of materials, in supplying omissions, in searching for papers, buried in different masses, and all this besides the exertion of composing and polishing. Many a time have I thought of giving it up. However, though I shall be uneasily sensible of its many deficiencies, it will certainly be to the world a very valuable and peculiar volume of biography, full of literary and characteristical anecdotes (which word, by the way, Johnson always condemned, as used in the sense that the French, and we from them, use it, as signifying particulars), told with authenticity, and in a lively manner. Would that it were in the booksellers’ shops! Methinks, if I had this magnum opus launched, the public has no further claim upon me; for I have promised no more, and I may die in peace, or retire into dull obscurity, reddarque tenebris.”
Writing to Mr. Temple on the 8th February, 1790, Boswell thus reports progress:—