[18] No doubt Edmund Burke.
[19] Probably Boswell.
[20] A famous actress.
[21] In a letter to Miss Boothby (31 Dec. 1755) Johnson recommended "dried orange-peel finely powdered ... in a glass of hot red port" as "a very probable remedy for indigestion."
Enter Boswell
Boswell and many others of Johnson's friends have already entered so often into the foregoing pages, that it is time we gave some space to the more prominent members of Johnson's circle.
James Boswell was more than thirty years younger than Johnson, being born at Edinburgh in 1740. He was the son of a Scottish judge, Lord Auchinleck, and his own inclination was to be an officer in the Guards; but at his father's wish he entered the profession of the law, and studied, not very industriously, first at Edinburgh and afterwards at Glasgow University. He dabbled in poetry and literary criticism and longed for the gayer world and more cultured society of London. He first visited the capital in 1760 and on his second visit fulfilled what was then the greatest ambition of his life—he met Dr Johnson.
