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Updated: July 16, 2025
I have inclosed a letter to pacify him, and reconcile him to the uncertainties of human life. Piozzi Letters, i. 350. When she was about four months old, Boswell declared that she should have five hundred pounds of additional fortune, on account of her fondness for Dr. Johnson. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 15, 1773. She died, says Malone, of a consumption, four months after her father.
Boswell's earnest desire to make his acquaintance and to sit humbly at his feet was only an extreme instance of an attitude of respect and admiration, often even of reverence, commonly felt towards him among the more intelligent and serious portion of the community.
It was evident that Boswell's reportorial duties did not end with his labors in the mundane sphere. The dinner was set down to begin at seven o'clock, so that the guests, as was proper, sauntered slowly in between that hour and eight.
The extravagant rents exacted by the landlords is the sole cause given for this emigration which seems to be only in its infancy. The high price of provisions and the decrease of the linen trade in the north of Ireland sent eight hundred this year from Stromness, when we find the linen dealers thanking Boswell's old rival, as he supposed, with Miss Blair, Sir Alexander Gilmour, M.P. for Midlothian, for his efforts at providing better legislation.
And now for the pretty girl who is staring with so alarmed and white a visage on the tumult of the hall. This is General Boswell's daughter, sole child of a late marriage, and the apple of his eye. She has been wandering quite consciously towards an engagement with young Polson; and expects him, with excellent reason, to declare himself at almost any hour.
Florence Wilson accompanied, as tutor, Cardinal Wolsey's nephew to Paris, and published at Lyons in 1543 his De Tranquillitate Animi Dialogus. Rose's Biog. Dict. xii. 508. When Johnson visited Boswell in Edinburgh, Mrs. Boswell 'insisted that, to show all respect to the Sage, she would give up her own bed-chamber to him, and take a worse. Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 14. See post, April 18, 1778.
The warm June day drifted sunnily into Boswell's study window. There was a fragrance of flowers and the note of birds. Priscilla, in her plain white linen dress, was sitting on the broad window seat, and Boswell, from his winged chair, looked at her with a tightening of the throat.
Ante, i. 197. 'It is wonderful how little mind she had, he once said. Ante, ii. 348. See Boswell's Hebrides, post, v. 126. See ante, iii. 183. See ante, iii. 184. 'Garrick's great distinction is his universality, Johnson said. 'He can represent all modes of life, but that of an easy, fine-bred gentleman. Boswell's Hebrides, post, v. 126. See ante, iii. 35.
There were other men in Johnson's circle, whom he knew longer and respected more; but for us, Boswell's position in relation to Johnson is unique. Beside him the others, even Burke and Reynolds, are, in this connection, shadows. They had their independent fields of greatness in which Johnson had no share: Boswell's greatness is all Johnsonian.
Boswell's was the melancholy of a man who spends too much, drinks too much, falls in love too often, and is forced to live in the country in dependence upon a stern old parent, when he is longing for a jovial life in London taverns. Still he was excusably vexed when Johnson refused to believe in the reality of his complaints, and showed scant sympathy to his noisy would-be fellow-sufferer.
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