The Correspondence of James Boswell and Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo: Yale Boswell Editions Research Series: Correspondence Vol. 10 9781474461535

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the yale editions of The Private Papers of James Boswell



RESEARCH EDITION Catalogue Catalogue of the Papers of James Boswell at Yale University, by Marion S. Pottle, Claude Colleer Abbott, and Frederick A. Pottle, 3 Vols., 1993

Correspondence   Volume 1 The Correspondence of James Boswell and John Johnston of Grange,edited by Ralph S. Walker, 1966   Volume 2

The Correspondence and Other Papers of James Boswell Relating to the Making of the Life of Johnson,edited by Marshall Waingrow, 1969; 2nd edition, corrected and enlarged, 2001

  Volume 3 The Correspondence of James Boswell with Certain Members of The Club,edited by Charles N. Fifer, 1976   Volume 4 The Correspondence of James Boswell with David Garrick, Edmund Burke, and Edmond Malone,edited by Peter S. Baker, Thomas W. Copeland, George M. Kahrl, Rachel McClellan, and James Osborn, with the assistance of Robert Mankin and Mark Wollaeger, 1986

  Volume 5 The General Correspondence of James Boswell, 1766–1769, Vol 1: 1766–1767,edited by Richard C. Cole, with Peter S. Baker and Rachel McClellan, and with the assistance of James J. Caudle, 1993   Volume 6 The Correspondence of James Boswell and William Johnson Temple, 1756–1795, Vol. 1: 1756–1777,edited by Thomas Crawford, 1997   Volume 7 The General Correspondence of James Boswell, 1766–1769, Vol. 2: 1768–1769,edited by Richard C. Cole, with Peter S. Baker and Rachel McClellan, and with the assistance of James J. Caudle, 1997   Volume 8 The Correspondence of James Boswell with James Bruce and Andrew Gibb, Overseers of the Auchinleck Estate, edited by Nellie Pottle Hankins and John Strawhorn, 1998   Volume 9 The General Correspondence of James Boswell, 1757–1763,edited by David Hankins and James J. Caudle, 2006   Volume 10 The Correspondence of James Boswell and Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, edited by Richard B. Sher, 2022

Journals   Volume 1

James Boswell: The Journal of his German and Swiss Travels, 1764,edited by Marlies K. Danziger, 2008

Life of Johnson   Volume 1

James Boswell’s Life of Johnson: An Edition of the Original Manuscript, in Four Volumes, Vol. 1: 1709–1765,edited by Marshall Waingrow, 1994

  Volume 2

James Boswell’s Life of Johnson: An Edition of the Original Manuscript, in Four Volumes, Vol. 2: 1766–1776,edited by Bruce Redford, with Elizabeth Goldring, 1998

  Volume 3

James Boswell’s Life of Johnson: An Edition of the Original Manuscript, in Four Volumes, Vol. 3: 1776–1780,edited by Thomas F. Bonnell, 2012

  Volume 4

James Boswell’s Life of Johnson: An Edition of the Original Manuscript, in Four Volumes, Vol. 4: 1780–1784,edited by Thomas F. Bonnell, 2019

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF

James Boswell AND

Sir William Forbes OF PITSLIGO

edited by

Richard B. Sher

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS Edinburgh

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS New Haven and London

© Yale University, 2022 Edinburgh University Press, 2022 The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Yale University Press New Haven and London Set in Goudy Oldstyle by the Yale Boswell Editions, New Haven A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library Edinburgh University Press ISBN 978-1-4744-6152-8 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-4744-6153-5 (webready PDF) ISBN 978-1-4744-6154-2 (epub) Yale University Press ISBN 978-0-300-25038-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021934643 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers. The paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39. 48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). Published by Yale University Press with the assistance of the Annie Burr Lewis Fund.

Boswell’s Correspondence, Volume 10 General Editor: Gordon Turnbull Associate Editor: Andrew Heisel

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF JAMES BOSWELL AND SIR WILLIAM FORBES OF PITSLIGO



Editorial Committee George A. Davidson, j.d., Senior Counsel, Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP. Conrad K. Harper, Chair pro tem, ll.b., ll.d., Retired Partner, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP. E. C. Schroeder, Director, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Barbara Shailor, ph.d., Department of Classics and Medieval Studies Program, Yale University. Gordon Turnbull, ph.d., General Editor, Yale Boswell Editions.

Advisory Committee Linda J. Colley, m.a., ph.d., f.r.hist.s., Shelby M. C. Davis 1958 Professor of History, Princeton University. The Earl of Elgin and Kincardine, k.t., Broomhall, Dunfermline, Fife. Bernhard Fabian, dr. phil., Professor of English Emeritus, University of Münster. Maurice Lévy, M. L. Richards Professor of English Emeritus, University of Toulouse. Roger Lonsdale, m.a., d.phil., Emeritus Fellow, Balliol College, Oxford University. Giuseppe Mazzotta, ph.d., Sterling Professor of Italian Language and Literature, Yale University. Ralph McLean, Manuscripts Curator (Long Eighteenth-Century Collections), Archives & Manuscript Collections, National Library of Scotland. Pierre Morère, Professor of English and Scottish Literature, Université Stendhal. Ronald H. Paulson, ph.d., William D. and Robin Mayer Professor Emeritus in the School of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins University. H. Mairi J. Robinson, m.a., Member, Scottish Dictionaries Council. Richard B. Sher, ph.d., Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus, New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Newark. Stuart Sherman, ph.d., Professor of English, Fordham University.

vi

General Editorial Note The Research Edition of the Private Papers of James Boswell consists of three coordinated series: Boswell’s journals in all their varieties, his correspondence, and the manuscript of the Life of Johnson, the four-volume edition of which was completed in 2019. The undertaking is a co-operative one involving many scholars, and publication is proceeding in the order in which the volumes are completed for the press. The ‘reading’ or Trade Edition of Boswell’s journal began publication in 1950 and was completed in thirteen volumes in 1989. While the annotation of that edition primarily turned inwards towards the text, the annotation of the Research Edition turns outwards from the text as well so as to relate the documents to the various areas of scholarship which they can illuminate: history (literary, linguistic, legal, medical, political, social, local), biography, bibliography, and genealogy, among others. The comprehensiveness and coherence of the papers that Boswell chose to preserve make them highly useful for such treatment. The correspondence volumes fall into three categories: single-correspondent volumes such as this one, subject volumes of letters related to a topic or theme, and miscellaneous-correspondence volumes of the remaining letters in chronological sequence.

vii

Contents List of Illustrations

x

Preface and Acknowledgements

xi

List of Correspondence

xvi

Editorial Procedures

xviii

Cue Titles and Abbreviations

xxiii

Chronology

xxxvi

Introduction

lix

The Correspondence

1

Appendices 1. The Family of Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo 2. Sir William Forbes’s Courtship of Elizabeth Hay, 1770 3. Boswell, Johnson, Forbes, and the Quarrel with ‘Young Mr. Tytler’, October– December 1785 4. Boswell and the Newspaper War over Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Resignation as President of the Royal Academy, 1790

321 322 331 359

Index379

ix

List of Illustrations Fig. 1: Copy of the Round Robin (C 1280) sent to Boswell by Forbes on 18 October 1787, to accompany From Forbes, 19 Oct. 1787

109

Fig. 2: Facsimile of the ‘Original’ Round Robin, 1776, from Boswell’s Life of Johnson, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, 6 vols., 1887, iii., facing p. 82

110

Fig. 3: ‘Round Robin, addressed to Samuel Johnson, L.L.D. With FacSimiles of the Signatures’, from James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 2 vols., 1791, ii., facing p. 92

111

x

Preface and Acknowledgements My connection with The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell began in December 1988, when its General Editor, Marshall Waingrow (1923– 2007), invited me to the ‘Boswell Office’ in Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, to formulate a publishing plan. During my two-day visit the office was humming with scholarly activity, and I met Gordon Turnbull, James Caudle, and others who were part of the enterprise at that time. The Yale Boswell Editions publication project was then at a crossroads. The founding General Editor, Frederick A. Pottle (1897–1987), and his successor, Frank Brady (1924–86), had both recently died. The thirteenth and final volume of the Trade Edition of Boswell’s journals—the series which had begun in 1950 with Pottle’s best-selling edition of Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–1763—was then in the press and would appear in September 1989 as Boswell: The Great Biographer, 1789–1795, edited by Marlies K. Danziger and Frank Brady. The McGraw-Hill Book Company, under contract to continue with the parallel Research Edition of Boswell’s correspondence, journals, and manuscript of the Life of Johnson, had grown wary at the prospect of producing scholarly volumes which would not sell in large quantities. I would soon learn that the Director of Edinburgh University Press, Martin Spencer, was keen to publish the Research Edition in association with Yale University Press. Co-publication by the Edinburgh and Yale university presses began in 1993 with the three-volume Catalogue of the Papers of James Boswell at Yale University by Marion S. Pottle, Claude Colleer Abbott, and Frederick A. Pottle, which documents the James Boswell portion of the massive Boswell family collections, spanning six centuries, housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale. In the process of assessing the publishing prospects for the Research Edition, I became enamoured of the project itself. It was one of the most comprehensive, exciting, and exacting endeavours of its kind, and I wanted to be part of it. In September 1989 I accepted an offer from Marshall Waingrow to edit the dormant ‘Scots Literati volume’ of correspondence in the Research Edition. I soon learned that the rubric ‘Scots Literati volume’ included dozens of Scots who corresponded with Boswell, sometimes just once or twice. At the same time, other volumes were in progress in the ‘General Correspondence’ series of the Research Edition, to which the correspondences of some major Scottish figures, such as Sir John Pringle and Sir Alexander Dick, had already been committed. My task was to sort through what remained and devise a coherent volume for publication. By the spring of 1992 my plan was in place: along with a co-editor, Bill Zachs, I would edit a volume of the correspondence between Boswell and Hugh Blair, Henry Home (Lord Kames), Sir David Dalrymple (Lord Hailes), and Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, with the notes Boswell had compiled for a biography of Kames as an appendix. Blair, Kames, Hailes, and Forbes were all major figures in the intellectual and cultural life of xi

Preface and Acknowledgements eighteenth-century Edinburgh, and Boswell’s correspondences with them contained a great deal of rich, largely unpublished material. Appointed a Senior Warnock Fellow for the summer of 1992 by Waingrow’s successor as General Editor of the Yale Boswell Editions, Claude Rawson, I looked forward to beginning my research and completing the volume within several years. Alas, my plans for the ‘Scots Literati volume’ proved to be far more difficult to implement than I had anticipated. First, a family illness prevented my spending the summer of 1992 at Yale as a Senior Warnock Fellow. Then various other projects and responsibilities intervened to cause further delays. Underlying these circumstances was a more fundamental problem that took time to appreciate fully. Although the Kames and Blair correspondences were of manageable size and relatively straightforward, the problems associated with editing the Hailes and Forbes correspondences were compounded by their greater bulk and complexity, as well as by the existence of large and fertile family archives in Scotland: the Newhailes Papers in the first instance and the Fettercairn Papers in the second. As my work proceeded, I became increasingly fascinated by the latter archive—privately owned but mostly on deposit in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh—and by the remarkable figure at the centre of it: the banker, philanthropist, ‘English Episcopal’ religious leader, improver, literary and cultural patron, biographer of James Beattie, and intimate friend of Boswell, Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo. It was becoming clear to me that researching and annotating the Boswell–Forbes correspondence to the high scholarly standard of the Yale Boswell Editions would require a great deal of research in the Fettercairn Papers, particularly to examine and incorporate the large numbers of letters that Forbes sent to, and received from, his friends and relations, including most importantly hundreds of letters to his wife, Elizabeth (Hay), Lady Forbes, and to and from his close friend, James Beattie. I was beginning to realize that, properly annotated, the Boswell–Forbes correspondence deserved a volume (indeed, a very substantial volume) of its own. Boswell scholars had drawn on it selectively for correspondence relating to the Life of Samuel Johnson, most notably Marshall Waingrow in his valuable volume on that subject (Corr. 2 in the Research Edition). But it had never been closely examined in its own right, as a record of one of Boswell’s most intimate friendships, essential for understanding Boswell’s own life—especially its under-researched final decade, when Boswell resided mainly in London and often did not document his life in his journals, correspondence, and register of letters as fully as in the past. Beyond his connection with Boswell, furthermore, Forbes had scarcely been studied at all, despite his prominence in late eighteenth-century Scotland. For these reasons, when I returned to Boswell editing with renewed vigour in 2007, after the publication of The Enlightenment and the Book, Forbes and the Fettercairn Papers became the focus of my research. A 2009 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities enabled me to delve deeper into the complex relationship between Forbes and Boswell. Often assisted by my wife Doris, I investigated the Fettercairn Papers on research trips to Edinburgh during the summers of 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015. Forbes steadily broke apart from his countrymen, and with the approval and support of Gordon Turnbull, General Editor of the Yale Boswell Editions, this xii

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS project took shape as one of the ‘single-correspondent’ volumes in the Research Edition. As work on this book accelerated, others began to play larger roles, and I am extremely grateful to them all. James Caudle, Associate Editor of the Boswell Editions from 2000 until February 2017, had long been helpful to me, as he had been to other editors of volumes in the Research Edition. Several years ago he undertook the task of checking the original manuscripts of Boswell’s letters to Forbes and the challenging drafts of Forbes’s letters to Boswell in the Fettercairn Papers in Edinburgh, as well as Forbes’s letters to Boswell in the Beinecke Library at Yale—in the process complicating and often improving the initial draft transcriptions prepared by me with the help of others at Yale, recording deletions, insertions, and other manuscript variations, and noting for the first time the details of seals and postmarks. He also examined other sources and supplied useful materials which I have sometimes incorporated into headnotes and footnotes. Others at the Yale Boswell Editions have also contributed generously. Andy Heisel has been a vital part of this volume since 2013, evolving from a master fact-checker to a jack-of-all-editorial-trades, and finally to the Associate Editor of the Yale Boswell Editions and typesetter of this volume. I have relied heavily on his bibliographical skills, his assiduous efforts to establish transcriptional accuracy, his searchable compilation of Boswell’s journals and journal notes, and his patience in replying informatively to my many desperate ‘Andy???’ queries scattered throughout the evolving typescript. Mark Spicer provided helpful advice on stylistic issues and matters of editorial policy and procedure. Because this volume has been in the works for such a long time, several Junior Warnock Fellows at Yale have helped to improve it over the years, mainly as text-correctors and fact-checkers of earlier drafts, and I owe thanks to them all: Jerry Weng in 2008, Jean Otsuki in 2010, and Jessica Hanser and Brian Davidson in 2012. Jerry Weng’s transcription of Boswell’s hand-written Register of Letters, Tricia Ross’s translation (no other word will do) of Forbes’s will in the Public Record Office (prob 11/1484/245) from clerical script, and Dan Gustafson’s calendar of Boswell’s trips to London have all made my work easier, and more recently Dan generously provided additional commentary on a late draft of the work. Boswell Office administrative staff members Rachel McClellan and Irene Adams (both now sadly no longer with us) and Nadine Honigberg were frequently called upon to answer my requests for photocopies, scans, and information about administrative matters. Above all others, Gordon Turnbull, a source of friendship and expert guidance for many years, made indispensable contributions by enriching the annotation, working wonders with genealogy and identifications, gamely grappling with the index, and carefully vetting the entire manuscript several times. In appreciation of all he has done for this work and for the Yale Boswell Editions, I am pleased to dedicate this volume to him. In 2016–17 I was fortunate to be a Senior Warnock Fellow at the Yale Boswell Editions, a quarter of a century after a family health issue forced me to decline that honour. Crucially important materials surfaced during that period, as a result of the sale of Fettercairn House in 2016 and subsequent auctions of its Forbes-related xiii

Preface and Acknowledgements contents. In particular, many of the gems in Forbes’s library and private collections, which had been held at Fettercairn House since the early nineteenth century, inaccessible to scholars, were sold at two major Sotheby’s auctions in London, on 13 December 2016 and 28 March 2017. Although it is unfortunate that Forbes’s library was not kept intact or, as far as I have been able to ascertain, properly catalogued before its dispersal, the magnificent sale catalogues from those Sotheby’s auctions (cited in the Cue Titles and Abbreviations below) illustrate and describe many of Forbes’s finest books, including several presentation copies from Boswell. The Sotheby’s auction catalogues also display many of Forbes’s other relevant possessions, such as seals and other writing materials, the mourning ring which Boswell bequeathed to Forbes in his will, and the three bound manuscript volumes of ‘Letters Explanatory’ (along with two supplementary volumes, one on methods of study and the other on ‘right conduct’) which Forbes prepared for the religious instruction of his children. (My thanks to Jennifer Dell and David Macdonald at Sotheby’s for their assistance.) Other books from Forbes’s library were sold by Sotheby’s at three auctions in November and December 2016 and by Taylor of Montrose in a series of five auctions between November 2016 and November 2018. Bill Zachs and Alex Forbes kindly provided me with information about these materials, as well as access to ‘Letters Explanatory’. A final deposit of Fettercairn manuscripts at the National Library of Scotland (Acc. 13827) became available to scholars in late August 2017 as a result of the cataloguing efforts of Ralph McLean and Alison Metcalfe, and I am particularly grateful to Felicity Loughlin for her meticulous work on those manuscripts as my research assistant. These developments may finally bring to an end the remarkable tale of the discovery and dissemination of Boswell, Beattie, and Forbes materials at Fettercairn House which began with Claude Colleer Abbott’s visits there in 1930, as discussed in the introduction to this volume. Several editors of other volumes in the Research Edition have been helpful in a variety of ways over the years, including Nigel Aston, Tom Bonnell, John Eglin, Hugh Milne, and the late Thomas Crawford, Marlies Danziger, and Marshall Waingrow. I also wish to thank Jim Alexander, the late Sonia Anderson, Karen Baston, Iain Gordon Brown, Rhona Brown, Adam Budd, William Donaldson, Hugh Feldman, John Finlay, Henry Fulton, Micky Gibbard, Justin Goff, Karen McAulay, Mark McLean, Jennifer Melville, Nelson Mundell, Susan Rennie, Joe Rock, Terry Seymour, John Stone, Paul Tankard, Jennifer Thorp, Paul Wood, and Jonathan Yeager for their assistance with specific matters. Tony Lewis kindly shared the results of his research on Edinburgh tax and building records and worked with me on piecing together the story of Forbes’s residences in the New Town. Tristram Clarke provided information about the births of the Forbes children from the genealogical database ‘ScotlandsPeople’, and Doris Sher confirmed those dates in the church records in Edinburgh City Archives. I have benefitted from and enjoyed my correspondence with Alex Forbes, a knowledgeable descendant of Sir William who provided much additional information about his family history. In 2019 Eloise Grey informed me about Sir William’s correspondence in the Ogilvie–Forbes of Boyndlie Papers in Aberdeen University Library, but unfortunately it was too late for me to consult that archive. New information about the pre-publication sale of the Life xiv

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS of Samuel Johnson to the London book trade, incorporated into the annotation for Boswell’s letter to Forbes of 13 May 1791, is drawn from my research on the publication history of that book’s first three editions, originally presented in July 2015 at the Colloquium on Literary Commerce at the University of Edinburgh, organized by Adam Budd. In the final stages of the volume’s preparation, Christine Ferdinand provided expert proofreading of the front matter, notes, and bank statements, and also contributed to proofreading the index. Zubin Meer helped with copy-editing the index and proofread it extensively, with assistance from Marcus Alaimo. The National Library of Scotland kindly provided permission to make extensive use of the Fettercairn Papers in its care. Photocopies of letters to Alexander Fraser Tytler on loan to the library, Acc. 3639, are quoted by permission of their owner. Among NLS librarians, Ralph McLean, the Eighteenth-Century Manuscripts Curator, has been consistently supportive, as have Iain Gordon Brown, Kenneth Dunn, Peter Findlay, Yvonne Shand, and other staff members over the years. John Overholt at Harvard University’s Houghton Library, Jennifer Hogg and Richard Hunter at the Edinburgh City Archives, Mark Pomeroy at the Royal Academy of Arts, Doug MacBeath at the Museum on the Mound, Lisa Little at Alnwick Castle, Jenny Nix at St. Cecilia’s Hall, Charles Stewart at Lodge Canongate Kilwinning No. 2, and Alison Rosie at the National Register of Archives for Scotland were also helpful. Charlotte Priddle at the Fales Library, NYU, and Liam Sims at Cambridge University Library Special Collections helped me to track down the Dublin variant of Boswell’s Tour to the Hebrides discussed in Appendix 3. The Northamptonshire Record Office granted permission to reproduce in a footnote Forbes’s letter to Edmund Burke of 6 April 1784 (as I have re-dated it). Without access to the excellent online reference materials at the libraries of Yale University and Rutgers University, and the interlibrary loan services provided by the Van Houten Library at New Jersey Institute of Technology, the research for this volume would have taken much longer to complete. Thanks are due to James Basker and Bill Zachs for permission to publish manuscript letters in their possession, and to Bill especially for photographing the collection of Forbes’s letters from Ireland to his brother-in-law John Hay in the National Archives of Scotland, among many other gifts and services he has graciously provided to me during our decades of warm friendship. All my publications owe a great deal to the loving encouragement I receive every day from My Dearest Dear Doris (to paraphrase the salutation in letters from Sir William to his beloved Betsy), but this one perhaps more than any other because she laboured on it with me in the archival trenches for several summers. I am pleased to be signing off on this book more than thirty years after I signed on as an editor in the Research Edition. It is my hope that this project’s long gestation period—particularly the opportunities it has provided to explore the Fettercairn Papers, and to improve the manuscript with others who have engaged in the dedicated work of the Yale Boswell Editions—is ultimately justified by the value of the volume before you. RBS April 2021 xv

List of Correspondence James B oswell

S ir W illiam F orbes

and

† indicates letters which have not been reported

†From Forbes, [Spring/Summer 1768] To Forbes, 8 Aug. [1772] From Forbes, [6 Jan. 1775] To Forbes, 6 Jan. 1775 †To Forbes, 11 Apr. 1776 To Forbes, 24 Feb. 1777 From Forbes, 7 Mar. 1777 To Forbes, 20 Dec. 1779 From Forbes, 21 Dec. 1779 To Forbes, [28 Aug. 1781] †To Forbes, [between late Sept. and early Oct. 1782] From Forbes, 9 Oct. 1782 To Forbes, 20 Oct. 1782 To Forbes, 5 May 1783 From Forbes, 23 May 1783 †From Forbes, [on or shortly after 7 Sept. 1783] From Forbes, 15 Oct. 1783 To Forbes, 23 Oct. 1783 To Forbes, 30 Dec. 1783 To Forbes, 17 May 1784 From Forbes, 16 Sept. 1785 To Forbes, 19 Sept. [1785] To Forbes, [5 Nov. 1785] †To Forbes, [between 17 Nov. and 2 Dec. 1785] From Forbes, 6 Dec. 1785 To Forbes, [20 Dec. 1785] To Forbes, [26 Jan. 1786] From Forbes, 25 Apr. 1787 To Forbes, 8 May 1787 To Forbes, 21 July 1787 From Forbes, 25 July 1787 To Forbes, 11 Oct. 1787 From Forbes, 19 Oct. 1787

To Forbes, 7 Nov. 1787 From Forbes, 18 Dec. 1787 To Forbes, 29 Jan. 1788 From Forbes, 26 May 1788 From Forbes, 30 May 1788 To Forbes, 31 May 1788 From Forbes, 3 June 1788 To Forbes, 12 Dec. 1788 From Forbes, 20 Jan. 1789 To Forbes, 27 Jan. 1789 From Forbes, 8 Apr. 1789 To Forbes, 23 May 1789 From Forbes, 1 June 1789 To Forbes, 27 June 1789 From Forbes, 4 July 1789 From Forbes, 5 July 1789 To Forbes, 15 July 1789 From Forbes, 23 July 1789 From Forbes, 30 Sept. 1789 To Forbes, 4 Oct. 1789 To Forbes, 7 Nov. 1789 From Forbes, 9 Feb. 1790 From Forbes, 18 May 1790 To Forbes, 2–3 July 1790 From Forbes, 9 July 1790 To Forbes, 11 Oct. 1790 From Forbes, 2 Nov. 1790 To Forbes, 20 Dec. 1790 To Forbes, 1 May 1791 To Forbes, 13 May 1791 From Forbes, 28 May 1791 To Forbes, 27 Sept. 1791 From Forbes, 13 Oct. 1791 To Forbes, 19 Oct. 1791 From Forbes, 29 Oct.–4 Nov. 1791 To Forbes, [13 Jan. 1792] xvi

List of Correspondence From Forbes, [14 Jan. 1792] To Forbes, 15 Jan. [1792] From Forbes, [16 Jan. 1792] From Forbes, 23 Apr. 1792 To Forbes, 11 Aug. 1792 From Forbes, 12 Mar. 1793 To Forbes, 11 May 1793 From Forbes, 8 July 1793

From Forbes, 16 Oct. 1793 To Forbes, 24 Oct. 1793 To Forbes, 30 Oct. 1793 From Forbes, 5–11 Nov. 1793 To Forbes, 29 May 1794 From Forbes, 4 June 1794 †From Forbes, [after 14 Aug. 1794] To Forbes, 15 Dec. 1794

O ther C orrespondents BARNARD, Thomas (TB) Forbes to Barnard, 29 Apr. 1786 BEATTIE, James (JaB) Forbes to Beattie, 9 Jan. 1786 Forbes to Beattie, 15 Oct. 1793 BLACKLOCK, Thomas Blacklock to Boswell, 12 Nov. 1785 BOSWELL, Alexander (AB) Alexander Boswell to Forbes, [11 June 1793] Forbes to Alexander Boswell, 25 May 1795 BOSWELL, Margaret (Montgomerie) (MMB) Margaret Boswell to Forbes, 15 Sept. 1783 CHAMBERS, Sir William (see REYNOLDS, Sir Joshua) FORBES, Elizabeth (Hay), Lady Forbes (LF) Forbes to Lady Forbes, [8 Aug. 1772] Forbes to Lady Forbes, 5 Mar. 1792 Forbes to Lady Forbes, [2 Oct. 1793] Forbes to Lady Forbes, 12 May 1795 Forbes to Lady Forbes, 8 June 1795 Forbes to Lady Forbes, 9 June 1795 SIR WILLIAM FORBES, JAMES HUNTER AND COMPANY (FHC) FHC to Boswell, 1 Jan. 1782 FHC to Boswell, 17 Mar. 1783 †FHC to Boswell, [12 or 13 May 1783] FHC to Boswell, 23 July 1783

FHC to Boswell, 22 Jan. 1784 FHC to Boswell, 28 Jan. 1785 FHC to Boswell, [c. 1 Feb. 1785] FHC to Andrew Gibb, 15 Feb. 1792 FHC to Boswell, 28 May 1794 Boswell to FHC, 29 May 1794 GIBB, Andrew (see SIR WILLIAM FORBES, JAMES HUNTER AND COMPANY) GRANT, Mary (Grant) Boswell to Mary Grant, 27 June 1789 JOHNSON, Samuel (SJ) The Round Robin: Reynolds, Burke, Forbes, Barnard and others to Samuel Johnson, [between late May and early June 1776] Forbes [with John Johnston of Grange] to Samuel Johnson, 13 July 1784 Samuel Johnson to Forbes, 7 Aug. 1784 REYNOLDS, Sir Joshua (JR) Reynolds to Sir William Chambers, [mid-Feb. 1790] Reynolds to Sir William Chambers, 22 Feb. 1790 ROTHES, Mary (Lloyd), Lady Lady Rothes to Forbes, 4 June 1790 Lady Rothes to Forbes, 6 Dec. 1790 TYTLER, Alexander Fraser (AFT) Tytler to Boswell, 31 Oct. 1785 WALKER, Joseph Cooper Walker to Boswell, 5 June 1785

xvii

Editorial Procedures The Texts Choice and Arrangement of Letters All known letters exchanged between the two principal correspondents are included, as are certain relevant letters exchanged between one of the principal correspondents and another party, or between other parties if enclosed with letters between the principal correspondents. The arrangement of the letters is chronological, except in cases of enclosed letters, which are, unless otherwise noted, reproduced immediately following the letter in which they were enclosed, regardless of date. When the full date of a letter does not appear in its dateline, the presumed date (or unstated portion of the date) is given in square brackets on the basis of internal evidence (e.g., a day of the week in the dateline) or external evidence (e.g., a journal entry), or both, with the grounds for this determination provided in the headnote. ‘Not reported’ indicates that, although evidence survives to establish that the letter in question was sent, no version of it has been located to use as a copy-text. Such letters are described as fully as possible on the basis of existing evidence.

Transcription In conformity with the plan for the correspondence series of the Research Edition, the manuscript documents in this edition have been printed to correspond closely to the originals. Changes have been kept within the limits of stated conventions, and no change which could affect sense has been made silently. Copy-texts. Whenever possible, the manuscripts of sent letters have been used as copy-texts. When such manuscripts have not been located, drafts, copies, or published versions of the letters have been used as copy-texts, as noted. Formatting. The writers’ paragraphing has been retained, with allowances for special situations (such as severe space constraints) in which new paragraphs seem to have been intended. Words and figures underlined in the manuscript for emphasis are printed in italics. Except in postmarks, words written in large letters or entirely in capitals are printed in small capitals. All subscript and superscript formulations have been regularized. Spelling and Capitalization. Writers’ idiosyncratic spelling has been retained, except for obvious slips of the pen, which have been silently corrected. Following a period or other sentence-ending mark of punctuation, a new sentence always begins with a capital letter. Capital letters following colons and semicolons have been reduced to lower case, as have capitals following exclamation marks and question marks which occur in mid-sentence. Otherwise writers’ capitalization has been retained wherever it is clear and unambiguous. Sir William Forbes’s handwriting poses special problems because of its irregular and inconsistent renderings of letters such as c, k, m, s, and y, xviii

EDITORIAL PROCEDURES which frequently appear larger than other letters at the beginning of words, though not necessarily because they were intended to be capitals. In the event of uncertainty about a specific letter beginning a word which is not a proper noun, the letter in question has been placed in lower case. In addition, the standards of capitalization in published works of the period have been used as a point of reference, especially two known instances in which letters by Forbes appeared in print during his own lifetime (Life iv. 83–85 and Beattie ii. 181–84). Punctuation. Periods are supplied at the ends of sentences where they are lacking in the manuscript, and dashes between sentences (which occur frequently in Forbes’s letters) have been silently deleted. Nonsensical periods are treated as commas, and vice versa. Where the end of a line stands in place of punctuation in the manuscript, commas or other punctuation are occasionally supplied to clarify meaning. Periods have been removed following cardinal and ordinal numbers and from the ends of addresses, datelines, endorsements, and signatures. Obvious inadvertencies, such as the omission of a comma in a series, have been corrected. Changes, Interlineations, and Marginalia. For sent letters—and for drafts of letters between the principal correspondents being used as copy-texts because the sent letters have not survived—additions, deletions, interlineations, and marginalia are all recorded in the footnotes. For other surviving drafts and copies, such alterations are recorded in the footnotes only if they may be significant for the style or content. Lacunae. Words and letters missing through a tear or obscured by a blot are supplied within angular brackets. Omissions by the writer, whether intentional or inadvertent, are supplied within square brackets only when required for sense; when the sense is clear, such editorial intervention has been avoided, allowing contemporary usages and idiosyncrasies to stand as written (e.g., ‘Dr. Johnsons Life’). Abbreviations, Contractions, and Symbols. The following abbreviations, contractions, and symbols, and their variant forms, are expanded in the text of personal letters: abt. (about), agst. (against), Bp. (Bishop), cd. (could), curt. (current), dft. (draft), Dr. (Dear), the Dr. (the Doctor), Ld. (Lord), Ly. (Lady), Lysp. (Ladyship), Ldshp. (Lordship), recd. (received), shd. (should), Sr. (Sir), wch. (which), wd. (would), wt. (with), ye (the), yr (your), and &c (etc.). Ampersands (&) are expanded to ‘and’ in the text of letters except in special circumstances, such as the names of firms (e.g., ‘Sir Robert Herries & Co.’). Other common or easily recognizable abbreviations and contractions for names and place names have been retained whenever the meaning is clear from the context (e.g., Wm. for William, Ja. for James, Lady F. for Lady Forbes, Mr. L. for Mr. Langton, Edinb., Edinbg., Edinr., or Edr. for Edinburgh, Lond. or Londn. for London, Apl. for April, Novemb. for November), but obscure or unfamiliar abbreviations and contractions have been expanded within square brackets. Periods are supplied for abbreviations and contractions except ordinals; this includes titles such as Mr., Mrs., Dr., Col., Bt. or Bart. (Baronet), M.P., and Esq. Colons following abbreviations and contractions have been replaced by periods (e.g., ‘Esq.’ for ‘Esq:’). The conventions above do not apply to bank statements and bank correspondence, in which abbreviations and contractions have been preserved in order to retain the flavour of these communications. The following abbreviations and conxix

Editorial Procedures tractions appear in these documents: accot. (account), cr. (creditor or credit), dft. (draft), demd. (demand), do. (ditto), dr. (debtor or debit), int. (interest), pct. or prct. (percent), ulto. (ultimo, meaning ‘of last month’). Currency Notation. Currency notation has been standardized, as in the following example: £15 16s 6d. Quotations. Primary quotation is indicated by single quotation marks, secondary by double. Missing quotation marks have been silently supplied at the beginnings or ends of quoted passages. Datelines. Except as noted in special cases, places and dates are joined in the upper right-hand corner of the letter regardless of their position in the manuscript. Salutations. Abbreviations are expanded. Fonts are standardized as small capitals, followed by colons and the text of the letter. Complimentary Closes and Signatures. Abbreviations are expanded (e.g., obedt. to obedient, humbl. to humble, compts. to compliments), and punctuation and capitalization are regularized. Elements appearing on separate lines are run together, and the close itself is printed as a continuation of the last line of text. Postscripts. Punctuation of the symbol P.S. is regularized, and postscripts are treated as separate paragraphs. Handwriting in the Text and Headnotes. Unless otherwise noted, sent letters, drafts, and copies, as well as headers and footers (recorded in the headnotes), are in the handwriting of the sender, whereas endorsements (recorded in the headnotes) are in the handwriting of the recipient.

Headnotes Each letter in the volume is preceded by a headnote which contains additional information. This information, when present, is listed in the following order. Manuscripts, Drafts, and Copies. When more than one version of a letter is cited at the beginning of a headnote, the first mentioned is the copy-text, identified as the ‘MS.’ (a draft used as a copy-text is cited as the ‘MS. Draft’). The location and reference number of the MS. is given, along with any special information about it, such as damage from tears or ink blots. For all letters exchanged between Boswell and Forbes, and for letters from other correspondents which are in the Fettercairn Papers, these details are followed by the reference number in Abbott’s catalogue (see ‘Abbott’ in Cue Titles and Abbreviations below), or by the phrase ‘Not in Abbott’. Information is then provided about any surviving drafts and copies of the letter. Reg. Let. Sent and Reg. Let. Received. If information about a letter was recorded in Boswell’s Register of Letters sent and received (see ‘Reg. Let.’ in Cue Titles and Abbreviations below), this information is provided fully. Previously Printed. If the letter was previously printed, in whole or in part, publication information is provided. Header. If the letter has a header, normally stating the name of the recipient of the letter, this information is provided. Footer. If the letter has a footer, normally stating the name of the recipient of the letter, this information is provided. xx

Editorial Procedures Addresses. If the letter has an address (sometimes written on a separate wrapper, sometimes on the reverse of one of the sheets of the letter itself), it is given fully. Elements of the address which appear on separate lines in the manuscript are run together, separated by commas. When an address is not given in the headnote, the letter may sometimes have been hand-delivered (‘under cover’), or a wrapper containing an address may not have been preserved with the manuscript of the letter. Enclosures. When the existence of an enclosure is stated in a letter or learned of from another source, this information is recorded. Enclosures which have been located (or copies or drafts, when available, of enclosures which have not been located) are reproduced immediately after the letter in question, unless it has been deemed wiser to place particular enclosed letters in chronological order, or the large size of an enclosure, such as a book or book-length manuscript, renders it impractical to reproduce it. Enclosures which could not be found, either in the original or in a copy or draft, are marked ‘not located’. Endorsements. Endorsements are given fully when present. Elements of endorsements which appear on separate lines are run together, separated by commas. Postmarks, Seals, and Franks. Postmarks (including postal charges), seals, and franks are recorded where significant evidence of them survives. Postmarks often use standard two-letter abbreviations (e.g., SE for Sept., OC for Oct., NO for Nov.), preceded or followed by numbers indicating the day of the month, and then the final two digits of the year (e.g., 92 for 1792). Multiple postmarks are numbered. The two main seals used by Forbes in this correspondence—designated in headnotes as ‘Forbes of Pitsligo Coat of Arms’ (9 instances between 19 Oct. 1787 and 8 July 1793) and ‘WF Monogram’ (11 instances between 21 Dec. 1779 and 9 June 1795)—are described in footnotes at their first appearance. The seal most frequently used by Boswell, designated in headnotes as ‘Boswell Monogram and Crest’, appears four times between 15 July 1789 and 15 Dec. 1794 and is also described in a footnote at its first appearance. Red wax in seals (the norm) is not recorded, but black wax, indicating mourning, is noted when present. Notes. Additional pertinent information is recorded, including the basis for tentative dating when a dateline has not been provided in the letter itself and information about the reception and forwarding of letters.

The Annotation Footnotes. These are intended to elucidate the text, including both substantive commentary and textual alterations (see Changes, Interlineations, and Marginalia above). When an abbreviated source is given, the full citation appears either in a preceding note or in the list of Cue Titles and Abbreviations below. Individuals frequently mentioned in the text are briefly identified by their initials (as summarized in the following section) and are referred to by those initials in footnotes to the letters, as well as in headnotes and the index. All others are identified (with life dates, if available) on first appearance in the annotation—or if they appear only in the front matter, on their first appearance there. xxi

EDITORIAL PROCEDURES In general, the stylistic conventions which apply to the text of the correspondence, as stated above, also apply to the footnotes and headnotes. This is not the case, however, for quotations from printed materials, which are reproduced exactly as printed. Similarly, in keeping with the plan for the correspondence series of the Research Edition, text quoted from certain kinds of manuscripts, such as Boswell’s journals and Register of Letters sent and received, and letters between Boswell and William Johnson Temple subsequent to those reproduced in the first volume of their published correspondence (Corr. 6), is reproduced verbatim rather than in accordance with the stylistic conventions applied to the main text of the correspondence. Identifications in footnotes use standard abbreviations for titles, such as ‘Bt.’ for baronet, ‘M.P.’ for member of Parliament, and ‘W.S.’ for Writer to the Signet (a member of an elite group of Scottish ‘writers’ or solicitors).

xxii

Cue Titles and Abbreviations Published and Unpublished Works, Institutions, Collections, and Repositories Abbott: Claude Colleer Abbott, A Catalogue of Papers Relating to Boswell, Johnson and Sir William Forbes Found at Fettercairn House, a Residence of the Rt. Hon. Lord Clinton, 1930–1931, 1936. This catalogue assigns numbers to Boswell’s letters to Forbes, Forbes’s letters to Boswell, and other manuscripts formerly at Fettercairn House (now in the Fettercairn Papers, in the National Library of Scotland, or the Boswell Collection in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University). Applause: Boswell: The Applause of the Jury, 1782–1785, ed. Irma S. Lustig and Frederick A. Pottle, 1981. ‘Apologia’: Sir Joshua Reynolds’s incomplete and unpublished ‘Apologia’ (Mar. 1790), in Frederick Whiley Hilles, The Literary Career of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1936, Appendix 3, pp. 249–73. Arnot: Hugo Arnot, The History of Edinburgh, 1779. Bailey: Margery Bailey, ed., The Hypochondriack, Being the Seventy Essays by the Celebrated Biographer, James Boswell, Appearing in the London Magazine, from November, 1777, to August, 1783, 2 vols., 1928. Beattie: Sir William Forbes, Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie, 2 vols., 1806; repr. 1997. Beattie Corr.: The Correspondence of James Beattie, ed. Roger J. Robinson, 4 vols., 2004. BEJ: Boswell’s Edinburgh Journals, 1767–1786, ed. Hugh M. Milne, 2001; rev. ed. 2003; newly rev. ed. 2013. Book of Company: James Boswell’s Book of Company at Auchinleck, 1782–1795, ed. The Viscountess Eccles and Gordon Turnbull, 1995. Boswelliana: The Commonplace Book of James Boswell, ed. Charles Rogers, 1874. Boswell’s Books: Terry I. Seymour, Boswell’s Books: Four Generations of Collecting and Collectors, 2016. BP: Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle: In the Collection of Lt.-Colonel Ralph Heyward Isham, ed. Geoffrey Scott and Frederick A. Pottle, 18 vols., 1928–34. Cal. Merc.: The Caledonian Mercury, 1720–1867. Catalogue: Marion S. Pottle, Claude Colleer Abbott, and Frederick A. Pottle, Catalogue of the Private Papers of James Boswell at Yale University, 3 vols., 1993. Caudle: James J. Caudle, ‘James Boswell (H. Scoticus Londoniensis)’, in Scots in London in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Stana Nenadic, 2010, pp. 109–38. Chesterfield’s Letters: Letters Written by the Late Right Honourable Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, to His Son, Philip Stanhope, Esq., 2nd ed., 4 vols., 1774. Chron.: Chronology: James Boswell and Sir William Forbes in this volume. xxiii

Cue Titles and Abbreviations Citizen of the World: Boswell: Citizen of the World, Man of Letters, ed. Irma S. Lustig, 1995. Corr. 1: The Correspondence of James Boswell and John Johnston of Grange, ed. Ralph S. Walker, 1966 (Yale Research Edition, Correspondence: Volume 1) Corr. 2: The Correspondence and Other Papers of James Boswell Relating to the Making of the Life of Johnson, ed. Marshall Waingrow, 2nd ed., corrected and enlarged, 2001 (Yale Research Edition, Correspondence: Volume 2). Corr. 3: The Correspondence of James Boswell with Certain Members of the Club, ed. Charles N. Fifer, 1976 (Yale Research Edition, Correspondence: Volume 3). Corr. 4: The Correspondence of James Boswell with David Garrick, Edmund Burke, and Edmond Malone, ed. Peter S. Baker, Thomas W. Copeland, George M. Kahrl, Rachel McClellan, and James M. Osborn, 1987 (Yale Research Edition, Correspondence, Volume 4). Corr. 5: The General Correspondence of James Boswell, 1766–1769, Vol. 1: 1766– 1767, ed. Richard C. Cole with Peter S. Baker and Rachel McClellan, and with the assistance of James J. Caudle, 1993 (Yale Research Edition, Correspondence, Volume 5). Corr. 6: The Correspondence of James Boswell and William Johnson Temple, 1756– 1795, Vol. 1: 1756–1777, ed. Thomas Crawford, 1997 (Yale Research Edition, Correspondence: Volume 6). Corr. 8: The Correspondence of James Boswell with James Bruce and Andrew Gibb, Overseers of the Auchinleck Estate, ed. Nellie Pottle Hankins and John Strawhorn, 1998 (Yale Research Edition, Correspondence: Volume 8). Corr. 9: The General Correspondence of James Boswell, 1757–1763, ed. David Hankins and James J. Caudle, 2006 (Yale Research Edition, Correspondence: Volume 9). Corsica: James Boswell, An Account of Corsica, The Journal of a Tour to that Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli, 1768, 3rd ed. corrected, 1769. Crit. Rev.: The Critical Review, 1756–1817. Curiosities: Curiosities of a Scots Charta Chest, 1600–1800, with the Travels and Memoranda of Sir Alexander Dick, Baronet, ed. Mrs. Atholl Forbes, 1897. Dame Christian Forbes: Sir William Forbes, Narrative of the Last Sickness and Death of Dame Christian Forbes by Her Son Sir William Forbes, Sixth Baronet of Monymusk and Pitsligo, 1789, 1875. Diary Farington: The Diary of Joseph Farington, ed. Kenneth Garlick, Angus Macintyre, and Kathryn Cave, 16 vols., 1978–84. Dict. SJ: A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755, 2 vols. DSL: Dictionary of the Scots Language, . Earlier Years: Frederick A. Pottle, James Boswell: The Earlier Years, 1740–1769, 1966, repr. 1985. Edin. Adv.: The Edinburgh Advertiser, 1764–1859. Edin. Eve. Courant: The Edinburgh Evening Courant, 1718–1859. English Literature: English Literature, History, Children’s Books and Illustrations, Sotheby’s auction catalogue, London, 13 December 2016. Enlightenment and the Book: Richard B. Sher, The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and xxiv

Cue Titles and Abbreviations America, 2006; pb. (corrected) 2010. ESTC: English Short Title Catalogue, 1473–1800 . EUL: Edinburgh University Library. Eur. Mag.: The European Magazine, and London Review, 1782–1826. Evidences: James Beattie, Evidences of the Christian Religion; Briefly and Plainly Stated, 2 vols., 1786. Experiment: Boswell: The English Experiment, 1785–1789, ed. Irma S. Lustig and Frederick A. Pottle, 1986. Extremes: Boswell in Extremes, 1776–1778, ed. Charles McC. Weis and Frederick A. Pottle, 1970. Facts and Inventions: Facts and Inventions: Selections from the Journalism of James Boswell, ed. Paul Tankard, 2014. Fasti Scot.: Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, ed. Hew Scott, 2nd ed., 7 vols., 1915–28. FHC: Sir William Forbes, James Hunter and Company, 1773–1838. ‘Forbes’: ‘Forbes, Sir William, of Pitsligo’, in A Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen, ed. Robert Chambers, 3 vols., 1835, ii. 349–64. Available online at . FP: Fettercairn Papers, NLS, Acc. 4796, papers of Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo and family. References to this collection show the box number (e.g., FP 98) followed by the folder number if the folders in a box have been numbered by an archivist (e.g., FP 98/2 to indicate box 98, folder 2). FP+: Fettercairn Papers, NLS, Acc. 13827, papers of Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo and family, accessible from Aug. 2017. References to this collection show the folder number. Gen. Eve. Post: General Evening Post, 1733–1822. Gent. Mag.: The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1731–1907. Grand Tour I: Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland, 1764, ed. Frederick A. Pottle, 1953. Grand Tour II: Boswell on the Grand Tour: Italy, Corsica, and France, 1765–1766, ed. Frank Brady and Frederick A. Pottle, 1955. Pagination differs in the Heinemann (UK) and McGraw-Hill (USA) editions. Great Biographer: Boswell: The Great Biographer, 1789–1795, ed. Marlies K. Danziger and Frank Brady, 1989. Hebrides: Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. 1773, ed. from the original manuscript by Frederick A. Pottle and Charles H. Bennett, new ed., 1961. Hilton Price: F. G. Hilton Price, A Handbook of London Bankers, enlarged ed., 1890–91. Hist. Parl.: The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1690–1715, ed. D. Hayton, E. Cruickshanks, S. Handley, 2002; The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1715–1754, ed. Romney Sedgwick, 1970; The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1754–1790, ed. L. B. Namier and John Brooke, 1964; The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1790–1820, ed. R. G. Thorne, 1986; The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1820–1832, ed. D. R. Fisher, 2009. Online at . xxv

Cue Titles and Abbreviations Holland: Boswell in Holland, 1763–1764, ed. Frederick A. Pottle, 1952. Pagination differs in the Heinemann (UK) and McGraw-Hill (USA) editions. Hyde: The Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Johnson and Early Modern Books and Manuscripts, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Intro.: the introduction to this volume. Ital. Journ. WF: Sir William Forbes’s journal of a tour to Italy with Lady Forbes and their daughter Christian (Christy), 1792–93, seven bound volumes in Forbes’s handwriting, NLS, MSS 1539–45. Journ.: Boswell’s fully written journal, Yale. Transcribed conservatively from the manuscript. Journ. 1: James Boswell: The Journal of His German and Swiss Travels, 1764, ed. Marlies K. Danziger, 2008 (Yale Research Edition, Journal: Volume 1). Journey, Fleeman: Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, ed. J. D. Fleeman, 1985. Kay: A Series of Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings by the late John Kay, Miniature Painter, Edinburgh, with Biographical Sketches and Illustrative Anecdotes [by Hugh Paton] (1837), new ed., 2 vols., 1877. Laird: Boswell: Laird of Auchinleck, 1778–1782, ed. Joseph W. Reed and Frederick A. Pottle, 1977, repr. 1993. Lamont: Claire Lamont, ‘James Boswell and Alexander Fraser Tytler’, The Bibliotheck, i (1971): 1–16. Larsen: Lyle Larsen, The Johnson Circle: A Group Portrait, 2017. Later Years: Frank Brady, James Boswell: The Later Years, 1769–1795, 1984. ‘Letters Explanatory’: Sir William Forbes, ‘Letters Explanatory of the Religious Beleif and Practical Duties of a Christian’. Three bound manuscript volumes with an opening Memorandum dated 5 Oct. 1803, with two additional supplementary manuscript volumes. Privately owned. Letters JR: The Letters of Sir Joshua Reynolds, ed. John Ingamells and John Edgcumbe, 2000. Letters SJ: The Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. Bruce Redford, 5 vols., 1992. Life: Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Together with Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and Johnson’s Diary of a Journey into North Wales, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, rev. L. F. Powell, 6 vols., 1934–64; vols. v and vi, 2nd ed., 1964. Contains the standard modern editions of The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1791 (3rd ed., 1799), in vols. i–iv, and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1785 (3rd ed., 1786), in vol. v. Life MS ii, Life MS iii, Life MS iv: James Boswell’s Life of Johnson: An Edition of the Original Manuscript in Four Volumes, Yale Research Edition, Life of Johnson, Vol. 2: 1766–1776, ed. Bruce Redford, with Elizabeth Goldring, 1998; Vol. 3: 1776–1780, ed. Thomas F. Bonnell, 2012; Vol. 4: 1780–1784, ed. Thomas F. Bonnell, 2019. Lit. Car.: Frederick Albert Pottle, The Literary Career of James Boswell, Esq. Being the Bibliographical Materials for a Life of Boswell, 1929, repr. 1967. Lock: F. P. Lock, Edmund Burke, 2 vols., 1998–2006. Lond. Chron.: The London Chronicle, 1757–1823. xxvi

Cue Titles and Abbreviations Lond. Mag.: The London Magazine, 1732–85. Mackenzie: Allan Mackenzie, History of the Lodge Canongate Kilwinning No. 2. Compiled from the Records, 1677–1888, 1888. ‘Memoirs JB’: ‘Memoirs of James Boswell, Esq.’, Eur. Mag., May and June 1791, xix. 322–26, 404–07, repr. in Lit. Car., pp. xxix–xliv. Memoirs JR: Joseph Farington, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds; with Some Observations on His Talents and Character, 1819. Memoirs of a Banking-House: Sir William Forbes, Memoirs of a Banking-House, 2nd ed., 1860. Monthly Rev.: The Monthly Review, 1749–1845. Morn. Chron.: The Morning Chronicle, 1769–1862. Morn. Post: The Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, 1775–92. NCBEL2: The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, Vol. 2: 1660–1800, ed. George Watson, 1971. Frederick A. Pottle’s bibliography of James Boswell appears on pp. 1210–49. NLS: National Library of Scotland. Northcote: The Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 2nd ed., 2 vols., ed. James Northcote, 1818 (originally published in one volume as Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1813). Old Statistical Account: The Statistical Account of Scotland, ed. Sir John Sinclair, 20 vols., 1791–99. Ominous Years: Boswell: The Ominous Years, 1774–1776, ed. Charles Ryskamp and Frederick A. Pottle, 1963. ODNB: The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Brian Harrison, founding ed. Colin Matthew, 2004. PML: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Correspondence between Boswell (and his son James) and William Johnson Temple, 1777–95, MS. MA 981 (for the years 1756–76, see Corr. 6). Pol. Car.: Frank Brady, Boswell’s Political Career, 1965. Prayers and Meditations: Prayers and Meditations, Composed by Samuel Johnson, LL.D. and Published from his Manuscripts, by George Strahan, A. M., 1785. Pride and Negligence: Frederick A. Pottle, Pride and Negligence: The History of the Boswell Papers, 1982. Principal Corrections and Additions: The Principal Corrections and Additions to the First Edition of Mr. Boswell’s Life of Dr. Johnson, 1793. Pub. Adv.: The Oracle and Public Advertiser, 1752–94. Reg. Let.: Boswell’s Register of Letters sent and received, Oct. 1763–Oct. 1790 (M 251–M 255). Rosenbach: Rosenbach Library, Philadelphia. Two letters from Boswell to Margaret Boswell, 28 Jan. 1789 (EMs 371/19.1) and 9 Feb. 1789 (EMs 371/19.2). Scots Mag.: The Scots Magazine, 1739–1817. Search of a Wife: Boswell in Search of a Wife, 1766–1769, ed. Frank Brady and Frederick A. Pottle, 1956. Pagination differs in the Heinemann (UK) and McGrawHill (USA) editions. Sermons SJ: Samuel Johnson, Sermons, ed. Jean Hagstrum and James Gray, 1978 xxvii

Cue Titles and Abbreviations (The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson: Volume 14). St James’s Chron.: St. James’s Chronicle; or, British Evening Post, 1761–1866. TIS: private collection of Terry I. Seymour. Tour: James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1785, in Life v. Based on the text of the 3rd ed., 1786. Tour1: James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1785, 1st ed. Tour2: James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1785, 2nd ed. Treasure: David Buchanan, The Treasure of Auchinleck: The Story of the Boswell Papers, 1974. Two Great Scottish Collections: Two Great Scottish Collections: Property from the Forbeses of Pitsligo and the Marquesses of Lothian, Sotheby’s auction catalogue, London, 28 March 2017. Tytler Corr.: Photocopies of Correspondence of Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, NLS, Acc. 3639, Vol. 1. Wendorf: Richard Wendorf, Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society, 1996. Whitehall Eve. Post: The Whitehall Evening-Post, 1746–1801. Woodfall: The Diary, or Woodfall’s Register, 1789–93. Works JR: The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Knt. … To which is Prefixed an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author. By Edmond Malone, Esq. 2 vols., 1797.

The Papers of James Boswell at Yale University Manuscripts and other Boswell materials housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University are cited in footnotes and headnotes by letter and number, according to the following referencing system, as recorded in Catalogue i. xiii: J: Journals of James Boswell (including notes for journals and memoranda) M: Manuscripts of James Boswell (other than journals and letters) L: Letters Written by James Boswell C: Letters to James Boswell and Others, and Manuscripts not by Boswell P: Printed Matter and Other Non-Manuscript Material A: Accounts and Other Financial Papers Lg: Legal Papers.

People The following individuals appear frequently in this volume and are cited by their initials in the front matter which follows, as well as in footnotes, headnotes, appendices, and index. They are briefly identified below, rather than in the footnotes, with emphasis on their connections with Boswell and Forbes. The designation ‘LC’ appears at the end of the biographical accounts of those who were members of the Literary Club (or The Club) founded by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1764, followed by the year of their admission. With the exception of Forbes’s wife, son, and daughter, and Boswell’s brother and daughters, all the figures below have biographical entries in the ODNB. xxviii

Cue Titles and Abbreviations TB: Thomas Barnard (1727–1806), Church of Ireland clergyman Successively Dean of Derry (1769), Bishop of Killaloe and Kilfenora (1780), and Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe (1794), he was an urbane Tory who spent much time in London, where he became a friend of SJ, JB, and their circle, and met WF at the Round Robin dinner party in spring 1776. In the JB-WF correspondence, he usually appears as ‘the Bishop of Killaloe’. WF visited him in Dublin in 1785 and obtained from him a copy of the Round Robin, which WF later sent to JB; after TB sent JB the original, it was engraved for publication in the Life. WF tried for years to see TB’s long letter to JB on the Lord’s Supper, which he finally copied in London on 1 Mar. 1792, and found convincing. LC 1775. JaB: James Beattie (1735–1803), poet, philosopher, and professor A popular Scottish author, his publications included The Minstrel (1771– 74) and other works of poetry, An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770), Evidences of the Christian Religion (1786), Elements of Moral Science (1790–93), and volumes of essays and dissertations. From 1760 he was Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic at Marischal College, Aberdeen, actively teaching until Nov. 1797. He was acquainted with JB and maintained a close friendship with WF, who managed some of his personal and business affairs. From the time of their meeting in 1765 onwards, he and WF kept up a voluminous correspondence, and many of his letters to WF were reproduced in the biography of JaB which WF published in 1806. AB: Alexander Boswell (1775–1822), 1st Baronet, elder son of JB and MMB, commonly called ‘Sandy’ or ‘Sandie’ by family members Educated at Eton and Edinburgh University, he was JB’s heir as Laird of Auchinleck. Aged nineteen at JB’s death, he afterwards kept up a frequent and affectionate correspondence with WF, who largely superintended his financial affairs before, and for some time after, he came of age. In 1799 he married Grace Cuming (d. 1864), daughter of a wealthy Edinburgh banker. He was partial to field sports and agricultural improvement but also wrote poetry and songs and started a press on the estate. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and an officer in the Highland Society of Scotland. A Tory M.P. for Plympton Erle, 1816–21, his political fervour gained him a baronetcy in July 1821 but cost him his life in a duel seven months later, leaving behind his wife and three children. EuB: Euphemia Boswell (1774–1837), second daughter of JB and MMB, commonly called ‘Phemy’ or ‘Phemie’ by family members Educated at a boarding school in Edinburgh, she was the longest lived and most troubled of JB and MMB’s five surviving children. She sometimes had strained relations with JB, and subsequently with WF (in his capacity as executor) and family members, whom she bitterly accused of neglecting her after her father’s death. She kept up a frequent and detailed correspondence with WF, who sometimes came to her financial rescue. From 1805 she lived unmarried xxix

Cue Titles and Abbreviations in London, trying to support herself as an opera writer, musical composer, and dramatist, and perpetually lamenting her financial situation. In 1816 her brothers, who ceased all communication with her, had her committed to a private asylum in Islington, where she remained until the year before her death. JB: James Boswell (1740–95). LC 1773. See Chronology: Boswell and Forbes. JBII: James Boswell (1778–1822), second son of JB and MMB, commonly called ‘Jamie’ by family members Educated at Westminster School and Oxford, he was a barrister by profession but a literary scholar by vocation, working with (and succeeding) EM in editing posthumous editions of the Life, and completing in 1821 EM’s great unfinished edition of Shakespeare (the ‘Third Variorum’) in twenty-one volumes. Died unmarried in London at the age of forty-three on 24 Feb. 1822, a month before his brother. MMB: Margaret (Montgomerie) Boswell (bap. 6 Mar. 1738–89), JB’s wife from 25 Nov. 1769 She was JB’s first cousin, her mother being the sister of JB’s father, Lord Auchinleck, who gave only a grudging approval to the marriage and, with his own second wife, Elizabeth (Boswell) of Balmuto, treated her with great coldness. JB valued her intelligence, her sensible, loving temperament, and her ability to both stand up to and forgive him. She became terminally ill with consumption as a young woman and suffered severely for many years before her death. JB loved her dearly but was tortured with guilt over his many indiscretions, bouts of gonorrhoea, and absences during their years of marriage. TDB: Thomas David Boswell (1748–1826), JB’s brother, commonly called ‘David’ or ‘T. D.’ Born David, he added Thomas (and went by ‘T. D.’) after moving to Valencia in 1768 to work as a merchant for Robert (later Sir Robert) Herries. Before that he had been apprenticed to John Coutts & Co. in Edinburgh under WF’s supervision, and his admiration for WF helped to fortify the friendship between JB and WF. He returned to Britain in 1779 and settled in London in 1780. In 1791 JB appointed him co-guardian of his children with WF in the event of his death, and prevailed on Henry Dundas to secure for him a modest position in the Navy Pay Office, which he used as a springboard for a moderately successful career, enabling him eventually to acquire the Crawley Grange estate and other properties in Buckinghamshire. VB: Veronica Boswell (1773–95), eldest child of JB and MMB Educated first in Edinburgh and then at the Stevenson sisters’ school in London, she had shown some ability as a musical performer but had suffered from symptoms of consumption while a girl and died, unmarried, in Sept. 1795, just four months after JB’s death. EuB nursed her through her final illness, and WF and EuB arranged for shipment of her body for burial (on 5 Nov.) in the family vault at Auchinleck. xxx

Cue Titles and Abbreviations EB: Edmund Burke (1729/30–97), politician and author Educated at Trinity College Dublin in his native Ireland, he emigrated to London in 1750 in order to train for a legal career but gravitated instead to writing philosophical treatises and editing the Annual Register, which he founded in 1758, and then from 1765 to serving as a leading Whig M.P. and orator. JB greatly admired his eloquence and talents, but their relationship blew hot and cold over personal differences and disagreements over various issues, beginning with their shared sympathy for the American Revolution, growing tense during the mid-1780s over Fox’s East India Bill and the impeachment of Warren Hastings (EB for, JB against) and the Tour (which offended EB), and then improving again somewhat through their shared opposition to the French Revolution. WF met EB at the Round Robin dinner at JR’s in spring 1776, entertained him at least once when EB visited Edinburgh in Apr. 1784 and in late summer 1785, and in June 1786 socialized with him at JB’s home in London, though he disapproved of EB’s Whig politics before the 1790s. LC 1764. JC: John Courtenay (1738–1816), politician, and political poet and author A witty and sociable Irish-born M.P. for Tamworth (1780–96), and later Appleby, he was a close friend of JB (as a member with EM and JR of ‘the Gang’) during the last decade of JB’s life in London, though his irreligiosity, his opposition to William Pitt, and his support for the impeachment of Warren Hastings, for abolition of the slave trade, and for radical causes during the era of the French Revolution put him at odds with JB’s views. LC 1788. CD: Charles Dilly (1739–1807), JB’s publisher and close friend Operating out of their residence and bookshop in the Poultry section of London, he and his older brother Edward hospitably entertained literary figures, Nonconformists, and Americans, and in 1768 published JB’s Corsica. After Edward’s death, CD continued the business for more than twenty years, enabling JB to self-publish his Tour and Life with CD’s imprint. JB continued to benefit from CD’s generous hospitality and financial support. WF sampled his hospitality with JB in Jan. 1792, and he later corresponded with CD about the posthumous third edition of the Life (1799). AE: Andrew Erskine (1740–93), poet and friend of JB during his youth A younger son of the Jacobite 5th Earl of Kellie (or Kelly), he was the brother of the 6th and 7th earls as well as of JB’s friend Elizabeth, from 1768 Lady Colville. He formed a friendship with JB in Edinburgh during the early 1760s as fellow poets and sufferers from melancholia, and in 1763 they published Letters between the Honourable Andrew Erskine and James Boswell, Esq. in London. After an undistinguished military career which ended in 1770, he lapsed into depression and—unmarried and impoverished, and unsuccessful in his attempt to publish a satirical political poem on which he pinned his hopes of regaining a literary reputation—committed suicide late in Sept. 1793. WF, a family friend of the Erskines, reported the details of AE’s suicide to JB, who was deeply affected. xxxi

Cue Titles and Abbreviations CF: Christian Forbes (1775–1863), eldest surviving daughter of WF and LF, commonly called ‘Christy’ by her parents She was the eldest girl among the eight Forbes children who survived into adulthood. At the end of 1791 WF took her to London to enrol in Ellin Devis’s school, and the letters WF wrote to LF during his two and a half months in London provide much information about their activities, including interactions with JB and his elder daughters, VB and EuB, with whom CF corresponded from Edinburgh. ‘She is undoubtedly the sweetest Child in the world’, WF wrote to LF soon after their arrival in London (25 Dec. 1791, FP 46/4). CF was devoted to her mother and accompanied her parents on their trip to Italy in 1792–93, and WF would subsequently dedicate his manuscript journal of that tour to her because of ‘her unremitting attention to her mother, during the whole of our progress’ (Ital. Journ. WF, MS 1539). She inherited a great deal of money, as well as much of the household furniture, silver plate, art, and musical instruments and music books from the Forbes homes, originally bequeathed to LF, and in 1807 married Alexander Wood (the son and namesake of the Forbes and Boswell family surgeon), who would be knighted in 1820 after a career in the colonial service. Subsequently styled Lady Wood, she would outlive her husband by sixteen years and die childless in 1863. LF: Elizabeth (Hay), Lady Forbes (1753–1802), WF’s wife from 1770, commonly called ‘Lady F.’ in WF’s letters to JB and ‘Betsy’ or ‘Betsey’ in WF’s letters to her She was the eldest child of the Edinburgh physician and Peeblesshire laird James Hay (later Sir James Hay, after successfully claiming the dormant baronetcy of Haystoun in 1805) and his wife Dorriel (Campbell). WF was thirty-one and LF seventeen when they married (for their courtship, see Appendix 2). Their long and happy marriage produced fourteen children (eight of whom survived into adulthood) and ended with her death, apparently caused by lingering complications from the last birth in 1790. WF: Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo (1739–1806), 6th Baronet. See Chronology: Boswell and Forbes WFII: Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo (1771–1828), 7th Baronet, eldest child of WF and LF Though he excelled in his studies at Edinburgh High School, WF decided to put him to work in his bank (after studying in France to master the French language in 1787–88) rather than send him to university. He accordingly began an apprenticeship at the bank on 1 Jan. 1789 and became a partner on 1 Jan. 1794. In Jan. 1797 he married Williamina Belsches (whom his friend Walter Scott had courted), from whose father he inherited in 1821 Fettercairn House in Kincardineshire, where WF’s papers, including many of JB’s manuscripts, were subsequently stored. He became a successful banker, a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Society of Antiquaries of London, and Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and an officer in the Highland Society of Scotland. xxxii

Cue Titles and Abbreviations SJ: Samuel Johnson (1709–84), author and lexicographer Despite being disfigured in boyhood from scrofula and smallpox, partially deaf, near-sighted, and subject to bouts of depression, as well as without substantial means, he became a prominent literary figure in eighteenth-century England, chiefly on the basis of his pioneering Dictionary (1755) and his varied corpus of literary productions, culminating in brilliant prefatory biographies of British poets (1779–81). JB first made his acquaintance in London in May 1763, and spent most Edinburgh court spring recesses from 1768 until the death of SJ in Dec. 1784 revelling in his company and recording his conversation, mainly in London. He joined JB in their now-famous tour of the Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides in the late summer and autumn of 1773, resulting in SJ’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) and JB’s Tour (1785). In 1791 JB immortalized him in the Life. WF met SJ in Edinburgh in 1773 and spent time with him in London in Apr. 1776 and on later visits to the metropolis. LC 1764. JJ: John Johnston of Grange (?1729–86), writer (solicitor) in Edinburgh and friend of JB’s from adolescence Styled ‘of Grange’ (after the name of the largest of his three farms in Dumfriesshire), he became friendly with JB when they were students at Edinburgh University during the mid-1750s. As a near neighbour and frequent associate throughout JB’s Edinburgh years, as well as one of JB’s most engaged correspondents from 1759 until his death in Aug. 1786, he exercised a ‘steadying influence’ on JB (Corr. 1, p. xxi). Among the bonds between them were an attraction to Episcopalian worship, a shared proclivity towards hypochondria or melancholia, and problems with excessive drinking. Although there is little evidence of JJ interacting with WF, they both strongly opposed JB’s plan to move his family to London, and in 1787 WF informed JB that JJ had collaborated with him in composing his letter to SJ of 13 July 1784, for the purpose of enlisting SJ in that cause. BL: Bennet Langton (bap. 11 Jan. 1736–1801), classical scholar, engineer, and militia officer Born into an old Lincolnshire family and educated at Trinity College, Oxford, he was respected as a classical scholar and in 1788 was appointed Professor of Ancient Literature at the Royal Academy of Arts. He also worked as an engineer on various projects and served as an officer in the North Lincoln Militia. Especially after a visit to Edinburgh with his wife Lady Rothes in 1772, he became a good friend and correspondent of both JB and WF, who admired his Tory politics and High Church Anglicanism. His lasting friendship with SJ, which began in BL’s youth, was helpful to JB in preparing the Life. LC 1764. EM: Edmond Malone (1741–1812), literary scholar After ten years of practising law in his native Dublin, he moved to London in 1777 and pursued a literary career, most successfully as an editor of Shakespeare. He first met JB at a dinner given by JR on 14 Apr. 1781, and their friendship blossomed when EM worked with JB on editing his Hebrides journal for publicaxxxiii

CUE TITLES AND ABBREVIATIONS tion in 1785, and grew stronger during the last decade of JB’s life (as documented in Corr. 4). He was indispensable to JB as the editor of the Life, and remained its editor through four posthumous editions. In that work, and even more in editing Shakespeare, he was the mentor of JBII, who wrote a ‘Biographical Memoir’ of him in 1814. WF apparently met EM in London in 1786. After JB’s death, EM (as editor) and WF (as executor) collaborated—despite some disagreements— on the third edition of the Life (1799), and they conferred, as JB’s two surviving literary executors, about JB’s manuscript writings, which they decided to leave unpublished. LC 1782. JR: Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), painter and art theorist As the leading English portrait painter of his day, the intimate friend of SJ and founder in 1764 of their famous Club (later referred to as the Literary Club), the founding President of the Royal Academy of Arts (est. 1769, when JR was knighted), and the presenter there of annual or biennial discourses on art theory which were later published, he was one of the preeminent cultural figures in late eighteenth-century Britain. JB revered him and dedicated the Life to him; from the time JR lost vision in one eye in July 1789 until his death, JB helped cater to his needs, and in 1790 he wrote newspaper articles in support of a successful campaign to restore him to the presidency of the Royal Academy after his controversial resignation (see Appendix 4). WF was probably introduced to him by JB in Apr. 1776, and that spring he and LF sat for portraits by JR, and WF attended the Round Robin dinner party at his home; he subsequently became his friend and admirer and occasional correspondent, as well as his sitter on a second occasion in 1786. LC 1764. WJT: William Johnson Temple (1739–96), Church of England clergyman and essayist Raised in Berwick-upon-Tweed, he met JB as a student at Edinburgh University during the mid-1750s and introduced him to the Anglican form of worship, which formed a stark contrast with JB’s strict Calvinist Presbyterian upbringing. Their lifelong friendship included four decades of intimate correspondence. After leaving Edinburgh he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and took Holy Orders instead of pursuing his original career path in law. He became Rector of the parish of Mamhead, Devon, in 1766, and in 1777 Vicar of St. Gluvias, near Penryn, Cornwall, where JB and his older daughters visited him in Aug. and Sept. 1792. JB named him one of his three literary executors, but his death in Aug. 1796 left matters in the hands of the other two, EM and WF (who apparently never met him, though they each wrote one letter to the other in 1796). AFT: Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747–1813), Lord Woodhouselee, advocate, historian, professor, and judge Born Alexander Tytler, he added Fraser to his name after his marriage in 1776 to Ann Fraser (1752–1837), inheriting her family’s estates of Balnain and Aldourie in Inverness-shire. In 1792 he also inherited the estate of Woodhousexxxiv

cue titles and abbreviations lee near Edinburgh after the death of his father, WF’s friend William Tytler, W.S., who was known for his publications on music and on Mary Queen of Scots and (like AFT after him) was closely associated with WF in the management of English Episcopal affairs in Edinburgh. Educated at Edinburgh High School, a London academy, and Edinburgh University, AFT practised law in Edinburgh as an advocate from 1770 and remained on good terms with JB until 1785, when he took offence at the way he was represented as a participant in a conversation about Ossian with SJ, as recorded in the first edition of the Tour (see Appendix 3 below). He received successive appointments to Edinburgh University history chairs in 1780 (joint Professor of Universal History) and 1786 (Professor of Civil History), and in 1802 was raised to the bench as Lord Woodhouselee. He published extensively on law, translation, poetry, and history, including his popular Elements of General History (1801). His last book was a biography of his legal mentor Lord Kames (1807), with an 1809 supplement which drew upon JB’s unpublished notes for a life of Kames.

xxxv

Chronology: James Boswell and Sir William Forbes 1738 ?Late Feb. or early Mar.: MMB born (bap. 6 Mar.), daughter of David Montgomerie of Lainshaw, Ayrshire, and Veronica Boswell.

1739 5 Apr.: WF born in Edinburgh to Sir William Forbes, landless 5th Baronet in the Forbes of Monymusk line, advocate, and Professor of Civil Law at King’s College, Aberdeen, and his cousin Christian Forbes.

1740 29 Oct.: JB born in Edinburgh to Euphemia (Erskine) Boswell and Alexander Boswell, Edinburgh advocate, and heir to the Auchinleck estate in Ayrshire.

1743 12 May: Death of WF’s father. WF, aged 4, his younger brother, and his mother move to Aberdeenshire, where WF is raised, briefly with his mother’s family at Mill of Forgue, then in Aberdeen, with support from four relations chosen by his father as his guardians (Theodore Morison of Bognie; Alexander Forbes, 4th Lord Forbes of Pitsligo; William Urquhart of Meldrum; and James Forbes, 15th Lord Forbes).

1748/49 JB leaves the school run by James Mundell (d. 1762) in Edinburgh, where he had been for two years, and is tutored at home for the next four years by John Dun, who introduces him to classical and modern literature.

1749 Mar.: Death of WF’s brother, leaving WF an only child. Apr.: Death of JB’s paternal grandfather, James Boswell; Alexander Boswell succeeds as 8th Laird of Auchinleck.

1752 After Dun is settled as the minister of Auchinleck, JB and his two brothers are tutored (unhappily for JB) by Rev. Joseph Fergusson (1718–91), later minister of the parish of Tundergarth in Dumfriesshire.

1753 21 Feb.: LF born, daughter of Dr. [later Sir] James Hay of Haystoun, near Peebles, and Dorriel (Campbell) Hay. Oct.: WF, aged 14, and his mother move back to Edinburgh. Autumn: JB matriculates at Edinburgh University, where he takes the arts course until 1758 and then begins studying law. xxxvi

CHRONOLOGY

1754 15 Feb.: JB’s father appointed to the Court of Session, with the judicial title Lord Auchinleck. 14 May: WF, aged 15, begins an apprenticeship at Coutts Bros. & Co. in Edinburgh, arranged by family friend and father-figure Francis Farquharson of Haughton.

1755 22 July: Lord Auchinleck appointed to the High Court of Justiciary, Scotland’s supreme criminal court.

Mid-1750s JB meets two fellow students at Edinburgh University who will become life-long friends and correspondents, John Johnston of Grange and William Johnson Temple, who introduces him to the Anglican form of worship at an Episcopal chapel in Carrubber’s Close.

1758 JB begins an enthusiastic involvement with the theatre and players in Edinburgh, which lasts until his removal to Glasgow the following year.

1759 14 May: WF’s five-year apprenticeship ends, and he becomes a clerk in Coutts Bros. & Co. in Edinburgh. JB (14 Aug.) and WF (16 Nov.) join the Freemasons’ Lodge Canongate Kilwinning No. 2 (St. John’s) in Edinburgh, the probable beginning of their acquaintance. Autumn: JB begins a year of study at Glasgow University, where he studies with Adam Smith, among others.

1760 Feb.: Publication in London of A View of the Edinburgh Theatre during the Summer Season, 1759, probably by JB. Mar.–May: JB runs away from Glasgow University to London, where he makes a short-lived conversion to Roman Catholicism, meets David Garrick and other literary figures, and is mentored by the 10th Earl of Eglinton. He is brought back to Scotland by his father, arriving Edinburgh 4 June, and begins legal study under Lord Auchinleck’s personal supervision. Sept.: WF and his mother make their first visit to Aberdeen since moving to Edinburgh in 1753.

1761 13 Mar.: WF, aged 21, becomes a partner in Coutts Bros. & Co. in Edinburgh with ‘a very small share’ (Dame Christian Forbes, p. 35). May: JB meets AE, a young military officer with whom he cultivates a literary friendship and correspondence. 8 Dec.: WF appointed Senior Warden and JB Junior Warden of Lodge Canongate Kilwinning No. 2. xxxvii

CHRONOLOGY

1762 Late Jan.: Publication of the second volume of Alexander Donaldson’s A Collection of Original Poems by Scotch Gentlemen, including contributions by JB and AE. 30 July: JB passes his Civil Law trials. 14 Sept.: JB begins a six-week ‘Harvest’ tour of southwest Scotland and the Borders with Lord and Lady Kames, during which he begins keeping a fully written journal. 15 Nov.: With the reluctant approval of his father, JB, seeking a commission in the Guards, sets out on his second visit to London, during which he keeps a detailed diary throughout his eight and a half months there, sent, usually in weekly instalments, to JJ, and first published in 1950 as Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–1763. Late Oct.–26 Dec.: WF visits London. On 25 Dec. he signs a new co-partnership agreement establishing WF and James Hunter as resident partners of John Coutts & Co. in Edinburgh and his lifelong friend and banking mentor Robert (later Sir Robert) Herries and William Cochrane as resident partners of Herries, Cochrane & Co. in London, effective 1 Feb. 1763. Dec.: Birth of JB’s first illegitimate child, Charles, with Peggy Doig.

1763 Late Jan.: in London, JB, AE, and George Dempster collaborate on a satirical squib, Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira. 12 Apr.: Publication in London of Letters between The Honourable Andrew Erskine and James Boswell, Esq., containing edited versions of selected correspondence between Aug. 1761 and June 1762. 16 May: JB, aged 22, meets SJ, aged 53, at Thomas Davies’s bookshop in London. Early Aug. 1763–spring 1764: JB studies law in Utrecht, where he becomes infatuated with the intellectually gifted and independent young noblewoman popularly known as Belle de Zuylen (1740–1805), whom JB calls Zélide, later famous as the author Madame de Charrière. Sept. 1763–Feb. 1764: WF visits the Low Countries on business and also spends a month in Paris; on 18 Sept. he attends a Dutch play in Rotterdam (C 2554) and three days later dines with JB in Utrecht (J 4, C 466).

1764 Mar.: Death of JB’s illegitimate son, Charles, aged 15 months. June–Dec.: JB continues his European travels in Germany and Switzerland, where he meets Rousseau and Voltaire.

1765 Jan. 1765–Feb. 1766: JB travels in Italy, Corsica (where he meets Gen. Pasquale Paoli and becomes a supporter of his Corsican independence movement), and France. In Italy he writes in his travelling notes on 4 Feb., ‘swear retenue & learn music & play with Sr. W. Forbes’ (M 101). Summer–autumn: WF makes the acquaintance of JaB in Edinburgh and visits him in Aberdeen, beginning a lifelong friendship and correspondence. xxxviii

CHRONOLOGY

1766 Feb.–Mar.: JB returns to Britain from the Continent after the death of his mother (11 Jan. 1766), arriving London 12 Feb. and Edinburgh early Mar. 26 July: JB passes advocate and then begins to practise law in Edinburgh. Oct.: WF visits JB at Auchinleck (his only visit there during JB’s lifetime) at the instigation of JB’s brother TDB, then serving a banking apprenticeship under WF’s supervision. WF continues his travels through different parts of Scotland.

1767 17 Apr.: JB purchases Dalblair, a marshy estate of farms east of Auchinleck, for approximately £2500, almost all of it borrowed. May–Dec.: JB publishes many newspaper articles, songs, and pamphlets— including Dorando (June) and The Essence of the Douglas Cause (Dec.)—on behalf of Archibald Douglas in the hotly contested Douglas inheritance case. Summer: WF travels in Aberdeenshire. Dec.: Birth (followed by death in infancy) of JB’s second illegitimate child, Sally, with Mrs. Dodds.

1768 WF spends most of this year and the beginning of the next in London and Kent with his banking mentor Robert Herries. 18 Feb.: Edward and Charles Dilly publish JB’s Corsica (printed by the Foulis brothers in Glasgow), which will have three authorized editions in 1768–69 (as well as an Irish reprint and translations into German, Dutch, French, and Italian), launching JB’s career as an author closely affiliated with the Dilly brothers. Mid-Mar.–mid-June: JB visits London, leaving Edinburgh 16 Mar., arriving London 22 Mar.; leaving London early June, arriving Edinburgh around 13 June. 23 Mar.: Upon arriving in London, JB has a meeting with WF and Herries by arrangement, to retrieve a dog and other gifts sent to him (via Herries) by Paoli, and they have a glass of wine together while the crowd chants ‘Wilkes and Liberty’. 28 Apr.: JB meets with WF and Herries in London. 11 May: JB meets with WF in London.

1769

Jan.: Possibly as the result of two unsuccessful courtships, WF sends a long letter, as well as a private memoir, to JaB, Herries, and a few other friends about his intention to give up the banking profession, take Anglican orders, and secure a position as a country curate in England. JaB and his other friends help dissuade him by mid-Feb., when he is preparing to return to Edinburgh from London. It is not known if JB ever learns of this episode. Late Aug.–mid-Nov.: JB visits London, leaving Edinburgh 28 Aug., arriving London 1 Sept.; leaving London 10 Nov., arriving Edinburgh 14 Nov. He basks in his newfound celebrity as an author and attends the masked ball at the Shakespeare Jubilee in Stratford in early Sept. dressed as an armed Corsican chief. 25 Nov.: JB, aged 29, marries his first cousin MMB, aged 31, at Lainshaw, on the xxxix

CHRONOLOGY same day that his father Lord Auchinleck, aged 62, marries in Edinburgh his cousin Elizabeth Boswell, of the Boswell of Balmuto family, aged 40.

1770

28 Aug.: Birth (and death about two hours later) of JB and MMB’s first child, a son. 21 Sept.: WF, aged 31, marries Elizabeth Hay (LF), aged 17, after a courtship of several months (see Appendix 2).

1771 WF becomes a manager of the Edinburgh Charity Workhouse. The Forbeses move from the Old Town to a new house at 3 George St., near St. Andrew’s Sq. in the emerging Edinburgh New Town. May: The Boswells move from a flat in the Canongate to one belonging to David Hume in James’s Court, on the north side of the Lawnmarket. 11 Sept.: WF arrives ‘After dinner’ and stays for supper when JB is entertaining Paoli (who is visiting Scotland at JB’s invitation) at his home in Edinburgh. 5 Oct.: WF spearheads legal action against the Edinburgh Town Council for allowing new building on the south side of Princes St. The case will not be fully settled until a compromise reached through arbitration in 1776. 21 Dec.: Birth of WF and LF’s first child, WFII (later 7th Baronet).

1772 1 Jan.: WF and James Hunter join with Robert Herries, his brothers, and others as partners in the London Exchange Banking Company, with premises in St. James’s St., London, for the purpose of issuing notes for British travellers in Europe. As the Coutts bank (John & Thomas Coutts) declines to become involved, this move effectively establishes the independence of WF and Hunter’s bank in Edinburgh, in association with Herries. Mid-Mar.–mid-May: JB visits London, leaving Edinburgh 14 Mar., arriving London 19 Mar.; leaving London 12 May, arriving Edinburgh 16 May. 7 June: WF and Hunter’s Edinburgh bank—still officially named John Coutts & Co. though effectively independent of the Coutts connection—moves its premises from the second to the first floor in President’s Stairs, Parliament Close. 25 June: Failure of Douglas, Heron & Co. (Ayr Bank), causing widespread economic disruption in Scotland and financial ruin to many in Ayrshire, but WF’s bank survives with relatively minor losses. Aug.: The Forbeses have supper at the Boswells’ home on 8 Aug., and the Boswells dine at the Forbeses on 15 Aug., beginning the recorded intimacy between the families. Sept.: JB contracts with the Lond. Mag. for a new series of essays, The Hypochondriack (which will not actually begin appearing for another five years). Early autumn: WF visits Aberdeenshire. Oct.–Dec.: BL and his wife Lady Rothes visit Scotland, and WF and JB socialize with them on several occasions documented in JB’s journal notes between early Nov. and early Dec., beginning WF’s lifelong admiration for BL and integration into JB’s London circle. xl

CHRONOLOGY

1773 1 Jan.: John Coutts & Co. in Edinburgh becomes Sir William Forbes, James Hunter and Company, so-called until its merger with the Glasgow Union Banking Company in 1838 (renamed Union Bank of Scotland in 1843). 20 Feb.: WF and LF sup at the Boswell home along with Dr. Thomas Young and his wife Barbara and others. 29 Feb.: The Boswells dine at the Forbeses’ home along with Dr. and Mrs. Young and Henry ‘Mackenzie the Authour’ (J 23). 15 Mar.: Birth of JB and MMB’s first surviving child, VB. Late Mar.–mid-May: JB visits London, leaving Edinburgh 30 Mar., arriving London 2 Apr.; leaving London 11 May, arriving Edinburgh 15 May. 6 May: Birth of WF and LF’s second child, Danielle Christian. May: The Boswells move to a larger flat in James’s Court, where they will entertain SJ later that year and which will continue to be their primary Edinburgh home until their move to London in 1786. 24 June: JB elected Master of Canongate Kilwinning No. 2. Aug.–Nov.: SJ visits Scotland and tours the Highlands and western islands with JB. In Edinburgh, before they set out, WF has breakfast and dinner with them at the Boswells’ home on 15 Aug., dinner on the 16th, and breakfast on the 17th. He also accompanies them on the 15th to a service at an English Episcopal chapel, where George Carr preaches. After JB and SJ return to Edinburgh, WF breakfasts with them on 11 Nov. 27 Dec.: The Boswells dine at the Forbeses’ home.

1774

20 May: Birth of JB and MMB’s second daughter, EuB. 24 July: JB visits WF at his Edinburgh home and has ‘a long comfortable tête à tête with him upon literary subjects and religious principles, and on the conduct of life’, leading JB to write: ‘I value him highly, & regret that we are not more together; for as I told him tonight, I am always the better of being with him’. JB also learns about WF’s system of keeping detailed expense accounts which ‘served as a kind of Journal of his life’ (Journ.). 8 Aug.: WF admitted a member of the Orphan Hospital in Edinburgh (a manager 1783–87 and 1797–1801). 9 Oct.: New English Episcopal chapel opens in the Cowgate, Edinburgh, built over three years largely through WF’s leadership. WF continues to serve in the vestry and as a lay leader of the English Episcopal community in Edinburgh. 15 Dec.: JB, WF, and William Nairne have dinner at the Boswells’ home and engage in conversation on ‘human liberty and God’s prescience’. 30 Dec.: The Boswells, the Forbeses, and Nairne dine at the home of Lady Colville at Drumsheugh House, west of the New Town.

1775 1 Jan.: JB drinks tea with ‘worthy’ WF, ‘to let him read my Hebrides Journal to prepare him for Mr. Johnson’s Book’ (SJ’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, published in London on 18 Jan. and available for sale in Edinburgh on xli

CHRONOLOGY 6 Feb.), then lends him all three of his manuscript notebooks of the Hebrides journal, ‘after reading him a great deal’ (Journ.). 2 Jan.: JB with WF ‘at his counting-house bank … as he had obligingly agreed to shew me his Account Book, & put me on an accurate plan of management’ (Journ.) 6 Jan.: JB sends WF the remaining (loose) sheets of his Hebrides journal. 7 Jan.: JB and MMB have supper at the Forbeses’ home. 25 Jan.: Death of Danielle Christian Forbes, aged 19 months. Feb.: WF writes letters to JaB (11 Feb., FP 98/1) and John Forbes of Pitsligo (15 Feb., NLS, MS 3112) critiquing SJ’s Journey but defending JB against charges that he ‘should have prevented the Doctor from falling into some mistakes that he has committed in the course of his narrative’ (quoting letter to John Forbes). Mid-Mar.–late May: JB visits London, leaving Edinburgh 15 Mar., arriving London 21 Mar.; leaving London 22 May, arriving Edinburgh by 29 May. Early June: Birth of WF and LF’s first surviving daughter, CF. Late Summer/autumn: WF and LF visit Aberdeenshire. 9 Oct.: Birth of JB and MMB’s first surviving son, AB.

1776 1 Jan.: FHC breaks its formal partnership with the Herries bank in London over a disagreement about banking practices, although the principals remain on good terms. 1 Jan.: Upon review, JB finds he spent £150 more in 1775 than he and WF had projected on 2 Jan. 1775, and he and MMB resolve to spend less. 5 Jan.: In the morning JB sends for WF ‘as a merchant’ (Journ.) to help him with a legal case involving a mercantile contract in Danzig, and WF assists him. 13 Feb.: The Boswells attend a large dinner party at the Forbes home. ‘There was no conversation that pleased me, for, I could have none with worthy Sir William alone’ (Journ.). 10 Mar.: JB, WF, and Nairne engage in hours of drinking and conversation on ‘religion, Dr. Johnson, & other good topicks’ (Journ.) at WF’s home the day before JB, as well as WF and LF, are to set off (independently) for London— JB until mid-May, WF and LF until mid-June. Nairne will also be in London shortly. Spring: Forbes family moves from 3 George St. to a larger home at 12 St. Andrew’s St. (corner of Princes St.). Mid-Mar.–mid-May: JB visits London, leaving Edinburgh 11 Mar., arriving London 15 Mar.; leaving London 17 May, arriving Edinburgh 21 May. Mid-Mar.–early June: WF (with LF) visits London on banking business. JB records no meetings with him for nearly a month after they both arrive there, but beginning with a visit of WF with JB and Paoli on 11 Apr., after JB leaves a note inviting WF to a supper with SJ on the 13th, they see each other more frequently. That supper at the Crown and Anchor with JB, SJ, JR, BL, and Nairne marks WF’s first encounter with JB’s circle in a London setting. WF xlii

CHRONOLOGY and LF sit for portraits by JR and begin to develop a friendship with him. JB’s journal notes mention seeing WF in London on 22 Apr., 6 May, 10 May (when WF and JB breakfast at the home of David Garrick, and JB and Garrick have a competition to imitate SJ), 12 May, and 16 May. Late May or early June: After JB has returned to Scotland, WF attends a dinner party at JR’s home, where he meets EB, TB, and others and serves as clerk when the company devises the Round Robin letter to SJ about SJ’s epitaph for Oliver Goldsmith. WF is apparently also present at the home of George Colman the Elder several days later, when JR delivers the news of SJ receiving the Round Robin in good humour but refusing to abide by its advice to render the epitaph in English. Late spring/early summer: WF and LF tour Bath, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, and the Lake District on their way back to Edinburgh from London. 7 July: JB visits WF (and LF) in the morning after WF’s return from London and stays ‘rather too late for church’ (Journ.). 16 July: WF, LF, Lady Colville and two of her siblings, and Nairne are among the guests at a dinner party at the Boswells’ home. 19 Sept.: Birth of WF and LF’s second surviving son, John Hay Forbes (later Lord Medwyn of the Court of Session). 1 Nov.: JB sits ‘awhile’ with WF and James Hunter, apparently at their counting house (Journ.). 15 Nov.: Birth of JB and MMB’s son, David. 21 Nov.: JB sups at WF’s home with other Freemasons ‘to concert measures’ and stays ‘till near one in the morning’ (Journ.). 30 Nov.: WF and JB walk as Freemasons in the St. Andrew’s Day procession and are elected Grand Master and Deputy Grand Master, respectively, of the Grand Lodge of Scotland. 4 Dec.: WF and JB make an official visit to their mother lodge, Canongate Kilwinning, where WF gives a charge to the brethren from lodges throughout Edinburgh. 5 Dec.: JB comments that ‘I liked to see respect paid to his worth’ after WF is ‘attended by no less than five former Grand Masters’ at a play at the theatre in Edinburgh ‘acted by desire of the Free Masons’ (Journ.). 10 Dec.: This evening JB accompanies WF to ‘a most numerous & excellent meeting’ (Journ.) at the Lodge of Edinburgh (Mary’s Chapel), where WF is made an honorary brother. Mid-Dec.: WF has a life-threatening illness, and his recovery leads to widespread expressions of joy and relief in Edinburgh, as later related by JB (though without indication of the date) in the Tour. In his journal JB writes on 22 Dec., ‘He was now out of danger. I resolved to be more with him, as I regretted my being so seldom with him, when there was a prospect of losing him’.

1777 12 Jan.: JB visits WF ‘to congratulate him on his recovery’ and has ‘an agreable meeting with him’ (Journ.) xliii

CHRONOLOGY 18 Feb.: JB accompanies WF on a visit to St. David’s Lodge and finds it ‘agreable to witness the mutual happiness of him & his bretheren on meeting after his recovery’ (Journ.). Feb.–Mar.: JB sends his Hebrides journal to WF for a second time, and on 7 Mar. WF returns it with a complimentary letter that JB will include in the published Tour. 27 Mar.: JB writes in his journal of WF after his visit to JB’s home in the evening, ‘I relished much his worthy and amiable society. He praised my Journey to the Hebrides very much; and said we had no travels like it’. 29 Mar.: Death of the Boswells’ son David, aged 4 months. Late Mar.: Anonymous publication of WF’s A Plan for the Better Providing for the Poor of the City of Edinburgh, by an Alteration of the System of Management of the Charity-Workhouse … By a Citizen of Edinburgh. 11 Apr.: JB visits WF in the morning, probably at WF’s counting house. 26 Apr.: WF elected to the Royal Company of Archers. 5 May: LF has a miscarriage. 10 May: Posthumous publication of Rev. George Carr’s Sermons in three volumes, edited anonymously by WF, with a large subscription list, including JB. The first sermon, on Providence, had been preached in the presence of JB, SJ, and WF on 15 Aug. 1773. 17 June: WF and JB dine at Lord Auchinleck’s Edinburgh home. 24 June: WF as Grand Master Mason lays the foundation stone for the new Edinburgh High School building. July–Nov.: WF and LF visit Aberdeenshire and the Highlands. 29 July: MMB has a miscarriage. 14–24 Sept.: JB visits SJ at Rev. John Taylor’s home in Ashbourne and composes the Ashbourne journal, later used extensively in the Life. Oct.: JB begins publishing in the Lond. Mag. his essay series The Hypochondriack, which will run until Aug. 1783. 2 Nov.: JB describes WF, after meeting him at the ‘English Chapel’ in Edinburgh, as ‘Good glass to view Myself in to advantage’ (Journ.). 22 Nov.: WF visits the Boswells’ home and offers his home in the New Town for the ailing MMB, who declines. 1 Dec.: WF and JB walk as Freemasons in the St. Andrew’s Day procession and are elected to a second term, according to custom, as Grand Master and Deputy Grand Master, respectively, of the Grand Lodge of Scotland.

1778 23 Jan.: At ‘Tea by appointment’, JB shows WF his ‘last interview’ with the dying David Hume. WF reads to JB ‘some pieces of his own calm and agreable’ (unidentified, but possibly from his ‘Letters Explanatory’), and tells him that ‘he never felt aversion to be active’ (Journ.). 3 or 4 Mar.: WF tells JB at WF’s counting house that he is ‘never indolent’ because he is kept active by his work and by ‘his inclination for study and society’ xliv

CHRONOLOGY during his leisure hours. He also relates a report in the London newspapers about SJ being on his deathbed, soon contradicted by another newspaper account and by a letter to WF from BL which WF shows to JB (Journ. 6 Mar.; Life, JB to SJ, 12 Mar. 1778). 6 Mar.: WF, LF, and Nairne are among the company who play cards and sup at the Boswells’ home. 11 Mar.: JB and WF discuss ‘the long journey death’. WF says ‘he never had experienced one moment of vapours or melancholy, so could not conceive another afflicted in that way’ (Journ.). Mid-Mar–late May: JB visits London, leaving Edinburgh 13 Mar., arriving London 17 Mar.; leaving London 19 May, arriving Edinburgh 28 May. 29 May: JB ‘Vastly well. Visited Sir W. Forbes’ (J 59). 9 Apr.: Birth of WF and LF’s son, James. 15 Sept.: Birth of JB and MMB’s second surviving son, JBII. Sept.–Oct.: WF visits Perthshire and Stirlingshire. 4 Dec.: JB ‘Settled Accounts with Sir W. Forbes. Sat a while with him. Was vastly clear and well’ (J 62).

1779 26 Feb.: JB ‘Quite jovial’ while ‘catchsinging’ by the fire at a supper at the Forbeses’ home, though he ‘Drank too much’ and the next day is ‘A little disturbed with last night’s excess’ (J 62.1). Early Mar.–early May: JB visits London, leaving Edinburgh 10 Mar., arriving London 15 Mar.; leaving London 4 May, arriving Edinburgh 10 May. 13 May: FHC successfully petitions to build an innovative new counting house at the rear of Parliament House (expanded in 1784). 10 June: in the morning JB visits with WF, who explains why he likes the religious mystics; later he drinks tea with WF ‘by appointment, but without much satisfaction, as we could have no intimate conversation, his lady & others being present’ (Journ.). 25 June: LF and one of her sisters sup at the Boswells’ home with some militia officers; ‘My Wife [ill with consumption] was the better of such a scene as this’ (Journ.). 26 June: JB sits ‘awhile’ with WF (Journ.). Late summer–mid-Nov.: WF and LF visit Aberdeenshire, where WF purchases 70 acres of land which were formerly part of the old Pitsligo estate, including the dilapidated Pitsligo Castle. 20 Dec.: JB sends WF his Ashbourne journal to read. 23 Dec.: The Boswells and Forbeses are among the company who sup and play whist at a ‘very cheerful evening’ at the home of the Youngs (Journ.). 24 Dec.: Birth of WF and LF’s second surviving daughter, Rebecca.

1780 4 Jan.: JB prepares a legal document making WF and MMB joint ‘tutors and xlv

CHRONOLOGY curators’ (legal guardians) of the Boswell children in the event of his death. This event occurs three months after JB’s consultation with SJ, who lays out the criteria for the co-curator (‘a man of respectable character’, ‘a rich man’, and ‘a man of business’) and eventually reaches the same conclusion as JB about who it should be (Journ. 4 Oct. 1779, 6 Jan. 1780). 20 Jan.: JB sits ‘awhile’ with WF and James Hunter Blair, apparently at their counting house, and reports that ‘they could let me have a little money only for a few months’ (Journ.). 15 Feb.: JB sits ‘a while’ with WF at his counting house in the morning but is too ‘languid … to keep up conversation even with him’; WF advises against a move to London and argues that JB is wrong to ‘look upon Edinburgh as so narrow and inconsiderable’ (Journ. 16 Feb.). 11 Apr.: The Forbeses and LF’s father and brother John are among the company who play cards and sup at the Boswells’ home; ‘very cheerful’ (Journ.). 8 May: JB publishes anonymously A Letter to Robert MacQueen Lord Braxfield but subsequently twice denies authorship to WF, though WF ‘seemed to like the Letter much’ (Journ. 12, 15 May). 15 June: Birth of JB and MMB’s third daughter, Elizabeth (‘Betsy’). 13 Aug.: JB worships morning and afternoon at ‘New English Chapel’ and drinks tea with WF (Journ.). Sept.–Oct.: WF and LF tour parts of Wales and England, including Bristol, Bath, and Oxford. 18 Dec.: WF a founding member of the Society of the Antiquaries of Scotland, and is elected its first treasurer at its initial meeting.

1781 WF succeeds the 6th Earl of Kellie as Deputy Governor of the Edinburgh Musical Society, an office he will hold until the society’s dissolution in 1797. 16 Feb.: James Hunter Blair entertains JB and seven others chosen by JB (including WF) at a dinner at Fortune’s Tavern in Edinburgh, paying off a bet from the 1760s that JB would ‘be first married to a widow’; ‘a most jovial day’ (Journ.). 2 Mar.: Birth of WF and LF’s third surviving daughter, Elizabeth. Mid-Mar.–early June: JB visits London, leaving Edinburgh 13 Mar., arriving London 19 Mar.; leaving London 2 June, arriving Edinburgh by 10 June. 12 June: JB’s first reference to ‘our Country house’ (Journ.) which the Boswells acquired in Drumsheugh, outside Edinburgh. The Forbeses also acquire a second house there, probably during the 1780s. 15 June: JB and WF are among the company for dinner at the home of the Edinburgh Lord Provost, David Steuart (d. 1824). 26 June: WF and LF sup and spend the evening at the Boswells’ home with other company. 28 June: The Boswells dine at the Forbeses’ home and stay to tea. 12 July: JB sups and plays cards at the Forbeses’ home. 28 Aug.: JB sends WF the first 40 printed numbers of The Hypochondriack. xlvi

CHRONOLOGY 30 Aug.: Death of John Forbes, Master of Pitsligo (son of the 4th Lord Forbes of Pitsligo), without issue. Through his grandmother Mary, the 4th Lord Forbes’s sister, and John Forbes’s acknowledgement of WF as his heir, WF inherits the Pitsligo family heirlooms as well as the ‘upper barony’, constituting a portion of the old Pitsligo estate in Aberdeenshire. He also acquires (after subsequent confirmation by the Scottish Lyon Office) the right to the Pitsligo title and a new coat of arms. The transition is widely reported in the death notice of John Forbes (e.g., St James’s Chron., 8–11 Sept. 1781: ‘The Family is now represented by Sir William Forbes, Bart., Banker in Edinburgh’). Autumn: WF and LF visit Aberdeenshire. Late Nov.: JB calls on WF, ‘who had read 40 of my Hypochondriacks and liked them; said there were many original thoughts, and always a good tendency’ (Journ. 3 Dec.).

1782 1 Jan.: FHC begins printing its own circulating notes, and LF’s brother John Hay becomes a partner in the bank. 8 Jan.: JB and WF discuss religion, fate, and free will at WF’s counting house ‘with an easy firmness quite different from the feeble melancholy with which I have conversed with him in that place on those subjects’ (Journ.). 23 Jan.: JB learns that his father has purchased a new house in the New Town. 23 Mar.: JB dines at the Forbeses’ home with Nairne, Mrs. Young, and others. 6 May: JB and the Forbeses dine at Lady Colville’s. 2 June: JB ‘With Sir W. Forbes and Lord Haddo’ (the prominent Freemason George Gordon [1764–91], styled Lord Haddo, son of 3rd Earl of Aberdeen) (J 80). 3 June: JB ‘Not well. But got up. Called Sir W. Forbes, who called me’ (J 80). 18 June: JB spends an hour in ‘high happiness’ with WF and reads him Hypochondriack no. 56, on penuriousness and wealth (Journ.). Late June–2 or 3 July: WF visits JB three times while JB is confined to his home with flu-like illness. 7 Aug.: Birth of WF and LF’s son, Daniel. 20 Aug.: JB sits ‘awhile’ with WF at his counting house, ‘where I find a never-failing source of good conversation, mixed with some local & personal prejudices, but all goodnatured’ (Journ.). 30 Aug.: Death of JB’s father, Lord Auchinleck, making JB the 9th Laird of Auchinleck. Lord Auchinleck’s will grants his widow, Lady Auchinleck, life occupancy of their large town house in the Edinburgh New Town (20 St. Andrew’s Sq.), as well as income for life from many farms on the Auchinleck estate. 31 Aug.: WF visits JB after his father’s death. 18 Sept.: JB, MMB, and their five children take up residence at Auchinleck. 24 Sept.: After setting out for London, JB is recalled by an express message with news of MMB’s spitting blood, and two days later he receives SJ’s letter of 21 Sept. advising him to remain at Auchinleck. 9 Oct.: WF is busy reading JB’s Hypochondriack essays, probably a recently received xlvii

CHRONOLOGY batch beginning with no. 41. 11 Nov.: JB, with MMB, returns to Edinburgh for the resumption of the court session. 23 Dec.: The Forbeses have a ‘very pleasant’ evening of cards and supper at the Boswells’ home (Journ.).

1783 31 Jan.: The Boswells and the Forbeses dine and drink tea at Lady Colville’s. 13 Mar.: As JB is preparing to leave for London, WF pays him ‘a private visit’ (Journ.). Mid-Mar.–early June: JB visits London, leaving Edinburgh 14 Mar., arriving London 20 Mar; leaving London 30 May (for a northern tour with WJT as far as Berwick-upon-Tweed), arriving Auchinleck 11 June. On 5 May he writes to WF from London promising to show him his journal upon his return. June–early July: WF, LF, and other family members make a two-week excursion to Loch Lomond, Stirling, and other sights. 6 Aug.: The Boswells and the Forbeses dine and play cards at Lady Colville’s, where JB drinks ‘a great deal of wine’ in an attempt to relieve his ‘miserable spirits’ (Journ.). 12 Aug.–10 Nov.: JB and his family stay at Auchinleck (JB, MMB, VB, and EuB arrive Edinburgh 11 Nov.; AB, JBII, and Betsy arrive 18 Nov.). Aug.: JB’s Hypochondriack series concludes in this issue of the Lond. Mag. 7 Sept.: Birth of WF and LF’s son, Adam. Oct.–mid- or late Dec.: WF and LF visit Harrogate and then London, leaving too late in the year to visit JB and MMB at Auchinleck, as they had planned to do. 17 Nov.: While in London, WF is elected a Fellow of the Literary Class of the Royal Society of Edinburgh at the society’s first meeting. 28 Dec.: After WF returns to Edinburgh he calls on JB ‘for a little while’ (Journ.). 29 Dec.: WF has coffee at the Boswells’ home in the evening and hears and approves of JB’s pamphlet against Fox’s East India Bill, A Letter to the People of Scotland, on the Present State of the Nation, revised by Nairne and published in Edinburgh two days later, and reprinted in London by CD in Jan. After WF hints that his credit at WF’s bank is exhausted, JB is shaken and resolves with MMB to pursue ‘strict frugality’ (Journ.).

1784 7 Jan.: JB records WF among recent visitors while confined at home by illness (Journ.). Week of 19 Jan.: JB visits WF’s counting house. 5 Feb.: WF visits JB while he is confined. 1 Apr.: JB, WF, and others attend a ‘Very jovial’ dinner at which the Edinburgh magistrates and Town Council honour their M.P., James Hunter Blair. Afterwards JB declines an invitation to go to WF’s home because he is ‘intoxicated a little’ (Journ.). 6 Apr.: An invitation from WF dated ‘Tuesday’, asking EB to sup at his home xlviii

CHRONOLOGY tomorrow, probably dates from this day, as EB is passing through Edinburgh on his way to be inducted as Rector of Glasgow University. WF and EB apparently socialize during this visit (their first interaction since the ‘Round Robin’ dinner party at JR’s in spring 1776). 10 Apr.: Following a period of cool relations with EB, JB goes from Auchinleck to Glasgow on the occasion of EB’s installation as Rector and has a cordial breakfast and dinner with EB, Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart, and others. On 12 Apr. JB invites EB to sup with him in Edinburgh on his return (in a party which will include WF among others), but EB is unable to attend. Early May–early July: After a false start in Mar., JB visits London, arriving 5 May. On this trip, after seeking the counsel of SJ, JB resolves to move to London. He sees SJ for the last time on 30 June. Leaves London 2 July, arriving Auchinleck 9 July and Edinburgh 12 July. 13 July: After an unrecorded meeting with JB in Edinburgh, at which he learns of JB’s fixed resolution to move to London, WF (with JJ as an unnamed collaborator) writes to SJ requesting his assistance in discouraging JB’s plan. SJ (who had already sent an encouraging letter to JB on 11 July) will reply to WF on 7 Aug. Mid-Aug–early Nov.: JB and his family stay at Auchinleck from 13 Aug. to 10 Nov., when he returns to Edinburgh. Early Dec.: WF visits JB on an unspecified day, but JB ‘could not relish his society, as I do when quite well’ (Journ. 8 Dec.). 12 Dec.: Wanting ‘to dine and drink wine with Sir W. Forbes’, JB is diverted by other company (Journ.). 13 Dec.: Death of SJ. 15 Dec.: ‘sat a good while with Sir W. Forbes’ (Journ.). 17 Dec.: JB learns of SJ’s death in a letter from Dr. Richard Brocklesby and is ‘stunned, and in a kind of amaze’, mentioning it only ‘to worthy Sir William Forbes’. 18 Dec.: ‘I sat again some time with Sir William Forbes, & talked of this sad event’ (Journ.). 30 Dec.–10 Jan. 1785: JB visits Auchinleck, returning to Edinburgh 13 Jan. 1785.

1785 WF becomes a manager of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (ongoing). WF becomes a Director of the newly established Highland Society of Edinburgh (later Highland Society of Scotland); elected a Vice President on 9 Jan. 1787. Jan. 1785: WF and LF undertake ‘a very long expedition thro’ the northern parts of Scotland’ (Corr. 3, p. 177), possibly from late Dec. 1784 or early 1785 until sometime before 21 Jan. 1785. Late Jan.: To help JB with his mounting debt, WF offers him a £1400 heritable bond against his late father’s home in the Edinburgh New Town, where JB’s stepmother has lifetime occupancy. JB subsequently pays the bank £70 interest every Mar., never paying off the principal. 23 Mar.: Birth of WF and LF’s daughter, Grace. xlix

CHRONOLOGY Late Mar.–late Sept.: In order to prepare, with EM, his Hebrides journal for publication, JB makes his longest visit to London since 1762–63, leaving Auchinleck 21 Mar., arriving London 30 Mar.; leaving London 24 Sept., arriving Auchinleck 3 Oct. 26 May: Publication of JB’s second Letter to the People of Scotland, opposing Henry Dundas’s bill to reduce the number of Lords of Session from fifteen to ten. The postscript concludes with a tribute to ‘a most respectable gentleman, Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo’, as a juryman. 28 May: JB draws up his will, appointing MMB and WF as co-executors, and specifying that if either should die before him, the other should serve as sole executor. He also appoints WF, EM, and WJT as joint executors of his original manuscripts, on behalf of his younger children. Spring or early summer: Death of Grace Forbes, aged 1–3 months. Late June–late Aug.: WF and LF tour Ireland in order to relieve LF’s depression after death of Grace. In Dublin in mid-Aug. WF makes a copy of the Round Robin from the original in the possession of TB, who also provides him with materials on the Ely inheritance case to bring back to Britain for JB. Aug.–Sept.: JB sees the Hebrides journal (Tour) through the press with EM. Late Aug.–mid-Sept.: While JB is in England, WF apparently socializes with EB when he visits Edinburgh on his way to and from his installation for a second term as Rector of Glasgow University. 1 Oct.: Publication in London of JB’s The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (available for sale in Edinburgh on 10 Oct.). 3 Oct.–early Nov.: JB stays at Auchinleck. 5–12 Nov.: JB spends a week in Edinburgh ‘half incognito’ on his way back to London, almost certainly meeting with WF on 5 and/or 6 Nov. to discuss AFT’s distress over an offensive passage in the Tour, which JB revises in the 2nd ed. (see Appendix 3 below). 17 Nov.–22 Dec.: JB visits London, arriving back in Edinburgh 28 Dec. 22 Dec.: Publication of the 2nd ed. of the Tour. 30 Dec.: WF visits JB two days after JB’s return to Edinburgh from London (Journ.).

1786 WF elected master of the Merchant Company of Edinburgh as well as governor of the Merchant Maidens’ Hospital, at this time under the Company’s jurisdiction. 2 Jan.: The Forbeses and Nairne sup at the Boswells’ home, making JB ‘glad’ at the ease of ‘the return to domestick & friendly intercourse’ in Edinburgh (Journ.). 6 Jan.: JB and WF have their last recorded conversation together in Edinburgh when JB sits ‘some time’ with WF, presumably at WF’s counting house (Journ.), possibly having the ‘late conversation’ about ‘the goodness of God’ to which JB refers in To WF, [26 Jan. 1786]. Before 26 Jan.: Death within five days of each other of Adam Forbes, aged 2, and Daniel Forbes, aged 3, from an outbreak of whooping cough and measles which also sickens their older brother James, aged 8, who survives until Dec. 1787. 27 Jan.: JB leaves Edinburgh for London (arriving 1 Feb.), his primary home for l

CHRONOLOGY the rest of his life. 13 Feb.: JB admitted to the English bar. Spring: Having rented his home in St. Andrew’s St. to a hosier and an ironmonger ‘at the extravagant rent of £200 p. annum’, WF moves his family temporarily to another house in George St. while planning to build a new, grander house (WF to John Hay, 22 Oct. 1785, NRS, GD 504/9/52), which they will occupy in June 1788. Early June–late Sept.: WF and LF take their son William to an academy in Suffolk for the summer vacation in order to rid him of ‘that vulgar dialect’ prevailing at Edinburgh High School; they intend to visit London for no more than two weeks, staying at their usual place of residence there, Lothian’s Hotel, but LF becomes ill and has an accident requiring a long period of convalescence, after which they make their first visit to the spa at Tunbridge Wells in the Kent countryside, ‘beautiful beyond description’. There WF and LF make the acquaintance of JaB’s patron Beilby Porteus, Bishop of Chester (Bishop of London from 1787), and the Bowdler family (WF to Beattie, 7 July, 2 Sept. 1786, FP 98/2). They return to Edinburgh in late Sept. (around the time that JB and his family are returning to London after a month at Auchinleck), making it the longest visit to London and southern England that the Forbeses will ever make. WF probably receives his inscribed presentation copy of the 2nd ed. of the Tour during this visit. WF’s known activities in London during this trip, mostly recorded in JB’s journal, are noted separately below. 11 June: WF surprises JB with a morning visit to his London home, and comforts him by saying that ‘my being some time in Westminster Hall would not be against my getting a Judge’s place in Scotland’. They go to see LF at Lothian’s Hotel and then (it being Sunday) attend ‘sundry churches’ (Journ.). 12 June: WF, LF, BL, and one of BL’s sons have breakfast at JB’s home. ‘This was truly cheering and I saw no distance between London & Edinburgh. I cannot put on paper the various agreable sensations’ (Journ.) 16 June: JB, the Forbeses, and TB breakfast at BL’s home in London; JB and WF dine at JR’s with EB, TB, BL, EM, and JC; ‘an excellent day’ (Journ.). 16–26 June: WF sits for a second portrait by JR. 17 June: JB and WF visit EM and then go to the Forbeses’ hotel, where WF talks ‘in a very friendly manner’ about JB returning to the Edinburgh bar and LF scolds JB for his affair with Margaret Caroline Rudd (Journ.). 23 June: JB sits ‘awhile’ with WF and TB (Journ.). 1 July: JB breakfasts with WF and ‘settled that I should quit english bar, either directly, or after a winter’s trial. My valuable spouse’s health was one great objection’ (Journ.). 3 July: JB serves a dinner of ‘plain fare’ to company which includes JC, EM, JR, John Wilkes, and WF, ‘who was truly happy to be one of such a party’ (Journ.). JB writes to MMB that LF and WF ‘are full of your kind attention to them last winter’ and have offered to board AB ‘as one of their own sons’ so that he can finish high school in Edinburgh while the Boswells are in London. ‘How agreable is it to be so well with them!’ (L 179). 5 July: JB breakfasts with WF. li

CHRONOLOGY 6–17 July: LF sits for a portrait by George Romney. 10 July: While in London, WF is named a founding Director of the Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures in Edinburgh at its first meeting after receiving a royal charter (elected Chairman on 9 July 1787). July: Hoping for political patronage, JB begins what will become a troubled fouryear association with the Earl of Lonsdale. 15 Aug.: JB signs the Advertisement to the 3rd ed. of the Tour before leaving London for Auchinleck. 21 Aug.: JB arrives at Auchinleck, having spent only about three of the past seventeen months with his family. 20 Sept.: JB, MMB, their children, and housekeeper ‘Bell’ Bruce leave Auchinleck for London in two post-chaises, taking up residence in a rented house in Great Queen St., Lincoln’s Inn Fields, upon their arrival on 25 Sept. 10 Oct.: Publication of the 3rd ed. of the Tour.

1787 WF becomes a trustee of the Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and Fisheries (ongoing). 10 June: Birth of WF and LF’s fourth surviving daughter, Jane. 1 July: WF’s banking partner Sir James Hunter Blair dies at Harrogate, aged 46. 20 Aug.–24 Sept.: After leaving London on 14 Aug., JB, MMB, and two of their children (AB and VB) stay at Auchinleck for five weeks, arriving back in London on 29 Sept. Sept.: WF travels to Aberdeenshire (leaves Edinburgh 1 Sept., returns 23 Sept.) to lay the foundation stone for New Pitsligo, a new town situated on the Pitsligo lands he acquired in 1781, and to purchase the estate of Pittulie and Pittendrum for £20,000. 11 Oct.: JB acknowledges receiving back from WF the Hypochondriack essays in his possession, which he had requested in July. 18–19 Oct.: WF sends JB an exchange of letters with SJ from summer 1784 and his copy of the Round Robin, as well as an account of its production and significance which JB will later publish in the Life. 17 Dec.: Death of James Forbes, aged 9, from whooping cough and measles, after almost two years of illness. 21 Dec.: JB departs London with Lonsdale and his entourage for north west England, staying into Jan. 1788.

1788 Jan.–Mar.: FHC survives a serious crisis triggered by the successive bankruptcies of two sets of interlocking family firms in its debt for large sums—the Fall grain businesses in Dunbar and the Stein distillery businesses in Alloa. 11 Jan.: JB elected Recorder of Carlisle through Lonsdale’s influence. May: The Forbes family moves to a large, custom-built new house at 39 George St., their third and final residence in the Edinburgh New Town. lii

CHRONOLOGY 15 May: JB, MMB, and all their children except VB leave London for Auchinleck (arriving 21 May), where MMB, suffering recurrent acute consumptive symptoms, will remain until her death the following spring. 10 Aug.: Birth of WF and LF’s fifth surviving daughter, Frances Farquharson. 15 Aug.: JB returns to Auchinleck after six weeks on the Northern Circuit in England. Oct.: After a brief working visit to northern England in early Oct., JB sets out from Auchinleck for London with AB and JBII on 20 Oct. (arriving 26 Oct.), leaving EuB and Elizabeth (‘Betsy’) to stay with MMB.

1789 Jan.: JB and his children move to a smaller home at 38 Queen Anne St. West, Cavendish Sq., London, where they will remain for two years. 6 Feb.: WF is appointed Deputy Chairman of the Edinburgh Society instituted for the Purpose of Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade. Apr.–May: JB and VB go to Auchinleck, arriving 6 Apr. JB leaves for England on 19 May—the last time he will see MMB—arriving in London by 29 May. On 23 May JB writes to WF from Lonsdale’s Lowther Hall ‘in alarming state of agitation’ (Journ. 24 May) over MMB’s condition. 4 June: Death of MMB from consumption at Auchinleck, aged 51, on the same day that JB sets out from London for Auchinleck with AB and JBII after hearing that MMB is dying; they arrive two days after her death. Mid-June–early Aug.: WF visits Aberdeenshire. Just before leaving Edinburgh he receives Bruce Campbell’s letter dated 4 June, informing him of MMB’s death. July: After receiving advice from WF and LF, JB decides to send VB to London to live with her friend Miss Buchanan and her mother, and EuB to Edinburgh to attend Miss Drysdale’s boarding school under the supervision of his stepmother Lady Auchinleck. Both girls are unhappy, and by summer 1790 they will be living in JB’s house in London. 3 Aug.: JB places last in a four-way contest for M.P. in the Ayrshire by-election, after which he leaves for the Northern Circuit but ends up staying at Lowther Hall instead, returning to Auchinleck on 28 Aug. 5 Sept.: Birth of WF and LF’s third surviving son, George (later George Forbes of West Coates). 26 Sept.: EuB and AB dine at the Forbes home. Oct.: JB, VB, and JBII leave Auchinleck on 1 Oct., meet AB at Carlisle, and arrive in London on 6 Oct. 26 Dec.: Death of WF’s mother, Christian Forbes; WF will later write a memoir of her last days, published by his descendants in 1875.

1790 Feb.–Mar.: JB participates in a newspaper war over JR’s controversial resignation as President of the Royal Academy of Arts (see Appendix 4). 8 May: EuB dines at the Forbes home and goes to the theatre with LF. liii

CHRONOLOGY June–July: JB breaks acrimoniously with Lonsdale. On 11 July he is joined in Carlisle by EuB (bearing a letter from WF dated 9 July, enclosing his donation to the subscription for SJ’s monument), after her unhappy stay at school in Edinburgh, and they leave for London on 15 July, arriving there on 17 July. Mid-July–mid-Oct.: WF shuttles between Edinburgh and Bonnington House, near Ratho, where his family spends the summer and early autumn. Mid-Oct.: JB borrows £2500 to purchase Knockroon, an estate adjoining Auchinleck, putting himself deeper into debt. 2 Nov.: WF receives a copy of EB’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, sent by JB. 23 Nov.: Birth of WF and LF’s fourteenth and last child, Charles, with serious complications for LF.

1791 Jan.: JB and his children move to 47 Great Portland St., JB’s last London residence. Mid-Apr.: JB publishes anonymously No Abolition of Slavery; or the Universal Empire of Love: A Poem, timed to coincide with the introduction of the first anti-slave-trade bill in Parliament. 16 May: Publication in London of The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in two quarto volumes, which sells briskly. 23 May: WF chairs a meeting of the Edinburgh Society instituted for the Purpose of Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade and issues to the press a resolution under his name, announcing that the Society ‘will persevere, with unabated zeal, in the same virtuous cause’. Late spring: WF rents Southfield House in Liberton, near Edinburgh, which the Forbes family uses as a country house for the next year. 2 July: JB elected Secretary for Foreign Correspondence of the Royal Academy of Arts. He subsequently becomes active in the Academy and its social auxiliary, the Academy Club. Late Aug.–mid-Oct.: JB at Auchinleck, arriving 28 Aug., leaving 19 Oct. for London. Late Dec.–early Mar. 1792: WF and CF travel to London (setting out from Edinburgh on 13 Dec. arriving in London 21 Dec.) in order to enrol CF in Ellin Devis’s boarding school. JB and WF see each other at least fourteen times during WF’s visit (see below), mostly documented in WF’s letters to LF. 25 Dec.: WF and CF have Christmas dinner at JB’s home with four of JB’s children and TDB and his wife.

1792 2 Jan.: WF and CF dine with JB and JB’s daughters at TDB’s home. 4 Jan.: JB and WF spend most of this day together, probably drawing up JB’s budget for the year before dining at CD’s home with others and then attending the Essex Head (or Sixpenny) Club. 5 Jan.: WF chosen a Director of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SSPCK). 17 Jan.: WF and JB have breakfast together. liv

CHRONOLOGY 20 Jan.: WF, as ‘Past Grand Master of Scotland’, is a guest of honour at the installation of John Murray, 4th Duke of Atholl (1755–1830) as Grand Master of the Ancient Free Masons of England at the Crown and Anchor. 26 Jan.: JB, WF, and others (including Richard Cumberland) dine at CD’s home. 29 Jan.: JB, WF, and others dine at the home of Lord and Lady Binning. 30 Jan.: JB, WF, and others dine at the home of Lord Fife. 1 Feb.: WF and CF attend a ‘rout’ (small party) given by ‘the Miss Boswells’ (VB and EuB). 2 or 3 Feb.: WF dines at JB’s home with EM, Sir William Scott, and Philip Metcalfe. 11 Feb.: WF and Sir William Scott meet JB and others at Sir Joseph Banks’s evening ‘Conversation’ (i.e., salon). 12 Feb.: JB and WF have breakfast together and then worship at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall. 24 Feb.: Death of JR, aged 69. 26 Feb.: JB and WF have breakfast together and then worship at Trinity Chapel in Conduit St. 28 Feb.: In the evening WF eats bread and cheese at JB’s home and then they and BL talk until 2:30 AM. 1 Mar.: While in London, WF is unanimously chosen Rector of Marischal College, Aberdeen, through the influence of JaB. 1 Mar.: WF makes a copy of TB’s letter to JB on the Lord’s Supper, probably after obtaining it from JB two days earlier. After dinner at the home of Sir Robert Herries, he attends a ‘conversation’ by invitation at the Bishop of London’s, attended by leading bluestockings. 2 Mar.: JB and BL breakfast with WF at his hotel, and they all have dinner at the home of Sir Robert Herries. JB and WF probably discuss TB’s letter on the Lord’s Supper this day, as well as the state of JB’s finances. 3 Mar.: WF and BL attend the funeral procession for JR together, while JB walks with the Royal Academy contingent. 5 Mar.: WF leaves London, arriving in Edinburgh five days later. CF remains at Ellin Devis’s school. 1 June–early Sept.: WF and LF visit London and (because of LF’s poor health) Tunbridge Wells. 20 June: JB dines with WF and LF in London. 27 July: As Rector of Marischal College, Aberdeen, WF submits to the government a loyal address to the King, denouncing ‘visionary Schemes of Liberty’ and ‘every Attempt, by seditious Writings or otherwise, to excite a Spirit of Disaffection, or endanger the Public Tranquillity’ (London Gazette, 7–11 Aug. 1792). 15 Aug.: JB dines with WF and LF in London, possibly delaying his trip to Cornwall (see below) on account of this meeting. 16 Aug.: LF and CF go to Tunbridge Wells while WF travels to Edinburgh and back on business, also purchasing a country house (Bantaskine, near lv

CHRONOLOGY Falkirk), where the family will often spend summers and autumns between 1793 and 1799. Aug.–Sept.: JB and his two elder daughters, VB and EuB, make an extended visit to Cornwall to see JB’s old friend WJT and his family, instead of JB’s usual excursion to Auchinleck. 6 Sept.: WF, LF, and CF leave Tunbridge Wells, bound for Italy. After two weeks in Spa (18 Sept.–2 Oct.) and a difficult journey through war-torn Germany, they reach Italy in late Oct., spending 10–23 Nov. in Florence, 28 Nov.–5 Dec. in Rome, and the winter in Naples. 24 Nov.: JB learns from CD that he is to receive £1555 18s 2d as his profit from the first edition of the Life. Instead of applying this money to his heritable bond with FHC, as intended, he uses it to pay off debts incurred by the purchase of Knockroon.

1793 Feb.–Mar.: JB goes to Auchinleck, leaving London 26 Feb. and arriving 1 Mar., for the selection of a new parish minister. Before leaving Auchinleck, he authorizes John Boswell of Knockroon to represent him in the proceedings on behalf of Rev. John Lindsay, who will be settled as the new minister on 29 Aug. 23 Mar.–2 Apr.: On his way back to London from Auchinleck JB makes what will turn out to be his last visit to Edinburgh, seeing Lady Auchinleck, Robert Boswell, and other family members as well as WFII and other Forbes children (but not WF and LF, then in Italy). 8 May: After three and a half months in Naples (7 Dec. 1792–25 Mar. 1793) and a second visit to Rome (26 Mar.–8 May), WF, LF, and CF leave Italy abruptly upon hearing news of a financial crisis at home. 11 May: JB writes to WF about his projected book of European travels, expressing an unrealistic expectation to have it ready for the press next winter. 5 June: JB is attacked and beaten by a street robber in London while walking home intoxicated late at night, probably causing more serious and lasting injuries than he will indicate at the time. 11 or 12 June: in response to an urgent note from AB on 11 June, WF, while on his way home from Italy with LF and CF, has a brief visit with JB, who is recuperating at home; it would be their last meeting. 16 June: WF, LF, and CF arrive back in Edinburgh after a year in England and on the Continent. LF’s health continues to be poor. 17 July: Publication in London of the 2nd ed. of the Life, in three octavo volumes. July: AB and JBII dine at the Forbes home when passing through Edinburgh on their way to Auchinleck. Mid-Sept.: Publication of JB’s Principal Corrections and Additions to the First Edition of Mr. Boswell’s Life of Dr. Johnson, which WF purchases and reads in Oct., before being offered a presentation copy by JB. 23 Sept.: Opening of the Edinburgh Asylum for the Relief of the Indigent and Industrious Blind, which WF supports as a banker, subscriber, and officer (ongoing). 2 Oct.: The body of JB’s old friend, AE, is discovered on the shore of the Firth of lvi

chronology Forth near Caroline Park, confirming his suicide by drowning; JB and WF, both deeply upset, correspond about the incident.

1794 Mid-June–mid-Aug.: WF visits Aberdeenshire and parts of the Highlands. 1 July 1794–12 Jan. 1795: After leaving London on 26 June, JB, accompanied by VB and EuB, makes his longest visit to Auchinleck since succeeding as laird. 15 Dec. 1794: JB writes what will be his last letter to WF, noting that ‘The warmth and yet the constancy of your friendship has not I am persuaded, many equals’.

1795 19 Jan.: JB arrives back in London from Auchinleck along with VB and EuB, who had met him in Moffat after visiting Lady Auchinleck and the Forbeses in Edinburgh. 14 Apr.: JB becomes severely ill at a meeting of the Literary Club. He is taken home and never recovers his health. 19 May: Death of JB in London, aged 54, after five weeks of debilitating illness, which WF describes in a letter to LF of 12 May as a hereditary ‘strangury’ (Dict. SJ: ‘A difficulty of urine attended with pain’). 8 June: WF attends JB’s funeral at Auchinleck, which he describes in letters to LF of 8 and 9 June. WF begins his service as executor of JB’s estate, as well as co-guardian (with TDB) of JB’s minor children and co-executor (with EM and WJT) of JB’s unpublished writings. 26 Sept.: Death in London of VB from consumption. WF will help arrange for her burial in the Boswell family vault at Auchinleck on 5 Nov.

1796 Late Aug.–late Sept.: WF visits Aberdeenshire.

1797 19 Jan.: WFII marries in Edinburgh Williamina Belsches, from whose father he will inherit Fettercairn House in 1821.

1799 WF declines an Irish peerage offered by William Pitt. 18 May: Publication of the 3rd (and first posthumous) ed. of the Life, edited by EM, in consultation with WF, TDB, and the publisher, CD. June: WF sells his country house, Bantaskine, for £4000, but continues to have use of it until Nov. 15 July: Death of Lady Auchinleck, after which the town house she had lived in by the terms of Lord Auchinleck’s will, and which had secured JB’s heritable bond from WF’s bank, is sold in order to help to pay off the estate’s debts. 26 Nov.: Marriage in Edinburgh of AB to Grizel (‘Grace’) Cuming. 23 Dec.: Marriage at Auchinleck of Elizabeth (‘Betsy’) Boswell to her second cousin, William Boswell. lvii

chronology

1800 WF purchases Colinton near Edinburgh, where he is engaged in building a neoclassical villa, Colinton House, from 1801 until his death. 1 June: Under the leadership of WF, the vestry of the English or Cowgate Chapel appoints the philosopher Rev. Archibald Alison to be its senior clergyman.

1801 WF sells his home in St. Andrew’s St., Edinburgh, to William Drysdale, proprietor of the Turf Coffee House, for £3000.

1802 WF is appointed founding President of the Governors of Gillespie’s Hospital. 4 May: Death of LF, aged 49, after twelve years of impaired health.

1803 1 Jan.: WF presents WFII with a manuscript account of his banking career, published in 1860 as Memoirs of a Banking-House. 18 Aug.: Death of JaB, aged 67. WF soon begins to accumulate materials for a biography, which engages him until its completion during the last year of his life.

1804 June: Publication of the 4th ed. of the Life of Johnson, edited by EM. WF is no longer involved with the publication because of JBII and EuB’s sale of the copyright to the new publishers, Cadell & Davies, but he is drawn into a dispute with TB about the Round Robin.

1805 WF and Archibald Alison take the English or Cowgate Chapel (the primary English Episcopal chapel in Edinburgh) into the Scottish Episcopal Church, completing more than a decade of effort by WF for such a union. Dec.: WF formulates what he believes are the final settlements for JB’s surviving children, terminating his work as executor of JB’s estate.

1806 28 Apr.–21 May: WF visits London to testify before Parliament in the corruption trial of Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville. He resents having to spend so much time and money for this purpose but is pleased that his testimony helps to clear Dundas. 28 May: Death at sea of WF’s youngest child, Charles, aged 15. 16 June: Publication of WF’s An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie in two quarto volumes, consisting mainly of JaB’s correspondence, including many letters to WF. In the only letter in the book from WF to JaB, sent on 9 Jan. 1786, WF reports his critical attitude towards JB’s publishing inappropriate and sometimes hurtful material in the Tour—an ongoing source of friction between WF and JB—but also includes a long footnote which pays tribute to JB as a warm and pious friend and the author of ‘one of the most characteristic and entertaining biographical works in the English language’ (ii. 181 n.). 10 Nov.: Death of WF in Edinburgh, aged 67. lviii

Introduction I. The Scale, Scope, and Significance of the Boswell–Forbes Correspondence In October 1930 Claude Colleer Abbott (1889–1971), then a Lecturer in English at the University of Aberdeen, visited Fettercairn House in Kincardineshire (now Aberdeenshire), in search of papers of the eighteenth-century Scottish poet and miscellaneous writer James Beattie in the possession of Beattie’s biographer, and Beattie’s and James Boswell’s close friend, Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo. Forbes had never resided at Fettercairn House, but the Forbes family papers were stored there after his eldest son, heir, and namesake, the seventh baronet, inherited it in 1821 from his widow’s father, fifteen years after the death of his own father. During the second half of the nineteenth century, members of the family were aware of these papers, at least in part, as two manuscripts by the sixth baronet were posthumously published. The first, Memoirs of a Banking-House (1859), chronicled the history of the family bank in Edinburgh, Sir William Forbes, James Hunter and Company, which Forbes and his primary banking partner, James Hunter (known from 1777 as James Hunter Blair), established in the early 1770s after asserting their independence from the Coutts Banks in which they had been partners;1 the second, Narrative of the Last Sickness and Death of Dame Christian Forbes (1875), described the character and recounted the last days of Forbes’s pious mother. If the family knew that Boswell papers were also stored there, that memory appears to have been lost over the course of subsequent decades, as Fettercairn House, along with the books, papers, and other Forbes materials stored in it, passed to later generations of owners with other surnames and titles. In the 1930s it was owned by Forbes’s great-great-grandson, the formidably named Charles John Robert Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis (1863–1957), 21st Baron Clinton. When Abbott came upon a mass of Boswell papers at Fettercairn, it formed a second major unexpected twentieth-century retrieval, following the extraordinary recoveries at Malahide Castle in Ireland.2 Abbott announced his discovery in The Times of London on 9 March 1936, and later that year Oxford University Press published a limited edition of five hundred copies of his Catalogue of Papers Relating to Boswell, Johnson and Sir William Forbes Found at Fettercairn House, a Residence of the Rt. Hon. Lord Clinton, 1930–1931. As Abbott explained in the introduction, the documents discovered at Fettercairn 1  Forbes became a partner in Coutts Bros. & Co. in Edinburgh on 13 March 1761, when he was just twenty-one years old. Hunter became a partner in February 1763 when Coutts Bros. & Co. was reorganized as John Coutts & Co. 2  For the recovery of the Malahide Papers and their publication in BP, see Pride and Negligence, Chs. 5–7, and Treasure, Chs. 2–3. The discovery of the Boswell and Forbes papers at Fettercairn is discussed in Pride and Negligence, Chs. 9–10, and Treasure, Ch. 4.

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INTRODUCTION House included a variety of Boswellian treasures, among them Boswell’s remarkable account of his visit to London in the early 1760s (no. 1361)—which would become an international non-fiction best seller when edited by Frederick A. Pottle for publication in 1950 as Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–1763—and another substantial London journal, from 20 March to 23 May 1778 (no. 1362). There were other manuscripts by Boswell and Johnson and a small collection of newspaper clippings and printed pamphlets by Boswell and others. But most of the Boswell and Johnson materials which Abbott found at Fettercairn consisted of correspondence, including more than 120 letters from Johnson to various recipients (119 of them listed in Abbott’s published catalogue), almost 300 drafts or copies of letters by Boswell, and 1039 letters to Boswell from a wide variety of correspondents. Some of those documents had belonged to Forbes, but others, which had belonged to Boswell, had found their way into Forbes’s papers after Boswell’s death, apparently through Forbes’s role as one of Boswell’s literary executors. While the Forbes materials would be deposited in the National Library of Scotland in 1969 by the owner of Fettercairn House, Mrs. P. G. C. Somervell (1923–86), the Boswell manuscripts found at Fettercairn were acquired in the 1940s by the American collector Lt.-Col. Ralph Heyward Isham (1890–1955). Along with the other Boswell papers which Isham had obtained earlier from Malahide Castle, they would become the property of Yale University in July 1949, and would eventually be deposited in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.3 The only substantial body of letters written by Boswell which Abbott found at Fettercairn consisted of letters from Boswell to Forbes. Abbott discovered them on his first visit to Fettercairn, on 6 October 1930, and excitedly carried them to his room to read them there, in violation of proper research protocol. He concluded that ‘Boswell wrote to Sir William as one would expect him to write to a very valued friend over many years’.4 On his second visit to Fettercairn, on 18 November, Abbott found a packet of letters marked in Boswell’s handwriting, ‘Sir William Forbes’. ‘This held’, he wrote, ‘not only letters Boswell had received from Sir William, but also certain rough drafts of his own replies. As I had already found the other side of the correspondence and also drafts of certain letters from Sir William to Boswell (and was to find several more), this correspondence was as complete as one could very well hope it would be’.5 Abbott’s Catalogue lists 74 distinct letters between Boswell and Forbes: (1) 41 letters from Boswell to Forbes, dating from January 1775 to December 1794 (nos. 1320–1360, pp. 211–18), as well as 7 drafts or copies of some of those same 41 letters (nos. 1115–1121, pp. 178–79); (2) 29 letters from Forbes to Boswell, dating from January 1775 to June 1794 (nos. 351–364, 367–372, 374–380, and 382–383, pp. 54–60); and (3) 4 drafts of letters from Forbes to Boswell, dated 4 July 1789, 5 July 1789, 28 May 1791, and 16 October 1793 (nos. 365–366, 373, and 381, pp. 56, 58–59), which Abbott seems to have recorded because he did not find the sent versions. The collection also contained additional drafts of letters from Forbes to Boswell, which Abbott alluded to in the passage quoted above but did not 3  For the full story of the complex and arduous assembly of these collections, see Pride and Negligence, Chs. 11–12, and Treasure, Chs. 5–9. 4  Abbott, p. xviii. 5  Abbott, p. xx.

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Introduction include among the 1607 numbered items in the Catalogue, apparently because he had the letters themselves in hand. The Boswell–Forbes correspondence discovered by Abbott at Fettercairn House in autumn 1930 forms the core of this book, which reproduces a total of 111 letters: 79 which Boswell and Forbes exchanged between 8 August 1772 and 15 December 1794 (42 from Boswell and 37 from Forbes), as well as 32 letters involving other correspondents, as discussed below. Of the four letters from Forbes to Boswell which Abbott recorded in draft form because he could not locate the sent versions, two (nos. 365 and 366) are published here from those drafts, while the other two (nos. 373 and 381) are reproduced in this volume from the sent versions of the letters which are now at Yale (C 1294 and 1302). Five additional letters between Boswell and Forbes, unknown to Abbott, are also included in this volume. One of them, from Boswell to Forbes, dated 8 August [1772], was enclosed with a letter from Forbes to his wife [8 August 1772] among the Fettercairn Papers. The other four, from Forbes to Boswell—dated 7 March 1777 (C 1268), 21 December 1779 (C 1269), 16 September 1785 (C 1275), and 25 April 1787 (C 1277)—are now part of the collection of Forbes’s letters at Yale.6 This volume also records the existence of three letters from Boswell to Forbes, and three from Forbes to Boswell, which are known to have been sent but do not appear to have survived in any form. In accordance with the conventions of the Research Edition of the Yale Boswell Editions, these are designated ‘not reported’. Abbott claimed that Boswell’s letters to Forbes ‘with the exception of the letters to Temple … form the longest series extant written by Boswell to any one of his friends’.7 He was certainly correct about the superior number of letters from Boswell to his friend from college days William Johnson Temple, 125 of which have survived—roughly three times more than the 41 letters from Boswell to Forbes which Abbott found at Fettercairn or the 42 published in this volume. Abbott did not know then that Boswell wrote still more extant letters (147) to another college friend, John Johnston of Grange, which Boswell himself had recovered after Johnston’s death in August 1786; these were published in 1966 in the first volume of correspondence in the Research Edition (Corr. 1). Furthermore, the surviving correspondence with Boswell’s friend and editor Edmond Malone, published in 1986 (Corr. 4), contains two more letters from Boswell to Malone (43) than Abbott found from Boswell to Forbes. Yet counting the number of Boswell’s extant letters is not necessarily the best way to gauge the significance of Boswell’s correspondences. The first part of this introduction will discuss five factors which distinguish the surviving Forbes correspondence from Boswell’s other epistolary exchanges with friends: its high level of balance and completeness; its chronological focus during the last decade of Boswell’s life, providing much new information on those years; the exceptional availability of 6  C 1268 was a ‘Paper Apart’, sent to the printer by Boswell for reproduction in the Tour (Catalogue ii. 654–55), and C 1269, quoted extensively in the Life (iii. 208), was probably retained separately for a similar reason. C 1275 was among the Boswell papers found at Malahide and printed in BP (xvi. 279–81). The provenance of C 1277 has not been determined. 7  Abbott, p. 211.

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Introduction extant additional or supplemenatry materials, used in this volume both to enrich the annotation and introduction and to provide additional letters within the main text; the quality of the letters; and the wide range of topics which the letters cover with honesty, sincerity, and sometimes intensity, as a result of the character and stature of Forbes and the intimacy of the friendship between the two correspondents. The second part of this introduction will probe the last of these factors in greater depth, with particular attention to the parallels, differences, and symbiotic interactions between Boswell and Forbes. ***** Unlike most of Boswell’s other large correspondences with friends, the Boswell– Forbes correspondence is, as Abbott noted, ‘as complete as one could very well hope it would be’. From start to finish, very few of the original, sent letters from either correspondent are missing or unreadable, and it has sometimes been possible to fill in the few existing gaps. For example, as noted above, two of Forbes’s lost letters to Boswell (dated 4 and 5 July 1789) have been reproduced from Forbes’s surviving drafts in the Fettercairn Papers. In other instances, a portion of one of Boswell’s letters containing sensitive political material which Boswell asked his friend to destroy has been restored because Forbes chose merely to put a line through the designated text instead of obliterating it, and some text which is no longer readable in the manuscript of one of Boswell’s letters has been restored thanks to an old photostat of the letter at Yale.8 It has also been possible to identify and reproduce most of the many enclosures which these letters contained. The result is a correspondence which exists today very nearly as it did in the eighteenth century, constituting a coherent and extremely readable record of epistolary interaction. The completeness of this correspondence is not a matter of chance. Rather, it reflects the high value which both Boswell and Forbes placed on the preservation of personal letters. As Forbes explained to his twenty-year-old son and heir, William, in January 1792,9 I confess to you, that I consider correspondence with an absent friend as one of the greatest consolations of life; but which one can only expect to enjoy, by making it reciprocal. I likewise consider the preservation of the letters one receives from one’s friends as the storing up a treasure, from which one may derive a very high degree of satisfaction and enjoyment to the latest hour of life: for in my mind there are few higher intellectual entertainments than the conversing in this manner with friends, whether dead or alive, by the preservation of their letters; and this it is that has made me so carefully to keep those I have received for a good many years past …  8  9 

To Forbes, 2–3 July 1790 and 15 Jan. [1792]. Forbes to William Forbes, 10 Jan. 1792 (FP+ 59).

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Introduction After expressing ‘much regret that I did not begin sooner; for I carelessly destroyd many at one period of early life, which I should now give their weight in Gold to recover’, he continued: ‘Such a correspondence forms, in fact, a sort of Register of one’s life; and recals to the memory many a tender and many a curious incident, which I own I should be very sorry to be deprived of.’ Several years earlier, in a letter of 18 December 1787, Forbes had written to Boswell of preserving his letters for the benefit of young William by ‘arranging a Small Cabinet of private letters from those who honor me with their friendship. Some of which for the distinguished reputation of the writers; and others for the elegance of the Style, would do honor to any Collection. I think my son will be the better for the perusal of such compositions’. Expanding on this line of thought in his letter to William, Forbes boasted to his son that within the correspondence he had preserved were ‘many letters … which for elegance and excellence of composition, I venture to say may vie with those celebrated collections of Pope’s and Swift’s and other wits of their time. Such an Epistolary Collection, however, can only be hoped for by one’s keeping up their own share of it.’ A second particularly valuable feature of the Boswell–Forbes correspondence derives from its chronology. Relatively little surviving correspondence with close friends dates from the last decade of Boswell’s life, when Boswell was living mainly in London (usually with annual retreats in late summer and autumn to Auchinleck, his family estate in east Ayrshire) and produced his two major works, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson (1785) and The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). With the exception of the correspondences with the three men whom Boswell would designate as the joint executors of his unpublished literary property—Forbes, Malone, and Temple—his major non-familial correspondences were concentrated in the earlier part of his life.10 Although the vast correspondence with Temple stretched from the time Boswell was sixteen until his death, fewer than a quarter of the total number of his extant letters to Temple, thirty-one in number, have survived from the years 1785–95. During that crucial period, Boswell kept his journal less faithfully and less thoroughly than at any other time since his early twenties, including two long stretches—sixteen months from 11 April 1791 to 16 August 1792 and thirteen months from 13 April 1794 to his death on 19 May 1795—when he recorded virtually nothing. He also stopped maintaining his Register of Letters, sent and received, during the last four and a half years of his life, thereby depriving us of information about the existence, and sometimes summary contents, of many letters from the 1790s which have not survived. Ironically, the period when Boswell achieved his greatest literary fame, as well as notoriety, is the most poorly documented time of his adult life. Those are precisely the years when the correspondence between Boswell and Forbes flourished. Of the 79 extant letters exchanged between them, 72, or more 10  Several friends died before Boswell’s move to London in the mid-1780s, or shortly afterwards, including Lord Kames (d. 1782), Sir John Pringle (d. 1782), Sir Alexander Dick (d. 1785), and John Johnston (d. 1786). Two others, Lord Hailes (d. 1792) and Andrew Erskine (d. 1793), lived longer, but in both cases their correspondences with Boswell occurred chiefly during the 1760s and tailed off long before Boswell’s move to London.

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Introduction than 91 per cent, date from the 1780s and 1790s, and the great bulk of them (63, or approximately 80 per cent) are from the years 1785–94. This circumstance is the result not of the timing of their friendship, which started considerably earlier, but rather of geographical circumstances. Only in the early and especially mid-1780s did an extensive correspondence become necessary, after Boswell became Laird of Auchinleck (1782) and then abandoned Edinburgh (formally in January 1786, when he moved his primary residence to London, but effectively from late March 1785),11 and Forbes began travelling more frequently in Aberdeenshire, England, Ireland, and Italy (he would write letters to Boswell from as far from home as Aberdeenshire, Harrogate, and Naples). Their friendship was then transformed from chiefly face-to-face (with correspondence often used to provide cover letters for important enclosures) to chiefly epistolary. The significance of the correspondence between Boswell and Forbes is further enhanced by a third factor: a large—and largely untapped—body of additional materials to supplement and elucidate it. All volumes of Boswell correspondence, including this one, draw heavily on the superb collection of Boswell materials at Yale University, including manuscripts in the Beinecke Library and a wide assortment of other relevant materials in the office of the Yale Boswell Editions in Sterling Memorial Library. But this volume has had the additional benefit of drawing on the equally impressive archive of Forbes materials in the Fettercairn Papers in the National Library of Scotland, first deposited in 1969 and supplemented with a new accession of manuscripts in 2017. On his visits to Fettercairn, Abbott noticed that Forbes ‘was a most careful man of business who kept practically every letter written to him and a copy of all he wrote, and that he destroyed nothing, not even visiting-cards’.12 Yet because he was actually interested in Forbes’s papers only in so far as he thought they related directly to Boswell and Johnson (in spite of the equal billing given to Forbes in the catalogue’s title), Abbott did not delve deeply into those materials. For the purposes of this volume, however, Forbes’s surviving correspondences, drafts, receipts, annual financial summaries, travel documents, and other materials have created a rare opportunity for the editor of a two-way eighteenth-century correspondence. The large personal archives which both Boswell and Forbes left behind have been used to elucidate the letters they exchanged with each other as well as to understand more fully the characters of those who wrote them and the contexts in which they did so. This introduction and the copious annotation in this volume owe a great deal to this happy circumstance. Two of Forbes’s correspondences have proved particularly valuable for this purpose. First, Forbes maintained an extensive correspondence with James Beattie from the time of their meeting in 1765 until a few years before Beattie’s death in 1803, and most of it has been preserved among the Fettercairn Papers in Edinburgh and the James Beattie Papers at the University of Aberdeen. Although many of 11  During the ten-month period from late March 1785 to late January 1786, Boswell spent a total of only about five weeks in Edinburgh: while en route to London from Auchinleck, ‘half incognito’, from 5 to 12 November 1785 (see To Forbes, [5 Nov. 1785]), and from 28 December 1785 to 27 January 1786. 12  Abbott, p. xvi. Forbes’s collection of calling cards reappeared only in 2017, in FP+ 49–51.

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Introduction Beattie’s letters to Forbes have been published previously, in Forbes’s own biography of Beattie and in Roger Robinson’s edition of Beattie’s correspondence,13 many others have not. More importantly, Forbes’s abundant, and almost entirely unpublished, letters to Beattie have not yet been mined by scholars. Second, when Forbes travelled alone to Aberdeenshire in 1787 and 1789, to London from late December 1791 to early March 1792, and to Ayrshire for Boswell’s funeral in early June 1795, he kept what he sometimes called a ‘diary’ in the form of lengthy and detailed personal letters to his wife Elizabeth (Hay), Lady Forbes.14 Unfortunately, for unknown reasons Lady Forbes’s side of this correspondence, with news from home, has not survived, but Forbes’s letters to his wife in the Fettercairn Papers constitute a valuable archive, which can be further supplemented by the letters which Forbes sent to his brother-in-law and banking partner, John Hay, when Lady Forbes joined her husband on trips to Wales and western England in 1780 and to Ireland in 1785. Abbott did not note these and many other unpublished Forbes materials from Fettercairn in his published catalogue, apparently not realizing that they contain a great deal of useful information not only about Forbes but also about Boswell, especially during the last years of Boswell’s life. For example, the letters which Forbes wrote to his wife during his visit to London from late December 1791 to early March 1792 document many previously unknown activities engaged in by Boswell and Forbes during this period, ranging from dining at the home of the bookseller Charles Dilly to attending Sir Joseph Banks’s scientific salons to worshipping at select Church of England chapels and churches.15 The large body of available materials on Forbes and Boswell has been used in this volume in another way besides enriching the introduction and the annotation. As mentioned above, in addition to the letters exchanged between Boswell and Forbes, thirty-two other letters are reproduced in their entirety in the main text of this book. These letters, most of which are published for the first time, fall into three main (sometimes overlapping) categories. Enclosures. The editorial policy of this volume calls for reproducing, whenever possible, materials enclosed with letters between Boswell and Forbes. Eleven of these enclosures are letters published from extant originals (or from drafts or copies when the sent letters have not been located), which appear in the following order: (1 and 2) a copy of a letter (reproduced from a surviving draft) from Forbes to Samuel Johnson, 13 July 1784, and Johnson’s reply, 7 August 1784, on Boswell’s prospects for moving to London (both meant to be enclosed with Forbes’s letter to Boswell of 19 October 1787, though actually sent separately on 18 October 1787, along with letter no. 7 below);16 (3) a letter from Forbes’s bank to Boswell, 28 January 1785, establishing an important heritable bond for £1400 in place of Boswell’s existing debt (enclosed with another letter from the bank—in Forbes’s See Beattie and Beattie Corr. Forbes uses the term ‘diary’ in the first line of his letter to Lady Forbes of 5 Mar. 1792 (under date in this volume). 15  See From Forbes, 23 Apr. 1792 n. 5. 16  For sense and continuity, these two letters have been placed in the chronological sequence of their composition rather than after the letter which cites them as enclosures three years later. 13  14 

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Introduction handwriting—explaining the terms of the new bond, provisionally dated [c. 1 February 1785]); (4) a letter (reproduced from a surviving copy) from Alexander Fraser Tytler to Boswell, 31 October 1785, objecting to his treatment in Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson (enclosed with Boswell’s letter to Forbes, [5 November 1785]); (5) a letter from the Irish antiquarian Joseph Cooper Walker to Boswell, 5 June 1785, requesting information about Scottish music (enclosed with a letter which Boswell sent to Forbes between 17 November and 2 December 1785, and then enclosed again with Forbes’s letter to Boswell of 6 December 1785); (6) a letter from Thomas Blacklock to Boswell, 12 November 1785, objecting to his treatment in Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson (enclosed with a letter from Forbes to Boswell, 6 December 1785, and subsequently published in an appendix to the second edition of Boswell’s book); (7) Forbes’s copy of the ‘Round Robin’ letter written to Johnson by some of his friends in spring 1776, about the proper form of his epitaph on Oliver Goldsmith (meant to be enclosed with Forbes’s letter to Boswell of 19 October 1787, though actually sent separately a day earlier with letters nos. 1 and 2 above, and subsequently published in the Life of Samuel Johnson from the original in the possession of Thomas Barnard); (8) a letter from Boswell to Mary Grant, 27 June 1789, concerning the education of Boswell’s two elder girls following the death of their mother (enclosed with Boswell’s letter to Forbes of the same date, though apparently never sent to Mrs. Grant); (9 and 10) two letters (reproduced from surviving copies) from Sir Joshua Reynolds to Sir William Chambers, [mid-February 1790] and 22 February 1790, about Reynolds’s resignation as President of the Royal Academy of Arts (enclosed with Boswell’s letter to Forbes of 2–3 July 1790); and (11) a letter (reproduced from a surviving copy) from Boswell to Forbes’s bank, 29 May 1794, about a missed interest payment (enclosed with Boswell’s letter to Forbes of 29 May 1794). All these enclosed letters contribute in some way to our understanding of the relationship between Boswell and Forbes, and sometimes they also open up interesting and previously neglected topics. The letter from Tytler (no. 4 above) and the two letters by Reynolds (nos. 9 and 10 above), for example, generated Appendix 3 and Appendix 4, respectively, which treat the issues they raise in greater depth than would have been possible in footnotes.17 Bank Correspondence. This volume publishes for the first time all nine known letters from Boswell’s correspondence with Forbes’s bank, Sir William Forbes, James Hunter and Company, now in the Boswell Collection at Yale: seven letters from the bank to Boswell (including one in Forbes’s handwriting), one from the bank to Andrew Gibb, overseer of Boswell’s Auchinleck estate, and one from Boswell to the bank. Two of these bank letters were mentioned in the preceding paragraph, because they were also enclosures in other letters. The existence of one ‘not reported’ letter from the bank to Boswell is also recorded. Some of the letters 17  In addition to the eleven enclosed letters mentioned above, a variety of other items were enclosed with letters exchanged between Boswell and Forbes, including published and unpublished writings by Boswell, materials relating to subscriptions for a proposed book by Francesco Sastres and for a monument in honour of Samuel Johnson, and copies of books and magazines. These items have also been reproduced, when feasible, immediately after the letters with which they were enclosed. Bulkier items, which could not be included in this volume, are identified as fully as possible in headnotes and footnotes.

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Introduction from the bank to Boswell contain, as enclosures, bank statements showing the state of Boswell’s account at various times. In the absence of fuller bank records, which have not survived,18 this correspondence—as well as some banking business which Boswell and Forbes occasionally slipped into their personal letters and a few references in the journal—furnish the best available information about Boswell’s dealings with Forbes’s bank. Other Letters. Besides the eleven enclosed letters and the nine bank letters (two of which were also enclosures), the main text of this volume reproduces in their entirety fourteen other letters (all but one previously unpublished) which have relevance for the subject matter of this book. The largest segment in this group consists of six letters from Forbes to his wife, Lady Forbes: one relaying a dinner invitation from the Boswells in 1772 (with which Boswell’s letter to Forbes of 8 August [1772] is enclosed); two describing Forbes’s visit to London early in 1792, when Boswell and Forbes were often together; one containing information about Boswell’s last illness in May 1795; and two written on the way home from Boswell’s funeral at Auchinleck in early June 1795. Two of Forbes’s letters to Beattie are also reproduced. One from 9 January 1786 contains a footnote on Boswell which Forbes inserted with this letter when he published it twenty years later in his biography of Beattie; the letter and footnote constitute Forbes’s only previously published remarks on Boswell, including critical comments on The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson. The other letter to Beattie, dated 15 October 1793, contains comments on The Principal Corrections and Additions to the First Edition of Mr. Boswell’s Life of Dr. Johnson, anticipating a letter on the same topic which Forbes would send to Boswell the next day. The remaining six letters which are published fully in the main text of this volume appear under date: (1) a letter to Forbes of 15 September 1783 from Boswell’s wife Margaret, sent from Auchinleck when Boswell was preoccupied with social duties there; (2) a letter (reproduced from a surviving draft) from Forbes to Thomas Barnard, Bishop of Killaloe, 29 April 1786, largely about Boswell’s move to London and Samuel Johnson’s Prayers and Meditations; (3 and 4) two privately owned letters to Forbes from Lady Rothes, the wife of Boswell and Forbes’s mutual friend Bennet Langton, 4 June and 6 December 1790;19 (5) a letter from Boswell’s elder son, Alexander, [11 June 1793], inviting Forbes (who was then passing through London ) to visit his father after a street attack which Boswell had suffered six days earlier; and (6) a letter of condolence from Forbes to Alexander on 25 May 1795, six days after Boswell’s death. A fourth factor contributing to the significance of the Boswell–Forbes correspondence concerns the aesthetic and emotive quality of some of the letters, par18  Records of Sir William Forbes, James Hunter and Company survive in the Lloyds Banking Group Archives (Edinburgh), GB 1830 FOR, including a section titled ‘Customer Accounts and Balances, 1778–1909’, GB 1830 FOR/2/1. However, these records were not found to contain any useful materials on Boswell or Forbes. More helpful materials may eventually come to light among various collections of extant papers and correspondence of Forbes’s primary banking partner, Sir James Hunter Blair, including the Blair of Blairquhan Papers, NRAS 17, and the Ayrshire Archives in Ayr, Acc. 884. 19  The fact that these two letters were put up for sale in the late twentieth century raises hope that Langton’s letters to Forbes (all of which are unaccounted for) may eventually come to light.

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Introduction ticularly those written by Boswell. When not merely documenting the details of banking, travel, and other aspects of daily life, or acting as cover letters for enclosures, Boswell’s letters to Forbes could be lengthy, informative, and personal (sometimes painfully so), and they contain many fine passages. Consider, as one example, the opening paragraph of a letter which Boswell sent Forbes on 31 May 1788, when his wife Margaret was slowly dying of consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis): My Dear Sir: The severe distress of my valuable Wife having continued with very little remission, or prospect of recovery in London, and her anxious wish being to try what effect the air and quietness of Auchinleck would have upon her, I brought her down as soon as I thought the weather mild enough. She made out the journey in much shorter time than I supposed she could have done, but was very much fatigued. She has been here about ten days; but, alas I cannot perceive any change to the better. She has an almost constant hectick fever, and a variety of bad symptoms, and Dr. Campbell who has visited her, thinks her case very hopeless. She is sadly depressed, and talks of herself as gone. I am very sure, My Dear Sir, of the kind concern of you and Lady Forbes, who are fully sensible of her worth and the importance of her being preserved to her family. I need not attempt to describe what my feelings are. No man ever loved a woman more than I have loved her from our early years, and no husband was ever under greater obligations to a Wife. I look up to God with pious endeavours at Resignation, yet with some hope; for He has been pleased repeatedly to restore her to tolerable health, when I had almost despaired. Pray let me hear from you, while I have much need of consolation; and if you could without great inconvenience meet me at Hamilton as the best halfway place where we might pass one cordial evening together, it would oblige me highly. But I will not press it, fearing to take advantage of the friendly warmth of your heart, when it might be improper for you to yield to it, in the midst of your various business. This passage imparts much information: about the family’s journey from London to Auchinleck, about Margaret’s poor state of physical and mental health, about Dr. John Campbell’s dismal prognosis. But it is written in a poignant, heartfelt manner which reflects the inner emotional turmoil which Boswell was experiencing, as well as his love for Margaret and his turn to Forbes as a source of consolation and stability. One wonders if this passage, and some others in letters written by Boswell, were among those which Forbes would later praise to his son for their ‘elegance of composition’. Finally, the significance of the Boswell–Forbes correspondence emerges from the stature and character of Forbes himself—as both an admired and successful man lxviii

Introduction of business and a commanding cultural and religious figure—and the distinctive nature of his relationship with Boswell. Sir Walter Scott remarked in a footnote to the fourth canto of his 1808 poem Marmion that Forbes was ‘unequalled, perhaps, in the degree of individual affection entertained for him by his friends, as well as in the general respect and esteem of Scotland at large’.20 During his lifetime, Forbes was a founding member, director, governor, trustee, master, president, chairman, treasurer, or some other significant office-holder in more than a dozen major Scottish institutions, including, besides his bank, the Grand Lodge of Scotland, the Charity Workhouse, the English Episcopal (Cowgate) Chapel, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, the Beneficent Society of Edinburgh, the Merchant Company, the Merchant Maidens’ Hospital, the Orphan Hospital, Watson’s Hospital, Gillespie’s Hospital, the Edinburgh Asylum for Relief of the Indigent and Industrious Blind, the Edinburgh High School, the Edinburgh Musical Society, the Trustees for the Encouragement of Manufactures and Fisheries, the Society for the Improvement of British Wool, the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, the Highland Society of Scotland, the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SSPCK), and the Edinburgh Society Instituted for the Purpose of Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade.21 On 24 June 1777 he laid the foundation stone of the new Edinburgh High School building in his capacity as Grand Master Mason in Scotland, and early in March 1792 he was elected Lord Rector of Marischal College, Aberdeen.22 He managed subscriptions for many causes (including, as the correspondence relates, the unsuccessful pursuit of Scottish subscriptions for a monument in honour of Samuel Johnson) and was renowned as a philanthropist and civic improver. European visitors sometimes noted the reverence of his countrymen in published tributes which were translated in the Scottish press early in the nineteenth century. In 1790 the Italian traveller Luigi Angiolini wrote in the second volume of his Lettere sopra l’Inghilterra, Scozia e Olanda, ‘Of no person, in no country, have I heard so much good more generally spoken, than of him; and, really, it is not possible to have manners more noble and more obliging than he has. Above all, he must have an inexhaustible fund of excellent moral qualities, to be extolled, as he is, by the acclamations of a whole nation’. Later in the 1790s the German merchant Caspar Voght (1752–1839) described Forbes as ‘the most benevolent man in Edinburgh. … There is no poor man whom he does not assist, no public undertaking he does not encourage, no charitable purpose to which he is not ready to devote his time and his talents. No one speaks of him without warmth’.23 While focussing on the relationship between Boswell and Forbes, this volume often illuminates the neglected Walter Scott, Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field, ed. Ainsley McIntosh, 2018, p. 246. See Kay i. 180–85, and ‘Forbes’, pp. 352–54, including the summary observation ‘that, for the last thirty years of his life, Sir William was either at the head, or actively engaged in the management of all the charitable establishments of Edinburgh, and that many of the most valuable of them owed their existence or success to his exertions’ (p. 354). 22  London Evening Post, 26–28 June 1777; Lond. Chron., 17–20 Mar. 1792. 23  ‘Letters written during a Tour through Scotland, in the Year 1788. From the Italian of Angiolini’, Scots Mag. May 1810, lxxii. 340; Caspar Voght, ‘On the State of Society in Edinburgh’, Scots Mag. Dec. 1804, lxvi. 916. 20  21 

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Introduction contemporary importance of Forbes in late eighteenth-century Scottish life. Forbes’s elevated standing in Scottish society in turn elevated his correspondence with Boswell. The letters from Forbes to Boswell reveal the moral authority of their author, just as Boswell’s letters demonstrate that Forbes was, in Boswell’s eyes as well as in the view of Scottish society generally, a paragon of virtue, honest prosperity, and dignity, to whom Boswell turned for counsel and support. When Boswell lived in Edinburgh, he sought out Forbes’s conversation, and he could be as jealous and possessive about his time with Forbes as he was with Johnson in London. Of one dinner at Forbes’s house on 13 February 1776, Boswell wrote in his journal, ‘There was no conversation that pleased me, for, I could have none with worthy Sir William alone’. On another occasion, 10 June 1779, the journal states, ‘drank tea with Sir William Forbes by appointment, but without much satisfaction, as we could have no intimate conversation, his lady & others being present’. When they did meet alone, Forbes served Boswell not only as a personal adviser but also as a figure worthy of emulation. ‘I am always the better of being with him’, Boswell wrote in his journal on 24 July 1774, echoing a similar comment made about Johnson eleven years earlier.24 After he attended the ‘English Chapel’ in the Cowgate on the afternoon of Sunday, 2 November 1777, his journal entry reads, ‘Met Sr. W. Forbes. Good glass to view Myself in to advantage’. At thirty-seven years of age, married with three children, Boswell still viewed himself as someone in the process of improvement, and such constructive self-reflection was one of the primary purposes of his journal.25 When the relationship with Forbes became mainly epistolary from the mid-1780s onwards, their correspondence sometimes assumed the function of the ‘glass’ or mirror which Boswell looked into for inspiration and improvement—even if he did not always act in accordance with Forbes’s advice or image. Boswell’s correspondence with Forbes was remarkably wide-ranging because of Forbes’s special place in Boswell’s life. Boswell’s friends from youth, such as Johnston, Erskine, and even Temple, as well as later acquaintances, including Hailes, Dick, Pringle, Kames, and other older friends in Scotland, had little or no experience of Boswell’s London world, just as Boswell’s circle of friends in the Literary Club in London, including (after Johnson’s death) ‘the Gang’ (Reynolds, Malone, and Courtenay), could have had only an indistinct impression of his life in Edinburgh or at Auchinleck, or other aspects of Boswell’s Scottish background and identity. The correspondence between Boswell and Forbes reflects the unique nature of their relationship, at once broad and intimate, and grounded in their shared Scottish backgrounds as well as their mutual friendships in London. In the remainder of this introduction, this point will be illustrated by means of thematic discussions which demonstrate the nature of this friendship and the 24  ‘I never am with this great man, without feeling myself bettered & rendered happier’ (Journ. 14 June 1763). 25  Boswell would remark, during a conversation about looking glasses and journals in the presence of Johnson and others, ‘as a Lady adjusts her dress at a glass, a man adjusts his character by looking at it’ (Journ. 30 Mar. 1778).

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Introduction evolution of its level of intimacy. In the process, the story of Forbes’s own life will unfold. In 1936 Abbott observed with surprise that no modern biography of Forbes existed, and more than eighty years later this point remains true.26 Although what follows is no substitute for a full-length biographical account, it will serve to introduce the main features of Forbes’s life and the principal ways in which Boswell and Forbes interacted, both in person and in their correspondence. It will also demonstrate that their friendship was built in certain respects on similarities and on shared values, beliefs, backgrounds, and experiences, while in other respects they were quite different, and occasionally ‘exceedingly opposite’, as Forbes would characterize their positions on the matter of political ambition. II. Boswell and Forbes: Parallel, Intersecting Lives Freemasonry and Friendship. After Boswell’s death in May 1795, Forbes sent letters almost identically worded to Boswell’s heir Alexander (Sandy) and his eldest daughter, Veronica, recounting that he had ‘lost a friend with whom I have lived these six and thirty years in the strictest habits of unreserved intimacy’.27 The phrase ‘six and thirty years’ is specific and harks back to the year 1759, when both men joined the same Masonic lodge in Edinburgh, Canongate Kilwinning No. 2 (also known as St. John’s). Boswell, aged eighteen, had just finished the arts course at Edinburgh University and was about to embark on the study of law when he became a member on 14 August 1759. Although his father, Lord Auchinleck, was not a Mason, his uncle, Dr. John Boswell, was at that time Depute Master of the lodge and initiated James into the Craft.28 Forbes, who was a year and a half older, was twenty when he joined three months later (16 November),29 having recently completed his five-year apprenticeship at the Coutts Bros. & Co., where he was employed as a clerk. Over the course of the next two decades, both Boswell and Forbes became prominent Freemasons, not only in their own lodge but also at the national headquarters of Scottish Freemasonry, the Grand Lodge of Scotland, and their Masonic 26  Abbott, p. xiv. The best biographical account, despite some errors, remains ‘Forbes’, first published in 1835 by Robert Chambers and condensed in later versions under the editorship of Thomas Thomson. 27  Forbes to Alexander Boswell, 25 May 1795 (under date in this volume) and n. 4, which quotes from Forbes to Veronica Boswell, 13 June 1795 (draft, FP 88). 28  Besides Dr. John Boswell, who had joined Lodge Canongate Kilwinning No. 2 on 6 Sept. 1742 (Mackenzie, p. 237), the Boswell family connections with Freemasonry went back to 1600. Several of Boswell’s mentors were also prominent Freemasons, such as the 10th Earl of Eglinton, and Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, who were elected Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1750 and 1774, respectively. On Boswell and Freemasonry, see J. R. Clarke and G. P. Jones, ‘Why Was James Boswell a Freemason?’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, lxxix (1966): 90–92; Ivan B. Tait, ‘James Boswell of Auchinleck: Man and Freemason’, Grand Lodge of Scotland Year Book, 1961, pp. 66–71; David Stevenson, ‘Why Was James Boswell a Freemason? An Old Question Revisited’, in The Canonbury Papers, Volume 2: Freemasonry in Music and Literature, ed. Trevor Stewart, 2005, pp. 123–34; and a 1943 lecture by John Kippen, ‘Lodge Canongate Kilwinning 2: James Boswell of Auchinleck’ (https://www.lck2.co.uk/james-boswell-of-auchinleck), which cites minutes from several relevant lodge meetings. 29  Mackenzie, pp. 238, 240.

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Introduction activities were closely intertwined. On 8 December 1761 Forbes filled a vacancy as Senior Warden of Canongate Kilwinning No. 2 and Boswell replaced him as Junior Warden. Boswell would follow in Forbes’s footsteps as Depute Master of the lodge (1767–69) and Master (1773–75). Their Masonic careers culminated in the years 1776–78, when Forbes was Grand Master Mason in Scotland and Boswell Deputy Grand Master. A journal entry of 21 November 1776 provides a revealing account of how Boswell acquired this office: ‘Having been applied to, to accept of being Deputy Grand Master of the Free Masons in Scotland, I wished to avoid it. But as worthy Sir William Forbes was to be Grand Master, & thought my accepting of the office would be an obligation conferred on him, I agreed’. By that time, Boswell and Forbes were certainly close friends. In a letter sent to a kinsman on 15 February 1775, Forbes referred to ‘Mr Boswell, with whom I have been long intimately acquainted’, and in the footnote on Boswell which he inserted into his biography of Beattie in 1806, Forbes would write that ‘Mr Boswell’s acquaintance and mine began at a very early period of life, and an intimate correspondence continued between us ever after’.30 In another footnote, Forbes would write of Samuel Johnson’s visit to Edinburgh in 1773, ‘As he lived in the house of my friend, Mr Boswell, with whom I was extremely intimate, I was very much with Dr Johnson at that time’.31 That the relationship between Boswell and Forbes was one of ‘unreserved intimacy’ from 1759 onwards, and that Freemasonry formed the foundation of their friendship, forms a tempting hypothesis. Yet there are also reasons to doubt it. When Forbes joined Canongate Kilwinning No. 2, Boswell had just begun to study at the University of Glasgow, where his father sent him on account of his fondness for the theatre and other extracurricular pleasures in Edinburgh. From then until he began practising law as an advocate in the summer of 1766, he would spend only one sustained period of time in Edinburgh, during the years 1761–62, but for much of that period he seems to have been inactive as a Mason.32 When studying in Utrecht, while his younger brother David (later known as Thomas David, or T. D.) was a banking apprentice in Edinburgh under Forbes’s supervision, Boswell dined with Forbes on 21 September 1763, but the way he recorded the event the next day hardly suggests intimacy: ‘Yesterday, you was necessarily & properly taken 30  Forbes to John Forbes, Master of Pitsligo, 15 Feb. 1775, NLS, MS 3112, fol. 28; Beattie ii. 181 n. 31  Beattie ii. 140 n. 32  According to Kippen, ‘Lodge Canongate Kilwinning 2’, the lodge minutes reveal that from the time he became Junior Warden in December 1761 until his return to Edinburgh in 1766, Boswell attended only one lodge meeting, in February 1762. From mid-September to late October 1762 Boswell took a harvest ‘jaunt’ through the Borders with Lord and Lady Kames, followed by a visit to London from 19 November 1762 to early August 1763 (during which he met Samuel Johnson and kept the diary that became the London Journal, 1762– 1763), a period of study in Utrecht, and a tour of Europe. He would not return to Edinburgh again until early March 1766, and he would then spend most of his time at Auchinleck preparing for his law exams, until he passed advocate on 26 July 1766. But his election as Depute Master of Canongate Kilwinning in June 1767 demonstrates that he resumed his activities as a Mason after returning to Edinburgh. There is no evidence that Boswell and Forbes had any communication or contact while they were both in London from late November to late December 1762.

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Introduction up with Sir William Forbes, a Scotch Knight, & who has the care of your Brother’.33 It is likely that their conversation at this meeting included their shared interest in music (as discussed below), because while travelling in Italy almost a year and a half later, Boswell recorded in his notes, ‘swear retenue & learn music & play with Sr. W. Forbes’.34 After Boswell returned from his travels and was staying at Auchinleck in October 1766, Forbes made a visit to the estate, marking a milestone in their emerging friendship. The visit was arranged by David Boswell, who wrote to his brother about it almost as if he thought Forbes was still a stranger to him.35 Another meeting, in London, is recorded in Boswell’s journal entry for 23 March 1768, when Boswell met Forbes and his banking associate and lifelong friend, Robert (later Sir Robert) Herries, in order to retrieve a dog and ‘my Corsican gun and pistols’, which General Pasquale Paoli had sent him from Leghorn (Livorno) via Herries, and before the dog broke loose they had a glass of claret while the crowds were chanting ‘Wilkes and Liberty’.36 Boswell recorded in journal notes that he met Herries and Forbes in London again on 28 April, probably for similar purposes, and Forbes alone another time that spring, on 11 May, but these encounters appear to have been mainly about business, and Boswell’s brief notices of them reveal no signs of intimacy.37 No other contact or communication between Boswell and Forbes is recorded in Boswell’s extant journals, journal notes, or memoranda until September 1771, when Forbes came ‘After dinner’ and stayed for supper with a large company at Boswell’s Edinburgh home during Paoli’s visit to Scotland,38 and there is no evidence of any ‘intimate correspondence’ until 1775, by which time both men were in their mid-thirties. As for Freemasonry, Boswell rarely writes of it in his journal or letters (including his extant correspondence with Forbes, in which Freemasonry is mentioned only once, in Forbes’s letter of 6 December 1785), and the subject remains a rare pocket of reticence in Boswell’s self-record. This may be because of its secret nature, making Boswell uncomfortable at the prospect of writing about it even in his private journal. Whatever the reason, it is not possible to confirm Forbes’s statements to Boswell’s children about thirty-six years of ‘unreserved intimacy’, or his other assertions suggesting intimacy extending back to their youth. The most likely scenario is that Boswell and Forbes knew each other since 1759 and steadily became better acquainted from Masonic activities in 1761 and early The entry for 21 Sept. includes, in preparation, ‘Be hardy wt. Sr. W. Forbes’ (J 4). ‘Notes written while travelling through Italy’ (M 101), 4 Feb. 1765. The word ‘retenue’ or ‘retenu’ was young Boswell’s code to signify a resolution to act with restraint and propriety. The use of the phrase in association with Forbes may therefore indicate an early instance of Boswell viewing Forbes as a model for emulation. 35  See From Forbes, 15 Oct. 1783 n. 2. David Boswell would join Canongate Kilwinning No. 2 in Oct. 1767 (see Kippen, ‘Lodge Canongate Kilwinning 2’). 36  In a letter of 10 Mar. 1768, Forbes had asked James Hunter to inform Boswell (who had not yet left Edinburgh) that the dog had arrived and ‘is a beast of a most dignified presence, and deemed to be worthy of the giver’ (FP 84/1). Boswell then placed a notice in the Lond. Chron. announcing that ‘Messrs. Herries and Co., merchants in this city, have received bills of loading from Leghorn of presents from General Paoli to Mr. Boswell’ (Search of a Wife, Heinemann, p. 149 n. 4; McGraw-Hill, p. 139 n. 8). 37  J 15. See also From Forbes, [Spring/Summer 1768]. 38  ‘Notes of Paoli’s Tour in Scotland 1771’ (J 22). 33  34 

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Introduction 1762, a meeting in Utrecht in 1763, Forbes’s visit to Auchinleck in October 1766, the resumption of their Masonic association around that time, and several brief encounters in London in spring 1768, but that ‘unreserved intimacy’ probably did not develop between them until early in the next decade. ‘Music was a part of every meeting of a Masonic lodge’ in eighteenth-century Scotland, ‘whether for ceremonial purposes and the singing of hymns, or as part of the relaxation after business was finished’.39 As music lovers who enjoyed majestic church music as well as casual catch-singing by the fireside,40 Boswell and Forbes would have found this feature of Masonic fellowship particularly attractive. Two years before they joined Canongate Kilwinning No. 2, the lodge had purchased an organ made by the London-based Swiss organ-maker John Snetzler (1710–85), and it is pictured (along with Boswell, Forbes, and many other prominent Freemasons) in both versions of the mid-nineteenth-century imaginary painting ‘The Inauguration of Robert Burns as Poet Laureate of the Lodge’ by William Stewart Watson (1800–70).41 Forbes was a mainstay of the Edinburgh Musical Society, which had close ties with Edinburgh Freemasonry, and he was among those responsible for bringing another Snetzler organ to Edinburgh, at the English or Cowgate Chapel (discussed below).42 He played the German flute and the armonica (musical glasses), and Boswell considered him so knowledgeable about Scottish music that he would defer to him when asked about that subject by Joseph Cooper Walker.43 Since Boswell’s musical inclinations and talents lay in performing songs, he relished singing Masonic songs at meetings and on special occasions, as well as other kinds of singing at the end of lodge meetings.44 39  Jennifer Macleod, ‘Freemasonry and Music in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh’, in Freemasonry on Both Sides of the Atlantic, ed. R. William Weisberger, Wallace McLeod, and S. Brent Morris, 2002, pp. 123–52, quoting p. 126. 40  Journal notes (J 62.1), 26 Feb. 1779: ‘I supt at Sr. W Forbes’s fire catchsinging. Quite jovial. Drank too much.’ 41  One version of the painting is in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (PG 946), while the other, more densely populated version hangs in the Grand Lodge of Scotland Museum and Library in Edinburgh. Although the story of Burns being made Poet Laureate of Lodge Canongate Kilwinning No. 2 on 1 March 1787 is apocryphal, and the representations in Watson’s paintings of those present on that occasion are also imaginary (Boswell, for example, could not have been present at any lodge meetings while Burns was visiting Edinburgh in late 1786 and early 1787 because he was then in London), the physical depiction of the lodge as it existed in 1787 is thought to be accurate. It is not known if Forbes attended the meetings at Canongate Kilwinning No. 2 on 7 December 1786 and 1 February 1787, when Burns was cited in the minutes as ‘a great Poetic Writer’ and granted an honorary membership in the lodge (Mackenzie, p. 109). 42  Arnot, pp. 284–87. The English Episcopal chapel in Carrubbers Close, which Boswell loved, had owned a Snetzler organ since 1747, and when Boswell attended the Christmas service there in 1772, he commented in his journal notes on the ‘fine music’ (25 Dec. 1772, J 26). In 1775, however, after the new Snetzler organ was installed at the Cowgate Chapel, the organ in Carrubbers Close was removed to an Episcopal chapel in Glasgow. The Cowgate Chapel organist, Samuel Clarke (d. 1797), appears in at least one version of Watson’s painting, along with various other musicians. 43  ‘Forbes’, p. 361; Patrick Heron to Forbes, 13 Jan. 1777 (FP 3/3); To Forbes, [between 17 Nov. and 2 Dec. 1785]; From Walker, 5 June 1785; From Forbes, 6 Dec. 1785. 44  On Masonic song culture in Scotland, see Katherine Campbell, ‘Masonic Songs in Scotland: Folk Tunes and Community’, Oral Tradition, xxvii (2012): 85–108; Stephen W. Brown, ‘Singing by the Book: Eighteenth-Century Scottish Songbooks, Freemasonry, and

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Introduction Finance, Philosophy, and Intimacy. Whatever the nature of the relationship between Boswell and Forbes in the years after they joined Canongate Kilwinning No. 2, there can be no doubt that their friendship deepened during the first half of the 1770s. As will be shown, some socializing between the families was in effect by 1772, and the visits to Edinburgh by Bennet Langton in 1772 and Samuel Johnson in 1773 constituted important steps in building their relationship. But the friendship and correspondence between Boswell and Forbes reached a higher level of intimacy during the six-month period from mid-1774 to early January 1775. What happened then was complicated and intense, precipitating a deeper relationship built on confidential exchanges about finance, literature, philosophy, and religion. This period of the friendship begins with this entry in Boswell’s journal for 24 July 1774: I called this evening on Sir William Forbes, & had a long comfortable tête à tête with him upon literary subjects, and religious principles, and on the conduct of life. He told me that he kept an accurate account of his expences, which he was resolved to do to the day of his death—that from his being so much used to figures it was quite easy to him—that it served as a kind of Journal of his life—that perhaps once a quarter he classed his expences under different articles & so saw where to retrench, where to extend. I determined to have myself put in a way by him of doing the same. I value him highly, & regret that we are not more together, for, as I told him tonight, I am always the better of being with him. [emphasis added] To begin with the end of this revealing passage, Boswell states that he values Forbes highly and thinks he is a better person for being with him (the first explicit statement of the theme of emulation which will appear again in the journal), but he also indicates, regretfully, that he does not spend all that much time with him. Burns’, in From Compositors to Collectors: Essays on Book-Trade History, ed. John Hinks and Matthew Day, 2012, pp. 261–78, and ‘Scottish Freemasonry and Learned Printing in the Later Eighteenth Century’, in Worlds of Print: Diversity in the Book Trade, ed. John Hinks and Catherine Armstrong, 2006, pp. 71–89; Jennifer Macleod, ‘The Edinburgh Musical Society: Its Membership and Repertoire, 1728–1797’, Ph.D. diss., University of Edinburgh, 2001, pp. 193, 199–205, 306–10, and ‘Freemasonry and Music’. When Boswell was Master of Canongate Kilwinning No. 2, he recorded in the minutes of a meeting during the summer of 1774 that ‘the evening was passed in social glee, every brother having sung’ (Later Years, p. 89). He noted in his journal that he sang ‘my nonsensical Scotch song, “Twa wheels”’ in ‘vigorous’ spirits on a visit to Leith Lodge on 13 Feb. 1775, and that he was ‘in perfect good spirits, and harangued and sung with ease and vigour’ when leading a Masonic procession in Edinburgh on 30 November 1775 (St. Andrew’s Day), in his capacity as Master of his lodge. Forbes probably participated in most events like these during this period, when he and Boswell were active Freemasons and increasingly close friends. Boswell was a subscriber to a 1769 book on British Freemasonry, which contained Masonic songs in the back (Boswell’s Books, p. 146), and the Edinburgh bookseller Charles Hunter (fl. 1773–84) dedicated his edition of A Collection of Free Masons Songs … For the Use of Lodges ‘To the Honourable and Most Worshipful Sir William Forbes Baronet’ on the occasion of Forbes becoming Grand Master Mason on 30 November 1776 (Hunter to Forbes, 29 Nov. 1776, FP 3/2).

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Introduction What exactly happened this evening to make him want more? First, they had a long talk about literature, religion, and ‘the conduct of life’. Then Forbes educated his friend about financial record-keeping and family budgeting. For Boswell, this seemingly mundane lesson took on the characteristics of an innovative way to keep a journal of one’s life, with numbers rather than words. After this meeting, Forbes would appear more often in Boswell’s life and therefore in his journal. The three weeks from mid-December 1774 constituted a crucial period in the development of their association. At a dinner party at the Boswells’ home with the Forbeses and William Nairne (later Sir William Nairne, elevated to the bench with the judicial title Lord Dunsinane) on 15 December 1774, there was a discussion about freedom of the will and God’s prescience, an issue which would continue to torment Boswell throughout his life. Forbes provided reassurance on both issues. On 30 December Elizabeth (Erskine), Lady Colville, entertained her brother the 6th Earl of Kellie, the Boswells, the Forbeses, and Nairne at her home, Drumsheugh House to the west of Edinburgh, in what would be the first recorded gathering of this nascent English Episcopal45 circle of friends in Edinburgh, discussed below. Two days later, 1 January 1775, Boswell records that ‘I drank tea by special appointment with worthy Sir William Forbes,46 to let him read my Hebrides Journal to prepare him for Mr. Johnson’s Book. He was much entertained & I left him my three volumes [of the Hebrides journal], after reading him a great deal.’ They saw each other again the next day, as discussed below. The Boswell– Forbes correspondence which Abbott discovered at Fettercairn House began four days later, on 6 January 1775, when Forbes wrote to return the Hebrides journal with laudatory comments, to send Boswell a friend’s manuscript which he thought Boswell and his wife would enjoy reading, and to invite the Boswells to a supper ‘in the family way’, while Lady Forbes was confined with her third pregnancy. On the same day, Boswell responded in the affirmative for supper on the 7th, which he recorded in his journal for that day: ‘supt at Sir William Forbes’s, with him & Lady Forbes alone’. In this flurry of social interaction, the meeting on the morning of 2 January 1775 stands out. In the journal Boswell notes that ‘I was with Sir William Forbes at his Counting House in the forenoon, as he had obligingly agreed to shew me his Account-Book, & put me on an accurate plan of management’. This meeting was clearly a sequel to their evening together the previous July, when Forbes had introduced Boswell to the mysteries of financial record-keeping and Boswell had decided to follow Forbes’s advice in an effort to set his own house in order. The beginning of the new year was the appropriate time to start putting Boswell ‘on an accurate plan of management’. After examining Forbes’s account book,47 Boswell gave Forbes 45  ‘English Episcopal’ was the term used by Forbes and others (and it is therefore used in this book) to refer to the community of adherents of the Church of England in Scotland, who worshipped in ‘qualified’ (i.e., loyal Hanoverian) chapels, unlike the Jacobite or non-juring Scottish Episcopal Church. 46  This is the first instance in the journal in which Forbes is described by the adjective ‘worthy’, which Boswell would regularly apply to him from this time forward (see From Forbes, 1 June 1789 n. 10). 47  The journal records only one aspect of Forbes’s finances which Boswell learned about

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Introduction ‘a state of my affairs’. He calculated his income for 1774 at £600, divided equally between the allowance he received from his father and the income he earned from his legal practice. Allowing £100 annually for ‘the interest of my debts & other burthens’, Boswell and Forbes then broke down Boswell’s remaining expenditures into an annual budget: £240 a year for his wife Margaret to manage family expenses (including servants’ wages), £60 for her clothes, £50 for renting their lodgings in Edinburgh, £30 for wine, and £50 for Boswell’s clothes and ‘Pocket-money’. This came to £430, leaving ‘£70 for contingencies, such as a London Jaunt, & smaller expences & char[i]ties’. For the first time, Boswell had attempted a systematic plan of family budgeting,48 and the journal registers his delight at the thought of bringing his finances under control: ‘It gave me great satisfaction to see myself in prospect an accurate man, & my dear Wife cheerfully resolved to help me.’ At the core of the deepening of the relationship between Boswell and Forbes between late July 1774 and early January 1775 was a mutual exchange: Forbes taught Boswell how to keep ‘a kind of Journal of his life’ by means of financial accounting, while Boswell revealed his financial details and showed Forbes his own kind of journalizing, using words rather than numbers. In this way Boswell promoted Forbes to the level of intimacy and trust which entitled him to read the manuscript of the Hebrides journal—the first person besides Johnson himself to be so honoured.49 These moments of personal revelation and exchange were inextricably linked, and they had wider implications for the rest of their lives. Forbes’s role as Boswell’s philosophical, religious, and financial counsellor; Boswell’s frequent use of the adjective ‘worthy’ before Forbes’s name; Boswell’s wishing to see Forbes more often, and to emulate him; Boswell’s willingness to show Forbes his journal, as well as other writings, both published and unpublished; the beginnings of an English Episcopal circle in Edinburgh in which both the Boswells and Forbeses participated as long as the Boswells lived in Edinburgh; and the increased closeness of the Boswells and Forbeses, ‘in the family way’—all followed from these developments. The intimate, personal correspondence between Boswell and Forbes also began in this context, and both the correspondence and the friendship would remain firm for the rest of Boswell’s life. at this meeting: ‘It was admirable to see what a proportion of Sir William’s money went in charity. The last year upwards of £70. He said that he had been so much more prosperous than he had reason to expect, that he thought giving about a tenth of his income in charity was a proper acknowledgement of gratitude to Providence.’ It seems unlikely, however, that Forbes was then earning only about £700 a year, as this passage suggests. The earliest surviving account of his finances, from 1 May 1773, shows that at that time Forbes owned stock in the Herries bank in London and his own bank in Edinburgh worth more than £3500, as well as a house in the New Town (£1400) and household goods and furnishings (£800), and even with allowances for ‘bad debt’, and exclusion of ‘dubious debts due to me’, he figured his net worth at that time at £3871 14s 3d, rising to £5153 in May 1774 (FP 201). 48  He had previously formulated budgets on trips, however, such as his plan for his expenses in London in 1762 (James Boswell, London Journal, 1762–1763, ed. Gordon Turnbull, 2010, pp. 305–07) and the expense records he kept on his European travels during the mid-1760s (A 29–A 34) and on the Western Circuit in spring 1771 (A 35–36). 49  See From Forbes, [6 Jan. 1775]. Mrs. Thrale and Lord Hailes would see the Hebrides journal later in 1775, and Boswell would read passages from it to Reynolds that spring (Hebrides, p. xiii).

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Introduction At the beginning of 1776 Boswell reviewed the record of his spending during the previous year as Forbes had taught him to do, and found to his dismay that ‘instead of £500 at which Sir William Forbes and I had calculated it on the 2 of January 1775, it amounted to upwards of £650’.50 As the years went by, he would continue to follow this pattern of spending beyond his means. Yet if Boswell would never be the ‘accurate man’ he hoped to become, to the end of his life he dutifully tried to devise an annual ‘View [or ‘State’] of my Affairs’ early in each new year, and whenever possible he continued to rely on Forbes for assistance in doing so.51 Boswell’s financial problems would have been much worse if Forbes had not used his banking influence to his friend’s advantage. In 1783 Boswell began to run up his debt to Forbes, Hunter & Co. with abandon. ‘I had this evening a delicate hint from Sir Wm. that my credit with his house was exhausted’, he wrote in his journal entry for 29 December 1783, after his debt to the bank had climbed from £277 19s 2d at the beginning of that year, to £760 13s 7d in the middle of it, and then to £1310 2s 6d by year’s end.52 Forbes’s hint ‘gave me a kind of sensation which I had never before experienced’, and he resolved with his wife to pursue a path of ‘strict frugality till I should be easier’. Yet by the beginning of 1785 Boswell’s debt to Forbes’s bank had risen to £1375 12s 6d from the five per cent interest alone. Forbes then gave Boswell ‘relief’ by arranging in late January for this debt to be consolidated into a heritable bond for £1400, secured by the valuable New Town house which Boswell had inherited from his father in 1782.53 This arrangement had two unusual features. First, Boswell had to pay only the £70 annual interest charge at five per cent every March, without ever paying off the loan itself. Second, since Lord Auchinleck’s will had granted life occupancy to Boswell’s stepmother, Elizabeth Boswell, Lady Auchinleck, the bank would not have been able to claim the Edinburgh town house until after her death, even if Boswell defaulted on the interest payments. As discussed below, the enormous financial relief provided by this heritable bond made it possible for Boswell to move his family to London, but it also had the unfortunate consequence of freeing him to continue to run up even more debt. When Boswell died in 1795, the full amount of the loan, £1400, was inherited by his heir, Alexander, because Boswell had not paid off a shilling of the principal in the ten-year history of the bond. Family, Property, and Identity. The constant struggles Boswell waged with his father for independence and his many extramarital infidelities and bouts of gonorrhoea can too easily lead us to misjudge the most essential values in his life. Boswell was fundamentally concerned with family in the largest sense of that term: not only his wife and children, whom he dearly loved, but also the estate of Auchinleck, and Journ. 1 Jan. 1776. In London in the winter of 1792, Boswell endorsed his budget for that year, ‘State of my Affairs Janry 1792 in the handwriting of my freind Sir William Forbes’ (A 52, which also contains Boswell’s other annual budgets). The two friends also planned ‘a quiet day together, upon finance’ (To Forbes, 15 Jan. [1792]), which may have occurred when they were together on 2 March. 52  See the letters from Sir William Forbes, James Hunter and Company dated 17 Mar. and 23 July 1783 and 22 Jan. 1784 in this volume, and their enclosed bank statements. 53  Sir William Forbes, James Hunter and Company to Boswell, [c. 1 Feb. 1785] n. 2 and enclosures. 50  51 

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Introduction everything for which it stood. Being the Laird of Auchinleck was always central to his identity, first as expectation and then, after the death in late August 1782 of his father, Lord Auchinleck, as reality. His vision was proud and romantic, centring on his place in an old landed family. As he wrote to Temple on 30 March 1767, ‘You know my grand object is the ancient Family of Auchinleck a venerable & noble principle’, and to Sandy twenty-three years later, ‘Remember always our ancient Family, for that is the capital object’.54 Unfortunately, the ‘grand’ or ‘capital’ object sometimes clouded his financial judgement, leading him to spend money he did not have in order to acquire lands adjacent to Auchinleck when they became available. His first purchase of that kind occurred in April 1767, when he paid almost £2500 for Dalblair, a large, marshy and peaty piece of land to the east of Auchinleck. He mortgaged it to the hilt, and in October 1769 he spent several hundred pounds which were apparently intended as a Dalblair payment to purchase a share of the London Magazine instead.55 A crisis involving creditors reached its peak just around the time that Boswell was trying to become ‘an accurate man’ under Forbes’s tutelage, and his father had to come to his rescue, ‘paying for my extravagance’, as Boswell wrote in his journal on 18 October 1776. Almost a year earlier, on 17 November 1775, he had recorded that ‘I wished to appear in the family Archives as having added Dalblair to our territories’, and expressed his resentment that ‘my Wife has not a spark of feudal enthusiasm; but is allways opposing me upon the subject of Family’—by which he meant, in this context, land. But the interest on the loans to pay for Dalblair would continue to exceed the income from its farm rents. In 1787 Boswell would have to appeal to Forbes for assistance with the interest payment, and in the autumn of 1791 he would have to borrow elsewhere to pay off the primary loan of £2000.56 Then in October 1790 Boswell repeated the same extravagant pattern of behaviour by purchasing the estate of Knockroon for £2500. Almost a year later, on 27 September 1791, he wrote to Forbes of having used the profits from the first edition of his Life of Johnson in this way instead of paying down the principal on the heritable bond held by Forbes’s bank, as he had intended to do. Knockroon had formerly been part of the Barony of Auchinleck, he noted, implying that he could not resist the purchase for that reason. In his reply of 13 October 1791, Forbes sounded less like a banker than a friend who shared the same baronial and feudal values: ‘The purpose to which you have applied the profits of the publication I doubt not is a very proper one: at least I am sure, it is a most natural feeling, the wish to recover part of one’s antient family inheritance.’ That same wish was deeply embedded in Forbes’s psyche, although the circumstances he faced were very different. At the time of his birth and in childhood, Forbes seemed to have little chance of recovering his ancient family inheritance. Like Boswell, he was born in Edinburgh, into a distinguished Scottish family,57 with a father in the legal profession. Born in Corr. 6, p. 182; To Alexander Boswell, 15 Oct. 1790, quoted in Later Years, p. 415. Earlier Years, pp. 325, 436. 56  See To Forbes, 7 Nov. 1787 and the supporting annotation. 57  Genealogical and other information about the Forbes family is drawn chiefly from Alistair and Henrietta Tayler, The House of Forbes, 1937, repr. 2012; ‘Forbes’; various accounts of the Scottish baronetage; and Forbes’s account of his childhood in Dame Christian 54  55 

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Introduction the same year as the parliamentary union with England, Alexander Boswell (1707– 82), 8th Laird of Auchinleck, and Sir William Forbes (1707–43), 5th Baronet in the Forbes of Monymusk line, were contemporaries who both qualified as advocates in the same year (1727), and their heirs were born just a year and a half apart: Forbes on 5 April 1739, Boswell on 29 October 1740. In some respects, Forbes’s father appeared to be on a more promising path to distinction than Boswell’s, since he possessed both a hard-won sinecure chair as the civilist at King’s College, Aberdeen, obtained in 1742,58 and—crucially important for the future of the family—an aristocratic title beyond ‘laird’, the Scottish term for an owner of a large estate. The title dated to 30 March 1626, when Charles I granted a Nova Scotia baronetcy to William Forbes, 3rd Laird of Monymusk (?1575–1628). More than three hundred Baronets of Scotland and Nova Scotia were created by the crown between 1625 and 1707, initially as a way of encouraging settlement of a vast colony in America—renamed to reflect the Scottish character of the enterprise— while at the same time winning political support and raising funds for the crown, which received approximately £167 sterling for most new titles, accompanied, at least for some time, by large, ultimately meaningless, colonial land grants.59 As a further incentive and mark of honour, on 17 November 1629 Charles I issued a royal warrant entitling the Baronets of Scotland and Nova Scotia to wear around their necks, supported by an orange ribbon, an oval badge or medal bearing the arms of Nova Scotia, encircled with their motto, ‘Fax Mentis Honestae Gloria’ (‘Glory Illuminates an Honest Mind’).60 The practice did not endure, but in the late 1740s Sir Alexander Dick of Prestonfield appeared wearing the badge and ribbon in a portrait by Allan Ramsay (1713–84), and in 1775 Dick, Forbes, and other likeminded Nova Scotia baronets agitated vigorously for its restoration. In response to an encouraging letter of 18 March 1775 from Boswell’s cousin and business agent, Robert Boswell—written in his capacity as Clerk (or Lyon Depute) in the Scottish Lyon Office, a position he occupied from 1770 until his death in 1804—the Nova Scotia baronets held meetings at the British Coffee House in London on 29 May and at Fortune’s Tavern in Edinburgh on 14 June, and resolved on the latter occasion ‘to re-assume this privilege of their Order’. A large committee (including Forbes and Forbes. Since the details in these sources sometimes differ, priority has been given to Forbes’s own account. A genealogical chart, corrected by fresh researches undertaken by Gordon Turnbull for this volume, with assistance from Alex Forbes, appears in Appendix 1. 58  Peter John Anderson, ed., Officers and Graduates of University and King’s College Aberdeen, MVD–MDCCCLX, 1893, p. 33; Roger L. Emerson, Professors, Patronage and Politics: The Aberdeen Universities in the Eighteenth Century, 1992, p. 63–65. Forbes recorded that his father had a successful legal practice in Edinburgh owing to ‘his reputation for knowledge of the law, and close application to business’, and he believed that, if he had not died prematurely, this circumstance, ‘with his high character for honour and integrity, would in all probability have raised him to a seat on the Bench’ (Dame Christian Forbes, p. 20). 59  See and Crispin Agnew, ‘Who Were the Baronets of Nova Scotia’, The Scottish Genealogist, xxvii (1980): 90–111. Among the 102 Nova Scotia baronetcies still current as of June 2012 are Stuart-Forbes of Pitsligo and Monymusk, as the Forbes of Monymusk and Pitsligo line later became known. 60  The royal warrant is reproduced in its entirety, along with an act of the Privy Council of Scotland which endorsed it on 24 Dec. 1629, in Francis W. Pixley, A History of the Baronetage, 1900, pp. 176–78.

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Introduction Dick) was appointed to express this view, and Forbes was among the five committee members who the next day sent a letter for this purpose to the Earl of Suffolk (Henry Howard, 12th Earl of Suffolk [1739–79]), Secretary of State for the Northern Department, and another letter on 28 June to the Lord Lyon. These communications were widely publicized, as was a bold display in London on 30 November, when the press reported that ‘the Baronets of Scotland made a very extraordinary appearance at court last St. Andrew’s day in their orange ribbons, medals, and St. Andrew’s crosses’.61 The movement ran into unexpected difficulties, however, when Suffolk questioned whether the privilege of wearing the badge and ribbon applied to all ‘Baronets of Scotland’ or only to those whose titles predated the King’s warrant of November 1629, and the patriotic display at court, and the larger movement of which it was a part, set off an anti-Scottish backlash in the London newspapers.62 As one of the highest ranking Scottish baronets (only Boswell’s future nemesis, Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat, Lord Macdonald, ranked higher among the committee members), and one of the relatively few whose right to wear the ribbon and badge was indisputable, Forbes asserted this privilege proudly and persistently while the larger issue raised by Suffolk remained unresolved. He wore the order’s ribbon and badge in nearly every portrait for which he ever sat, and he integrated their images into his seals and bookplates, as defining features of his public identity.63 Despite the prestige and privileges of their baronetcy, the Forbes family faced three obstacles which would put the sixth baronet at a serious disadvantage during his formative years. First, they were landless, and often poor. Overwhelmed with debt, the first baronet’s great-grandson, and Forbes’s great-grandfather, Sir William Forbes, 4th Baronet of Monymusk (d. 1715), went bankrupt and sold the Monymusk estate on 31 July 1713 to Sir Francis Grant (?1660–1726), who had recently been granted a Nova Scotia baronetcy (1705) and been raised to the bench as Lord Cullen (1709). Monymusk, a pleasant Aberdeenshire estate well inland on the 61  Robert Boswell’s letter (e.g., Lond. Chron., 25–27 Apr. 1775; Scots. Mag. Apr. 1775, xxxvii. 221); minutes of the Edinburgh meeting on 14 June (quoted), with the letters sent to Suffolk and Lord Lyon, signed by Forbes, Sir Alexander Dick, Sir John Dalrymple, Sir Alexander Macdonald, and others (Scots Mag. June 1775, xxxvii. 340–41); statement about the St. Andrew’s Day display, with a history and defence of the revitalized privilege (e.g., Lond. Chron., 28–30 Nov. 1775; Scots Mag. Dec. 1775, xxxvii. 676). 62  Suffolk’s discouraging reply of 7 July 1775, and the Scottish baronets’ response to it of 1 Aug. 1775, are contained (in versions printed for distribution among the baronets themselves) in Forbes’s thick folder of materials on the Nova Scotia baronets (FP 125/1). For the backlash in the press and responses to it, see Middlesex Journal, 21–23 Dec. 1775; Pub. Adv., 26 Dec. 1775; Morn. Post, 20 Jan. 1776, 28 Feb. 1776. 63  Forbes wears the ribbon and badge, for example, in the two portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds from 1776 and 1786 (discussed in From Forbes, 23 May 1783 n. 16); the several versions of a portrait by Sir Henry Raeburn (1756–1823) which were apparently painted for Forbes’s children; a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830) from 1803; and a miniature watercolour on ivory which was painted in 1785 by Horace Hone (1756–1825) (the portraits by Hone and Lawrence and one version of the Raeburn—other versions are known to be in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow, on display at the Museum on the Mound, Edinburgh, and at Druminnor Castle, Aberdeenshire—are reproduced in Two Great Scottish Collections, p. 93, lot 149; p. 119, lot 214; and p. 165, lot 310; Forbes’s badge and ribbon, and the seal, or one like it, appear on p. 164, lot 309). On the use of the badge and ribbon in Forbes’s principal seals and bookplate, see From Forbes, 21 Dec. 1779 n. 1, and From Forbes, 19 Oct. 1787 n. 2.

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Introduction River Don, was lost to the Forbes family forever, and the Forbes baronets of Monymusk would be forced to earn their way in the world without a family seat. When Forbes’s father and mother wed in 1731, neither family approved of the marriage, apparently (as Forbes himself related in his memoir of his mother) because their financial situation was so bleak. The fourth baronet’s half-brother, John Forbes of Upper Boyndlie (1680–1716), appeared to fare better than the Forbes baronets of Monymusk, because he had secured a different estate (Pitfichie) from his father before the family bankruptcy, subsequently purchased Upper Boyndlie in the far north of Aberdeenshire, and married into the prominent Morison of Bognie family at Forgue, in north western Aberdeenshire. The eldest child of that union was Forbes’s mother, Christian Forbes. But misfortune struck the Forbeses of Upper Boyndlie too, as a result of the Forbeses’ second major hardship: their steadfast commitment to Jacobitism. John Forbes of Upper Boyndlie died trying to escape to the Continent after taking part in the 1715 Jacobite uprising, leaving his wife and their children with scant means. The bankrupt fourth baronet also died that year, having outlived by four years his only son, Forbes’s grandfather John Forbes, whose death from consumption at the age of twenty-seven was, according to Forbes, supposed to have been caused by the financial woes facing his father. John’s wife, Forbes’s grandmother Mary Forbes, was a sister of the famous Jacobite and pietist author, Alexander, 4th Lord Forbes of Pitsligo—commonly called Lord Pitsligo, to differentiate him from the Lords Forbes who resided at Castle Forbes near Alford (then called Putachie), a few miles west of Monymusk on the River Don. As a result of his support for the 1745 Jacobite uprising, the 4th Lord Forbes of Pitsligo was deprived of his land and his title, although his son, John Forbes, Master of Pitsligo, managed to buy back a portion of the Pitsligo estate at auction. After the death of Forbes’s grandfather, his widow Mary Forbes married another Jacobite sympathizer, James Forbes, the future 15th Lord Forbes (of Castle Forbes), and their three daughters all married Jacobites who also suffered for their political cause. Forbes’s father was schooled at Montrose by the Jacobite poet and polemicist William Meston (?1680–1745). Forbes himself, like Boswell in his maturity, was a ‘Church and King’ Tory64— the ‘King’ being the Hanoverian George III for all their adult lives. But also like Boswell, Forbes retained an emotional attachment to Jacobitism, in his case deeply rooted in his family background. In a letter to Boswell of 28 May 1791, prompted by the death of their mutual friend, the Jacobite physician John Cairnie, Forbes proudly acknowledged possessing two Jacobite relics previously owned by Jacobite notables: a book of devotion formerly owned by both ‘King James the Seventh’ of Scotland (i.e., James II of England) and James Drummond, 4th Earl of Perth, and a watch from James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose. The third obstacle facing the Forbes family was the tendency of its males to die young. We have seen that Forbes’s grandfather on his mother’s side, John Forbes of Upper Boyndlie, died at the end of the 1715 uprising, when he was in his mid-thirties, and that Forbes’s grandfather on his father’s side, John Forbes, died four years 64 

Corr. 3, p. 374.

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Introduction earlier at the age of twenty-seven, never holding the baronetcy because he predeceased his father. Forbes’s father, who was very young when he lost his own father, died of an abdominal illness in his mid-thirties on 12 May 1743, a month after William’s fourth birthday. Then William, his younger brother, and their mother Christian Forbes (who had already lost her eldest son and two daughters) left Edinburgh for Aberdeenshire, living for a year with her unmarried sisters and her widowed mother Susanna Morison (1680–1759) in a house on the Morison family estate at Bognie, Forgue. According to Forbes, his father had designated four family elders to serve jointly as his guardians: Forbes’s father’s stepfather, the 15th Lord Forbes; Forbes’s grandmother’s brother, the 4th Lord Forbes of Pitsligo, who was about to go out in the 1745 Jacobite uprising and would live the rest of his life in hiding, spending his last years at Auchiries, home of the Ogilvie family into which his son John had married; William Urquhart of Meldrum (1698–1775), who had married a sister of Forbes’s grandfather John Forbes; and a brother of Forbes’s grandmother on his mother’s side, Theodore Morison of Bognie (1685–1766). Around 1744 Christian Forbes moved her little family to Aberdeen, where her younger son died at the age of seven in March 1749, leaving William an only child. In Aberdeen he learned to read and write English and was schooled as a gentleman, but poverty precluded his attendance at a university. Instead, mother and son moved to Edinburgh in October 1753, so that the following spring William, aged fifteen, could take up an apprenticeship at Coutts Bros. & Co. In his memoirs of his mother and of his banking career, Forbes recorded that he owed this opportunity, his subsequent advancement in the bank, and indeed ‘my whole success in the world’ to his father’s friend, the Edinburgh accountant Francis Farquharson of Haughton (d. 1767), who ‘in every respect acted to me the part of the most attentive parent’.65 In the same year that Forbes started his banking apprenticeship, 1754, Boswell’s father was raised to the Court of Session as a judge, taking the judicial title Lord Auchinleck. In 1749 he had succeeded his father, ‘Old James’, as the Laird of Auchinleck, and in 1755 he began building Auchinleck House, a handsome neoclassical villa loosely in the Adam style, completed in 1762. Lord Auchinleck also owned a ‘house’ in Edinburgh, in the fourth storey of Blair’s Land in Parliament Close, and Boswell grew up, especially after 1749, dividing his time between town and country, in the traditional manner of the Lowland gentry. He was privileged (though not always pleased) to be educated by private tutors with varying degrees of ability and sensitivity to his needs, and then from 1753 to attend the University of Edinburgh. Forbes lacked all these advantages, but his mother, living in an extremely frugal manner, managed to send him to private teachers of drawing, music, and fencing, and he acquired elegant manners and a genteel bearing. The two boys were nearly opposite in temperament: Forbes was diligent, stable, and hard-working, completely devoted to his mother (as he would be for the rest of 65  Dame Christian Forbes, pp. 29–30. Forbes remained closely connected with the Farquharson family, and after the death of Francis’s nephew and successor Alexander Farquharson (d. 1787), who served Forbes as a personal adviser on financial matters, he and Lady Forbes would name their twelfth child Frances Farquharson Forbes (b. 10 Aug. 1788). Alexander Farquharson’s son Francis (d. 1808) would manage the finances for Forbes’s executry of the Boswell estate during the decade after Boswell’s death.

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Introduction his life), and appreciative of every sacrifice she made for him, while Boswell was headstrong and often rebellious, especially towards his father, and suffered much from the austere Calvinism which his loving but intensely pious mother Euphemia (1718–66) instilled in him. Their physical characteristics were also very different, Boswell being (as he described himself in print at the age of twenty-one) ‘rather fat than lean, rather short than tall’,66 and increasingly portly as he aged, whereas Forbes was exceptionally tall (at least 6 feet 4 inches, and probably an inch or two taller than that) and somewhat gangly when young, though quite stout by the time he reached middle age.67 As they approached the age of thirty in the late 1760s, with blossoming professional careers in Edinburgh (Boswell as an advocate, Forbes as a banker), both men began to think seriously about finding wives and starting families of their own. Young Boswell fleetingly imagined all sorts of grand marital possibilities, focussing at different times on the attractiveness, wealth, status, and pedigree of various young Scottish women—and sometimes on all those attributes. In a revealing passage from his youthful harvest jaunt journal, he wrote on 24 October 1762, ‘I must own that Veneration and regard for my Ancestors with a desire to continue their race, is a Principle or a feeling … that I posess in a very strong degree, and which I retain at all times, whatever variation of sentiment I may have about other matters. Even in my most dispirited moments it remains. It is rooted in my heart it is a part of myself’. He then recorded a long fantasy about marrying Lady Mary Douglas (1737–1816), whom he had never seen, but who seemed by reputation to have all the right qualities: high birth as the daughter of the Earl of Morton, twenty-five years old, ‘well-look’d sensible & polite, with a fortune of £15000. I considered, that by marrying her, I should gain an acquisition to the family of Auchinleck; that I should have opulence and respect, and that my children should have some of the blood of the Douglasses.’68 This was not the last time that Boswell would dream of a marriage beyond his station. In the end, however, he followed his heart, and settled for his slightly older and far from affluent first cousin Margaret Montgomerie, an ideal match for him, as things turned out, because of their mutual affection and her intelligence, level-headed temperament, and willingness to forgive his many transgressions. But it was a choice which further strained relations with his widower father, who, having hoped for a more advantageous match, gave only a reluctant and grudging approval. Boswell married Margaret at Lainshaw, her family home in Ayrshire, on the same day as the wedding in Edinburgh of his father to his second wife, his much younger cousin Elizabeth Boswell. 66  Corr. 9, p. 173, quoting Boswell’s letter to Andrew Erskine, 17 Dec. 1761, as published in Letters between the Honourable Andrew Erskine and James Boswell, Esq. (1763). Elsewhere he was described, however, as ‘Rather above the middle height, and inclined to corpulency’ (Boswelliana, p. 191). It is thought that Boswell stood about five feet six inches tall and in his mid-thirties weighed ‘Eleven stone twelve pounds’, or 166 lbs./75 kg. (ODNB). 67  He appears much thinner in Reynolds’s first portrait from spring 1776, aged 37, than in the second portrait painted by Reynolds ten years later (see From Forbes, 23 May 1783 n. 16), and in his early fifties he weighed at least 14 stone 7 pounds, or 203 lbs./92 kg. (see Forbes to Lady Forbes, 5 Mar. 1792, under date in this volume). 68  J 2. In 1774 Lady Mary would become the second wife of Charles Gordon, 4th Earl of Aboyne (?1726–94).

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Introduction Boswell’s marriage to ‘my dear Peggie’ on 25 November 1769 was followed less than a year later by Forbeses’ marriage on 21 September 1770 to ‘my Dearest Dear Betsy’, Elizabeth Hay, the daughter of an Edinburgh physician and laird from Peebles—another ideal match. Both men left accounts of their courtships: Boswell in his journal and his correspondence with Margaret herself, as well as with the various friends and acquaintances whose advice he sought, Forbes in the charming memoir he wrote at the time of Betsy’s death more than thirty years later, reproduced as Appendix 2 in this volume. Unlike Boswell, who had many sexual encounters and fathered two children before marriage, Forbes left no record of his prior relationships with women except a bundle of correspondence relating to his failed attempt to woo a wealthy relation, Mary Erskine, from 1765 to 1768.69 This was apparently the first of the two painfully unsuccessful courtships which touched off a personal crisis while Forbes was working as a banker in London in early 1769.70 Margaret Boswell had a son in August 1770, but he died within hours. The Forbeses had better luck when Lady Forbes gave birth to a son, William, in December 1771, and after losing a girl in infancy who had been born in May 1773, had their first surviving girl, Christian (Christy), in June 1775. The Boswells had their first surviving child, Veronica, in March 1773, their second, Euphemia, in May 1774, their only surviving sons, Alexander (Sandy) in October 1775 and James (Jamie) in September 1778, and their last child, Elizabeth (Betsy), in June 1780. Lady Forbes gave birth fourteen times over the course of twenty years (1771–90), losing five of her children in infancy or childhood (including two boys within a few days of each other in January 1786, and another boy at the age of nine almost two years later, all from the same virulent outbreak of whooping cough and measles which struck the household during the winter of 1785–86); another boy died at sea at fifteen, after Lady Forbes’s own death. She was only seventeen when she married Forbes (who was then thirty-one), and only forty-nine when she died in 1802 (from ongoing complications suffered during her final experience of childbirth in 1790),71 after almost thirty-two years of marriage. Margaret, by contrast, was thirty-one at the time of her marriage to Boswell, an advanced age for starting a large family. She was fifty-one when she died in early June 1789 after her long and painful decline FP+ 8–9. FP 82/5 contains a letter from Forbes dated 12 Jan. 1769 about his plan to give up his banking career, take Anglican orders, and seek a position as a country curate in England. He sent this letter, along with an enclosed essay on the matter, to a select group of trusted friends, including Beattie, Dr. John Gregory, Robert Herries, John Forbes, Master of Pitsligo, and Rev. George Carr. In a long reply dated 25 July 1769, designed to dissuade his friend from this course of action, Beattie observed, ‘You were for several years engaged in a certain pursuit, which I am sure gave you much vexation while it lasted, and not a little after it was over. … While your spirits were yet harassed and jaded with this fatiguing and unprofitable pursuit, you entered upon a second, which it seems has not answered at the first trial’ (Beattie Corr. ii. 78; similarly, Herries wrote on 5 Sept. 1769, ‘You have had two refusals … ’, FP 116/2). Beattie was ‘morally certain’ that Forbes’s ‘scheme’ to become a clergyman was the result of these romantic disappointments, although he presented other arguments against Forbes’s scheme as well. Forbes replied on 17 or 18 Feb. 1769 (FP 98/1) that Beattie’s letter had convinced him. It is not known whether Boswell ever knew about this brief crisis in Forbes’s life. 71  Forbes to James Mercer, 12 May 1803 (FP 83/5), identifying Charles as ‘the unfortunate cause’ of LF’s death. 69  70 

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Introduction from consumption, having given birth to seven children between 1770 and 1780, one of whom died hours after birth, and another at the age of four months. Each woman suffered at least one miscarriage.72 The extant (though not yet intimate) correspondence between Boswell and Forbes began in August 1772 with a one-sentence invitation to a family supper at the Boswells’ home, which in turn led to a dinner at the Forbeses’ home the following Saturday. This circumstance is entirely appropriate, because the friendship between Boswell and Forbes was between two families as well as two individuals. Both couples were then newlyweds in the process of starting families in Edinburgh, and they would continue to socialize during the 1770s and early 1780s, both individually and in a circle of English Episcopal friends. The correspondence between Boswell and Forbes is peppered with references to the births, deaths, illnesses, accidents, recoveries, and accomplishments of their children, as well as other family activities. It is also filled with accounts of their wives’ health, both physical and emotional. There is evidence in these letters that their wives and some of their daughters also bonded with each other in personal relationships, and carried on correspondences which have not survived.73 In a poignant passage from the last years of their correspondence, Forbes discusses his hope (never realized) that their sons and future heirs, William Forbes and Alexander Boswell, ‘will live in intimate friendship together, as their fathers have done’, and Boswell, in his reply, extends his thanks ‘for the warmhearted wish in which I sincerely join, that our intimate friendship may subsist between our sons’. After the Boswells left Edinburgh in 1786, there are references in the correspondence to the Forbeses extending hospitality to Boswell children who happened to be in town for schooling (Sandy at the University of Edinburgh, Euphemia at a private girls’ school) or en route to Auchinleck (Sandy and Jamie in July 1793) or to visit Lady Auchinleck (Veronica and Euphemia in January 1795), and in his letter of 18 May 1790, Forbes mentions that Lady Forbes had recently taken Euphemia to the theatre. For his part, Boswell, on a visit to Edinburgh in early spring 1793, while Forbes, Lady Forbes, and their eldest daughter were travelling in Europe, had Forbes’s eldest son to breakfast and looked in on Forbes’s other children.74 Appointing Forbes as co-guardian (with his wife Margaret, and after her death, with his brother David) of their younger children, as well as co-executor (with Margaret) of his estate (and sole executor after Margaret’s death), was indicative of this close family relationship, which none of Boswell’s other friends and correspondents shared in quite the same manner or to the same degree. Boswell and Forbes were both proud of their status in society and wished to leave substantial inheritances to their first-born sons, but their situations, strategies, and results were very different. While Boswell was perpetually debt-ridden, Forbes accumulated increasingly large amounts of wealth as his bank grew in size and 72  Lady Forbes ‘unluckily miscarried’ on 5 May 1777 (Forbes to James Hunter Blair, 8 May 1777, FP+ 6); Boswell recorded ‘Wife miscarriage’ less than three months later (Journ. 29 July 1777). 73  See the references cited in From Forbes, 29 Oct.–4 Nov. 1791 n. 5. 74  To Forbes, 11 May 1793; From Forbes, 8 July 1793.

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Introduction stature. In 1779 it built what Forbes called ‘a most commodious counting-house’ behind Parliament House as a self-conscious display of commercial opulence, and five years later an adjacent tenement was demolished in order to make the bank building significantly larger.75 But despite his growing prosperity, Forbes had no opportunity to buy back his family’s former estate at Monymusk. He therefore turned his attention to the lands of his extended family in Buchan (north eastern Aberdeenshire), and through a combination of wealth, birth, and good fortune, he was able to build up a large family seat there over the course of less than a decade, from 1779 to 1787. First, in 1779 he purchased 70 acres which formed the symbolic core of the Pitsligo estate, including the former seat of the Lords Forbes of Pitsligo, Pitsligo Castle, by then a ruin. Significantly, in a letter to his partner Forbes used the word ‘repurchased’ to describe this transaction, since he had bought back some of the lands which the Forbes of Pitsligo family had lost when the estate of the 4th Lord Forbes of Pitsligo had been forfeited and auctioned after the Forty-Five.76 Next, in 1781 Forbes benefitted from the fact that his childless friend John Forbes, Master of Pitsligo, had designated him as his heir, through a family connection to Mary Forbes, Sir William’s grandmother and John Forbes’s aunt. From this inheritance Forbes acquired a small amount of land, some possessions, and (after formal approval by the Scottish Lyon Office in 1782, presumably with the assistance of Robert Boswell), the Pitsligo title and coat of arms. Henceforth he would be known formally as ‘Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, Baronet’, which is the way Boswell usually addressed letters to him. The last part of the plan was implemented in 1787, when Forbes bought the large, adjacent estate of Pittulie and Pittendrum from his friend William Cumine for the enormous sum of £20,000. When his wife expressed her displeasure at this purchase, Forbes acknowledged that he understood her concerns about ‘a spot so remote, so bleak, and so uncomfortable. Yet there is a feeling with regard to that part of the Country, of which I cannot possibly divest myself’.77 It is no wonder, then, that Forbes was so understanding about Boswell’s purchase of Knockroon: their ancestral lands were in their blood, and even for a banker like Forbes, blood was thicker than money. We are accustomed to think of Boswell as being constantly in the process of reinventing himself, and as often appearing to be conducting his life (and recording it in his journal) as a performance in a play. Boswell unquestionably did undertake one major reinvention of himself, when he moved from Edinburgh to London in the mid-1780s (discussed below). Yet in the larger scheme of things, Boswell’s identity as the Laird of Auchinleck was relatively stable; it was Forbes who fully transformed his identity in regard to land, title, and social and economic standing. 75  Memoirs of a Banking-House, pp. 59, 61–62; D. Bell, Edinburgh Old Town: The Forgotten Nature of an Urban Form, 2008, p. 345; Dean of Guild Court Collections, Edinburgh City Archives, box 1779/19 and box 1784/12. The new bank or counting house is clearly marked on contemporary maps of Edinburgh, such as those by John Ainslie (1780), Alexander Kincaid (1787), and Thomas Brown and James Watson (1793), all viewable at . In 1782 Forbes’s bank began issuing its own circulating notes, bearing an image of Parliament Close. 76  Forbes to James Hunter Blair, 7 Oct. 1779 (FP 84/6). 77  Forbes to Lady Forbes, 18 Sept. 1787 (FP 46/2); see also From Forbes, 19 Oct. 1787 n. 10.

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Introduction From modest beginnings as a fatherless, landless, and impoverished baronet, he became a wealthy banker and property owner and added a new title, ‘of Pitsligo’, reflecting his revitalized status. This transformation merged an increasingly affluent mode of living with the restoration of the ‘antient family inheritance’ of the Forbes of Pitsligo line with which he came to associate himself. As another ambitious part of this process of reinvention, in the 1780s Forbes developed a planned community in the parish of Tyrie, on the Pitsligo lands he acquired after 1781. He called the town New Pitsligo and relished his role as a kind of benevolent feudal chief, bringing improvement to the people.78 In 1797 Forbes told a fellow improver, Boswell’s old friend George Dempster, that ‘the Village made no progress’ during its first decade (1787–96), and he had found himself ‘beginning to lose hope of its succeeding’. But in the spring of 1796 he had printed and distributed widely two thousand copies of an ‘Advertisement’ designed ‘to make the terms on which I granted feus [leased parcels of land], more generally known, and likewise to propose a few premiums for the encouragement of industry among the Villagers’, and the town began to thrive.79 According to a modern historian of such communities, this advertisement began a process which ‘transformed the fortunes of New Pitsligo (Aberdeenshire) from a hamlet to the largest planned village in northern Scotland’.80 Contemporaries would praise Forbes for creating manufacturing jobs, stimulating agricultural improvement, and encouraging schooling.81 The development of New Pitsligo paralleled Forbes’s expansion into another planned community, this one urban, closer to home, and built in a much grander style: the Edinburgh New Town. In August 1767, when the New Town was in its early stages, Forbes shrewdly invested £80 in a plot of land, which he later expanded. The home he built there, no. 3 (after 1811, no. 5) George Street, near St. Andrew’s (now St. Andrew) Square, was ready for occupancy by Forbes and his new wife in 1771.82 When the Edinburgh Town Council appeared to violate the original plan by allowing building on the south side of Princes Street, Forbes, David Hume, and other neighbourhood property owners whose views (and property values) were affected brought legal action against the town.83 The Court of Session ruled against the property owners in October 1771, and Forbes subsequently put 78  From Forbes, 19 Oct. 1787 n. 10. As discussed in Corr. 8, p. xlix, in 1756 Lord Auchinleck had attempted something similar on a smaller scale near his estate in Ayrshire, but his plan for an industrial village which would accommodate displaced tenants did not succeed. 79  Forbes to George Dempster, 14 Feb. 1797, Dempster Papers, vol. 6, Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto; John Evans, The Gentleman Usher: The Life and Times of George Dempster, 1732–1818, 2005, pp. 253–54. One of Forbes’s printed advertisements is preserved among Forbes’s papers (FP 75), and a version published in the Aberdeen Journal on 31 May 1796 appears in Douglas G. Lockhart, Scottish Planned Villages, 2012, pp. 78–80. 80  Lockhart, Scottish Planned Villages, p. 26. 81  See, for example, the long note on New Pitsligo in William Playfair, British Baronetage, 4 vols., 1811, iii. 61–63. 82  The elevation of this house is pictured from the builder’s plans, along with a description, in Anthony Lewis, The Builders of Edinburgh New Town, 1767–1795, 2014, pp. 63–65, 141. 83  For a full account of this legal dispute, see Arnot, pp. 316–18, and A. J. Youngson, The Making of Classical Edinburgh, 1750–1840, 1966, pp. 86–91. Youngson states that Forbes was the ‘principal begetter’ of the bill of suspension against the town council (p. 86).

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Introduction his house up for sale. The newspaper advertisement for the sale, which ran through 28 January 1772, gives us some idea of the couple’s living quarters early in their marriage: the house had a ‘large parlour, back parlour, small room’ and ‘water closet’ on the first floor, a ‘large drawing room’—still ‘not painted and papered’—and one bedroom on the second floor, three bedrooms ‘with two closets’ on the third floor, in addition to two ‘garret rooms and three lumber rooms’, a ‘pump well and water pipe area’, and a site suitable for erecting ‘coachhouse and stables’.84 Three months later the House of Lords reversed the decision of the Court of Session on appeal, presumably raising real estate values for Forbes and his neighbours, and the following year Forbes was offered £1600 for his house.85 But the legal battle in Edinburgh continued, and it was not until March 1776 that a compromise arranged through arbitration finally settled the matter. At that time the Forbeses moved again within their New Town neighbourhood, to a ‘commodious, large, and elegant house’ at no. 12 St. Andrew’s (now St. Andrew) Street, at the corner of Princes Street, which Forbes had purchased for £1325 and renovated.86 In May 1788 they made a final move, to a still grander, custom-designed and built house at no. 39 George Street, which Forbes privately called ‘one of the best houses in Edinburgh’.87 Forbes retained and rented the St. Andrew’s Street property, and in 1790 he estimated the market value of the two houses at £3000 each.88 With larger and better houses came more elegant furnishings and household goods. Among Forbes’s papers is an annual record of the value of the family’s books, prints, furniture, and silver plate from 1760 to 1788. In 1760 Forbes spent £6 9s 5d on books, rising to a cumulative figure of £973 15s 11d by 1788. He began collecting prints in 1764 with an expenditure of £20 19s 2d and by 1788 had spent £395 18s 5d on his print collection, in addition to more than £71 on drawings. He made his first furniture purchase, £10, in 1767, and by 1788 the Forbeses had spent £1520 Cal. Merc., 11 Jan. 1772. Lord Macdonald to Forbes, 23 Nov. 1773 (FP 4/11). It appears from tax records brought to my attention by Anthony Lewis that Forbes did not sell at this time and continued to live in the house until 1776, when Macdonald apparently assumed ownership. 86  Cal. Merc., 29 Mar. 1788, advertising William Drysdale’s Turf Coffee House in ‘the property of Sir William Forbes, Baronet’. In autumn 1785 Forbes had arranged, as of the following spring, to rent parts of the St. Andrew’s Street property very profitably to a hosier and an ironmonger, and the family seems to have lived temporarily in a George Street home owned by John Robertson (1722–91), the affluent printer and proprietor of the Caledonian Mercury, until they were able to build and move into their new house at 39 George Street (Forbes to John Hay, 22 Oct. 1785, NRS, GD 504/9/52; Bell, Edinburgh Old Town, p. 287). The figure of £1325 comes from Forbes’s account book (FP+ 54). 87  Forbes to his son William, 15 May 1788 (FP+ 58). When inviting Beattie and his son to this house, Forbes wrote in a letter of 31 Mar. 1790 (FP 98/3), ‘Our house … is so large and roomy, that we have separate apartments for you and Mr. James if he accompanies you, of which you shall have the undisturbed dominion, as long as you will do us the favor to occupy them. There is store of Books of various sorts in the Library. There is moreover a very pleasant spot, by no means inconsiderable for its situation behind a town-house, filled with Rose-Bushes and flowering Shrubs, with a little walk of Kensington Gravel, where you may muse and meditate, and take the benefit of air and exercise as freely as you please.’ 88  ‘Statement of My Affairs 1st January 1790’ (FP 201). In 1801 Forbes would sell the house on St. Andrew’s Street to its principal renter since 1788, William Drysdale, for £3000 (Forbes’s account book, FP+ 54), perhaps in order to generate cash to cover the expense of purchasing the estate at Colinton, discussed below. 84  85 

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Introduction 18s 4d on furniture. In the year of his marriage, 1770, a first purchase of silver plate was made for £35 12s 7d, and by 1788 the Forbeses’ cumulative plate purchases totalled £378 7s 6d.89 There were a carriage and horses and all the other trappings of New Town affluence, and the family possessions continued to grow as Forbes’s prosperity increased over the last two decades of his life. Once he had established himself in the Edinburgh New Town and acquired extensive holdings in Aberdeenshire, Forbes grew more comfortable with his wife’s desire to possess an accessible family estate in the vicinity of Edinburgh.90 From 1792 to 1799 the Forbeses owned Bantaskine, a country home near Falkirk. Forbes would spend the last several years of his life building a larger villa at the Colinton estate he purchased in 1800.91 At some point the Forbeses also bought a ‘small house at Drumseugh [Drumsheugh]’, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, which Forbes said they were keeping ‘for the Children’.92 Thus, Forbes’s mature identity was thoroughly bound up with the acquisition and development of property in many forms, including sizeable expanses of distant, reimagined ancestral lands which encompassed a planned rural community; a succession of impressive houses in the Edinburgh New Town, replete with all the features which marked elite urban life at this time; and a large country estate near his home in Edinburgh. Still another pleasure made possible by Forbes’s wealth was travel for health and leisure, including trips with Lady Forbes to the spas at Peterhead in Aberdeenshire (1777, 1779, 1781), Harrogate in Yorkshire (1783), Bath in Somerset (1776, 1780), Tunbridge Wells in Kent (1786, 1792), and Spa in the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium), as well as to Naples (1792–93). Boswell and his family enjoyed only some of these luxuries, and none to the same degree. There would be no spa visits for the ailing Margaret Boswell, for example. Apart from the inheritance of Auchinleck in 1782, with its fine library and other genteel features, the Boswells lived principally as renters rather than owners. In Edinburgh they resided from 1771 in James’s Court (now James Court, rebuilt during the late nineteenth century), an enclosed block of eight-storey tenements surrounding a courtyard, conveniently located on the north side of the Lawnmarket. Built in the 1720s, James’s Court maintained its own police, cleaning, maintenance, and other services, and also sponsored social activities for residents.93 89  ‘Schedule, as nearly as I am able to collect it from Vouchers and accounts of expences, of Books, Prints, furniture, plate etc. purchased by me since I came of age in 1760, made up in Autumn 1788, and since continued’ (FP 215). The continuation of these records beyond 1788 has not been located. 90  On 29 Apr. 1783 Forbes drafted a long letter to his financial adviser, Alexander Farquharson, in which he expressed concerns about buying an estate in the south of Scotland, ‘lest it may have the appearance of abandoning our friends and relations in Aberdeenshire, who have ever shown us an extreme degree of kindness and attention, and of deserting that part of the Country to which I naturally belong, and where by purchasing an addition to the property I am already possessed of, I may render my family one day more respectable’ (FP+ 2). He would pursue the purchase of property closer to Edinburgh in earnest only after he had carried out his plan in the north. 91  See From Forbes, 2 Nov. 1790 n. 15, which also mentions local country homes which the Forbeses rented before purchasing Bantaskine and Colinton. 92  Forbes to John Hay, [late 1792?] (FP 83/4). 93  Boswell disliked this ‘village’ aspect of James’s Court, and his journal entry for 6 Feb.

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Introduction The Boswells were able to rent a home in such fashionable quarters because the establishment of the Edinburgh New Town had recently begun to attract wealthy inhabitants from the Old Town, such as the Forbeses and David Hume. The first recorded visit of the Forbeses to the Boswells’ home, in early August 1772, occurred in the small but charming third-storey flat in James’s Court which Boswell had rented from Hume in 1771, after Hume’s move to the New Town.94 That flat began to seem cramped, however, after the birth of the Boswells’ first surviving child, Veronica, on 15 March 1773, and that May the family moved to a larger residence in the same building, at a rent of £90 per year.95 When Samuel Johnson visited them there three months later, he would write to Hester Lynch Thrale on 17 August 1773 that ‘Boswel has very handsome and spacious rooms level with the ground on one side of the house [i.e., the entrance on the Lawnmarket], and on the other four stories high’.96 The Boswells would continue to rent this roomy flat in James’s Court until May 1786. While Forbes refashioned himself, his style of living, and his professional and public profile over the course of decades, Boswell undertook a bold transformation in his mid-forties, when he moved from Edinburgh to London and from the Scottish to the English bar early in 1786, and then brought his whole family to London the following September. Forbes lobbied strenuously against a move to London. As early as 16 February 1780, when he was not yet the Laird of Auchinleck, Boswell records in his journal a meeting at Forbes’s counting house at which Forbes ‘advised me not to think of settling in London, & argued very justly that I should correct the errour of my imagination which made me look upon Edinburgh as so narrow and inconsiderable’—to which Boswell replied (whether to Forbes or only in his journal is not clear), ‘I was born for England; and I am so much happier in London nay any where in England than in Edinburgh, that it is hard I should be confined to this place. However, I must prudently wait till I see if my circumstances shall ever be such as to enable me to live in London.’ Unable to act, he acted out, for example by appearing at Carlisle House in London on 19 April 1781 in the costume of an English barrister, singing a song of his own composition in character, and then publicizing his performance in the London and Edinburgh newspapers.97 As Boswell became more serious about implementing his planned move during his visit to London in the spring and summer of 1784, Forbes grew more insistent in his opposition. The letter which Forbes (assisted by John Johnston) wrote to Samuel Johnson on 13 July 1784—published for the first time in this volume from a surviving draft—laid out Forbes’s reasons, focussing on financial and career issues as well as the precarious state of Margaret Boswell’s health. The letter appealed to Johnson, with whom Forbes had discussed the matter in London in December 1776 records that, in order ‘to keep clear of a connexion which was not desirable’, he and his friend John Johnston, who lived in the same building from some time in the mid-1770s (Corr. 1, p. xxix), declined to attend ‘a ball in James’s Court given by the inhabitants’. 94  See the description of this flat in To Forbes, 8 Aug. [1772] n. 1. 95  Later Years, p. 232. 96  Letters SJ ii. 52–53. 97  ‘The English Barrister to His Mistress’, St James’s Chron., 21–24 Apr. 1781 (P 51).; Cal. Merc., 28 Apr. 1781.

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Introduction 1783, to send a letter to ‘our mutual friend’, discouraging ‘this wild idea’. Unknown to Forbes, however, Johnson had already sent Boswell a letter on this subject two days earlier, and it would be taken by its recipient as justification for implementing his plan.98 Johnson’s approval of the move was conditional on Boswell’s avoiding debt,99 but the tone was uplifting rather than discouraging. Whereas Forbes believed Boswell was starting too late to succeed at the English bar, Johnson wrote to Boswell, ‘The loss of your Scottish business which is all that you can lose, is not to be reckoned as any equivalent to the hopes and possibilities that open here upon you.’ Similarly, Johnson told Forbes in his letter of 7 August 1784 that ‘no great mischief can be incurred. He can lose nothing but his Scottish business in the Scottish courts, which the appeals, and other incidental employment may easily recompense’. For Johnson, even failure in London would be worthwhile, because ‘if after a few years You should return to Scotland, You will return with a mind supplied by various conversation, and many opportunities of enquiry, with much knowledge and materials for reflexion and instruction.’100 Johnson’s encouragement met with stiff opposition from Forbes and others in Edinburgh, and for a time it appeared that Boswell, ‘harrassed by the arguments of Relations and Freinds’,101 had begun to reconsider his relocation scheme. On 21 January 1785 Forbes wrote to Langton, ‘I sincerely rejoice that he has been prevailed on to lay aside thoughts of establishing himself in London, because I was clear from the beginning, it must have been productive to him of ruin the extreme’.102 Yet in some ways Forbes would help to enable the very thing he so fervently opposed. It was around the time of his letter to Langton that Forbes initiated the scheme for converting Boswell’s debt to his bank into an interest-only heritable bond, as discussed above, and Boswell could never have moved his family to London in 1786 if Forbes had not done so. A letter from Boswell to Margaret of 3 July 1786, two months before she and their five children would join him in London, relates another example of Forbes’s supportive behaviour: ‘Lady Forbes and Sir William … have proposed that as it may be better for Sandie to be at the high school, while we are in London, he shall be at their house as one of their own sons. How agreable is it to be so well with them!’103 These instances reveal Forbes to be torn between his objective judgement as an adviser predicting professional and financial ‘ruin the extreme’ if Boswell should relocate his family to London and his wish to oblige a friend in need. As Forbes understood, Boswell’s need at this time was not only financial but also— in the aftermath of Samuel Johnson’s death on 13 December 1784—emotional. When Boswell heard about it four days later, in a letter composed on the 13th From Johnson, 11 July 1784, Letters SJ iv. 346–48; Life iv. 351. See also Johnson to Forbes, 7 Aug. 1784 (under date in this volume). 100  From Johnson, 11 July 1784, Letters SJ iv. 347. The uplifting character of Johnson’s letter gave rise to the following journal entry for 1 May 1785, when Boswell recorded that the London banker John Forbes (1737–after 1793), his friend and relation (also distantly related to Sir William Forbes), ‘Advised me to frame Dr. John[son’]s letter & if asked reason why come to London, take them into next room: There are my reasons.’ 101  To Temple, 20–22 July 1784 (L 1237). 102  Corr. 3, p. 180, and n. 9. 103  L 179. 98  99 

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Introduction by Johnson’s physician, Dr. Richard Brocklesby, he wrote in his journal of being ‘stunned, and in a kind of amaze’ while entertaining company, but he ‘said nothing of the dismal news, but to worthy Sir William Forbes, just as he was going away’. The next day he recorded that ‘I sat again some time with Sir William Forbes, & talked of this sad event’.104 In the same letter to Langton of 21 January 1785 in which Forbes rejoiced at the apparent termination of Boswell’s London relocation scheme, he also mentioned that ‘Mr. Boswell has favor’d me with the perusal of two letters from Dr. Brocklesby giving a very minute account of [Johnson’s] last few days’.105 The first of those letters was the one dated 13 December 1784, which the two men would have discussed at their meeting on the 18th. The other was a longer letter of 27 December, from which Boswell obtained, among other things, details about Johnson’s final religious utterances, information that no fewer than ‘six Authors’ were now writing Johnson’s life, and confirmation of the troubling news that Johnson had neglected to mention him in his will (Brocklesby used the kinder word ‘forgot’).106 The conversation in which Forbes offered Boswell relief in the form of a refinanced, interest-only bank loan occurred either at the same meeting with Boswell at which Forbes perused Brocklesby’s letter of 27 December, during the third week of January, or else at another, undocumented meeting held around the same time or a few days later.107 There is no way of knowing if this confluence of emotional consolation and financial relief in late January 1785 was causal or coincidental, or whether Forbes was intentionally or inadvertently helping Boswell to fulfil his dream. We must also keep in mind that what Forbes believed his friend to be undertaking was not a permanent removal to London but rather a ‘trial’ or ‘experiment’,108 which he hoped and believed would eventually result in Boswell’s return to Edinburgh. In his letters to Boswell of 11 July and to Forbes of 7 August 1784, Johnson was wrong to write that Boswell had nothing to lose from relocating to London except his ‘Scottish business’, for which he could be more than compensated at the London bar. Boswell not only would receive less income from his law practice in London but would also—as he would admit to Forbes in his letter of 25 April 1787—face much higher expenses for renting a house, maintaining his family, and educating his children, as well as for the general cost of living. Johnson also erred by suggesting that Boswell could profit from his move to London intellectually and culturally even if he should return to Edinburgh ‘after a few years’. As discussed below, the longer Boswell stayed in London, and the more he assumed the identity of an English gentleman-barrister who freely criticized Scottish manners and mores, the more difficult it became for him to consider returning to Edinburgh, Journ. 17 and 18 Dec. 1784. Corr. 3, p. 179. 106  Brocklesby’s two letters are printed in Corr. 2, pp. 21–24 and 26–31. By the time Boswell read Brocklesby’s letter of 27 Dec. 1784, which had been sent to him at Edinburgh and was presumably forwarded to him at Auchinleck in early Jan., he had already recorded in his journal on 28 Dec. that ‘I was a little uneasy that I was not mentioned in his will’, which he had read that day in ‘an English newspaper’ (see Applause, p. 274 n. 7). 107  See From FHC, [c. 1 Feb. 1785] n. 2. 108  On the use of these terms by Boswell, Forbes, and others, see Forbes [with John Johnston] to Samuel Johnson, 13 July 1784 n. 12. 104  105 

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Introduction even for a brief visit.109 The publication in October 1785 of the Tour, which Boswell himself would characterize in a letter to Forbes on 20 December of that year as ‘a work which is unpopular in Scotland’, raised issues about Boswell’s Scottish identity. So did a poem on Samuel Johnson which Boswell’s Anglicized Irish friend John Courtenay published in London in April 1786; after citing Goldsmith, Reynolds, Malone, and others, it begins a tribute to Boswell’s Johnsonian diligence with this couplet: ‘Amid these names can Boswell be forgot, / Scarce by North Britons now esteem’d a Scot?’110 A letter published in the London press soon after the appearance of Courtenay’s poem, undoubtedly by Boswell, states that ‘Mr. Courtenay meant this, and Mr. Boswell receives it as a compliment. The import of it is, that Mr. Boswell does not live solely with his countrymen in London; has not that narrow nationality which is so offensive.’111 The letter then points out, however, that Boswell had distinguished himself as ‘a substantial friend to Scotland’ in three controversial matters: the Douglas Cause, resistance to a proposed reduction in the number of judges in the Court of Session, and advocating English practices with regard to juries in Scotland.112 At this time Boswell still wished to have it both ways, by claiming to be a defender of Scottish interests and revelling in the mitigation of his Scottish identity. When Forbes turned up at his London residence unexpectedly later that spring, Boswell recorded in his journal on 11 June 1786 that he ‘comforted me & made 109  After leaving Edinburgh for London in late January 1786, Boswell would spend time at Auchinleck almost every year but would visit Edinburgh only once, for about ten days in early spring 1793, when Forbes was in Italy (see From Forbes, 11 May 1793 n. 17). 110  John Courtenay, A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the Late Samuel Johnson, L.L.D. With Notes, 1786, p. 23. A copy of this work was in Forbes’s library at Fettercairn (English Literature, p. 60, lot 102). 111  Pub. Adv., 2 May 1786. However, in a letter of 4 May 1786 (C 162), Hugh Blair told Boswell that he was ‘not pleased at all’ with Courtenay’s witticism. 112  On these issues, see Forbes to Lady Forbes, 9 June 1795 (under date in this volume), n. 12; Earlier Years, pp. 311–17, 397–400; Later Years, pp. 274–81; Lit. Car., pp. 27–50, 108–12; N. T. Phillipson, ‘Scottish Public Opinion and the Union in the Age of the Association’, in Scotland in the Age of Improvement, ed. N. T. Phillipson and Rosalind Mitchison, 1970, pp. 125–47, esp. 136–39. The two legal issues on which Boswell believed he had defended Scottish interests were addressed in A Letter to the People of Scotland, on the Alarming Attempt to Infringe the Articles of the Union, and Introduce a Most Pernicious Innovation, by Diminishing the Number of the Lords of Session. By James Boswell, Esq., published on 26 May 1785, and in his newspaper articles supporting that pamphlet (e.g., Pub. Adv., 14 May, 4 June, and 27 July 1785), but his support for juries in civil cases went back at least to the Douglas Cause (e.g., see Lond. Chron., 16–18 Apr. 1768, where the argument that the judges in the Scottish Court of Session constitute a jury is refuted with the assertion that ‘a perpetual jury is no jury’). Three years earlier Boswell had contributed a letter to the press which purported to quote Forbes when serving on a Scottish jury: ‘“My Lords, I shall not take upon me to determine at what time it was proper to state the point of law; but while I sit here as a British Juryman, I shall ever think that I have a right to decide upon the law as well as the fact.” The conscientious and spirited declaration does great honour to Sir William, as we believe it is the first time a Scots juryman has publickly asserted a right which has been often maintained in England’ (Pub. Adv., 1 Aug. 1782; Eur. Mag. Aug. 1782). Boswell concluded the postscript to his 1785 Letter to the People of Scotland with a different version of this tribute to Forbes: ‘we have at Edinburgh a most respectable gentleman, Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, who, when sitting as a juryman, and hearing one of the judges mutter audibly, that “the law must be left to the court!” rose in his place, and, with a proper courage, asserted the full right of himself and his bretheren; which had a very good effect’ (p. 107).

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Introduction me sensible that my being some time in Westminster Hall would not be against my getting a Judge’s place in Scotland’.113 Six days later the journal reports that Forbes ‘in a very friendly manner engaged to talk of my returning to the Court of Session as a thing that I intended, in case either of want of success in Westminster Hall, or of my Wife’s health not agreeing with London; & thus there would be no appearance of fickleness’. Forbes knew how important it was for Boswell to save face, and that becoming a judge in Scotland like his father would enable him to do so, especially since advocates who had been close friends of his in Edinburgh, with no greater claim to distinction, were then receiving that honour, including Alexander Gordon (as Lord Rockville) in July 1784 and, most recently, William Nairne (as Lord Dunsinane or Dunsinnan) in March 1786. The next appointment to the bench would be another old friend: John Maclaurin (as Lord Dreghorn) in 1788. In his Letter to the People of Scotland opposing Dundas’s bill to decrease the number of Lords of Session while increasing their salaries, Boswell had cited Gordon (‘a man of good understanding, experience, and integrity’), Nairne (‘whose character truly exhibits a heaven-born judge’), and Maclaurin (‘a son [of Prof. Colin Maclaurin] of no common talents’), as well as another friend, George Wallace, to prove that there were many highly qualified advocates happy to accept the existing judge’s salary. In order to show that his own motives were ‘pure’, he had added that ‘I have at present no wish for the serious and important office of a Lord of Session’ and ‘will try my fortune, for some time at least, in a wider sphere’.114 In keeping with that sentiment, when Boswell read of Maclaurin’s appointment, he wrote in his journal on 3 January 1788 of feeling ‘somewhat uneasy to think that had I steadily remained at the scotch bar, I might have had the Judge’s place’, though ‘I should not have relished it, while under the strong delusion of hope at the english bar’.115 During a confrontation with his ‘seriously distressed’ wife less than two months later, he would write in his journal entry for 20 February 1788 of his ‘pretensions to a Judge’s place in Scotland, which I still flattered myself I might attain’. As time passed, however, whatever chances Boswell may once have had of ‘getting a Judge’s place in Scotland’ dwindled away with the remaining vestiges of his identity as a patriotic Scotsman. When the Life appeared in 1791, Boswell proudly inserted an excerpt from Courtenay’s poem which included the previously mentioned couplet, along with a footnote Courtenay had added to the third edition, concluding, ‘Mr. Boswell indeed is so free from national prejudices, that he might with equal pro113  In his letter to Johnson of 13 July 1784, Forbes had implied that Boswell would have to stay in Edinburgh in order to have ‘the prospect of being in due time a judge’. 114  Boswell’s second (1785) Letter to the People of Scotland, pp. 42–45. 115  A similar sense of envious ‘uneasiness’, overcome by feelings of self-importance about the prospects for success on a larger stage, is apparent in Boswell’s journal entries in Mar. 1791 about two meetings in London with Rockville, who shortly after his promotion had told Margaret Boswell ‘privately’ that her husband’s ‘jocularity’ and declared ‘antipathies to many people’ worked against his ‘claim for a Judge’s place’ (Journ. 9 Dec. 1784). On 19 Mar. 1791 Boswell would write, ‘I felt a temporary uneasiness at seeing him a Lord of Session and contrasting this with my bad success’; but two days later he would qualify this judgement by commenting that ‘I felt a superiority over Lord Rockville, notwithstanding his office. He seemed to have provincial narrowness’.

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Introduction priety have been described as—“Scarce by South Britons now esteem’d a Scot.”’116 Assimilation had been achieved, at least in some circles, but Boswell’s bridge back to Edinburgh was badly burnt. The biggest loss Boswell sustained as a result of moving his family to London—a loss which Johnson failed to acknowledge in 1784, although he had shown considerable sensitivity to it earlier117—concerned his consumptive wife Margaret. In his letter to Johnson of 13 July 1784, Forbes noted ‘the agonies’, ‘distress’, and ‘agitation of mind’ which Margaret was forced to endure by Boswell’s resolution to move to London, owing to her ‘delicate’ frame; in his letter to Langton of 21 January 1785, he remarked, just before expressing his delight about Boswell avoiding ‘ruin the extreme’ by laying aside his planned move to London, that Mrs. Boswell was ‘always in hazard of attacks of her former complaint’.118 Forbes effectively pressed the issue at a breakfast with Boswell in London on 1 July 1786, when Boswell recorded in his journal that they ‘settled that I should quit english bar, either directly, or after a winter’s trial. My valuable spouse’s health was one great objection.’ Margaret’s move to London less than three months later would confirm Forbes’s fears. The foul air in the metropolis and the arduous trips from Auchinleck to London (in September 1786 and September 1787) and from London to Auchinleck (in August 1787 and then, for the last time, in May 1788) were extremely taxing for her diseased lungs. As Boswell wrote to Forbes on 25 April 1787, ‘the apprehension that the air of London is hurtful to her, presses me in a most interesting [i.e., important] manner’. There was also a huge emotional toll. Margaret had gone only as far as Durham on her one previous visit to England, for a week of sightseeing with Boswell in August 1771. Edinburgh had been her principal home since their marriage in 1769, and she had a social milieu there, with many supportive, if not always intimate, friends (Lady Forbes among them), and was ‘satisfy’d’.119 She also retained a deep fondness for Ayrshire, her ancestral county. In London—a city as alien to her as it was familiar to her husband—the family lived in a rented, rat-infested house in Great Queen Street from late September 1786 to mid-August 1787 and again (after a brief visit to Auchinleck) from late September 1787 to mid-May 1788. Although soon after their arrival Boswell cheerfully recorded in his journal, on 18 October 1786, ‘My wife found herself quite easy in London, going about to markets & all manner of shops with perfect freedom’, this perception would not last long. Margaret was soon sick again and eventually ‘was seriously distressed’ about the family living in ‘a mean neglected situation’ in London, and she pleaded with her husband to move the family to Auchinleck and spend several months in London Life i. 222–23; Courtenay, Poetical Review, 3rd ed., 22 May 1786 (Morn. Post), p. 25. See To Forbes, 20 Oct. 1782 n. 3, and Forbes [with John Johnston] to Samuel Johnson, 13 July 1784 (under date in this volume), n. 22. 118  Corr. 3, p. 180. 119  Margaret Boswell to the Hon. Mrs. Margaret (Cunynghame) Stuart, 9 Aug. 1785, quoted in Irma S. Lustig, ‘“My Dear Enemy”: Margaret Montgomerie Boswell in the Life of Johnson’, in Citizen of the World, p. 236. Mrs. Stuart, Margaret Boswell’s ‘most intimate friend’ (Journ. 4 Apr. 1773) since childhood, lived at Richmond Park, but being near her in London does not seem to have provided Margaret with much consolation. 116  117 

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Introduction each year on his own—‘float between the two countries’, as Boswell put it in his journal on 20 February 1788. Boswell wavered, admitting that ‘her arguments seemed of very great weight’, but he was unwilling to act.120 Margaret spent her last year struggling with her illness at Auchinleck while her husband went on legal circuits and did political work in northern England, or lived sociably among his many companions in London. Worst of all, perhaps, while Boswell was preparing for his family’s move to London, he engaged in a torrid love affair with the notorious adventuress and alleged forger Margaret Caroline (Youngson) Rudd, carried on between November 1785 and April 1786. At some point after the affair ended, Boswell told his wife about it, no doubt expecting to be forgiven, as when she had previously encountered records of his licentious episodes in the journal.121 But a sustained affair with a glamorous, disreputable, criminal celebrity was not the same as occasionally fondling chambermaids or engaging with prostitutes. We know of her response only indirectly, from two letters Boswell sent her during her final months of isolation at Auchinleck, after she had accused him, wrongly but understandably, of continuing the affair. Boswell’s letters, dated 9 November 1788 and 9 March 1789, are models of contrition, but they could scarcely have provided much consolation to a woman who was on her deathbed, effectively abandoned by her husband. The affair with Margaret Rudd prompted the only recorded incident of friction between Boswell and Lady Forbes, who, according to Boswell’s account in his journal of an exchange at Lothian’s Hotel in London on 17 June 1786, ‘charged me with a dangerous connection. I assured her it did not exist. I satisfied Sir William & he promised to contradict the ill-natured report.’ It is not clear whether Boswell denied the affair to the Forbeses on this occasion or merely insisted that it had ended, but after his wife’s death he would boast of his earlier connection with Mrs. Rudd, and Johnson’s envy of it, in the Life of Johnson.122 Political Ambition. In a letter of 16 August 1792 to Thomas Barnard, Bishop of Killaloe, Boswell remarked of a recent meeting in London with Barnard’s eldest son Andrew, Sir William Scott, and Forbes, ‘We exulted in the thought that four more zealous Church and King men could not be found’.123 The fact that Boswell and Forbes shared a similar Tory ideology was a powerful bond between them, and as noted above, both were also united in their emotional or sentimental attachment to Jacobitism. But beneath Boswell’s exultation lay a more complicated reality about their political beliefs and values. In the year before this letter to Barnard, Boswell had argued forcefully, both in the Life of Johnson and in a separately published poem titled No Abolition of Slavery (1791), in support of slavery and the slave trade.124 Forbes, by contrast, was taking a leading role in the opposition to what he See To Forbes, 29 Jan. 1788 n. 7. See To Forbes, 20 Dec. 1779 n. 1. 122  Life ii. 449–50, 20 Mar. 1776, iii. 79–80, 15 May 1776. On Boswell and Rudd, see Gordon Turnbull, ‘Criminal Biographer: Boswell and Margaret Caroline Rudd’, Studies in English Literature, xxvi (1986): 511–35; L181, L 189; Experiment, passim. 123  Corr. 3, p. 374. 124  Life iii. 200–05. Although No Abolition was published anonymously, it could easily be linked to Boswell because its anti-abolitionist argument was closely paraphrased in the 120  121 

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Introduction called ‘that horrid and disgraceful Commerce the African slave-trade’.125 One week after publication of the Life of Johnson, Forbes chaired a meeting of the Edinburgh Society instituted for the Purpose of Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade, which passed a strong resolution. It was soon reprinted in London, with the sole name ‘William Forbes’ flashed boldly at the beginning and the end.126 Although Boswell and Forbes must each have been aware of the other’s position, they never discussed this issue in their correspondence or elsewhere, as far as we know from existing sources. Besides occasionally diverging on particular issues such as slavery, Boswell and Forbes were separated by a much larger political divide. Forbes referred to this difference when he wrote to Boswell on 9 July 1790 that ‘your ideas of ambition and mine have always been exceedingly opposite’. ‘I have a restless wish for distinction in England, in short on a great scale’, Boswell wrote in his journal in Edinburgh on 26 July 1782, when comparing himself to his lethargic friend Andrew Erskine. This desire for ‘distinction in England … on a great scale’ was in part literary and legal, but it was also political. Boswell’s yearning for political preferment took many forms, including promoting causes he believed in, sometimes in published pamphlets; writing and singing flattering songs at political events (and then sometimes writing up his performances in the newspapers); meeting with and writing to potential patrons such as William Pitt, Pitt’s Scottish manager Henry Dundas, and Lord Chancellor Edward Thurlow; canvassing for the right to represent his ancestral county, Ayrshire, in Parliament; and most disastrously, attaching himself—as his wife was dying during the late 1780s—to the tyrannical and mentally Life (Lit. Car., p. 147), and Boswell would note that he was ‘generally believed to be the Author’ in an anonymous autobiographical sketch discussed below (‘Memoirs JB’, p. xliv). 125  Forbes to Beattie, 26 Apr. 1788 (FP 98/2): ‘I am sorry you abandoned your idea of publishing something on that horrid and disgraceful Commerce the African slave-trade: and perhaps you may still resume it. It may do much good. I heartily wish success to the present attempt to remove so foul a reproach from our island. I saw today a very beautiful Silver Medal struck on the occasion. It represents an African in Chains, reclining on one knee, his hands and eyes lifted up in a supplicating attitude: with this inscription, “Am I not a Man, and a Brother”? On the reverse, this very apposite and emphatic precept of Our Saviour’s, “Whatsoever you would that Men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.” It was executed, I am told after a design of the ingenious Mr. Wedgewood.’ It is not known where in Edinburgh Forbes viewed this silver medal replicating the seal which the Birmingham pottery entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood (1730–95) had made in Oct. 1787 for the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and had begun mass-producing early in 1788 as a black and white jasper cameo (see J. R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: The Mobilization of Public Opinion against the Slave Trade, 1787–1807, 2nd ed., 1998, pp. 155–58). At some point Forbes acquired the jasper Wedgwood cameo, which appears in Two Great Scottish Collections, p. 53, lot 59. Forbes also owned many anti-slave trade pamphlets (English Literature, pp. 50, 54, 62–63, lots 83, 93, 107–08). On the reluctance of Beattie to publish his 1778 essay against slavery (reproduced as a facsimile of the manuscript in James Beattie, Miscellaneous Items, ed. Roger J. Robinson, 1996, pp. xvii–xix), despite what he called, in a letter to Forbes of 3 May 1788, the ‘very urgent’ attempts of Forbes and others (Beattie ii. 228), see Glen Doris, ‘An Abolitionist Too Late? James Beattie and the Scottish Enlightenment’s Lost Chance to Influence the Slave Trade Debate’, Journal of Scottish Thought, ii (2011): 83–98. Beattie would eventually publish the essay in revised form in the second volume of his Elements of Moral Science, 1793, pp. 153–223. 126  Woodfall, 6 June 1791. See also Iain Whyte, Scotland and the Abolition of Black Slavery, 1756–1838, 2006, pp. 82, 88.

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Introduction unstable Earl of Lonsdale, in the misguided expectation that this connection might bring him into Parliament.127 Parliament had been his goal since his early twenties, when he wrote these lines in admiration of friends not much older than he who already served there: ‘To serve my country half my land I’d give— / Not to be member, freinds, is not to live. / Who at his seat contentedly would stay? / Who would not be in great Preferrment’s way?’128 The answer to Boswell’s question would soon appear. As Boswell was flailing hopelessly in the run-up to the parliamentary election of 1784, the London press reported that ‘Sir William Forbes, Mr. Hunter Blair’s partner in their Banking-house, had the offer of being elected Member of Parliament, in the room of that gentleman, but declined to accept it’.129 Such parliamentary offers to Forbes were said to be frequent, from both Edinburgh and Aberdeenshire, and in 1799 Forbes would also decline Pitt’s offer of an Irish peerage.130 Thus, the preferment which Boswell coveted but could not obtain from Pitt, Dundas, Thurlow, Lonsdale, and other politicians, Forbes could have had easily but unequivocally rejected. In turning down opportunities to enter Parliament, Forbes was following a personal credo which he articulated at length in the manuscript advice book composed for the benefit of his eldest son William and his other children, ‘Letters Explanatory of the Religious Beleif and Practical Duties of a Christian’.131 For every talented young Scottish lawyer such as Henry Dundas or Alexander Wedderburn, who entered Parliament and succeeded in London, he could name ‘at least fifty’ who had failed, he warned. They would risk their fortune and possibly their health, and would be exposed to corruption and other unpleasant realities of political life. If such a man finally succeeded in reaching his goal by obtaining a parliamentary seat, he would be ‘a silent insignificant spectator’ or else a speaker ridiculed for his ‘provincial accent’ or ‘mortified by the listlessness and inattention shewn to him while he is displaying what he takes to be flowers of the noblest oratory’. He would also be ‘pestered with applications from his constituents for places which tho’ utterly impossible for him to procure, they think they have a right to expect; and are offended in case of a disappointment’. Then, after years of ‘cringing with the meanest servility’ to a minister and violating his conscience when voting on See Pol. Car.; To Forbes, 29 Jan. 1788 n. 1. Fragment written for John Wilkes, from an unfinished poem on Parliament, begun in honour of George Dempster (Journ. 6 Aug. 1764), in Letters of James Boswell, ed. Chauncey Brewster Tinker, 2 vols., 1924, ii. 519. 129  Morn. Post, 12 May 1784. On 1 April Boswell and Forbes had both been present, along with Henry Dundas, the Solicitor General (Robert Dundas of Arniston [1758–1819]), Rev. Hugh Blair, and others when the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, John Grieve (?1740–1803), held a dinner honouring James Hunter Blair for his parliamentary service, and Boswell flattered the Dundases with a rendition of his ballad, ‘The Midlothian Address’ (Cal. Merc., 3 Apr. 1789; Pol. Car., pp. 111–12). A reluctant Hunter Blair was persuaded to stand for re-election as Edinburgh’s M.P. in June 1784, but in August he would step down in favour of Sir Adam Fergusson and become Lord Provost of Edinburgh, as part of a deal engineered by Henry Dundas to give Boswell’s friend Col. Hugh Montgomerie the Ayrshire seat in place of Fergusson. 130  ‘Forbes’, p. 363. 131  The final version in three bound manuscript volumes came to light in 2016, when it was auctioned along with two bound companion volumes titled ‘Letters on Study’ and ‘Letters on Right Conduct in regard to Society’ (English Literature, p. 34, lot 49). See From Forbes, 20 Jan. 1789 n. 36. 127  128 

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Introduction certain issues, ‘he thinks himself fortunate, if he can retire with a place or a pension of not more than half the value of what he might have purchased by way of annuity, with the sums he has lavished away on this parliamentary adventure’.132 Forbes referred Boswell to these particular passages in a letter of 1 June 1789, when Boswell was still engaged with politics in Ayrshire and with Lonsdale, but it does not appear that his friend ever perused Forbes’s work. Then, in his letter of 9 July 1790, after Margaret Boswell had died without her husband at her side and Boswell had admitted to Forbes that his political aspirations were at an end, Forbes expressed his view more directly when he wrote, in regard to it being ‘out of the question at present’ that Boswell could enter Parliament, ‘nor can I even think, that as a ladder of ambition, it is the surest road either to affluence or happiness. The instances to the contrary, I am fully persuaded, are very, very few.’ As Forbes had anticipated, the attempt by Boswell to transform his life by moving permanently to London failed miserably both professionally (and therefore financially) and politically, and it also made him unavailable to his wife during her time of greatest need. Privately, Boswell would come to realize the paradox inherent in his relationship with London, as when he wrote to his son Jamie during the last year of his life, ‘Much enjoyment have I had there; but as yet every ambitious aim has been disappointed.’133 Publicly, he tried to save face by publishing in the spring of 1791 an anonymous magazine article titled ‘Memoirs of James Boswell, Esq.’, which placed the primary blame for his not obtaining a seat in Parliament on his ‘independence of mind and of conduct’ and asserted, unrealistically, that he ‘has declared his resolution to persevere on the next vacancy’. The memoir also expressed, sincerely, his sense of loss over the death of ‘the woman he loved, and the friend he could trust’, without of course mentioning that he had not been there for her as much as he knew he should have been. Finally, in the memoir Boswell blamed the failure of his legal career on the fact that ‘his attention to the business of Westminster-Hall has been chiefly interrupted by his great literary work in which he was engaged for many years, “The Life of Dr. Johnson,” which he has at last published, in two volumes quarto, and which has been received by the world with extraordinary approbation.’134 In the literary sphere Boswell would succeed in his quest for ‘distinction in England … on a great scale’. Even Forbes had been obliged to admit, in a letter of 25 July 1787, that ‘till you finish your life of Johnson I suppose you cannot well be any where else; as you will have the best opportunities in London of getting materials and assistance’. Nor could Forbes deny that the move to London had been successful in one other respect, by allowing Boswell to engage fully in the rich and fulfilling social world which he had long been cultivating in his visits to the metropolis. ‘Our Mutual Friends’. Both Boswell and Forbes were sociable men, and their sociability took many forms. But two circles of friends stand out from the others in 132  Forbes, ‘Cautions against immoderate or ill-regulated Ambition’, in ‘Letters Explanatory’ iii. 248–54, quoted fully in From Forbes, 1 June 1789 n. 17. Forbes’s cautious attitude towards Scottish professional men migrating to London was not limited to those seeking parliamentary office. In 1768 Forbes himself declined offers from Robert Herries to make his banking career in London rather than Edinburgh (‘Forbes’, pp. 357–58). 133  To James Boswell, Jr., 27 Oct. 1794 (L 148). 134  ‘Memoirs JB’, pp. xlii–xliv.

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Introduction helping to bring them closer together. One was a loose-knit group in Edinburgh, featuring William Nairne; Lady Colville and her Erskine siblings, headed by the Earls of Kellie (first Thomas Alexander, the musical sixth earl, and after his death in 1781 his brother Archibald, the seventh earl); Dr. Thomas Young (until his death in early February 1783) and his wife Barbara; and Alexander Gordon, later Lord Rockville, and his wife Anne, Lady Dumfries. The journal from Boswell’s mature Edinburgh years contains references to dinners and suppers, sometimes including card-playing, with members of this largely English Episcopal circle, often including the Forbeses.135 Four years after Boswell moved to London, Forbes could still write, on 18 May 1790, ‘Your friends here all remember you cordially; the Colvill and Kelly family; Lord Dunsinnane, Lord Rockville’. The other circle was Boswell’s celebrated group of London friends who belonged to the Literary Club, including Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Bennet Langton, Thomas Barnard, Sir William Scott, Edmond Malone, Edmund Burke, and John Courtenay. Forbes’s first substantial appearances in Boswell’s journal occur in connection with visits to Edinburgh from two of these men several years before Forbes would encounter them in London: Bennet Langton in autumn 1772 and Samuel Johnson (accompanied by Sir William Scott) in late summer and autumn 1773. First, Langton and his new wife Mary, styled Lady Rothes because of her first marriage to the 10th Earl of Rothes, came north to visit her mother, the Countess of Haddington, and stayed almost two and a half months, from early October to mid-December 1772. Although Boswell was not keeping a full journal during this period, his notes show that he was often with them, and sometimes also with Forbes, and Lady Forbes, too, including a supper and a dinner at the Forbeses’ home.136 It is also likely that Forbes and Lady Forbes sometimes socialized with Langton and Lady Rothes (for whom Forbes may already have been managing investments) in Edinburgh without Boswell present. Forbes came to admire Langton greatly and would maintain a friendship and correspondence with him. The following August Samuel Johnson visited Edinburgh en route to the Highlands and Hebrides with Boswell. Johnson’s first full day in Edinburgh was a Sunday, 15 August 1773, and this circumstance may have influenced the course of events for Forbes. Since Johnson would not go to a Presbyterian church,137 Boswell took him to Baron Smith’s Chapel in Blackfriars Wynd for a Church of England service. 135  See, for example, Boswell’s journal entries for 30 Dec. 1774, 16 July 1776, 23 Dec. 1779, 6 May 1782, 31 Jan. 1783, and 6 Aug. 1783, and From Forbes, 18 May 1790 n. 11. 136  ‘Notes for Journal in Edinburgh’ (J 26): 7 Nov.: ‘Evening supt. Dr. Gregory’s Mr. Langton & Sr. W. Forb[es] only there. A most pleasant evening’; 9 Nov.: ‘Supt. Sir W. Forbes’s with Langton’; 24 Nov.: ‘Dined with him [Langton]. Sir W. Forbes & Dr. Gregory there’; 9 Dec.: ‘Dined Sr W. F[orbes]’s wt Langt[on], Rev. Mr. Kerr, Dr. Blacklock.’ The company mentioned included Hugh Blair; Robert Hunter (1704–79), Boswell’s former Greek instructor at Edinburgh University, who was probably invited because of Langton’s proficiency as a classicist; Dr. John Gregory; Rev. George Carr; and Thomas Blacklock. Boswell’s entry for 13 Dec. 1772 does not specifically mention Forbes, but he may well have been present that afternoon: ‘Church forenoon. Langton with me between sermons. Went with him to English Chapel. Was in good frame.’ See also To Forbes, 11 Apr. 1776 n. 1. 137  Life iii. 336, v. 121.

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Introduction As a principal figure in the English Episcopal community in Edinburgh—particularly at Baron Smith’s Chapel, which he and his mother attended regularly—Forbes was a fitting choice to join Johnson, Scott, and Boswell at breakfast,138 followed by worship. They heard (or rather did not hear, because the sound did not carry well enough) a sermon on divine Providence from Psalm 97, delivered by Rev. George Carr. After they returned to Boswell’s house, Forbes’s close friend Robert Arbuthnot of Haddo called. Arbuthnot, Boswell, Johnson, Scott, the advocate Charles Hay (1747–1811, later raised to the bench as Lord Newton), and Forbes (who had gone home and returned) dined together, followed by a visit from William Nairne and John Hamilton of Sundrum (1739–1821) in the evening. On the following day Johnson toured the university, Parliament House, St. Giles Church, and other sites with Principal William Robertson (1721–93) and Professor Adam Ferguson (1723–1816), returning to Boswell’s house for dinner with a large party which included Forbes. On the morning of the 17th Forbes returned for breakfast, bringing with him his friend, the blind poet Thomas Blacklock. Others came and went at the various breakfasts, dinners, and suppers which Boswell held for Johnson during their first days together in Scotland, but Forbes alone was in his company on all three of his initial days in Edinburgh, for two breakfasts, two dinners, and a religious service. Forbes was also present at Boswell’s house on at least one day after Boswell and Johnson returned from their tour, on 11 November 1773. The visits to Edinburgh of Langton in 1772 and Johnson in 1773 prepared the way for Forbes’s entry into Boswell’s circle of London friends in the spring of 1776, when the Forbeses visited the capital. Since Forbes already knew Langton and Johnson, it is not surprising that Boswell invited him—as well as their friend Nairne, who had accompanied Boswell and Johnson from Edinburgh to St. Andrews three years earlier—to a supper at the Crown and Anchor Tavern on 13 April. There Forbes would renew his acquaintances with Langton and Johnson and meet another founding member of the Literary Club who would become an important figure in his life, the eminent portrait painter Sir Joshua Reynolds.139 In the coming weeks Sir William and Lady Forbes each sat for a portrait by Reynolds, who invited Forbes to a dinner party which would produce the literary highlight of Forbes’s life: the Round Robin. The Round Robin was the message which the company at Reynolds’s dinner party produced for Johnson as a way of criticizing his Latin inscription for the tomb of their deceased friend, Oliver Goldsmith, for whom they felt an inscription should have been written in English. Too intimidated by Johnson to sign their names in a manner which might give away who was most responsible for it, they hit upon the tactic of signing their names in a circle around the outside of the message, in the manner of mutineers on ships at sea. Johnson had sent his inscription to Reynolds with instructions to ‘shew it to the Club’ if he thought it worthy of criticism by its 138  The wording in Boswell’s manuscript journal—‘Mr. Scott came to breakfast. I sent for Sr. W. Forbes who came’ (J 32.3)—suggests that Forbes was invited on short notice rather than by pre-arrangement. 139  See To Forbes, 11 Apr. 1776 n. 1.

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Introduction members.140 Forbes had never known Goldsmith and would never be a member of the Literary Club—although his involvement with the Round Robin and his friendship with several of its members would give rise to mistaken claims that he was.141 His participation in the Round Robin was exceptionally fortunate for him, and his importance was further enhanced by his being elected the group’s clerk, responsible for writing down the approved text. Moreover, since Boswell had returned to Scotland before the Round Robin dinner, Forbes was now venturing into Boswell’s London circle on his own. The Round Robin had no effect on Johnson who, though he ‘received it with much good humour’, as Forbes told Boswell in his letter of 19 October 1787, retained his original Latin inscription. But it was a major milestone for Forbes in two respects: it would prove to be his biggest contribution to Boswell’s career as an author, as shown below, and it would solidify his standing as an occasional member of Boswell’s London circle in his own right. Thirteen years later, when discussing Boswell’s move to London in a letter of 20 January 1789, Forbes acknowledged why his friend ‘should be fascinated by the charms of the Society among whom you live there; for where are such men to be found as the members of the Round Robin, who combine the social and convivial powers in the highest perfection, with classical taste, elegance of manners, and literary accomplishments!’ Associating with Boswell’s circle of friends in London opened up a new world for Forbes, and he relished it. After the Round Robin dinner he sought to maintain and expand those relationships in various ways. Whenever possible he saw his new friends in person in London, which he would visit five more times during Boswell’s lifetime: with Lady Forbes in autumn 1783, in spring/summer 1786, and in late spring/summer 1792; with his daughter Christy during the winter of 1791–92; and with both Lady Forbes and Christy while briefly passing through London on their way back to Scotland from Italy in June 1793. Usually Boswell was also in London on these occasions, but when he was not there, Forbes often made contact with their friends directly, calling frequently on Johnson in autumn 1783, for example. Forbes also took advantage of opportunities to correspond with several of these friends (especially Langton and Reynolds) and to socialize with them away from London. In addition to the visits of Langton and Johnson to Edinburgh in the early 1770s, when Boswell was often present, Forbes and Lady Forbes visited the Barnards in Dublin while touring Ireland in August 1785. Boswell and Forbes also had separate encounters in Scotland with Burke, who visited there twice in connection with his election as Rector of Glasgow University in 1784 and his re-election the following year, each time passing through Edinburgh on his way to and from Glasgow. As we know from his journal, Boswell travelled from Auchinleck to Glasgow on the day Burke was first installed as Rector (on Saturday 10 April 1784) and was warmly received, in spite of what he called, in a letter passed to Burke that morning, ‘my Tory zeal against a political system which Life iii. 81. This error seems to have originated with a contemporary obituary, which stated that ‘Sir William Forbes was one of the earliest members of the celebrated Literary Club’ (Cal. Merc., 20 Nov. 1806). Although corrected by Pottle in Pride and Negligence, p. 252, it is still commonly repeated, as in the entry on Forbes in the ODNB (2006 version). 140  141 

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Introduction you have supported’.142 Before departing Glasgow on the morning of Monday 12 April, Boswell left another letter for Burke, inviting him to sup ‘under my roof’ in Edinburgh on his way back to London, on ‘any night’ he pleased. In a private note, Boswell jotted down the select guest list ‘If he comes’, including ‘Sir W. F.’ But on Thursday 15 April Burke wrote to Boswell to decline his invitation for that evening because he had arrived ‘very late last Night, and go off very early, (that is, at five) tomorrow morning’.143 Since Boswell was at Auchinleck as Burke passed through Edinburgh on his way to Glasgow in early April 1784, and was in London when Burke passed through Edinburgh again on his way to Glasgow in late August 1785 and on his return to London in September 1785, he never met Burke in Edinburgh. Forbes, however, did see Burke in Edinburgh on those occasions, although the details remain hazy. A letter which Forbes left at Burke’s lodgings (almost certainly Dunn’s Hotel in St. Andrew’s Square, very near the Forbes residence), dated simply ‘st. andrews street Tuesday’, invites Burke to supper at Forbes’s home ‘tomorrow evening’ (i.e., Wednesday).144 This letter is datable to Tuesday 6 April 1784, when Burke was stopping over in Edinburgh on his way to Glasgow,145 and it seems probable that Burke did in fact avail himself of Forbes’s hospitality on that occasion and others.146 Another piece of evidence—in an undated letter from Forbes to Barnard, datable from internal evidence to, or shortly after, 16 September 1785—refers to 142  Corr. 4, pp. 142–43; on these political differences between Boswell and Burke, see To Forbes, 11 Oct. 1790, and Michael Brown, ‘The Meal at Saracen’s Head: Edmund Burke and the Scottish Literati’, Studies in Burke and His Time, xxii [2011]: 13–44. Two days later Boswell placed a notice of Burke’s activities in Scotland in the Edinburgh newspapers (Cal. Merc., 12 Apr. 1784; also Edin. Adv., 13 Apr. 1784, in Facts and Inventions, pp. 70–71), praising Burke’s ‘excellent speech’ in Glasgow and mentioning that he had been present at dinner with Burke and his Whig friends after the installation—a circumstance not noted in his journal or in most other accounts of this episode, which mention only Boswell’s attendance at breakfast. 143  Corr. 4, pp. 144–45 and n. 6 144  The letter reads:

Sir William Forbes presents Compliments to Mr. Burke. Beg, the honor of his Company tomorrow evening for supper. Mr. Burke may perhaps recollect that Sir Wm. had the honor of being known to him some years ago at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s [i.e., the Round Robin dinner party in spring 1776]: on his hearing that Mr. Burke was in Edinburgh, he called at his Lodgings to pay his respects to him; and to enquire in what shape he could render Mr. Burke’s stay in this place, most agreeable to him. st. andrews street Tuesday

145  On Burke’s journey, see Lock ii. 51 n. 5. Forbes’s letter has been assigned the date Tues. 13 Apr. 1784 by the Northamptonshire Record Office, F(M) A, I, 27, where it is housed, and in The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, x, ed. Barbara Lowe, P. J. Marshall, and John A. Woods, 1978, p. 129, where it is listed but not reproduced. Since Burke told Boswell that he did not arrive in Edinburgh until ‘very late’ on the night of Wednesday 14 April 1784, however, Forbes could not have invited him to supper the day before that, in a letter which included the phrase ‘on his hearing that Mr. Burke was in Edinburgh’. 146  In his letter to Forbes of 11 Oct. 1790, Boswell wrote of Burke, ‘when I asked him if I should present his compliments to you, he said I would be much in the wrong to him if I did not present his very respectful and grateful compliments to you’. Burke would not have used the word ‘grateful’ unless he had been entertained by Forbes at least once during his visits to Edinburgh in 1784 and 1785. Forbes was probably also among the company attending a dinner which (as noted in Boswell’s newspaper account in the Cal. Merc., 12 Apr. 1784) the Bank of Scotland put on for Burke at Fortune’s Tavern on Wednesday 7 April.

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Introduction Burke’s stay in Edinburgh that August: ‘I found Mr. Burke here in his way to pay a visit to the University of Glasgow.’147 There is also a postscript to Forbes’s letter to Boswell of 16 September 1785, alluding to Burke’s passing through Edinburgh on his way back to London: ‘Our friend Mr. Burke is just now here in perfect health.’ For the most part, however, Forbes remained dependent on Boswell to maintain his relationships with Boswell’s circle from the Literary Club in London. A long passage in a letter to Boswell of 26 May 1788, when he thought (incorrectly, as things turned out) he might never have another opportunity to see any of them again in London, conveys Forbes’s feelings of both gratitude and fear of loss: As I have now little hope of preserving any sort of intercourse or Communication with those valuable friends to whose acquaintance I had first the honor of being introduced by you, except through you, at second hand; I must earnestly request you to present my affectionate and respectful regards to the Bishop of Killaloe, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Langton, Mr. Malone and Mr. Burke, as you may occasionally recollect to mention me to them. Do not, I pray you, allow me to slip altogether out of their remembrance; since I have scarcely any hope of being again made happy by a personal intercourse of that friendship with which they were pleased to honor me in London. This is, indeed, almost the only drawback on my present situation but which is in every other respect so extremely comfortable, that I should be the most ungrateful wretch on earth, were I so much as to harbour a single symptom of discontent. Here again is a most terrible digression, which I know not on what score you can possibly pardon; except it be, the opportunity it has given me of expressing my obligations to you for the knowledge of those friends. Forbes’s letters to Boswell in London are not usually so forceful about this subject, but most of them contain good wishes for, and requests to be remembered to, the men whom Forbes often called ‘our mutual friends’.148 ‘If this finds you in Londn.’, Forbes wrote to Boswell on 1 June 1789, in a typical passage, ‘remember me with affection and respect to My Lord Bishop of Killaloe, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Malone, Mr. Langton, Mr. Burke. My heart is often with you and them; and perhaps the time may come when the peculiar Circumstances of my present Situation may permit my paying another visit [to] those valuable friends.’ Such compliments, 147  FP+ 3. On Burke’s return visit to Edinburgh in 1785, when he travelled with William Windham, see Lock ii. 53–54, and The Diary of the Right Hon. William Windham, 1784 to 1810, ed. Mrs. Henry Baring, 1866, pp. 59–64 (mentioning on p. 59 that he and Burke lodged at ‘Dun’s Hotel’). Although Forbes does not appear in Windham’s diary, the diary contains substantial gaps, and it is possible that Forbes became acquainted with Windham (whom he later considered a good friend) at this time (see From Forbes, 8 Apr. 1789 n. 5). 148  Forbes used this phrase in his letters of 18 Dec. 1787, 8 Apr. 1789, 2 Nov. 1790, 12 Mar. 1793, and 5–11 Nov. 1793, and Boswell used it in his letter of 27 Sept. 1791.

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Introduction repeated in one form or another in letter after letter, may strike the modern reader as mere filler, but they helped to reinforce and sustain Forbes’s connection with Boswell’s London circle as well as Boswell and Forbes’s own relationship during the last decade of Boswell’s life. The good wishes which Forbes’s letters asked Boswell to convey to their mutual friends can also be used to gauge the timing and extent of Forbes’s integration into Boswell’s London circle. In a letter of 23 May 1783, Forbes extends his compliments to Reynolds, Langton, Johnson, and Barnard. On 6 December 1785 Johnson is gone, having died the previous December, but Burke has been added, because Forbes had socialized with him in Edinburgh in 1784 and 1785. In letters of 25 April and 19 October 1787, Malone appears for the first time, along with John Courtenay and Reynolds’s niece and companion Mary Palmer—indicating that Forbes had associated with them during his visit to London with Lady Forbes from late spring to early autumn 1786. Forbes’s first documented meeting with Malone and Courtenay, and his first meeting with Burke in London in ten years, occurred on 16 June 1786, when Boswell records in his journal a dinner party at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s home, attended by Burke, Malone, Barnard, Langton, and Forbes—‘an excellent day’. On 3 July Boswell himself would host a dinner of ‘plain fare’ with Forbes, Courtenay, Malone, and Reynolds among the company, as well as John Wilkes, and he noted in his journal that Forbes ‘was truly happy to be one of such a party’. Forbes, and especially Lady Forbes, probably renewed their friendship with Mary Palmer when Forbes sat for his second portrait by Reynolds between 16 and 26 June 1786.149 Forbes’s letter to Boswell of 23 April 1792 adds compliments to Sir William Scott, Philip Metcalfe, and Boswell’s bookseller Charles Dilly, with whom he had socialized during his visit to London between December 1791 and March 1792. Reynolds is now mentioned only in the context of the enormous void left by his death in February 1792. Forbes was not equally attached to all the members of Boswell’s London circle. The two he held in highest esteem were Sir Joshua Reynolds and Bennet Langton. Reynolds was his hero, and he and Lady Forbes cultivated a friendship with him and Miss Palmer. He also adored Langton (despite exasperation about his irregularity as a correspondent) and shared religious affinities with him and Thomas Barnard. Two of the ongoing themes in the correspondence relate to the manuscript on religion which Forbes prepared for his children, which he asked Langton to read and critique, and a long letter on the Lord’s Supper which Barnard sent to Boswell on 15 May 1784. Forbes hounded Boswell for years for an opportunity to read that letter, and on 1 March 1792 he was finally allowed to make a copy of it, which is now the only surviving version.150 Forbes also admired Samuel Johnson, but with some reservations. At his most positive, he wrote to Boswell on 28 May 1791, upon receiving a presentation copy 149  The Forbeses had not seen Mary Palmer on their last visit to London late in 1783, prompting Reynolds to write to Boswell on 16 Feb. 1784, ‘I beg my most respectfull compliments to Sir Wm. Forbes. I thought it very unlucky that Miss Palmer was not in Town to have paid her respects to Lady Forbes. I wishd very much to have had an opportunity of seeing more than I did of that very amiable Lady’ (Corr. 3, p. 151). 150  From Barnard, Corr. 3, pp. 161–68.

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Introduction of the Life, ‘I honored Dr. Johnson when living, and I venerate his memory now that he is gone; as a man who by his moral writings has much instructed, and by his works of taste and criticism has improved and delighted the world’, and a footnote in his biography of Beattie alludes to his respect for ‘the talents and the virtues of that truly eminent and good man’.151 That same footnote, however, suggests that the ‘bond of union between Dr Johnson and me’ owed more to their having ‘common friends’ (Boswell, Reynolds, Langton, and to a lesser extent, Beattie) than to personal friendship. Moreover, to a man of Forbes’s refinement and gentility, Johnson was sorely lacking in etiquette. When reporting Johnson’s death to a Scottish friend in January 1785, Forbes, ever polite, described Johnson as one ‘whose virtue and abilities I admired more than his manners; but who honored me with a greater degree of kindness than usual’.152 Like many Scots, he was appalled at the unreliability of Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, which appeared early in 1775, about fourteen months after Forbes’s last meeting with the author in Edinburgh. The introduction to the Clarendon edition of the Journey quotes the following sentence from Forbes’s letter to John Forbes, Master of Pitsligo, in order to demonstrate that ‘not all Scottish opinion was adverse’: ‘There are however a great many new & important Observations & discussions in the Work, which are well worth reading.’153 But that sentence occurs at the end of a long paragraph which, taken as a whole, conveys a very different sense of Forbes’s view of Johnson’s book. After noting that he has sent his friend a copy of ‘Johnson’s tour through the Highlands, which is just come down from London, and is much the subject of Conversation here at present’, Forbes writes: I hope it may amuse you and Mrs. Forbes. The Doctor is a man of very eminent merit in many respects; but he is subject to inveterate prejudices, which indeed are very conspicuous in many places of this publication: he is likewise very blind and very deaf; owing to all which, it is not surprising, that he should fall into many mistakes: but it may very reasonably be asked, why the Doctor, under all these disadvantages, should have undertaken to describe a Country, of which, at the best, he could know but little, from barely riding through it. You will see by reading only a very few pages, that were a Stranger to form his ideas of the face of the Country, or of the modes of living, and manners of the inhabitants, from the Doctor’s descriptions, he would be exceedingly deceived. There are however a great many new and 151  Beattie ii. 140 n. See also Forbes to Beattie, 31 Aug. 1773 (FP 98/1), praising ‘that extraordinary Man’. 152  Forbes to Mercer, 12 Jan. 1785 (FP 83/5). Robert Arbuthnot, writing to Beattie on 28 Aug. 1773 (FP 91), shortly after Johnson’s visit to Edinburgh, was more direct: ‘I was once or twice in Company with your Friend Doctor Johnston, and was much entertained with him, his figure and manner is to be sure uncouth, and even disgusting to a Stranger, but in my opinion his Judgment is uncommonly acute, and comprehensive, and his expression energetic and animated in the highest degree. He frequently spoke of you with great Regard and complacency.’ 153  Journey, Fleeman, p. xxxi.

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Introduction important observations and discussions in this work, which are well worth reading.154 Later in the same letter Forbes defends Boswell against suspicions that he had failed to correct and improve Johnson’s defective account of Scotland by pointing out that Johnson had refused to show his manuscript to Boswell before publication.155 Years later, when Boswell and other members of the Literary Club were campaigning for a monument to Johnson, Forbes contributed the substantial sum of five guineas and dutifully placed advertisements for the subscription in the Edinburgh newspapers, as Boswell had requested. But in opposition to Boswell’s prophecy in a letter of 12 December 1788, ‘that something handsome will be raised in Scotland; for notwithstanding his prejudices, he was highly valued by many of our Countrymen’, Forbes correctly predicted, in his reply of 20 January 1789, that nothing would come of that attempt. For his part, Boswell regarded Forbes as a loyal friend who could be expected to get on well with everyone in his London circle. His Episcopal piety and Tory politics made for a good fit, and he was tolerant of those with different beliefs. ‘Remember me, also, with affection and respect to Sir Joshua Reynolds, the worthy Mr. Langton, Mr. Malone and Mr. Burke:’, Forbes wrote to Boswell on 8 April 1789; ‘altho I do not always approve of the political principles of this last Gentleman, I admire his talents, and esteem his private virtues.’ When Johnson spoke rudely to him at their first-ever London meeting in 1776, Boswell reports that ‘Worthy Sir William luckily did not mind this’.156 As previously noted, Forbes served Boswell as a model for emulation, perhaps more than anyone else he knew in Scotland. By bringing such a person into his London circle, Boswell was enlarging Forbes’s social range, enriching the group, and enhancing his own place in it. Boswell’s Writings and Publications. Once Boswell had shared his Hebrides journal with Forbes and confided in him about his finances at the beginning of January 1775, other portions of his personal manuscripts and published writings would not seem too private for Forbes to see. But which unpublished or anonymous writings 154  Forbes to John Forbes, Master of Pitsligo, 15 Feb. 1775, NLS, MS 3112, fols. 26–27. Four days before writing to John Forbes, Sir William had used similar language in a letter to James Beattie (11 Feb. 1775, FP 98/1), where the words ‘exceedingly deceived’ read ‘egregiously deceived’. Forbes added in the letter to Beattie that ‘with all its imperfections, the Book is well worth reading; for it contains a number of new and important remarks’, and ‘I am an admirer of Dr. Johnson’s, with all the peculiarities that attend him’. Forbes would later publish Beattie’s similar view, expressed in a letter to Beilby Porteus of 4 Mar. 1775: ‘Dr Johnson’s journey … contains many things worthy of the author, and is, on the whole, very entertaining. … I admire Johnson’s genius; I esteem him for his virtues; I shall ever cherish a grateful remembrance of the civilities I have received from him’. But he continued, ‘I am sorry to see in Johnson some asperities, that seem to be the effect of national prejudice. If he thinks himself thoroughly acquainted with the character of the Scots as a nation, he is greatly mistaken. The Scots have virtues, and the Scots have faults, of which he seems to have had no particular information.’ Beattie was especially perturbed about Johnson’s willingness to believe that Scots were ‘without exception, a nation of cheats and liars’, and ‘to represent us’ that way (Beattie i. 378–80). 155  Fol. 28. Once again Forbes made a similar point in his letter to Beattie of 11 Feb., cited in the preceding note. 156  Journ. 13 Apr. 1776.

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Introduction did Boswell actually share with Forbes, and what part did Forbes play in Boswell’s publications? On 5 May 1783 Boswell wrote to Forbes from London, ‘All my treasures, at least a very great proportion of them, are preserved in my Journal, and shall be shewn to you.’ This sentence clearly implies that Boswell viewed Forbes as part of the reading audience for his mature journal,157 and that he intended to show him the whole of it. By this time he had already shown Forbes at least three different parts of the journal: (1) the main part of the Hebrides journal on two different occasions: 1 January 1775, ‘to prepare him for Mr. Johnson’s Book’, and again in February 1777, presumably to give Forbes a chance to spend more time with that very long manuscript than the five days he had been allowed in January 1775;158 (2) the revised version of Boswell’s interview with the dying David Hume, which Boswell mentioned showing to Forbes in a journal entry of 23 January 1778; and (3) the ‘Journal in Ashbourne’—mainly recording a visit with Johnson at John Taylor’s house in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, from 14 to 26 September 1777, which Boswell sent to Forbes in December 1779 and later published in revised form in the Life—but also including sensitive personal material from the period 10–14 September, when Boswell was on his way there.159 Boswell even prepared, apparently for Forbes’s benefit, ‘a list, so far as I can now recollect, of the company whom I used to see at Dr. Taylor’s’.160 As far as we know, no one else saw as much of Boswell’s mature journal. There is reason to suspect, however, that these documented cases may not represent the complete record of journal material which Forbes saw or heard while Boswell was alive. The sentence quoted at the beginning of the previous paragraph suggests more than this, and so does the following statement which Forbes made to Malone in 1796 in regard to Boswell’s ‘exceedingly curious’ journals: ‘He used occasionally, during our uninterrupted intercourse, while he resided in Edinburgh, to favour me with a perusal of these; and they ever afforded me a rich entertainment.’161 A stronger statement appears in the following passage from a letter which Forbes sent to a friend in January 1785: My friend Boswell among others, is preparing to write the life of Dr. Johnson. Boswell has a most extraordinary facility of recollecting conversations very minutely; and every evening after he comes home from any party when what was said was worth preserving, he puts it down by way partly of narrative and partly Dialogue in his literary Journals: he has often shown me passages of it; and a most curious collection it is indeed! In this manner he means to intersperse his account of Johnson with scenes of conversation in which he has been engaged: thus his work, like 157  Cf. To Temple, 17 Apr. 1775, Corr. 6, p. 368: ‘I try to keep a Journal, and shall shew you that I have done tollerably.’ 158  Journ. 1 Jan. 1775; To Forbes, 24 Feb. 1777. 159  Life iii. 135–207; Life MS iii, pp. 87–152; To Forbes, 20 Dec. 1779 n. 1. 160  Extremes, p. 172 n. 4. See also To Forbes, 20 Dec. 1779 n. 1 161  Forbes to Malone, 30 June 1796 (Hyde, 10.233, quoted in Pride and Negligence, p. 13).

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Introduction Tristram Shandy’s, will contain not only Dr Johnson’s life but his opinions also.162 [emphasis added] It seems likely, therefore, that Forbes saw or heard considerably more of Boswell’s journal than Boswell himself reported. Boswell wrote several topical pamphlets during his Edinburgh years, and in at least one instance at the end of 1783 Forbes was consulted before publication.163 On another occasion, however, Boswell twice denied to Forbes that he was the author of an anonymous pamphlet critical of a Scottish judge and corrupt judicial practices, A Letter to Robert MacQueen Lord Braxfield. At the time of the first denial, recorded four days after publication in his journal entry for 12 May 1780, Forbes asked, at ‘a little social tete á tete with him’ in his counting house, ‘if I was not the Authour? I denied it even to him, though I scrupled a little considering my confidential regard for him. But I wished to be concealed at least for some time, as much as possible’. This passage reveals how unusual and difficult it was for Boswell to be less than candid with a friend with whom he normally shared so many personal details. Forbes was prominent among those to whom Boswell turned for guidance with the seventy papers he published in the London Magazine between October 1777 and August 1783 under the pseudonym ‘The Hypochondriack’. In late August 1781 he sent Forbes the first forty numbers, requesting detailed comments to assist him in his plan to collect all the papers when the series was finished and publish them as ‘a Volume or Volumes’. He also requested strict secrecy, believing that his authorship was not generally known.164 Forbes appears to have been sent a second set of numbers which he reported reading in his letter to Boswell of 9 October 1782. Although there is no record that Forbes ever complied with Boswell’s wish to provide him with detailed comments on each number, Boswell clearly thought enough of him as a literary critic to continue asking for his help. Forbes also played roles in Boswell’s two most enduring works. Mention has already been made of his appearances in The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, meeting with Boswell and Johnson on several occasions in Edinburgh before they went north, and at least once after they returned to Edinburgh at the conclusion of their tour. Unlike most of the portions of that journal which Forbes (and Johnson) read in manuscript, the Edinburgh segments of the journal were fragmentary, and Boswell fleshed them out with material added years later.165 This point is well illustrated by comparing the substantive passages about Forbes Forbes to Mercer, 12 Jan. 1785 (FP 83/5). Boswell’s journal entry for 29 December 1783 mentions reading to Forbes and Nairne the manuscript of A Letter to the People of Scotland, on the Present State of the Nation. By James Boswell, Esq., written in opposition to Fox’s East India Bill, and in support of the East India Company and Pitt’s new ministry. Nairne had helped to revise it, and ‘Both of them approved of it’. The pamphlet would be published two days later (Cal. Merc., 31 Dec. 1783). 164  To Forbes, [28 Aug. 1781]. 165  ‘I did not begin to keep a regular full journal till some days after we had set out from Edinburgh’, Boswell wrote in the Tour (Life v. 23), and he made a similar admission about the last days in Edinburgh following the travellers’ return from the Hebrides, after the morning of 11 November 1773 (Life v. 394). 162  163 

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Introduction in Boswell’s original Hebrides journal of 1773 and the published Tour of 1785. In the latter, Forbes is introduced on Sunday 15 August in the following laudatory paragraph: Mr. [William] Scott came to breakfast, at which I introduced to Dr. Johnson, and him, my friend Sir William Forbes, now of Pitsligo; a man of whom too much good cannot be said; who, with distinguished abilities and application in his profession of a Banker, is at once a good companion, and a good christian; which I think is saying enough. Yet it is but justice to record, that once, when he was in a dangerous illness, he was watched with the anxious apprehension of a general calamity; day and night his house was beset with affectionate inquiries; and, upon his recovery, Te deum was the universal chorus from the hearts of his countrymen.166 In the discussion which follows, Forbes serves as a foil for Johnson, who counters Forbes’s contention that lawyers should take only causes they believe are just with a speech about the justice or injustice of a cause being no concern of a lawyer. Then, when noting their attendance at Baron Smith’s Chapel to hear a sermon by Rev. George Carr, Boswell adds, ‘A selection of Mr. Carre’s sermons has, since his death, been published by Sir William Forbes, and the world has acknowledged their uncommon merit.’167 Finally, at the end of the book Boswell refers to Forbes as if he were a recognized arbiter of literary merit: ‘It would be improper for me to boast of my own labours; but I cannot refrain from publishing such praise as I received from such a man as Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo, after the perusal of the original manuscript of my Journal.’ All these passages also appear in the 1936 and 1961 editions of Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. 1773, edited by Frederick A. Pottle and Charles H. Bennett in order ‘to give, so far as it is recoverable and readily readable, the narrative that Boswell actually wrote in 1773 and that Johnson read’. Yet Johnson never read these passages,168 and neither did Forbes. Very little of this material on Forbes appears in Boswell’s surviving notes for the initial portion of his journal in Edinburgh (J 32). Those notes record Forbes’s several appearances at breakfast, dinner, and church, as well as Carr’s biblical text, and the fact that Carr could not be heard well because his voice was too faint. Everything else was added later, to make the text fuller, more readable, and more representative of Boswell’s state of mind at the time of publication in 1785. Indeed, three points which the published book makes about Forbes date from well after 1773: ‘Sir William Forbes, now of Pitsligo’ was not applicable until 1782; Forbes’s undated serious illness and recovery occurred in December 1776 and January 1777, as discussed below; and Forbes’s edition of Carr’s Sermons did not appear until May Life v. 24–25. Life v. 28. 168  Hebrides, pp. x, xii. 166  167 

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Introduction 1777. Thus, Boswell fashioned the complimentary paragraph on Forbes near the beginning of the published Tour to reflect the high level of intimacy which existed between them in 1785 but had not yet developed at the time of Johnson’s visit to Scotland in 1773.169 The high praise of Forbes in the Tour raised two difficulties, however. First, when Malone was reporting to Boswell (then at Auchinleck) on early reactions to the Tour in London, he mentioned that one unnamed person ‘thinks you have paid too much court to your countrymen’. Boswell denied the charge in his reply, remarking, ‘Neither do I think I have paid more court to such of my countrymen as are praised than they deserve’.170 It is likely that the unnamed critic was thinking particularly of the complimentary characterization of Forbes in the Tour, not only because it has no equal in the book but also because in 1785 Forbes was not very well known in England, and for that reason Boswell’s acclaim probably seemed excessive to some English readers. For example, many Scottish readers would have nodded in assent when encountering the undated ‘Te deum’ incident concerning the euphoric response to Forbes’s recovery from a life-threatening illness, but it is difficult to imagine their English counterparts having a similar reaction. That event can be dated to December 1776 from various sources, including Boswell’s journal entry on the 22nd of that month: ‘Sir William Forbes had been dangerously ill, last week. It was for the credit of mankind, as well as his honour that there was an universal concern for so worthy a man. He was now out of danger. I resolved to be more with him, as I regretted my being so seldom with him, when there was a prospect of losing him.’ Full recovery took longer, and friends continued to celebrate it until well into the new year. On 12 January Boswell records in his journal ‘a visit to Sir William Forbes, to congratulate him on his recovery’, and on 18 February 1777 he tells of accompanying Forbes on a visit to St. David’s (Masonic) Lodge, where ‘It was most agreable to witness the mutual happiness of him & his bretheren, on meeting after his recovery. Never were compliments more sincerely exchanged.’171 In Edinburgh Forbes was considered a model citizen for his business acumen and fair-dealing, his exemplary contributions as a philanthropist and improver, and his unrivalled civic leadership. But few in England would have known his name 169  Boswell did the opposite in regard to Charles Hay, a friend of his in 1773, who was present at Sunday dinner at Boswell’s Edinburgh home on 15 August, along with Forbes, Scott, Arbuthnot, Johnson, and Boswell. By 1785, Hay and Boswell were no longer friendly, and the description of the company in the Tour was accordingly edited to read ‘Sir William Forbes, Mr. Scott, Mr. Arbuthnot, and another gentleman dined with us’ (Life v. 32; BEJ, p. 104 n. 13). Just as Forbes had been transformed into a figure of great consequence and merit in the twelve years between the tour and Boswell’s published account of it, Hay had completely lost his identity. 170  From Malone, 5 Oct. 1785; To Malone, 13 Oct. 1785, Corr. 4, pp. 200, 207. 171  On 14 Feb. 1778 Forbes, in his capacity as Grand Master Mason of Scotland, delivered a funeral oration for a distinguished predecessor in that office, William St. Clair of Roslin (1700–78), in which he referred to himself as ‘one who has but lately escaped from the gates of the grave’ (Scots Mag. Feb. 1778, xl. 59). See also relevant parts of various letters summarized and printed in Beattie Corr. i. 203–04, 206–07, iii. 40–41, 43–44, including this remark made by Beattie in a reply (dated 25 Dec. 1776) to a letter from William Creech informing him of Forbes’s recovery: ‘Sir William Forbes comes nearer to a perfect character than any other person I have ever known or heard of. For my own part, my soul is so attached to him, that I know not how I could have lived, if he had been taken from me’ (Beattie Corr. iii. 44).

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Introduction in the autumn of 1785. The second difficulty was more troubling to Forbes. Immediately after his statement about the propriety of including in his book ‘such praise [of the original Hebrides journal] as I received from such a man as Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo’, Boswell inserted the complete text of the complimentary letter which Forbes had sent him on 7 March 1777, while he was reading the manuscript of the Hebrides journal for the second time.172 The inclusion of this letter in the Tour exposed Boswell to charges of vanity,173 but for Forbes it generated a more serious problem. The combination in the Tour of Boswell’s lavish praise of Forbes and Forbes’s praise of the manuscript of Boswell’s Hebrides journal created the false impression that Forbes had, in the words of one hostile critic (Lord Macdonald), given ‘his sanction and approbation to the work in which he must have discovered his own just panegyric’.174 It was an embarrassing situation for Forbes, who had not intended his letter endorsing the Hebrides journal for publication, had not given Boswell permission to publish it, and had not seen Boswell’s ‘panegyric’ before the Tour was published.175 Although Boswell, at Forbes’s urging, inserted a footnote into the second edition in order to clarify the situation,176 he remained privately unapologetic, telling Forbes that ‘your anxiety not to appear to have approved of a work which is unpopular in Scotland, is too Scottish’.177 Forbes had one persistent criticism of Boswell’s later writing: that Boswell did not take sufficient pains to avoid giving offence, especially by removing the names of living persons whose feelings might be hurt by the way they were represented in his books. After the Tour was published in October 1785, Forbes experienced this problem first-hand, not only in regard to Lord Macdonald—who was furious about his treatment by Boswell, and indirectly criticized Forbes also, as already noted—but also in regard to two friends who also believed that Boswell had misunderstood or misrepresented them, Alexander Fraser Tytler and Thomas Blacklock. Forbes was then put in the uncomfortable position of serving as an intermediary for revisions in the second edition. Boswell adopted a defensive posture in these situations, claiming that the work’s ‘authenticity’ rested ‘not Life v. 413–14. See the conclusion to the list of instances of Boswell’s vanity in the Tour by ‘AntiStiletto’ (Gent. Mag. Jan. 1786, lvi. 17–23): ‘And, lastly, By his printing a letter … from Sir William Forbes, in which that gentleman says, “that this Journal is formed on the most instructive plan that can be thought of;” and that he is “not sure an ordinary observer would be so well acquainted either with Dr. J. or the manners of the Hebrides, by a personal intercourse, as by a perusal of it”’ (p. 18). 174  From Lord Macdonald, 26 Nov. 1785 (Life v. 577–78); To Forbes, [20 Dec. 1785] n. 1. In his letter to Boswell of 6 Dec. 1785, Forbes states that ‘many people’ were blaming him for this reason, although it is not known to whom he was referring or how and where they had expressed their criticism. 175  More than twenty years later Forbes would include in his biography of Beattie his letter to Beattie of 9 January 1786 (under date in this volume), which alludes to this issue in the following sentence: ‘I have also been accused of having written that complimentary letter, because of the eulogium with which he has been pleased to honour me in his book: but that passage, in which I am mentioned in so flattering a manner, was not in the original MS. which I saw.’ 176  From Forbes, 6 Dec. 1785; To Forbes, [20 Dec. 1785] n. 2; Life v. 413 n. 3. 177  To Forbes, [20 Dec. 1785]. 172  173 

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Introduction upon memory, but upon what was written at the time’, and that ‘People must be satisfied to appear as they really did. Should they be allowed to improve and enlarge their conversations, upon after thought, the labour would be endless and the Book not authentick.’178 As the present volume demonstrates, however, the written journal on which Boswell staked his reputation in both these cases was imprecise and ambiguous, and the controversy with Tytler hinged chiefly on a matter of memory—namely, whether Tytler had verbally authorized Boswell to publish an anecdote concerning him.179 Boswell’s revisions in the second edition were made reluctantly, and he remained defiantly certain that his representations were accurate and ‘authentick’. In his letter to Beattie of 9 January 1786, Forbes acknowledged that Boswell had made some softenings since Forbes had read the manuscript of the journal years earlier, and that the second edition (which he had not yet seen) was thought to contain more of them. But he worried that Boswell would make the same mistake in his next work. ‘As his “Life of Dr. Johnson” will probably be a work of a similar nature,’ he wrote, ‘I have taken the liberty of strongly enjoining him to be more careful what he inserts, so as not to make to himself enemies, or give pain to any person whom he may have occasion to mention: and I hope he will do so, as he seems sorry for some parts of the other’. Forbes was alluding to his letter to Boswell of 6 December 1785, where he had written, ‘I trust with some confidence, that you will pay a particular attention, in your life of Dr. Johnson, to insert nothing that can give either pain or offence to any mortal.’ He would return to the same issue again in a letter of 25 July 1787, adding hopefully: ‘I make no doubt you will be particularly careful in that respect, in your next publication.’ When the Life appeared nearly five and a half years later, Forbes wrote an enthusiastic letter on 28 May 1791 to thank Boswell for sending him a presentation copy and for giving him such a prominent role in the section on the Round Robin, where most of Forbes’s letter on that subject from 19 October 1787 was reproduced. ‘I am highly honored by your insertion of the Round Robin,’ he stated, ‘which was the first thing I lookt for; and I deservedly feel both a pride and a pleasure by being recorded in such illustrious Company.’ Besides his starring role in the Round Robin segment, Forbes would have also discovered himself at two other places in the Life. The first was the supper at the Crown and Anchor Tavern on 13 April 1776, which Boswell altered from the original journal entry in order to make Johnson appear milder and Forbes less like the object of his ridicule.180 Forbes’s other appearance occurred just after the presentation of the Ashbourne journal of September 1777. As in the Tour, Boswell quoted directly from a personal letter from Forbes (dated 21 December 1779) for self-serving purposes (‘I suppose there is not a man in the world to whom he [Johnson] discloses his sentiments so freely as to yourself’, Forbes had written), while also paying Forbes another com178  The first quotation comes from Appendix No. I in the second edition of The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson (Tour2, p. 532; Life v. 419); the second comes from the letter to Forbes cited in the preceding note. 179  See Appendix 3 below, and To Forbes, [20 Dec. 1785] n. 5. 180  Life iii. 42; To Forbes, 11 Apr. 1776 n. 1.

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Introduction pliment (referring to ‘Sir William Forbes, in whom I have always placed deserved confidence’).181 Forbes had no reason to object to the way Boswell had portrayed and quoted him in the Life, but he was soon expressing his characteristic disapproval of the treatment accorded to others. His letter to Boswell of 13 October 1791 combined praise for the book with his favourite criticism: I rejoice exceedingly, My Dear Sir, at the profitable issue of your publication of Dr. Johnsons life, from the perusal of which I derived a very high degree of entertainment. I found in it, indeed, several things that might, and some, I must honestly confess, that I do humbly think ought to have been omitted. Yet I must at the same time add, that I met with many an[on]ymous anecdotes, to which I could easily supply a Key, from having formerly heard you relate them to me, and which you have prudently and discreetly, foreborn to apply to their Authors by name. I feel regret that You did not oftner use the same precaution. You will pardon me, I hope, for this remark, and allow me the same indulgence in that respect, that you have kindly shown me on former occasions. Before Boswell had a chance to reply in full, Forbes wrote again, re-phrasing his criticism from his last letter and explaining that it was meant to apply to the second edition of the Life, which he hoped would include the same kinds of revisions which had occurred in the second edition of the Tour. ‘It was with a view to this second edition,’ he remarked, ‘that I took the liberty of hinting in my last letter, that I had found some things in the Book, which I cannot help thinking might be better omitted.’182 On 11 May 1793, two months before the appearance of the second edition of the Life, Boswell wrote to Forbes, then travelling on the Continent with his wife and daughter, of his intention to produce a book of his own continental travels during the mid-1760s. Expecting the book to ‘be ready for publication next winter’, he wanted his friend to assist him by negotiating a translation arrangement ‘with foreign Booksellers’. Forbes would not receive this letter until some time after arriving back in Edinburgh in mid-June. In the meantime, Boswell and Forbes met, for what would prove to be the last time, on 11 or 12 June, after Forbes, briefly in London on his way home from the Continent, received at his hotel a note from Boswell’s elder son, Alexander, about his father having been attacked by a street robber a few days earlier.183 Although it has been suggested that the injuries Boswell suffered in this attack caused him to suspend his projected book of continental travels,184 Life iii. 208. From Forbes, 29 Oct.–4 Nov. 1791. 183  Alexander Boswell to Forbes, 11 June 1793 (under date in this volume); From Forbes, 8 July 1793 n. 3. 184  Great Biographer, p. 221. 181  182 

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Introduction there is no evidence that Boswell ever began seriously working on that book, and the surviving materials relating to it raise serious doubts about whether it could ever have been completed.185 Forbes seems to have taken Boswell at his word about the progress of his book of European travels, however. In his reply from Edinburgh on 8 July, he sent encouragement before quickly returning to his familiar refrain: ‘I have only just one thing to request of you, that you be particularly careful not to insert a Syllable that can either expose the weakness or hurt the feelings of any one. You know I have some times taken the liberty of an old friend to touch on this subject to you, on former occasions; and I cannot help reminding you of it, when you are again preparing a work for the public of a similar nature with the former: in which, amidst all its excellence as a most entertaining and instructive performance, there are several things that might, and some that ought to have been omitted.’ Boswell had managed to restrain himself up to this time, but he could no longer do so. On 24 October 1793 he sent a reply which began with some pleasantries about Forbes’s ‘goodness to me’, Lady Forbes’s health, and their ‘intimate’ family friendship and then thanked Forbes ‘for your friendly caution to avoid giving offence in the account which I am to publish of my Travels, though there we think a little differently, I mean as to the degree in which offence is to be avoided; for, although I should be very sorry to hurt any worthy person, I can by no means think it a duty to abstain from censuring the unworthy, or laughing at the ridiculous, though they should be vexed.’ There the matter ended as far as Boswell was concerned, but not Forbes, who would raise the same criticism again with Malone several years later, in regard to the posthumous third edition of the Life, which would appear in 1799.186 It is difficult to know what effect Forbes’s moderating influence may have had on Boswell’s revisions of the Tour and the Life. Some passages were softened in the second editions of both works, and in one case—the angry response by Alexander Fraser Tytler to the way he was treated in a passage concerning James Macpherson’s Ossian in the first edition of the Tour—Tytler’s name was removed after Boswell contacted Forbes in a panic in order to have him help resolve the issue.187 L. F. Powell pointed out that ‘The number of anonymous or general descriptions of persons in the Tour is not so great proportionally as in the Life, which is of much wider scope: the respective totals are 70 and 511.’188 We can only wonder to what degree Forbes was responsible for this shift. In many of the anecdotes he related, Boswell had to choose between naming names, which he associated with ‘authenticity’, and protecting the feelings of others, and if his natural inclination ran towards full disclosure, Forbes never let him forget that such a policy could have harmful consequences. ‘A Stronger Sense of Piety’. Sir William Forbes was raised in the English Episcopal tradition of north east Scotland, with its heavy mystical component, by a mother who regularly read Thomas à Kempis and Augustine’s Confessions, and considered See To Forbes, 11 May 1793 n. 7. Forbes to Malone, 22 May 1798, Corr. 2, p. 461; From Forbes, 8 July 1793 n. 14. 187  See To Forbes, [5 Nov. 1785], and Appendix 3. 188  Life v. ix; vi. 431–75. 185  186 

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Introduction herself a faithful member of the Church of England until her death in 1789.189 Unlike the nonjuring (Jacobite) Scottish Episcopal Church, English Episcopal chapels in Scotland were ‘qualified’ because they were loyal to the Hanoverian dynasty, but they had no church polity beyond the congregation itself. As their opponents maintained, without bishops they were essentially Congregationalists or Independents, Episcopal in name only.190 Other problems followed from this one. Their clergymen had to be ordained by bishops in the Church of England or Church of Ireland, and most were (like George Carr) imported from England. Moreover, English Episcopal congregations in Scotland were deprived of certain rites requiring bishops, such as confirmation of young people and consecration of land for burial grounds. Ultimately, the solution to these problems would be to unify the two varieties of Scottish Episcopalians under the banner of the Scottish Episcopal Church. This solution became feasible after the death of Charles Edward Stuart in January 1788 brought an end to that church’s formal allegiance to Jacobitism and led to the repeal of the penal laws against it four years later. Forbes supported that repeal and encouraged the Scottish Episcopal Church to accept the Eucharistic liturgy of the Church of England and subscribe to its Thirty-nine Articles as a prerequisite for ecclesiastical union with English Episcopal chapels, which then occurred, congregation by congregation, during the last years of the eighteenth century and early years of the nineteenth century.191 Throughout Boswell’s lifetime, however, there was no such union in Scotland, and in the absence of bishops, it fell to Forbes and some of his lay colleagues, such as Nairne and the Tytlers (William and later his son Alexander Fraser), to manage the English Episcopal houses of worship in Edinburgh. Their most important achievement was to build and manage the New English or Cowgate Chapel, intended to unite the city’s three small chapels (in Carrubber’s Close, Skinner’s Close, and Blackfriars Wynd) in one impressive structure, with a new Snetzler organ and capacity for seating a thousand people. Forbes was the driving force behind the construction of the new chapel between 1771 and 1774, at a cost of £800 for the land and more than £6000 for the building, and he remained a leader of the English Episcopal community in Edinburgh after it was completed.192 Had Johnson visited Scotland a little more than a year later than he did, he could have heard George Carr preach at the Cowgate Chapel rather than See Dame Christian Forbes, pp. 24–25, 37. Boswell would quote a letter to Johnson of 2 Feb. 1779 from Bishop William Falconer (1707–84), Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church from 1762 to 1784, regarding ‘the episcopal clergy who take the oaths to the present government’: ‘as Bishop Falconer observed, “they are not Episcopals; for they are under no bishop”’ (Life iii. 371–72). 191  See Dame Christian Forbes, pp. 25–28 n. 1, and the letter from the ‘Trustees and Vestrymen of the English Episcopal Chapel in Edinburgh’ (Forbes, Nairne, Alexander Fraser Tytler, and four others), to Bishop John Skinner (1744–1816), Primus of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, 26 Feb. 1805, in John Skinner (Bishop Skinner’s son [1769–1841]), Annals of Scottish Episcopacy, from the Year 1788 to the Year 1816, 1818, pp. 366–68, and other materials relating to Forbes in that volume, including the reference to him as ‘the best lay friend whom the Scottish Episcopal Church … had for a century seen’ (p. 364). 192  John Parker Lawson, History of the Scottish Episcopal Church from the Revolution to the Present Time, 1843, pp. 361–62; Arnot, pp. 284–87; Scots Mag. Oct. 1774, xxxvi. 505–06; ‘Forbes’, pp. 356–57. 189  190 

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INTRODUCTION at Baron Smith’s.193 But as things turned out, Baron Smith’s also remained open after 1774, and Boswell (usually calling it the Old English Chapel) continued to go there as well as to the English or New English or New Episcopal Chapel in the Cowgate when he wished to attend a Church of England service in Edinburgh.194 Christian piety and conduct were always central to Forbes. ‘Letters Explanatory’ was his chief avocation for decades, and it provides some idea of Forbes’s guiding religious principles. The first volume sets out the purpose of the work and certain fundamental beliefs (e.g., belief in God and in the existence of a future state) and then traces the history of Christianity through its sacred books, the Old Testament (letters 5–8) and the New (letters 9–17), including Christian revelation, the authenticity of the Gospel, the certainty of the Resurrection, and various kinds of biblical evidence, from miracles and prophecies. Volume 2 treats the development of moral doctrine and religious rites in the early days of Christianity, stressing ‘the Utility of the Christian Revelation’ in relation to ‘Heathen’ beliefs, Roman religion, and ‘antient Philosophy’ (letters 18–28). It then addresses one of Forbes’s central beliefs, the notion of divine Providence, stressing its consistency with the idea of human liberty and defending it against various objections (letters 29–35). The third volume discusses practical aspects of Christianity, namely the efficacy of public worship and private prayer (including a long letter, no. 38, on the Lord’s Supper), meditation and self-examination (letter 39), charity (letters 41–42), and five letters (nos. 43–47) on ‘Cautions against the opposite extremes of enthusiasm or indifference in Religion’ and ‘true Religion perfectly compatible with the performance of all the duties of active life’, including guarding against ‘immoderate or ill-regulated Ambition’ (which we have seen he considered particularly appropriate advice for Boswell), the attainment of ‘Contentment’, and ‘Resignation to the Will of Heaven the best support under the pressure of Calamity’. Finally, there are reflections on death (letter 48) and two letters (nos. 49 and 50) which conclude the work and state Forbes’s ‘Profession of Christian Beleif’. In ‘Letters Explanatory’, Forbes expresses his preference for Episcopalianism over Presbyterianism, and particularly notes that ‘I dislike some of the theological tenets of Calvin’. But he also points out that ‘the moderate and enlightened men of both churches very nearly agree at present, on those points on which they set the fundamental articles of our faith’, and his footnotes cite moderate Presbyterian 193  Carr was the senior clergyman at the Cowgate Chapel from the time it opened until his death in 1776. In 1800 Forbes would be chiefly responsible for securing that position for the philosopher Rev. Archibald Alison, who had married Dorothea Gregory, daughter of his friend Dr. John Gregory. 194  Arnot, p. 287. Boswell registered fluctuating impressions of the two English Episcopal chapels in his journal. He preferred Baron Smith’s ‘as a privater assembly than the New Episcopal Chapel’ (17 Sept. 1780) and as a place to worship with John Johnston, and some time after it began to have organ music (8 Dec. 1782) he purchased his own seat there (30 Jan. and 15 Feb. 1784; Forbes also continued to maintain his seat at Baron Smith’s). He was sometimes also pleased with the New English Chapel (e.g., he called it ‘a fine episcopal chapel’ on 6 Nov. 1774, recorded being ‘happy in a considerable degree’ there on 18 June 1780, and ‘enjoyed devotion delightfully’ while sitting in ‘Lady Colvill’s seat’ on 8 Oct. 1780), but he recorded complaints about the music at Christmas services in 1775 and 1776, and on another occasion ‘Felt an unpleasing indifference’ which he feared could have led him to ‘experience insipidity & perhaps disgust’ if he attended regularly (11 Aug. 1782).

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Introduction ministers such as Hugh Blair (‘an eloquent and excellent preacher’) and George Campbell (1719–96) along with Anglican and English Episcopal clergymen such as Beilby Porteus (Bishop of London) and George Carr, as well as secular authors such as Joseph Addison and Adam Smith. Forbes grounds his preference for the Church of England not in ordination, church government, or doctrinal issues but in ‘the decency of her ceremonies, and the sublimity and excellence of her liturgy, so well calculated to engage and keep alive the attention, by its variety in the performance of publick worship’, when contrasted with the ‘nakedness and want of form in the Presbyterian mode of worship’. After expressing his denominational preference, however, Forbes admonishes his children ‘to live in perfect charity with the virtuous members of all churches’ and ‘avoid the intolerant and persecuting spirit that would limit the mercies of the Almighty to a particular sect or party’.195 Boswell came from a very different religious background and never read Forbes’s ‘Letters Explanatory’, but his mature religious views were similar to those of Forbes on most matters. The Boswells were members of Scotland’s established Presbyterian church, the Church of Scotland. As a prominent member of the Edinburgh legal establishment, Lord Auchinleck had a pew in the most prestigious congregation in Edinburgh, the portion of St. Giles known as the New or High Kirk. There Boswell’s friend, the Moderate divine Hugh Blair, presided for most of his career, becoming the most popular preacher in Britain as a result of the five volumes of sermons he prepared for the press over the span of a quarter century (1777–1801, the last volume being posthumous). However, kinship ties, friendships, and other factors pulled Boswell away from Blair’s Moderate Party in the Kirk, towards the more staunchly orthodox, and more aggressively Whig, Popular Party. At Auchinleck, he enjoyed good relations with his former tutor Rev. John Dun, who was the minister from 1752 until his death in 1792.196 From the time he became the 9th Laird of Auchinleck in late summer 1782, Boswell was the lay patron of that parish, entitled to present a new minister when the office was vacant. He took this responsibility seriously on the only occasion he ever had to implement it, in 1792–93, proudly recounting to Forbes that he had travelled from London to Auchinleck and ‘conscientiously made the Parish of Auchinleck happy with a good Minister of the Gospel, and at the same time gratified my own wish to help a good scholar and a pleasing man’.197 Yet Boswell yearned for a grander, more uplifting religious experience than he found in the Presbyterian church into which he was born. After a youthful, short-lived conversion to Roman Catholicism in London in 1760, he settled into a life of multi-denominational piety, in which it was not uncommon for him to worship in different settings according to circumstances.198 In London in later life Forbes, ‘Letters Explanatory’, iii. 110–13. Richard B. Sher, ‘Scottish Divines and Legal Lairds: Boswell’s Scots Presbyterian Identity’, in New Light on Boswell, ed. Greg Clingham, 1991, pp. 28–55; To Forbes, 11 May 1793 n. 15. 197  To Forbes, 11 May 1793. He neglected to mention, however, that this clergyman, Rev. John Lindsay, had not been his first choice for the post, as discussed in the annotation to this letter. 198  James J. Caudle, ‘James Boswell and the Bi-Confessional State’, in Religious Identities 195 

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INTRODUCTION he sometimes worshipped at Catholic chapels, and he was particularly pleased with Church of England services, where he relished the pomp and vestments of the clergy (especially in the more ornate cathedral worship), the written liturgy and formulaic prayers in the Book of Common Prayer, the hymn- and psalm-singing accompanied by organ—all very different from the Church of Scotland. Although doctrinal differences were not pronounced between the two established churches, he remained tortured by the Presbyterians’ Calvinist emphasis on sin and damnation, which had terrorized him as a child.199 From the time Temple first took him to the English Episcopal chapel in Carrubber’s Close in Edinburgh when they were university students, he associated the Church of England with heaven and the Church of Scotland with hell.200 ‘Between ourselves, the Church of England Worship is infinitely superiour to our presbyterian method’, he wrote to his future wife from Oxford on 5 September 1769. ‘I at present have my mind raised to heaven by the grand churches, noble organs and solemn service of the churches around me’.201 His preference for the Church of England was not unusual among Scottish Presbyterian professional men,202 and it was reinforced by friends in his London circle, such as Johnson, Langton, and Barnard, as well as his college friends Temple (who would spend most of his career as a clergyman in Cornwall) and John Johnston, and Andrew Erskine and his family. But Sir William Forbes was perhaps the strongest influence of this kind. ‘In what regards the essentials of Christianity and its practical duties, I trust you and I shall never differ’, Forbes wrote to Boswell in a letter of 1 June 1789. This was the ‘Church’ component in their shared ‘Church and King’ ideology, and it constituted another strong bond between the two friends. A key feature was their shared preference for Episcopal forms of worship and the joy it brought them. When Forbes was in London early in 1792, he and Boswell worshipped together at select Church of England churches and chapels, and upon returning to Edinburgh he recollected, in his letter of 23 April 1792, ‘the happy hours and half hours we in Britain, 1660–1832, ed. William Gibson and Robert G. Ingram, 2005, pp. 119–46. 199  See Boswell’s sketch of his early life, and its various drafts and accompanying letters, prepared for Rousseau, in Journal 1, pp. 350–69; the sketch is translated from Boswell’s French in Earlier Years, Ch. 1. 200  Although Arnot, p. 284, called the chapel at Carrubber’s Close ‘mean’, Boswell remarked in his journal that it ‘has always made me fancy myself in heaven’ (16 July 1769). That feeling increased his discomfort when he later attended a Berean service there, after its Snetzler organ had been removed, and was ‘shocked that the chapel at the foot of Carrrubber’s Close, where I first was charmed with the Church of England worship, should be debased by such vulgar cant’ (Journ. 2 Sept. 1781). Boswell had drawn the heaven-hell analogy between Anglican and Presbyterian worship in conversation with David Hume and in a letter to Sir David Dalrymple (later Lord Hailes) of 1 Feb. 1764, as we know from Dalrymple’s reply of 10 Oct. 1764 (C 1432). 201  L 169. 202  James Beattie worshipped at the Church of Scotland when in Aberdeen, where he had to keep up appearances as the Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic at Marischal College, but at the Aberdeenshire spa town of Peterhead, where he spent his summers, he attended the English Episcopal chapel (William Laing to Forbes, 1 Nov. 1803, FP 95). Dr. John Gregory was bred to the Church of Scotland, but his wife Elizabeth Forbes (a distant relation of Forbes) and their children were English Episcopal; when he died, the public Church of Scotland funeral was preceded by a private Church of England funeral, according to the wishes of his family (Forbes to Beattie, 23 Feb. 1773, FP 98/1).

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Introduction spent together in easy, friendly discussion; and, how unfashionable soever it may appear, on our attendance together at places of public worship, where I trust the devotion of the one was not entirely unaided by that of the other’. In person and in their correspondence, in Edinburgh and in London, they discussed the meaning of the Lord’s Supper, resignation to the will of God in the face of tragedy, the workings of divine Providence, free will and determinism, the importance of charity, and other religious topics. For Boswell, Forbes was a constant source of religious as well as emotional consolation, and his influence is frequently apparent. In regard to family and personal prayer, for instance, Boswell regularly turned to the three volumes of Carr’s Sermons which Forbes edited for publication in 1777.203 Christian mysticism constitutes another example of shared interest. In a journal entry for 10 June 1779, Boswell records Forbes saying that ‘he liked the Mysticks because they make every part of life Religion so as to be serving God in all the common affairs of life’. On 20 October 1782 he proudly wrote to Forbes from Auchinleck, ‘My mind at present is just as I could wish it to be, owing I beleive to daily reading the sacred scriptures and Thomas a Kempis, and to sincere devotion.’204 In the biographical footnote on Boswell in his biography of Beattie, Forbes would write, ‘I have known few men who possessed a stronger sense of piety, or more fervent devotion’. Similarly, when Forbes summed up Boswell in a letter to his wife from Auchinleck on the day after his funeral (9 June 1795), he remarked on the appropriateness of Hamlet’s famous words on the ironic fate of Yorick, so talkative and mirthful in life and now stone quiet in death. But he quickly added that, ‘infinitely better’, the friend he knew also possessed ‘a warmth of heart, and a strong impression of Religion on his mind, as well as a fervour of devotion in the Practice of it, notwithstanding all his eccentricities, which I have never seen exceeded in any man. Many a joyous, and many a solemn discussion I have had with him!’ In experiencing, appreciating, reinforcing, and sometimes shaping the pious side of Boswell’s personality, Forbes once again came closer to knowing the whole man than many of Boswell’s other friends and acquaintances. Engaging the ‘Foul Fiend’. If a similar religious outlook constituted one of the firmest ties between Boswell and Forbes, the situation was very different with regard to the mental condition known in the eighteenth century as melancholia or hypochrondria, which Boswell sometimes called ‘the foul fiend’. Boswell’s lifelong bouts of depression are well known to every reader of his journal, where his chronic mood swings often indicate the disorder known today as cyclothymia, or bipolar personality.205 As a masterful performer, however, Boswell was often able to appear exuberant in company even while suffering from depression, or perhaps it may be truer to say that his symptoms were often more severe when he was alone and recording his impressions.206 It has also been noted that Boswell projected ‘hypochondrical See From Forbes, 9 July 1790 n. 7. On Christian mysticism, see To Forbes, 20 Oct. 1782 n. 11. 205  D. W. Purdie and N. Gow, ‘The Maladies of James Boswell, Advocate’, Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, xxxii (2002): 197–202, esp. 201. In a letter to Paoli of 10 Dec. 1791 (sent on 16 Aug. 1792), Boswell remarked on the ‘alternate agitation and depression of spirits to which I am unhappily subject’ (Later Years, p. 458). 206  ‘You complain of your constitutional melencholy’, his precocious sixteen-year-old 203  204 

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Introduction self-indulgence’ as a fundamental aspect of his public persona.207 In December 1780 he articulated the symptoms of his affliction in Hypochondriack no. 39: an ‘idea of multitude, disorder, fluctuation, and tumult’, a ‘low and desponding’ opinion of oneself, a feeling of being ‘distracted between indolence and shame’, a sense of everything appearing ‘quite indifferent’, an inability to ‘fix his attention upon any one thing’, an ‘extreme degree of irritability’, a fluctuation between being ‘so weakly timid as to be afraid of every thing in which there is a possibility of danger’ and starting ‘into the extremes of rashness and desperation’, a belief that the ‘hideous representations of life’ fostered by one’s ‘gloomy’ and ‘powerful’ imagination ‘are true’, and a complete loss of hope that the future might be better. This paper is the only one of the seventy in the Hypochondriack series to have a biblical motto at its head—‘In the multitude of my thoughts within me, thy comforts delight my soul’ (Psalm 94)—and the paper closes with three paragraphs on ‘the habitual exercise of piety’ as the sufferer’s only reliable source of comfort.208 Boswell’s journal relates an interesting discussion about melancholia at a meeting with Forbes in Edinburgh in March 1778. Boswell was ‘gloomy’ because of ‘indisposition’ on 9 March, ‘somewhat better’ on the 10th, but ‘in indifferent spirits’ and having ‘no satisfaction in any thing’ on the 11th, when he ‘went & sat a good while with Sir William Forbes’. They first discussed the anxiety associated with journeys, such as the one to London which Boswell was about to undertake. ‘We then talked of the long journey death’. In his journal account, Boswell provides no information about his own ideas, feelings, or fears, as expressed in this conversation. Instead, he records Forbes’s views, including this comment: ‘He told me he never had experienced one moment of vapours or melancholy, so could not conceive another afflicted in that way. He never was uneasy but from some cause which he could distinctly tell.’ Boswell must have been taken with this revelation, because he would allude to it twice in their later correspondence, including the last letter he ever wrote to Forbes (cited below). Similarly, Boswell’s journal records two occasions in which Forbes told him that ‘he never felt aversion to be active’ and ‘was never indolent’; ten years later, a letter from Boswell would cite this difference between them as a barrier to fully comprehending his affliction: ‘You who never put off till tomorrow what you should do today, can have no notion of that inexplicable indolence which at times has dominion over less perfect mortals, so as to prevent them from doing perhaps the very thing which they most earnestly son Jamie wrote to him near the end of his life. ‘That to be sure together with other vexatious circumstances sometimes harass you. But who so merry and gay as you in company though at times gloomy at home? Why may it not be so their happiness may be as much put on as yours is?’ (From James Boswell, Jr., 10 Nov. 1794, C 354). According to Joseph Farington, Euphemia Boswell stated six years after Boswell’s death that her father was ‘a pleasant and a good humoured companion’ with the family, and that ‘fits of low spirits … were transient & passed off in an hour’ (Diary Farington, 25 Sept. 1801, v. 1634), while Malone observed that Boswell ‘had a considerable share of melancholy in his own temperament; and, though the general tenor of his life was gay and active, he frequently experienced an unaccountable depression of spirits’ (Gent. Mag. June 1795, lxxvii. 472). 207  George E. Haggerty, ‘Boswell’s Symptoms: The Hypochondriack in and out of Context’, in James Boswell: Psychological Interpretations, ed. Donald J. Newman, 1995, pp. 111–26, quoting p. 113; Allan Ingram, Boswell’s Creative Gloom (1982). 208  Bailey ii. 40–46.

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Introduction desire to do.’209 In one sense, these differences in personality distanced Boswell from Forbes, who could never experience the pain his friend was feeling. The best friends of Boswell’s youth, Temple, Johnston, and Erskine, were all hypochrondriacs (in the eighteenth-century sense of that term), and a twentieth-century editor has gone so far as to suggest that ‘Only a fellow sufferer could hope to establish a lasting intimacy with Boswell’.210 In another sense, however, Forbes’s freedom from this affliction enabled Boswell to confide in him about his mental state as one might do with a sympathetic clergyman or counsellor, who could be relied on for sympathy, support, and confidentiality. In the correspondence with Forbes, Boswell discussed three progressively more critical emotional crises in his life which came at intervals of two and a half to three years. In a letter of 11 October 1787, soon after returning to London from Auchinleck with his family, he wrote, ‘Since my return, I have been somewhat troubled with my old inexplicable complaint Lowness of Spirits, of which you are happy enough to know nothing by experience, and I sincerely hope never shall. No situation I believe is proof against it; otherwise I think I should not have it in London. However one finds here the best remedies.’ The ‘remedies’ Boswell alluded to were social, relating to ‘the Gang’, as they were termed, of close male friends (Reynolds, Courtenay, and Malone), at a time when his state of mind was adversely affected by his wife’s difficult adjustment to London, his failure to succeed as a barrister, and the slow progress of his biography of Johnson. Forbes replied on 19 October, hoping Boswell’s ‘depression of spirits’ would soon pass and recommending, along with ‘the Society of agreeable and valuable freinds’, the ‘regular habit of exercise. The last is in every one’s power who possesses the use of his Limbs: the first you enjoy in a superlative degree in your present situation.’ But the journal makes it clear that this depression of autumn 1787 lasted for some time. The situation was considerably worse almost three years later, when Boswell wrote Forbes a long letter from Carlisle on 2–3 July 1790. Once again ‘the foul fiend has seised me’, he stated, adding, ‘The consciousness of having a mind subject to the saddest fits of melancholy is a deplorable circumstance.’211 Now his wife was gone, and he believed he had no hope of a parliamentary seat as a result of the deterioration of his connection with Lonsdale and other political failures and limitations, ‘no prospect of success at the english bar’ and no stomach to return to the Scottish bar, disdain for retiring to his estate in the country, ‘unhappily embarrassed’ finances, and serious concerns about how his two older daughters were turning out. ‘What then is now to be done?’, Boswell asked his friend with a sense of desperation. On 9 July Forbes replied at length, hopeful that this case of ‘depression of spirits’ was the result of Boswell’s terrible experience with Lonsdale and perhaps other identifiable circumstances rather than ‘that constitutional sadness, you were sometimes subject to’. As for the advice Boswell craved, Forbes offered once again the plan he had always thought best: Boswell should return to his legal career in Journ. 23 Jan. and 6 Mar. 1778; To Forbes, 12 Dec. 1788. Ralph S. Walker in Corr. 1, p. xxvi. 211  See also To Temple, 21 June 1790, PML: ‘At no period during our long friendship have I been more unhappy than at present.’ 209  210 

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Introduction Edinburgh, with annual visits to London in the spring and to Auchinleck in the summer and autumn. Boswell’s response, at the end of his next letter from London on 11 October 1790, was a single curt sentence: ‘Pray do not blame me too much that I as yet shrink from quitting this great Ocean, on the surface of which I still see visions of hope.’ The primary cause for hope during the summer and early autumn of 1790 was a perception of the increasing value of the copyright to the forthcoming Life of Johnson. In his letter of 11 October, Boswell told Forbes he could get £1500 (£500 more than the figure he had cited in his letter of 2–3 July) from a London bookseller (later identified as George Robinson), but ‘should refuse it’ on Malone’s advice— meaning that he intended instead to stick with his original plan of self-publication in association with Dilly. Although this perception gave Boswell the confidence to borrow £2500 for the purchase of Knockroon, by the end of 1790 he was consumed with growing doubt and anxiety about his finances generally and his publication arrangements in particular. On 24 February 1791—three days after recording in his journal that ‘The embarassed state of my affairs overwhelmed my spirits’, and two days after recording that Dilly had advised him, against his own self-interest, to sell the copyright to Robinson—Boswell wrote to Malone in Dublin, ‘I have been worse than you can possibly imagine. … I am in a distressing perplexity how to decide as to the property of my Book’.212 Relief from this long bout of depression did not arrive until winter gave way to spring, beginning with the firm (and as things would turn out, wise) resolution, recorded in the journal on 18 March, to put aside all thoughts of selling the copyright to Robinson and ‘take the fair chance of the Publick’ by finally committing to the self-publication scheme.213 Two months later came the exhilarating experience of publication itself, which Boswell discussed in a triumphant letter to Forbes of 13 May 1791, accompanied by an inscribed presentation copy of his long-awaited tome. Two and a half years after getting over his mental crisis of 1790–91, Boswell wrote in a combined journal entry for 24–26 September 1793 that he had lapsed into ‘general insipidity & gloom of my existence at this time. … I was in truth in a woeful state of depression in every respect’. Even the great success of the Life of Johnson, then in its second edition, could not overcome its author’s descent into an almost unshakeable state of melancholy. This extended attack of intense depression was exacerbated by a combination of circumstances, including the full realization that the idea of a legal career at Westminster was merely an ‘animating delusion’, and that he could no longer hope for legal preferment if he should return to Scotland because of ‘my having addicted myself almost entirely to English Society, and my aversion to Scotch manners, and contempt of provincial consequence being known’. Two other factors made this visit from ‘the foul fiend’ particularly painful for Boswell. First, there was his worsening drinking problem during his last years. Boswell had long recognized that abstaining from alcohol sometimes resulted in 212  213 

Corr. 4, pp. 403–05. See Enlightenment and the Book, pp. 220–22.

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Introduction his getting the best of depression.214 But he was also inclined to drink excessively in order to ward off melancholia.215 Friends and family recognized the correlation between excessive drink and depression, as when Malone wrote to him in March 1791, ‘is not your depression entirely owing to yourself, I mean to your own almost uniform intemperance in wine?’216 A few months later Dr. John Coakley Lettsom, whose medical practice included a focus on alcohol abuse, warned Boswell of the connection between drink and ‘depression’ (or worse) after observing his excesses at dinner parties.217 Eight days later Boswell was at it again, however, making a spectacle of himself at a celebration for the election of Sir William Curtis (1752–1829) as a London M.P.218 After he was attacked by a street robber while stumbling home drunk in the wee hours one night in June 1793, he told Temple that this experience constituted ‘a crisis in my life. I trust I shall henceforth be a sober regular man. Indeed my indulgence in wine has of late years especially, been excessive.’219 But all such efforts at reform were temporary and ineffectual. When Malone wrote to Forbes less than a year after Boswell died, he postulated that Boswell’s ‘life might have been saved’ if he and his other London friends had intervened ‘more strenuously’ to temper his ‘more than usual indulgence’ during his final months.220 Yet, curiously, excessive drinking is one topic that never appears in the correspondence between Boswell and Forbes. The second factor intensifying this episode of depression had to do with a topic discussed by Boswell and Forbes since the 1770s: ‘the long journey death’. In his letter to Forbes of 2–3 July 1790, Boswell had expressed fear that he would not live to see his Life of Johnson published (‘in my desponding hours, I am apt to 214  For example, his journal entry for 22 April 1787 notes that ‘By taking a course of water & tasting no fermented liquor, I felt myself wonderfully easier; that is to say, I had no high enjoyment; but neither had I any horrible melancholy’. 215  Thomas B. Gilmore, ‘James Boswell’s Drinking’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, xxiv (1991): 337–57. One such incident, recounted in Boswell’s journal, occurred at a dinner party at Lady Colville’s on 6 August 1783, attended by the Boswells, the Forbeses, and the Gordons: ‘I was in such miserable spirits that I resolved to drink a great deal of wine. I did so, and afterwards played ill at cards.’ Similarly, during his depression in autumn 1787, described above, Boswell wrote in his journal on 23 October, ‘Was very low; & very injudiciously had recourse to too much wine to raise my spirits.’ 216  From Malone, 5 Mar. 1791, Corr. 4, p. 408. Frank Brady claimed that Malone was wrong and that drinking ‘did not depress Boswell’ (Later Years, p. 421), arguing that Boswell’s ‘common but unfortunate mistake was to take drinking as a cause rather than a symptom of malaise’ (p. 109). 217  From Lettsom, 18 June 1791, quoted in To Forbes, 30 Oct. 1793 n. 3. 218  Woodfall, 27 June 1792, describing an event on the 26th, at which Boswell (obviously drunk, though this is not mentioned), ‘with that enthusiasm that marks his character’, made an address and sang a song while standing on a chair, in a manner described as ‘zealously extravagant’ and ‘not a little ludicrous’, and then ‘re-mounted the Chair’ and ‘made a speech in which he was running a muck at men, who equally violent with himself, thought and acted on different political principles, when he was very properly checked, and called to order, by the President’. See also Later Years, p. 463, for different newspaper accounts of this event, including Boswell’s own attempt at a defence and another item which lamented that ‘a man of real wit, learning, and genius, endowed with qualities to ensure him the respect of the wise and the worthy, should court popularity by what might be almost called gross buffoonery at a City feast’. 219  To Temple, 21 June 1793, PML. 220  Malone to Forbes, 25 Apr. 1796 (FP 87).

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Introduction imagine … that I shall die before it is concluded’), and when that period of melancholia reached its climax the following winter, Courtenay wrote to Malone on 22 February 1790 of Boswell being so ‘low’ and ‘dispirited’ that he could not be roused from talking ‘tiresomely and tediously’ about ‘the same cursed trite Commonplace topics—about death etc.’221 Journal entries demonstrate that three particular deaths in the late summer and autumn of 1793 greatly exacerbated this preoccupation. First, Boswell was ‘deeply affected’ upon reading in the newspapers on 22 August that his kinsman Lt.-Col. Thomas Bosville had died in battle four days earlier. Then he was ‘affected with a kind of stupor mixed with regret’ on 13 October, after reading in the newspapers a day or two earlier of the recent death of ‘my old friend and correspondent, and confidant in Hypochondria, the Honourable Andrew Erskine’. Finally, on 24 October he was horrified by news of ‘The horrible murder of the Queen of France’ (which had occurred eight days before). In each case his suffering was aggravated by the gruesome manner of death. The upper part of Bosville’s skull had been blown off by a bullet, while the guillotine had removed Marie Antoinette’s head completely. But it was the death of Andrew Erskine, and the way it occurred, which distressed him the most, and Boswell’s correspondence with Forbes helps us to understand why this was so. In his letter to Boswell of 16 October 1793, Forbes alluded to the death of Erskine, adding that ‘His death, or more properly the manner of it, has plunged his worthy Brother and Sisters into deep affliction’. From this wording it would seem that Forbes was not sure whether Boswell yet knew how Erskine had died, or whether he wanted to know. Boswell’s reply of 24 October mentioned ‘the lamented fate’ of Bosville and the lingering ‘indisposition’ from the encounter with a ‘street-robber’, and then turned to Erskine: ‘My spirits have of late been very low, and the death of my old friend first, and afterwards the manner of it which your last too plainly intimates to me have increased the depression. I beg, My Dear Sir, that you will inform me of the particulars as minutely as you can.’ Forbes obliged with a long, touching paragraph on Erskine’s suicide by drowning, in a letter which took him a week to complete (5–11 November). It was an insider’s account because Forbes was a close friend of the Erskine family, and therefore in attendance at the small, private funeral. Boswell waited until 29 May 1794 to tell Forbes that his ‘full, particular, and very affecting account … of the melancholy exit, from this stage of being, of my old friend A. E. has pressed upon my mind very heavily’. No longer able to write out Erskine’s name either in his journal or his correspondence, he notes that his friend had never revealed his suicidal tendencies in their ‘Innumerable conversations … on the misery of his existence. … But being often afflicted in the same manner that he was, his melancholy fate shocks me in a peculiar manner.’ In his journal notes for 1 June 1776, Boswell had reported having ‘talked of my hypocond[ria] & thoughts of suicide’ with his uncle, Dr. John Boswell, and in a journal entry for 22 August 1781, he had written, ‘I was very lowspirited today; and during this late fit, there has come into my mind the horrible thought of Suicide. It was 221 

Corr. 4, p. 403 n. 2.

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Introduction most effectually checked by thinking what a triumph it would afford to my ennemies or rather enviers, and how it would hurt my children.’ Having formerly contrasted his ‘restless wish for distinction in England … on a great scale’ with Erskine’s listlessness as one major difference between their respective forms of depression, he now drew attention to another ‘great advantage in my distress which he had not in his’, namely, ‘an habitual piety, the benignant influence of which I need not, My Dear Sir William, enlarge upon to you’. Nevertheless, Erskine’s suicide brought Boswell face to face with his deepest fear: a state of melancholy so profound that it could destroy one’s life. Largely as a result of the rosy manner in which Boswell had presented himself in his last letter to Erskine,222 his old friend probably died thinking that Boswell had achieved a degree of success in life which contrasted sharply with his own miserable state of affairs. In reality, by the time of Erskine’s death, the specific causes of depression which Boswell recounted in his journal and in his letter to Forbes of 24 October 1793 merely intensified a deeper, ongoing sense of despair rooted in his growing awareness of critical flaws in his career, his finances, and his personal life. The full impact of Andrew Erskine’s suicide and the other recent deaths and misfortunes which Boswell mentioned in the correspondence with Forbes and in the journal must be understood within this broader context of domestic and professional failure and loss, of having severed his ties with Edinburgh, of having no viable options for the future, of drinking too heavily, of having fleeting and usually implausible plans for remarriage that came to nothing, and of struggling almost constantly with depression and the ultimate fear which ‘the foul fiend’ threatened: ‘the long journey death’. In the final years of his life, Boswell was plagued by feelings of hopelessness and dread associated with these hardships, compounded by persistent physical ailments—notably his many bouts of gonorrhoea and the lingering effects of the malaria he had contracted on his way to Corsica as a young man—which may have contributed to his death from renal failure on 19 May 1795, at the age of fifty-four.223 In his last known letter to Boswell, on 4 June 1794, Forbes would make one more push for his old friend to give up London and return to Edinburgh, but that cause was doomed. Boswell’s last letter to Forbes, sent from Auchinleck on 15 December 1794, describes ‘a return of that constitutional Melancholy or Low 222  To Erskine, 6 Mar. 1793 (copy), from Auchinleck (L 531). In this letter Boswell acknowledged that he had ‘suffered more from [hypochondria] last winter than I had done for many years’, but he also boasted about his fine sons, the success of his Life of Johnson, and the ‘wonderful circle of Society’ he enjoyed in London. 223  According to Purdie and Gow, ‘Maladies of James Boswell’, the modern medical consensus is that ‘the final cause of death was renal failure precipitated by acute-on-chronic pyelonephritis, itself triggered perhaps by a chronically infected prostate or a post-gonorrhoeal urethral stricture’ (p. 202). As discussed in Forbes’s letter to Lady Forbes of 12 May 1795 (under date in this volume) and n. 3, this condition may have been hereditary, because Boswell’s father and father’s father (Old James, the seventh laird) both suffered and died from a similar affliction. Purdie and Gow also note the effects of Boswell’s nineteen bouts of gonorrhoea (including both new infections and flare-ups of old ones) and the recurring effects of malaria (ague), which are also discussed in William Ober,“Boswell’s Clap” and Other Essays (1979) and Gordon Turnbull, ‘Yale Boswell Editions Notes’, Johnsonian News Letter, lix (2008): 20–23, respectively.

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INTRODUCTION spirits to which I am subject,’ from which he had ‘suffered painfully’. ‘Let me not dwell upon so unpleasing a subject’, he adds. ‘You, My Dear Sir! know it not; and I hope never shall. But be it what it may, and be the cause of it what it may, much of my existence has been rendered wretched by it.’ The only hope is submission to ‘the Father of all spirits’. In this depressed frame of mind, Boswell could not even visit Edinburgh, let alone move there. Much as he wished to ‘have some cordial and confidential conversations with you’, he tells Forbes, he would only contemplate visiting Edinburgh again if he could ‘contrive to be there incognito’—or had ‘Jack the Giant-Killer’s coat of darkness’, as he put it in a letter from Auchinleck to his son Sandy on 26 November.224 As in the letter to Sandy, this letter to Forbes assigns the chief blame for this circumstance to his having ‘such an extensive acquaintance, that I could not in a short time pay common civilities to all; and to omit any would give offence’. This explanation does not ring true. With the exception of Forbes, Boswell’s closest Edinburgh friends were all dead by late 1794 (e.g., Andrew Erskine, his sister Lady Colville, John Johnston, Lord Rockville, Lord Hailes, Sir Alexander Dick), and contact had apparently been lost with most old friends who survived, such as Nairne (Lord Dunsinane) and others in the legal profession. No significant ‘extensive acquaintance’ existed any longer. It is more likely that the unwillingness of Boswell to visit Edinburgh openly was caused by the painful embarrassment which such a visit would have caused him. Even before relocating to London, the very idea of a permanent move was a source of anxiety, as Boswell told Temple in a letter of 8 July 1784: ‘It is unpleasant to me to go to Edinburgh for the remainder of this summer session, & be stared at, & talked to with scottish familiarity, concerning my change of situation’.225 Three days before his departure for London on 27 January 1786, Boswell told Malone that he appeared ‘boldly’ and triumphantly in the Court of Session (where his journal places him on 17–21 January), leaving him hopeful that ‘whenever I chuse it, I may return to the bar here with a good prospect of success’.226 Yet his only subsequent visit to Edinburgh, in early spring 1793, would be brief and secretive.227 An open visit to Edinburgh in 1794 or early 1795 would not have been the return of a conquering hero after the publication of the Life, as a literary perspective might suggest, but rather an awkward homecoming of one who appeared to have deserted Scotland and its culture for England, to have devoted himself to an English man of letters known for his anti-Scottish prejudices, to have insulted a number of 224  To Alexander Boswell, 26 Nov. 1794, L 117. The full passage reads, ‘I was indeed in spirits beyond expectation, when at Edinburgh last year. But I am so ill at present that I cannot bring my mind to undertake to be there again; as I could see few, & might offend many. I am most desireous to see Lady Auchinleck; and could I have Jack the Giant-Killer’s coat of darkness, I should be under her roof for a day or two with warm cordiality.’ Yet his letter to Sandy, written a week earlier (17 Nov. 1794, L 116), contained different reasons for avoiding Edinburgh at this time: ‘Tell Lady Auchinleck that I am much obliged to her for wishing me to take Edinburgh in my way. But it was a great effort for me last year to make it out; and I really am not able for it again this year, as I have stayed here so long that my spirits are quite exhausted, and I should make but a sad figure. I expect no relief till I am again in London, and hardly expect much even there.’ 225  L 1236.9. 226  To Malone, 24 Jan. 1786, Corr. 4, pp. 292–93. 227  See To Forbes, 11 May 1793 n. 17.

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Introduction Scots in his publications, and to have failed in his attempt to pursue an English legal career. By deferring ‘till another year … “The feast of Reason and the flow of soul”’, as he poetically dubbed a future meeting in his final letter to Forbes, Boswell missed his last opportunity to see his oldest and dearest living Scottish friend. ***** James Boswell had many friendships in Scotland and England, including college companions with whom he kept up intimate correspondences in adulthood, older mentors and surrogate father-figures whom he looked to for guidance, and sometimes for biographical subject matter, and the distinguished assemblage of literary men and others with whom he associated in London. But Sir William Forbes was unique among them. Although he was Boswell’s near contemporary, Boswell admired and respected him like an esteemed elder. Of all his friends, Forbes alone straddled the boundary between the Scottish and English worlds which Boswell inhabited and had intimate knowledge of almost every key aspect of his life: his family and attachment to his ancestral lands, his friends, his professional career, his personal finances, his published writings and private journals, his political values and aspirations, his philosophical doubts and fears, his recurring episodes of depression, his religious beliefs. The friendship between Boswell and Forbes was built on a foundation of shared associations, activities, relationships, and attitudes, as well as a few areas in which they differed, sometimes profoundly. Their intimacy was such that Forbes could tell Boswell what he did not always want to hear: that he should live within his means according to a carefully calculated budget, that he should not give up his stable existence in Edinburgh by moving to London to pursue an impractical dream (and that he should return to Edinburgh when it was clear that dream would not be realized), that his political ambition would not lead to happiness, and that he should be more considerate of other people’s feelings in his otherwise delightful publications. Despite their differences of opinion on these and some other issues, Boswell trusted Forbes as an adviser, as a guardian of his younger children, as the sole executor (after the death of his wife) of his estate, as one of the three men (along with Temple and Malone) with authority to determine which of his private manuscripts, if any, should be published after his death, and as the person with whom he shared more of his mature unpublished journal, anonymous publications, and financial and other personal information than anyone else. Yet, with few exceptions, the letters exchanged between Boswell and Forbes have gone unpublished until now,228 and the relationship which was cultivated and enriched by those letters remains unfamiliar scholarly territory. It is time to rectify this deficiency and let the epistolary voices of Boswell and Forbes be heard. 228  Only Forbes’s letters of 7 Mar. 1777 (in the Tour) and 16 Sept. 1777 (in BP) have been previously published in their entirety. Much of Forbes’s letter of 19 Oct. 1787 and a long sentence from Forbes’s letter of 21 Dec. 1779 appear in the Life. Other substantial excerpts which have been previously printed, especially in Corr. 2 (which reproduces sixteen excerpts about the Life from Boswell’s letters to Forbes), are noted in the headnotes.

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THE CORRESPONDENCE OF JAMES BOSWELL AND SIR WILLIAM FORBES OF PITSLIGO

[Spring/Summer 1768]

From Forbes, [Spring/Summer 1768] Not reported. On 25/26 Nov. 1768 WF wrote from London to his Edinburgh banking partner James Hunter,1 ‘Mr. Boswell ought to have told you that he had askt the same permission [as another client had requested] of us here in spring last about his subscription, and that by Mr. Herries’s2 desire I had wrote him refusing it. However I don’t suppose it is a matter of much Consequence’ (FP 84). The details of JB’s request and the nature of the ‘subscription’ are not known, and no communication on the matter between JB and James Hunter [Blair] has been located. 1  James Hunter (1741–87), later Sir James Hunter Blair, would assume the surname Blair in 1777, after his wife since Dec. 1770, Jane Blair (1746–1817), inherited Dunskey, a large estate near Portpatrick in Wigtonshire. Having begun his apprenticeship in Coutts Bros. & Co. in Edinburgh in 1756 (two years after WF), he became a partner on 1 Feb. 1763 when the firm was reorganized as John Coutts & Co. in association with Robert Herries (see next note). He would become a wealthy civic and agricultural improver, successively M.P. for Edinburgh (1781–84) and Lord Provost of that city (1784–86), and would be raised to a baronetcy in 1786. Like WF and JB, he was an active Freemason as a member of Canongate Kilwinning No. 2 (which he joined on 14 Nov. 1755 [Mackenzie, p. 238]), and he was elected Grand Treasurer of the Grand Lodge of Scotland for twenty-seven consecutive years, from Nov. 1757 through Nov. 1783. Like JB, he came from a family with an ancestral estate in Ayrshire and attended the University of Edinburgh, and he and JB sometimes socialized in Edinburgh. During the 1760s Hunter bet JB that JB would marry a widow, and he paid off the bet many years later by treating JB and several friends of his choosing (including WF) to a dinner of roast beef and claret at Fortune’s Tavern in Old Stamp Office Close in Edinburgh, recorded by JB as ‘a most jovial day’ (Journ. 16 Feb. 1781). For WF’s assessment of Hunter Blair in the aftermath of his death on 1 July 1787, see From WF, 25 July 1787, and supporting annotation. 2  Robert (later Sir Robert) Herries (1730– 1815), eldest son of William Herries of Halldykes (d. 1777), an impoverished Dumfriesshire laird, and his first wife, Katherine Henderson (d. 1768), would rise to prominence as a London merchant and banker, would be knighted in 1774, and would serve as M.P. for Dumfries Burghs, 1780–84. He would be WF’s mentor, banking associate, and lifelong friend. He had begun his career as a merchant in Rotterdam and then Barcelona, where he brought his two younger brothers, Charles (?1745–1819) and William

(d. ?1812), and ‘educated them in business’ (Memoirs of a Banking-House, p. 18). He met WF in 1761 through John Coutts (1732– 61), his old friend from Rotterdam and WF’s employer at Coutts Bros. & Co. in Edinburgh, who died in Aug. 1761. In the same year, the mental incapacitation of Patrick Coutts (1731–?1808) and the establishment of a London banking partnership in the Strand by the remaining two Coutts brothers, James (1733–78) and Thomas (1735–1822)—whose firm, James & Thomas Coutts, would become Thomas Coutts & Co. in 1775 and Coutts & Co. from 1822—removed the Coutts brothers entirely from the management of their Edinburgh bank and its London office in Jeffreys Square, St. Mary Axe. As a result of these developments, on 25 Dec. 1762 Thomas and James arranged the reorganization of the family’s Edinburgh bank into John Coutts & Co., managed by WF and James Hunter, in partnership with the family’s London branch in Jeffreys Square, managed by Herries and a relation of the Coutts by marriage, William Cochrane (d. 1799), as Herries, Cochrane & Co. Not long after this agreement went into effect on 1 Feb. 1763, Herries and the Coutts brothers broke off ‘all friendly intercourse in business’ after Herries ousted Cochrane (a merchant ‘totally unacquainted with the business of such a house’ [Memoirs of a Banking-House, pp. 22–23]) and reorganized his bank in London as Herries & Co. as of 1 Jan. 1766, in close association with WF and Hunter. For most of 1768 and the early part of 1769, WF lived in London as the guest of Herries, ‘attending the counting-house’ (Memoirs of a Banking-House, p. 28), especially while Herries was doing business in Europe. Late in life WF would describe this experience in glowing terms, recalling especially the long weekends spent at Beckenham, the Herries country house near Bromley in Kent (now a borough in Greater London but then a village in Kent) (Ital. Journ. WF, MS 1539, 21 June 1792). Before Herries, Cochrane & Co. had even been formally established, JB was referring to Cochrane as ‘my banker’ in his London

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[Saturday 8 August 1772] journal (26 Nov. 1762), explaining in another journal entry on 28 Mar. 1763 that he ‘is a good plain comfortable Scots fellow  …  entrusted by my father to pay me my allowance, & being his great friend, takes upon him to lecture me on my idle views of life’. JB would continue to use Herries, Cochrane & Co. as his banker while travelling in Europe as a young man, and to use Herries for some banking services in London for many years afterwards (e.g., Journ. 8 Mar. 1788: ‘Went to Sir Ro. Herries’s & got money’). JB recorded in his journal drinking claret with Herries and WF in London on 23 Mar. 1768, at a meeting arranged to retrieve a dog and other gifts sent to him (via Herries) by the Corsican leader Gen. Pasquale Paoli (1725–1807). He met with them again on 28 Apr., perhaps to complete this process, and with WF alone on 11 May (J 15), and it was probably on one of those occasions ‘in spring last’ that JB made the request which WF mentions to Hunter. Another topic which was undoubtedly on JB’s mind when meeting with Herries in spring 1768 was the career of JB’s younger brother TDB, who had just begun to work for Herries in Valencia (see John Stone, ‘Being Boswell’s Brother’, Age of Johnson, xxiii [2015]: 205–38, esp. 211–17), and whose welfare would continue to be a concern for JB in his dealings with Herries until TDB’s return to Britain in 1779 (e.g., J 25, 8 May 1773: ‘Dined Mr. Herries’s—spoke of Dav.’). In the early 1770s Herries would set up the London Exchange Banking Company (later Sir Robert Herries & Co., and still later Herries, Farquhar & Co.) in St. James’s Street, in partnership with his brothers Charles and William in London and with WF and Hunter in Edinburgh, largely for the purpose of implementing an innovative and eventually successful scheme for a network of European agencies which would enable British travellers carrying his ‘circular notes’ and ‘transferable notes’ (forerunners of modern travellers’ cheques) to obtain

payment more quickly and easily than with traditional bills of exchange or letters of credit. WF was closely connected with this scheme, which James & Thomas Coutts declined to support. After this development, and the removal from John Coutts & Co. in 1771 of another incompetent Coutts relation by marriage, John Stephen (d. 1774), WF and Hunter were associated with the Coutts brothers in name only, having vacated the Coutts counting house on the second floor in President’s Stairs, Parliament Close, Edinburgh, and removed to new premises on the first floor on Whitsunday (15 May) 1772. On 1 Jan. 1773 they would complete the separation by renaming their bank Sir William Forbes, James Hunter and Company. Towards the end of 1775 FHC and Herries decided to disband their partnership because of disagreements about Herries’s speculative trading practices; WF and Hunter would assume independent control over the bank in Edinburgh, while Herries would control the London banking and exchange house. In keeping with WF’s ‘earnest wish that the disuniting of the two houses may be conducted in the greatest, the most comfortable, and most convenient matter for all parties’ (WF to James Hunter, 24 Nov. 1775, FP/84/4), WF and Herries would remain close after their formal banking ties were severed on 1 Jan. 1776. In his last known letter to Herries, sent 23 Nov. 1799 (draft dated 11 Nov. 1799; FP 82/5), WF would express ‘the happiness I have all along felt, and ever shall feel, that altho the particular circumstances occasioned a separation of our joint interests in business, our personal friendship has never suffered a moment’s interruption’ (Memoirs of a Banking-House; ODNB; Hist. Parl.; Edna Healey, Coutts & Co., 1692–1992: The Portrait of a Private Bank, 1992; Robert S. Rait, The History of the Union Bank of Scotland, 1930; Ralph Richardson, Coutts & Co., Bankers, Edinburgh and London, 1902; Ernest Hartley Coleridge, The Life of Thomas Coutts, Banker, 1919).

Forbes to Elizabeth, Lady Forbes, [Saturday 8 August 1772] MS. FP 46/1. Not in Abbott. footer: 10 oClock address: Lady Forbes, New Town1 enclosure: An unsigned note in JB’s handwriting, inviting WF and LF to supper that evening (reproduced below). note: The date of this letter derives from JB’s enclosed note, signed ‘James’s Court, Saturday 8 August’, and the entry for that date in JB’s ‘Notes for Journal in Edinburgh’ (J 26), confirming that the Forbeses supped at the Boswells’ Edinburgh home that evening.

4

8 August [1772] Dearest Betsy: I found the inclosed Card at the Counting house.2 Will you please take the trouble to send an answer to it by Robert or by the Cady,3 rather by Robert. I will either go or not as you please. Be so good as send the answer to Mrs. B.4 immediately. I am truly, My Dearest Betsy, your affectionate husband, W. F. 1  In 1771 the Forbeses had moved to their new home at 3 George Street in the Edinburgh New Town. 2  On WF’s counting house, at this time on the first floor in President’s Stairs, Parliament Close, see the preceding letter, n. 2. Parliament Close (later called Parliament Square) is the centrally located space off the High Street in the Edinburgh Old Town, between St. Giles Church and Parliament House, which was built in 1632 for the Scots Parliament and the courts. Although the Parliament was dissolved at the Union of 1707, in the late eighteenth century the space to which it gave its name was a thriving social and commercial centre. The presence in the

square of both the law courts frequented by JB and the counting house of WF gave rise to easy and frequent contact between the two men during JB’s years in Edinburgh. 3  Robert, not otherwise identified, may have been a Forbes family servant. Caddies were the well-organized body of Edinburgh messenger boys whom an English visitor in the 1770s, Edward Topham (1751–1820), playfully called ‘the tutelary guardians of the City’ (Letters from Edinburgh; Written in the Years 1774 and 1775: containing Some Observations on the Diversions, Customs, Manners, and Laws, of the Scotch Nation, during a Six Months Residence in Edinburgh, 1776, p. 87). 4  MMB.

To Forbes, Saturday 8 August [1772] MS. FP 46/1. Not in Abbott. address: To Sir William Forbes, Baronet note: This unsigned note in JB’s handwriting, enclosed with WF’s letter to LF, [8 Aug. 1772], above, is the earliest known written communication between JB and WF.

James’s Court,1 Saturday, 8 August [1772] Mr. and Mrs. Boswell present their best compliments to Sir William and Lady Forbes, and if they are not engaged, beg the favour of their company this evening to supper.2 1  In May 1771 the Boswells had moved from a large flat in Chessel’s Buildings in the Canongate to a smaller, less expensive one belonging to the historian and philosopher David Hume (1711–76) in the third storey of James’s Court (see Intro., p. xc, and Corr. 1, p. 260 n. 3, p. 265 n. 6). Hume had purchased it in the summer of 1762 for £500, a price he considered ‘somewhat dear, but I shall be exceedingly well lodged’ (The Letters of David Hume, ed. J.Y.T. Greig, 2 vols., 1932, i. 367). JB called it ‘a good room newly fitted up’ when he and AE visited Hume there on 3 Nov. of that year (Journ.). It was soon rented to JB’s minister and friend Hugh Blair (1718–1800), to whom Hume called it, in a letter of Dec. 1763, ‘an excellent House for its Size’ (i. 420), while boasting of its warmth, wine cellar, and other features. Another advantage was its magnificent view across the Firth of Forth, causing Hume to joke in a letter to Adam

Smith (1723–90) of 20 Aug. 1769 that he could see him in Kirkcaldy (Fife) ‘from my Windows’ (ii. 206). Two months later Hume playfully described his home in another letter as ‘very chearful, and even elegant, but too small to display my great Talent for Cookery’ (ii. 208). Hume’s move to the nascent New Town cleared the way for JB and MMB, then childless, to rent the James’s Court flat, which JB described in a letter of 22 May 1771 as ‘large enough for us, very convenient, and exceedingly healthful and pleasant. My wife is very fond of it’ (Corr. 1, p. 265). In May 1773 they would move to a larger residence in the same building, where they would entertain SJ later that year and would remain until their move to London in 1786. 2  JB’s journal notes (J 26) confirm that this invitation was accepted on 8 Aug. 1772—the first known instance of their socializing as young married couples. The

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[6 January 1775] evening of 8 Aug. 1772 must have gone well, because JB’s journal notes (J 26, 15 Aug. 1772) indicate that JB (and presumably MMB also) ‘Dined Sir W. Forbes’s’ one week later. An undated letter from WF to LF (FP 47/5) suggests the possibility of another evening at the Boswells during the 1770s:

No enclosure is preserved with this letter, and no record survives of such an evening with the Forbeses and the unnamed ‘Captains’ (possibly AE and his brother Archibald Erskine [1736–97], the future 7th Earl of Kellie, whom JB calls ‘the two Captains’ in Journ. 11 July 1774). The expression ‘wait of’ in WF’s letter above, to mean ‘call on, pay one’s respects to’, is a Scotticism (DSL), as noted in James Beattie, Scoticisms, 1787, p. 64. It is routinely used by WF (see From WF, 15 Oct. 1783, 23 July 1789, [14 Jan. 1792], the latter two instances in the form ‘waiting of’), and also by young JB (e.g., Journ. 18 Jan. 1763, 8 Dec. 1764, 3 May 1769).

Dearest Betsy Mr. Boswell has been with me and requests that you and I will spend this evening at his house in James’s Court, with the Captains. I have told him that if you have no Objection we will wait of him. Pray tell me. Yours ever most affectionately, W. F. I have just received the inclosed.

From Forbes, Friday [6 January 1775] MS. Yale (C 1267). Abbott No. 351 (where it is dated [c. 4 January 1775]). With this letter is the wrapper of a missing letter from JJ, tentatively dated 8 Sept. [1784] (C 1637 and Corr. 1, p. 304), which JB inscribed on the reverse ‘Sir William Forbes’ and used as a wrapper in which to keep some of WF’s letters. address: James Boswell Esqr. enclosures: (1) three manuscript volumes of JB’s Hebrides journal (J 33); (2) a manuscript by George Cumine of Pittullie (not located). seal: Bare-breasted classical dancer with long flowing skirt. note: Marked ‘Friday’ by WF, this letter has been dated from JB’s journal and JB’s reply, written later the same day, To WF, 6 Jan. 1775 (see the next letter, below). In addition to acknowledging WF’s praise of the Hebrides journal, JB’s letter accepts for ‘tomorrow evening’ WF’s invitation to the Boswells to ‘eat an egg’ with the Forbeses today or tomorrow (i.e., on a Fri. or a Sat.)—and JB’s journal records that the Boswells supped at the Forbes home on Saturday 7 Jan. 1775.

Friday Dear Sir: I return you the three volumes of the Journal, which has both instructed and delighted me to a very high degree.2 I am perfectly of opinion with your learned Companion that it will be a treasure to you in all time to come.3 I am quite impatient to follow you through the rest of the tour, and shall be infinitely indebted to you to favour me with a sight of what remains of the Journal. Along with it I send you the Manuscript I spoke of to you;4 which I am certain you will peruse with much satisfaction: for I really look on it in the light of a great Curiosity. If you think it will amuse Mrs. Boswell you may read it aloud to her.5 During my wife’s Confinement I wish her now and then to see a friend or two, to prevent the Spirits from flagging.6 Mrs. Boswell was so good as [to] say she would come and eat an egg with us in the family way; either this night or tomorrow, as might be most convenient for you.7 You will oblige me highly by this. I am truly Dear Sir, your most obedient humble servant, William Forbes 1

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[6 January 1775] JB wrote in his journal on 1 Jan. 1775, ‘I drank tea by special appointment with worthy Sir William Forbes, to let him read my Hebrides Journal to prepare him for Mr. Johnson’s Book. He was much entertained & I left him my three volumes, after reading him a great deal.’ SJ’s ‘Book’, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, had been advertised anonymously during the third week of Dec. 1774 as forthcoming on 18 Jan. 1775, when it was in fact published in London (Daily Advertiser, 21 Dec. 1774; Morn. Chron., 18 Jan. 1775). Publication in Edinburgh occurred three weeks later (Edin. Eve. Courant, 6 Feb. 1775). The ‘three volumes’ to which WF refers—which JB terms ‘my Hebrides Journal’—were the two notebooks which JB brought from Edinburgh and a third which SJ gave him on Skye, in which JB recorded the main portion of his journey with SJ, northwards along the east coast of Scotland and through the Highlands and western islands. They covered the period from JB and SJ’s departure from Edinburgh on 18 Aug. 1773 until their visit to Coll on 12 Oct. These pages (supplemented by others mentioned in To WF, 6 Jan. 1775 n. 1) are now contained in J 33 at Yale, but not in the form in which WF read them in early Jan. 1775: they have been torn from their original notebooks and contain revisions which JB and EM made in preparing the Tour for publication in 1785 (see Hebrides, pp. xii– xiii, and Catalogue i. 16–17). 2  WF’s wording alludes to the influential Horatian ideal from Ars Poetica (Bk. 2, iii. 343–44), that literature should both delight and instruct (for other applications of the concept by WF, see From WF, 9 Feb. and 2 Nov. 1790). That WF was ‘much entertained’ by the Hebrides journal is corroborated by comments he would make to BL a decade later, when JB was preparing to publish it: ‘Our friend, Boswell proposes to write the Dr’s. life, for which he is possessed of a variety of curious and important Materials: and he is speedily to publish his own account of their tour to the Hebrides, upon a plan totally different from that printed by Dr. Johnson, as it relates less to descriptions of the Country than to accounts of conversations in which the Doctor bore always a considerable share. Mr. Boswell favored me with a perusal of the Manuscript on their return from that expedition; and it afforded me a very high degree of entertainment’ (WF to BL, 21 Jan. 1785, Corr. 3, p. 179). 3  WF alludes to the comment made by SJ and recorded by JB on 2 Oct. 1773: ‘He said today while reading my Journal, “This

will be a great treasure to us some years hence.”’ (Hebrides, p. 241). WF would also have encountered SJ’s praise of the journal in entries for (1) 19 Sept. 1773: ‘He came to my room this morning before breakfast to read my Journal, which he has done all along. He often before said, “I take great delight in reading it.” Today he said, “You improve. It grows better and better.” I said there was a danger of my getting a habit of writing in a slovenly manner. “Sir,” said he, “it is not written in a slovenly manner. It might be printed, were the subject fit for printing.” … He asked me today how we were so little together. I told him my Journal took up so much time. … But my Journal is really a task of much time and labour, and Mr. Johnson forbids me to contract it’ (Hebrides, p. 188); (2) 27 Sept.: ‘He read tonight, as he sat in the company, a great deal of this volume of my Journal, and said to me, “The more I read of this, I think the more highly of you.” “Are you in earnest?” said I. Said he, “It is true, whether I am in earnest or no.”’ (Hebrides, p. 226); and (3) 12 Oct: ‘He read a good deal of my Journal in the little book which I had from him, and was pleased; for he said, “I wish thy books were twice as big.” He helped me to supply blanks which I had left in first writing it, when I was not quite sure of what he had said; and he corrected any mistakes that I had made’ (Hebrides, pp. 293–94). In the published version of the work, JB reproduced all these remarks and inserted an additional footnote at the end of the entry for 18 Aug. 1773, stating that ‘My Journal, from this day inclusive, was read by Dr. Johnson’, and he added a corresponding footnote to the entry for 26 Oct. 1773: ‘Having mentioned, more than once, that my Journal was perused by Dr. Johnson, I think it proper to inform my readers that this is the last paragraph which he read’ (Life v. 58 n. 2, 360 n. 4). 4  JB’s journal, 8 Jan. 1775, identifies this item as ‘an Account which the late Mr. Cumin of Pitoulie in Aberdeenshire had written of his first Wife, & which was lent to me by Sir W. Forbes’. The author of the manuscript (which has not been traced) was George Cumine (1695–1767), 2nd Laird of Pittulie or Pitullie (as it is also spelt). His first wife was Jean Urquhart (d. 1728), whom he married in 1719, daughter of Capt. Robert Urquhart, 10th Laird of Burdsyards, M.P. for Elginshire 1708–10, and his wife Marie (Forbes), daughter of Duncan Forbes (1685– 1747) of Culloden (Frances McDonnell, Jacobites of 1715, North East Scotland, and Jacobites of 1745, North East Scotland, 2000,

1 

7

[6 January 1775] p. 8; Hist. Parl.). WF presumably ‘spoke of’ this manuscript when he and JB met on 1 and 2 Jan., as noted in the journal entries for those dates. Pitullie is a coastal village near Pitsligo and Fraserburgh, and the Cumines were intimate friends of the Forbes family and part of their larger Episcopal circle in that region. WF was particularly close with George Cumine’s son William (1721–90). When WF’s great uncle (and one of his guardians) Alexander Forbes (1678–1762), 4th Lord Forbes of Pitsligo (commonly called Lord Pitsligo to distinguish him from the Lords Forbes who were based at Castle Forbes near Alford, in central Aberdeenshire), ‘was rallying support for the Jacobite cause, his neighbour, William Cumine of Pittulie Castle … joined the regiment he raised, Pitsligo’s Horse’. Cumine (like Lord Pitsligo) ‘survived the carnage of Culloden’ and ‘spent many years in hiding in Edinburgh before returning to Pittulie’ (Janet McLeman, Peathill: The Auld Kirk and Kirkyard, 2012, pp. 18–19). WF would purchase the estate of Pittulie and Pittendrum from William Cumine in 1787 for £20,000 (WF to LF, 10 Sept. 1787, FP 46/2, and From WF, 19 Oct. 1787 n. 10), in part, as WF wrote in his private ‘State of my Affairs’ compiled in Jan. 1788, ‘because my purchasing those estates by a private bargain in the manner I did, was a matter of essential Service to Mr. Cumine, as well as highly grateful to his delicate feelings, for whom I entertain the most sincere and cordial friendship and affection’ (FP 201). Although William Cumine resided in Aberdeen during the 1770s, he was not there when JB and SJ visited the town on 21–24 Aug. 1773, but three months later, on 22 Nov., he wrote to WF about SJ’s reception: ‘Tho he did not appear in an agreable light to the People here I suppose your Character of him [in an unreported letter] is extremely just, and Beattie who seems to be much acquainted with him, speaks of him as a miracle of worth and knowledge. Pray how is he pleased with his expedition. I can not well conceive in what a Man of his stamp proposed to have his curiosity gratified. If he looked for People approaching to a State of Nature, he must have been disappointed, and to such natural objects as the face of the Countries affoords, I am told the defect in his Sight makes him unfit for exploring them’ (FP 87). This letter also alludes to a manuscript by his father that was recently sent to WF—possibly the manuscript referred to in this exchange of letters

between JB and WF, and in JB’s journal entry. Some of William Cumine’s many other letters to WF from the 1770s (in FP 37/2) concern another, longer manuscript written by George Cumine, which WF evidently helped William to publish. Written for the guidance of the author’s children, it was a devotional work, which William’s letters refer to as ‘my Fathers Book’ (29 Oct. 1772), ‘the Discourses on religion’ (29 Dec. 1772), and ‘The discourse on Religion’ (29 June 1774). As the last of these letters indicates that the publisher was the Edinburgh bookseller William Creech (1745–1815), the work can be identified as A Discourse upon Religion. In Two Parts, an anonymous publication printed in Edinburgh for Kincaid & Creech and advertised by that firm in the Edin. Eve. Courant on 21 Dec. 1771 (though the imprint reads ‘1772’). WF purchased a copy from the publisher for four shillings in Dec. 1771 (FP 216). In a biographical sketch prefixed to his 1835 and 1854 editions of Lord Pitsligo’s Thoughts concerning Man’s Condition and Duties in This Life, and His Hopes in the World to Come (see From WF, 29 Oct.–4 Nov. 1791 n. 16), John Hay Forbes (1776–1854)—WF’s second son, who became Lord Medwyn of the Court of Session in 1825—mentions A Discourse upon Religion as a posthumous work of Lord Pitsligo’s ‘nearest neighbour and friend, Mr Cumine of Pittulie, a congenial mind, who became an equally ardent admirer of so much of that theology as sublimes devotion, and purifies the motives which lead to the practice of the duties of Christianity’ (p. 11). Cumine’s Discourse upon Religion may have inspired WF to begin writing in the early 1770s a manuscript book of religious advice for his own children, ‘Letters Explanatory’, which is frequently alluded to in the later correspondence with JB, and in supporting annotation (see From WF, 20 Jan. 1789 n. 36). 5  The journal entry for 8 Jan. indicates that JB did read ‘part’ of this manuscript to his wife, but they were unimpressed by both the author and his subject: ‘My Wife thought her a simple woman and the husband a double fellow. I thought so too; for, she though pious, seemed to be persuaded with little or no argument; and he notwithstanding great professions of grief and constancy took another wife. Perhaps it is too hard a censure to call him double. But he certainly was not the man which his manuscript would make one think him.’ Cumine’s second wife, whom he married in 1728, was his cousin, Christian

8

6 January 1775 15 Dec. 1774 (Journ.). The expression was a common Scottish idiom to describe a casual, frugal, convivial meal taken together by friends and family. When JB wrote in his journal on 17 June 1782, ‘I came home & eat my egg cordially’, he apparently meant that he enjoyed a relaxed family supper. One contemporary, describing eighteenth-century cultural life among the inhabitants of Glasgow, wrote, ‘Families occasionally supped with one another, and the form of the invitation, and which was used to a late period, will give some idea of the unpretending nature of these repasts. The party asked was invited to eat an egg with the entertainer’ (quoted in The New Statistical Account of Scotland, 15 vols., 1845, vi. 228). The phrase ‘in a family way’ suggests the growing intimacy between the Forbes and Boswell families at this time.

Guthrie, daughter of Sir John Guthrie of King-Edward. 6  LF was at this time pregnant with her second daughter, CF, who would be born about five months later. The Forbeses’ first daughter, Christian (or Danielle Christian) (1773–75), died suddenly within weeks of this letter to JB, throwing LF into a depression which WF would describe in a letter to JaB of 11 Feb. 1775 (FP 98/1). On 29 June WF would tell JaB that they had named their new daughter after ‘our last poor child, to whom she has a very striking resemblance: I hope, if it be the will of heaven, she shall be longer spared to us’ (FP 98/1). CF was indeed spared and became her parents’ favourite. 7  MMB may have spoken about her willingness to ‘eat an egg’ at the Forbes home when WF and LF dined at the Boswells’ on

To Forbes, Friday 6 January 1775 MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1320. address: To Sir William Forbes Baronet endorsement: Jas. Boswell, 6 Jany. 1775

Friday 6 Janry. 1775 Dear Sir: It gives me sincere satisfaction to know that my Hebrides Journal has pleased you so much. I send you nine sheets more written on such paper as I could find after my books were filled.1 There is not an other sheet yet finished as my diligence flagged towards the end. I recollect however so much, that I shall compleat the Tour.2 I thank you for the manuscript with which you have favoured me. My Wife and I will wait on Lady Forbes and you tomorrow evening.3 I am ever, with a most sincere regard, Dear Sir, yours etc., James Boswell JB purchased loose sheets of paper on Coll after filling the three notebooks already mentioned, and he used them to take his journal up to 22 Oct. 1773, when he and SJ were preparing to leave for Oban from Lochbuie on the island of Mull (Hebrides, pp. xii–xiii; Catalogue i. 16–17). WF did not see the parts of the journal recording SJ’s visits to Edinburgh before the Highland tour (14–17 Aug., J 32) and after it (9–22 Nov., J 33.1), in which WF himself appears, because (as the remainder of this paragraph of the letter and the next note make clear in regard to the last part of the tour) those parts did not yet exist in fully written form (see To WF, 24

Feb. 1777; From WF, 7 Mar. 1777 and 6 Dec. 1785; and To WF, [20 Dec. 1785]). 2  In the Tour, JB wrote, ‘As I kept no Journal of any thing that passed after this morning [11 Nov. 1773], I shall, from memory, group together this and the other days, till that on which Dr. Johnson departed for London [20 Nov. 1773]’ (Life v. 394). As discussed in Appendix 3 below, JB’s coverage of events on 10 Nov., SJ and JB’s first day back in Edinburgh after their tour, was also extremely thin in the original journal (J 33.1). 3  JB’s journal for Sat. 7 Jan. reads, ‘supt at Sir William Forbes’s, with him & Lady Forbes alone.’

1 

9

11 April 1776

To Forbes, Thursday 11 April 1776 Not reported. JB’s journal entry in London for this date states that, before breakfast, ‘I called on Sir William Forbes, who had often tried to find me. He was abroad. I left a note to engage him to sup with Dr. Johnson at the Crown & Anchor on saturday’.1 WF presumably confirmed that he would attend the Crown and Anchor supper later that day, when ‘Sir William Forbes called [at Paoli’s residence in Berkeley Square, where JB was staying] & sat a little with the General and me’ (Journ. 11 Apr. 1776). 1  WF (with LF) and JB had independently left Edinburgh for London on 11 Mar. 1776. JB describes the supper in the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand on Sat. 13 Apr. 1776 in his journal entry for that date (which was torn from the journal manuscript in order to be used by JB and EM in preparing the Life, and therefore appears in Life MS iii, pp. 35–36) as well as in the Life (iii. 41–44, where the date is incorrectly given as Fri. 12 Apr). WF also mentions it, and names the other company, in a letter from London to JaB on 24 Apr. 1776 (FP 98/2): ‘I supped a few nights ago with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Langton, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Boswell, and Mr. Nairne.’ JB had already introduced WF to SJ three years earlier in Edinburgh (see Intro., pp. ci– cii). Of the others present, WF had been friendly with BL and his wife Mary (Lloyd), Lady Rothes (1743–1820), widow of John Leslie (1698–1767), 10th Earl of Rothes, at least from the time of their two-and-a-half month visit to Edinburgh in autumn 1772, to see family members, including Lady Rothes’s mother, Mary (Holt) Hamilton (d. 1785), Countess of Haddington (see Corr. 3, pp. lii– lxxv, esp. lviii–lix, and passim). JB’s journal notes (J 26) record at least four occasions on which JB, WF, and BL were together at that time, including a supper and a dinner at the Forbes home (see Intro., p. ci, n. 136). BL and his wife probably also socialized with the Forbeses in Edinburgh when JB was not present. WF would later write of BL, ‘I was happy in his friendship and unreserved epistolary intercourse, during the long period of nearly thirty years’ (Beattie ii. 95 n.). On 28 June 1773 WF had written to JaB, who had recently met BL, ‘I have a particular regard for Mr. Langton, and I have seldom met with a man whom I admire so much, from so short an acquaintance. His learning and virtues are an honour to his station in life, and his rank in the World make them a more valuable and useful example to others. It were happy for the World in general, as well as for individuals, that such examples were more frequently to be met with’ (FP 98/1). On 31 Dec. 1774 JB had written to BL of ‘Our common Banker Sir William Forbes … communicating to me,

from time to time his letters from you’ (Corr. 3, p. 49; see also Journ. 24 July 1774, quoted in To WF, 20 Oct. 1782 n. 5). The banking reference is probably to one or more investments which Lady Rothes had with WF’s bank (see Lady Rothes to WF, 4 June 1790 and 6 Dec. 1790, under date in this volume, and WF to BL, 9 Sept. 1782, Corr. 3, p. 122). Although this reference to BL’s letters suggests a substantial correspondence, corroborated by scattered references in WF’s and JB’s letters (including JB’s letter to SJ, 12 Mar. 1778, in Life iii. 221) and other evidence, no letters from BL to WF, and only two from WF to BL, have been located (see From WF, 16 Sept. 1785 n. 16, and 25 Apr. 1787 n. 3). The established friendship of WF and BL may explain why, in JB’s journal account, these two appear to arrive at the Crown and Anchor together: ‘Sir William Forbes & Langton came’ (Life MS iii, p. 35). Several months later, in a letter to JB of 10 Aug. 1776, BL would refer to ‘our good Friend Sir Wm. Forbess’, reflecting the traditional disyllabic Scottish pronunciation of WF’s surname (Corr. 3, p. 71 and n. 2; FHC to Andrew Gibb, 15 Feb. 1792 n. 2; From WF, 25 July 1787 n. 4). The Crown and Anchor supper was probably WF’s first meeting with another member of the Literary Club, JR, of whom WF soon became enamoured. JR would paint portraits of WF and LF this spring (see From WF, 23 May 1783). In his letter to JaB of 24 Apr. 1776, WF wrote, ‘Sir Joshua Reynolds is an acquaintance I have had the happiness to form here very much to my Satisfaction: I love the Simplicity of his Character, and gentleness of his manners, beyond those of most men I have seen on so slight a knowledge; and I am much prejudiced in favor of the goodness of his heart as well as of his understanding, from your testimony and that of some of our mutual friends.’ The growing friendship between WF and JR led, in turn, to the dinner at JR’s home where WF met TB (see From WF, 23 May 1783) and EB (see WF to EB, [6 Apr. 1784], Intro., p. civ, n. 144), among others, and participated in the Round Robin letter to SJ which will figure prominently in this correspondence. This

10

24 February 1777 dinner occurred in late May or early June 1776 (see From WF, 19 Oct. 1787 n. 18). WF was well acquainted with the other Scot present at the Crown and Anchor supper, the Perthshire advocate and laird William Nairne (1731–1811), from 1786 Lord Dunsinane (or Dunsinnan) of the Court of Session, and from 1790 5th Baronet of Dunsinane. WF and Nairne had socialized together with JB on at least three occasions before spring 1776, including a Sunday of heavy drinking and serious conversation the day before setting out for London in the preceding month (Journ. 10 Mar. 1776, and 15 and 30 Dec. 1774; see also 16 July 1776, 6 Mar. 1778, and 23 Mar. 1782 for later occasions on which the three men socialized in Edinburgh, and 2 Jan. 1786, when WF, LF, and Nairne supped at the Boswells’ home in Edinburgh). Religion constituted a strong bond between WF and Nairne, who were both leaders of the English Episcopal community in Edinburgh (‘two worthy distinguished Christians’, according to JB’s journal entry of 10 Mar. 1776), and would help to bring about its union with the Scottish Episcopal Church in the first decade of the nineteenth century (Records of St. Paul’s and St. George’s, including Baron Smith’s [Blackfriars] and the New English Chapel, Edinburgh City Chambers Archives GD 236/ED2, esp. ED 002/1/1; WF’s correspondence with Nairne, largely concerning their management of the New English or New Episcopal Chapel in the Cowgate, in FP 38/2; John Skinner,

Annals of Scottish Episcopacy, from the Year 1788 to the Year 1816, 1818, pp. 366–68). Their English Episcopal affiliation was probably one reason why Nairne, like WF, had been called upon by JB to socialize with SJ in Scotland in 1773—in Nairne’s case, accompanying SJ and JB from Edinburgh to St. Andrews (Life v. 53–54, 18 Aug. 1773)— and again in London on this occasion. Although the Life contains a lengthy account of the conversation at the Crown and Anchor supper, WF is credited with only one contribution: ‘Sir William Forbes said, “Might not a man warmed with wine be like a bottle of beer, which is made brisker by being set before the fire?”—“Nay, (said Johnson, laughing,) I cannot answer that: that is too much for me”’ (Life iii. 42). However, in the journal version of this encounter, WF’s question lacks the phrase ‘warmed with wine’ and uses the word ‘improved’ where the Life has ‘made brisker’. More importantly, in the journal account SJ’s reply is spoken ‘contemptously’ (JB’s standard rendering of words ending ‘ptuous’) rather than in laughter, and JB adds that ‘Worthy Sir William luckily did not mind this.’ The journal version also notes that ‘Langton acquiesced in Dr. Johnson’s doctrine. Nairne either durst not speak or had nothing to say’ (Life MS iii, p. 36). Thus, the revisions in the published Life made the passage more economical and softened SJ’s manners, so that WF no longer appears to have provoked SJ’s intimidating scorn.

To Forbes, Monday 24 February 1777 MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1321. address: To Sir William Forbes Baronet enclosure: JB’s Hebrides journal (J 33). endorsement: Jas. Boswell, Edr. 24 Feby. 1777

24 Febry. 1777 My Dear Sir William: I entrust you with my Hebrides Journal, ‘to the last syllable of recorded time’.1 I depend upon your honour that you will not copy or communicate any part of it; and upon your friendly indulgence, that you will excuse what faults you see in it. I must next vacation continue it from my memory.2 I ever am, with the sincerest esteem and affection, your obliged humble servant, James Boswell Please take care of the 10 Separate sheets, that no part of them may be lost. 1  JB playfully invokes Macbeth, V. v: ‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow /

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time’.

11

7 March 1777 By ‘next vacation’, JB means the period from 12 Mar. to 11 June, when the Court of Session would be between its winter and summer sessions. In 1777 JB would leave Edinburgh for London on Tues. 11 Mar., and he returned on 21 May, in order to conduct business at the bar of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, ‘that vulgar & rascally court’ (Journ. 26 May 1777). No record has been found of his working during

this vacation on revisions of the Hebrides journal, which he seems to have made in the years 1779–82 (Hebrides, p. xiii). On the need for completing this journal from ‘my memory’, as well as the explanation of the ‘10 Separate sheets’ mentioned in the postscript, see To WF, 6 Jan. 1775 (where, however, the number of separate sheets is given as nine rather than ten).

2 

From Forbes, Friday 7 March 1777 MS. Yale (C 1268). Not in Abbott. previously printed: Printed in its entirety near the end of the Tour (with minor stylistic revisions),1 preceded by the following sentence: ‘It would be improper for me to boast of my own labours; but I cannot refrain from publishing such praise as I received from such a man as Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo, after the perusal of the original manuscript of my Journal’ (Life v. 413). header: To James Boswell Esqr. address: To James Boswell Esqr., Advocate, James’s Court

Edinbg.2 7 March 1777 My Dear Sir: I ought to have thankt you sooner for your very obliging Letter,3 and for the singular Confidence you are pleased to place in me, when you trust me with such a curious and valuable deposit4 as the papers you have sent me.5 Be assured, I have a due Sense of this favour; and shall faithfully and carefully return them6 to you. You may rely that I shall neither copy any part, nor permit the papers to be seen. They7 contain a curious Picture of Society, and form a Journal on the most instructive plan that can be possibly thought of: for I am not sure that an ordinary observer would become so well acquainted either with Dr. J.8 or with the manners of the Hebrides by a personal intercourse,9 as by a perusal of your journal.10 I am very truly, Dear Sir, your most obedient and affectionate humble servant, William Forbes 1  Besides some differences in punctuation and capitalization, the letter as published in the Tour (Life v. 413–14) contains the following revisions from the manuscript, as transcribed below: the dateline reads ‘Edinburgh, March 7, 1777.’ (see n. 2 below); in the first sentence, ‘thankt’ reads ‘thanked’; in the second paragraph, ‘can be possibly’ reads ‘can possibly be’, and ‘Dr. J.’ reads ‘Dr. Johnson’ (see n. 8 below). Furthermore, in the first and second editions of the Tour, the word ‘deposit’ in the first sentence reads ‘deposite’ (as it is spelt in Dict. SJ); it was changed to ‘deposit’ in the third edition, but not in the Hill–Powell edition (Life v. 413). As suggested in the notes to this letter below, some of these revisions appear to be the work

of EM, who edited the Hebrides journal for publication with JB. For the controversy over JB’s publication of this letter, see From WF, 6 Dec. 1785, and To WF, [20 Dec. 1785]. 2  MS. WF’s original ‘Edinbg’ has been deleted, apparently by EM, after which EM inserted ‘burgh’ above the line by caret. 3  To WF, 24 Feb. 1777. 4  MS. next seven words inserted above the line by caret. 5  It is not known why JB sent his Hebrides journal to WF at this time. WF had already read and praised the same materials in 1775 (see From WF, [6 Jan. 1775], and To WF, 6 Jan. 1775), and there is no evidence that JB began expanding and revising the journal for publication until 1779 (Hebrides, p. xiii).

12

20 December 1779 The most likely explanation is that WF wanted to spend more time with the journal, as he had kept most of it for only five days on the first occasion. The reason was certainly not that, in the space of just two years, JB and WF ‘both … seem to have forgotten the previous loan’, as asserted in the notes to the Hill–Powell edition of the Tour (Life v. 577). 6  MS. ‘it’ lightly inserted above deleted ‘them’, possibly by EM (although the published Tour has ‘them’). 7  MS. An opening bracket before ‘They’, probably inserted by EM when preparing the letter for publication, suggests that

consideration was given to publishing only the second paragraph in the Tour, instead of the entire letter. 8  MS. ?EM inserted ‘ohnson’ to expand WF’s ‘Dr. J.’ to ‘Dr. Johnson’ for publication in the Tour. 9  MS. ‘intercourse’ written above deleted ‘acquaintance’. 10  JB’s journal entry for 27 Mar. 1777 reports a visit to the Boswells’ home by WF: he ‘came & sat a while in the evening. I relished much his worthy and amiable society. He praised my Journey to the Hebrides very much; and said we had no travels like it.’

To Forbes, Monday 20 December 1779 MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1322. Copy at Yale (L 541), headed ‘To Sir William Forbes with my Ashbourne Journal 1777’. address: To Sir William Forbes Bart., with a Book sealed up enclosure: As explained below, ‘a Book sealed up’ in the address refers to JB’s Journal in Ashbourne (J 52). endorsement: James Boswell, Edr. 20 Decr, 1779

20 Decr. 1779 My Dear Sir: What is now sent will shew the confidence I have in you.1 I trust to your fidele silentium.2 I hope you will receive entertainment. I should like, if you could take the trouble, to have your remarks on any passages which particularly strike you. I ever am with most sincere esteem, your affectionate humble servant, James Boswell 1  From the header on JB’s copy of this letter at Yale, the enclosure can be identified as a quarto notebook with leather spine and blue paper boards marked ‘Journal in Ashbourne’ (J 52). The heart of this journal is the account, now famous as a result of publication of a large part of it in the Life (iii. 135–208), of the visit by JB and SJ on 14–24 Sept. 1777 to the Mansion House in Church Street, Ashbourne, Derbyshire, home of SJ’s friend, Rev. John Taylor (1711–88). For analyses of this account, see John B. Radner, ‘Pilgrimage and Autonomy: The Visit to Ashbourne’, in Citizen of the World, pp. 203–27, and Johnson and Boswell: A Biography of Friendship, 2012, pp. 192–213. The process by which JB revised his original journal into material for the Life can be traced in Life MS iii, pp. 87–152. The ‘Journal in Ashbourne’ which WF received was composed by JB during Sept. and Oct. 1777, using notes and memoranda, as well as material recollected from memory. Because it was

later used as a printer’s copy for the Life (as discussed in the commentary on J 52 in Catalogue i. 23–24; Extremes, p. xxiii; and Life MS iii, p. 87 n. 5), the Ashbourne journal no longer exists in the bound, unmarked form in which WF would have seen it. Furthermore, the version seen by WF almost certainly included a long note on ‘the company I used to see at Dr. Taylor’s’, which JB dated ‘December 1779’ and added to the entry on 20 Sept. 1777, possibly for WF’s benefit (see Extremes, p. 172 n. 4). The ‘Journal in Ashbourne’ which JB sent to WF begins on the day of JB’s departure from Edinburgh (10 Sept.) and concludes with JB’s return there (27 Sept.). This additional material explains JB’s allusion to ‘the confidence I have in you’ and, in the next sentence, his expression of trust in WF’s discretion. For while the journal at Ashbourne focuses closely on SJ’s conversation (except for one brief ‘digression from Dr. Johnson’ on 20 Sept., in which JB reflects on his own

13

Tuesday 21 December 1779 situation), the pre-Ashbourne part of the journal contains more personal material. The entry on the day JB left Edinburgh (10 Sept., although written six days later) records the tension JB felt between his excitement at the prospect of being with SJ again (‘I was like one going upon a pilgrimage to some sacred place’) and ‘my dear Wife’s thinking that there was not a sufficient reason for my leaving her & the children, & putting myself to as much expence as a Journey to London would cost me’. Yet just two days later he ‘toyed’ with a pretty maid at an inn in Lancaster. Although JB remarks that he ‘meant no ill this night’ (12 Sept.), the account of his experiences with the maid the next morning is less equivocal: ‘she looked so inviting, and my desire was so strong, that after being allowed liberties enough I attempted to lye with her; but to this she would not consent. In a moment after, I was shocked to think of the risk I had run. Perhaps I should not put such things as this into my Journal’ (13 Sept.). Still later that day, now in Manchester, JB picks up two ‘provincial & mean’ women, though ‘without any intention of transgressing’. Travelling in a post-chaise in the middle of the night, he grows ‘very unhappy’ as he thinks ‘with tender anxiety of my Wife & Children’, but at Leek that night, he finds a chambermaid pleasing, ‘and I fondled her’ (14 Sept.). In Stafford he fondles another maid, since ‘she charmed me’. ‘I had immediate keen sensations of desire for Women’, he continues. ‘I let them play about my fancy; but they were checked by looking back to my dear Wife, to whom, be they irreligious or not, they could not but be ungracious, and by looking forward to my revered friend, in whose opinion I beleived they were immoral. How inconsistent,

thought I, is it for me to be making a pilgrimage to meet Dr. Johnson, and licentiously loving wenches by the way’ (14 Sept.). In his journal entry for 20 Sept., about a week after his arrival at Ashbourne on the evening of 14 Sept., JB noted—in retrospect, as he was finishing his incomplete record of that day on 5 Oct.—that ‘None of the Dr’s maids were handsome. So I had no incitement to amorous desires; and all the time that I was at Ashbourne I had not the least wish for women. I thought that Dr. Johnson’s company would afford me so much of a higher kind of pleasure—intellectual delight—that I could live quite well without the pleasure of enjoying women. Having this experience in my own person, I can have no difficulty to beleive that Monks whose minds are entertained in an exalted manner, do not break their vow of chastity’. The fact that JB sent WF this revealing journal suggests that he was seeking not only validation of his developing biographical methods but also forgiveness for, or toleration of, his temptations and indiscretions. According to JB’s journal entry of 3 Oct. 1777, when MMB (‘Sposa’) saw the early portions of this journal, during the period when JB was writing it up in Edinburgh, she was understandably perturbed: ‘Sposa read my Journ & was justly displeased wt my fondling of maids at inns’. But she must have quickly forgiven him, as later that day JB went ‘to town wt wife in good humour’. 2  Literally loyal or faithful silence, ‘fidele silentium’ was associated chiefly with Horace’s ideal of manly excellence (Odes 3.2.1.25: ‘est et fideli tuta silentio’, ‘There is a sure reward for trusty silence, too’; Loeb ed., trans. C. E. Bennett, 1960).

From Forbes, Tuesday 21 December 1779 MS. Yale (C 1269). Not in Abbott. previously printed: One sentence quoted in Life iii. 208, in the section following the segment based on the Ashbourne Journal, 10–27 Sept. 1777 (Journal in Ashbourne, J 52). address: To James Boswell Esqr., Advocate, with a Book enclosure: As explained in the letter, ‘a Book’ in the address refers to a volume of the Monthly Review containing the Feb. 1779 issue (not located). seal: WF Monogram.1

Parlt. Close 21 Decr. 1779 Dear Sir: I thank you most sincerely for the Confidence you are pleased to repose in me by this Communication of your very valuable Journal. Be assured that Confidence is not misplaced; nor can any man be more grateful for the favor. I have 14

Tuesday 21 December 1779 already perused more than half of it; but2 it is not once nor3 twice going over it that will satisfy me; for I find in it a high degree of instruction as well as entertainment; and I derive more benefit from Dr. Johnson’s admirable discussions, than I should be able to draw from his personal Conversation: for I suppose there is not a man in the world to whom he discloses his sentiments so freely as to yourself. When I have finished it, I will bring it to you myself; and we will talk over some particular and favorite Passages.4 In the meantime I send you the Vol. of the Monthly Review where at p. 138 you will find the introduction I mentioned to you, of Rousseau’s Memoirs written by himself.5 The work is, I dare say, genuine; and I heartily wish the whole were published, for it will surely be a singular Curiosity. I am with great regard, Dear Sir, your most obedient and faithful humble Servant, William Forbes 1  This oval seal shows a monogram ‘WF’ in large, upper-case letters, beneath which hangs by a ribbon the badge of the Nova Scotia baronets (see Intro., pp. lxxix–lxxxi). After the acquisition of a new Pitsligo coat of arms in 1782 enabled him to make a more elaborate seal, which featured the Forbes of Pitsligo coat of arms above the badge of the Nova Scotia baronets (see From WF, 19 Oct. 1787 n. 2), WF continued to use this simple monogram seal about as often as the newer one in his letters to JB. 2  The remainder of this sentence appears, with slight stylistic alterations, in the Life (iii. 208), just after the account of JB’s Sept. 1777 visit to Ashbourne, introduced by this statement: ‘From this meeting at Ashbourne I derived a considerable accession to my Johnsonian store. I communicated my original Journal to Sir William Forbes, in whom I have always placed deserved confidence; and what he wrote to me concerning it is so much to my credit as the biographer of Johnson, that my readers will, I hope, grant me their indulgence for here inserting it’. By omitting the first part of WF’s sentence, JB concealed the fact that WF’s compliment was based on a perusal of only part of the Ashbourne journal. WF uses the phrase ‘more than half’ to describe the portion he read, but since the segment he received began with much material that would not be published in the Life, as discussed in To WF, 20 Dec. 1779 n. 1, he may in fact have read less than half of the published Ashbourne journal when he wrote this letter to JB. 3  The word ‘nor’ was printed ‘or’ in the Life as published (Life iii. 208). This change can be explained either as a revision made in proof or a mistake by the compositor—‘JB’s faint “n” having been overlooked’ (Life MS iii, p. 150 n. 3).

4  No record of such a meeting has survived, although JB’s journal records a social event with the Forbeses two days later (23 Dec. 1779) and meetings with WF at his counting house on 20 Jan. and 15 Feb. 1780. Many other meetings with WF probably went unrecorded. 5  The item sent by WF was presumably The Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal: From January to June, Inclusive. 1779. By Several Hands. Volume LX, 1779. At this time WF subscribed to the Monthly Rev. through William Creech, and his 1779 bill for fourteen months at a cost of 18s 8d has survived among his papers (FP 216). Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) had died on 2 July 1778. The Feb. 1779 number of the Monthly Rev. contained a review of a hostile Éloge de M. Rousseau, de Genève (printed without any indication of author, printer, publisher, or year), with ‘a specimen of [Rousseau’s] memoirs by himself ’, pp. 136–43. The review identified the author of this ‘Éloge’ as ‘Mr. Palissot’, i.e., Charles Palissot de Montenoy (1730–1814), polemicist, playwright, and poet, whose comedy Les Philosophes (1760) had included a satirical depiction of Rousseau. The ‘Éloge’ appeared three more times this year: in Œuvres complettes de M. Palissot. Tome septième, contenant Le triomphe de Sophocle, et divers mélanges, Liège, 1779, pp. 173–202; in a ‘nouvelle edition, revue, corrigée & considérablement augmentée’, published with a false London imprint (see ESTC N42085), pp. 173–205; and in Tome 14 of Le Nécrologe des hommes célèbres de France, a series of biographical obituary compilations edited chiefly by Palissot, issued annually from 1767 to 1782. The review in the Monthly Rev. assails Palissot for the ‘ill-disguised spirit of malignancy’ of this ‘pretended eulogy’ (p.

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Tuesday [28 August 1781] 136), defends Rousseau’s character, and gives a lengthy account of the dialogue between Rousseau and his wife, Thérèse le Vasseur (1721–1801), in his dying moments at Ermenonville, the estate of René Louis de Girardin (1735–1808), Marquis de Vauvray. The reviewer observes on p. 138 (as WF notes) that ‘Our Author [Palissot] thinks that the solution of the problem [i.e., the ‘problem’ of the truth of Rousseau’s ‘moral character’] will be found in the Memoirs of his own Life, written by this singular man, which are expected with impatience, and which, perhaps, the philosophical sect (treated without ceremony in this Work) will have credit enough to withhold from the eye of the Public. Mr. Palissot has found means of coming at some of the paragraphs that serve as an introduction to these Memoirs. These paragraphs are, indeed, both extraordinary and extravagant … we shall communicate them here to our Readers; they are perfectly in Rousseau’s manner; they carry an internal evidence of authenticity, and are as follows’. This specimen, given in English translation (on p. 139), would later appear as the introduction (‘Préambule’) to Rousseau’s ‘Confessions’ (Les Confessions de J. J. Rousseau, 1782). Although the first volume of the Confessions was not published until four years after Rousseau’s death (his connections having withheld the work from ‘the eye of the Public’ until then), much of the work’s content was known from readings the author had given in the early 1770s (see Leo Damrosch, JeanJacques Rousseau: Restless Genius, 2005, p. 474). The accuracy of Palissot’s quotations of the paragraphs from the ‘Préambule’ shows

that he had had access to the manuscript, or at least to a copy of that portion of it. No record has been found of where or when WF had ‘mentioned’ to JB the introduction to ‘Rousseau’s Memoirs written by himself’, or of JB’s reaction to this article. JB would later record in his journal his first impression of Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques on 21 Sept. 1780: ‘I was roused by his eloquence; but saw with a sound look that he was mad’ (he would also record, without comment, reading ‘a small portion of the first volume’ of Rousseau’s Confessions on 3 Sept. 1792). JB’s own attempt at confessional autobiography, ‘Ébauche de ma vie’ (translated in Earlier Years, pp. 1–6), had been written for Rousseau during JB’s exhilarating encounters with Rousseau and Thérèse le Vasseur at Môtiers in Dec. 1764 (see Journ. 1, pp. 255–96, 350–69; Gordon Turnbull, ‘James Boswell and Rousseau in Môtiers: Re-inscribing Childhood and Its (Auto) biographical Prospects’, in Romanticism, Rousseau, Switzerland: New Prospects, ed. Angela Esterhammer, Diane Piccitto, Patrick Vincent, 2015, pp. 101–116). Upon returning from his European travels, however, JB was confronted by SJ’s bitter denunciation of Rousseau on 15 Feb. 1766 (recorded in his journal the next day) as ‘one of the worst of men a Rascal who ought to be hunted out of Society … Sir Rousseau is a very bad man’. In the Life JB would insert after SJ’s tirade a lengthy rebuttal, which begins, ‘This violence seemed very strange to me, who had read many of Rousseau’s animated writings with great pleasure, and even edification’ (Life ii. 11–12).

To Forbes, Tuesday [28 August 1781] MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1323 (where it is dated ‘1781’). Copy at Yale (L 541.3), headed ‘To Sir W. Forbes, 28 Augt. 1781’. address: To Sir William Forbes Bart., with a Parcel enclosure: As explained in the letter and note 2 below, ‘a Parcel’ in the address apparently refers to a bound collection of forty numbers of the Hypochondriack (P 63). endorsement: Ja. Boswell, Edr. 1781 seal: Full-length robed classical figure standing next to column. note: The date of this letter has been supplied from the copy at Yale.

Drumsheugh1 Tuesday Evening My Dear Sir: I send you forty numbers of The Hypochondriack,2 which I have all along intended to submit to your consideration; so that your putting me in mind of that intention was a very agreable circumstance.3 I own I have a very good opinion of some of them; and I think in general, that they contain much thinking and great variety of ideas. You will be diverted with my whim of having a Motto 16

Tuesday [28 August 1781] from a different Authour to each paper. But it appears to me that my Mottoes are admirably adapted to the subjects, and that I am happy in my translation of some of them.4 Except Numbers first and tenth, all of these Essays were written within a day or two of my stated time each month.5 I will be much obliged to you if you will peruse them calmly and attentively while you are in the country,6 and will take the trouble to write your Criticism on each of them freely. It will not be enough unless you say something of every one of them. So take a Sheet of paper, and have it lying by you, while you read, and favour me with your remarks. When I have written as many Numbers of this Paper as I think enough, it is my intention to collect them into a Volume or Volumes.7 It is therefore of consequence to me to have them fully and deliberately revised by such a Freind as you. Upon your return to town I shall hope to receive your Criticisms.8 I heartily wish you and Lady Forbes all happiness in the North, and a safe return to us, and I ever am with most sincere regard, My Dear Sir, your affectionate humble servant, I beg you may keep my Essays to yourself.9 1  By early June 1781 the Boswells had acquired ‘our Country house at Drumsheugh’ (e.g., Journ. 12 June 1781, 2 Feb. 1782), a hamlet west of the Edinburgh New Town (see John Clark Wilson, ‘Lands and Houses of Drumsheugh’, Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, xxv [1945]: 71–95). JB usually referred to the house simply by the name of its neighbourhood (e.g., Journ. 12, 23 June, 26 Oct. 1781, 30 Mar. 1782). A property in Drumsheugh would have placed the Boswells close to friends who were associated with WF’s English Episcopal circle. WF himself may have owned a house there in addition to his principal residence in the New Town: an undated letter (?late 1792) to his brother-in-law John Hay (for whom see the next letter n. 1) states that ‘we keep the small house at Drumseugh for the Children’ (FP 83/4). Drumsheugh House was the residence of JB and WF’s friend Elizabeth ‘Betty’ (Erskine) (?1734–94), known as Lady Colville after her successive marriages to Walter Macfarlane (d. 1767) and Alexander Colville (1717–70), 7th Lord Colville, and her siblings, AE and Lady Anne Erskine (1735–1802). Both JB and WF were entertained there on numerous occasions (see From WF, 18 May 1790 n. 11). The Boswells did not retain the house in Drumsheugh long. By the summer of 1782, when MMB suffered from a serious attack of consumptive symptoms, they visited and ‘resolved to take’ a different house, one ‘on the road to Prestonfield, which pleased us much’ (13 July 1782); but two days later, MMB ‘thought

James Boswell it would trouble & disconcert her to remove to it, & have two houses’ (J 83, ‘Notes and Journal of My Wife’s Illness and of my own Life from 22 June to 11 Novr. 1782 inclusive’). 2  JB’s seventy essays as The Hypochondriack appeared anonymously each month in the Lond. Mag. for almost six years, from Oct. 1777 to Aug. 1783, missing only the month of July 1783. In 1781 JB had stitched together the printed copies of the first forty essays (originally published in Lond. Mag. Oct. 1777–Jan. 1781), with a few minor corrections written in ink, and bound them in a grey wrapper, and this collection (now P 63) was apparently the ‘Parcel’ enclosed with this letter to WF. 3  As no record has been found of WF reminding JB of his intention to show him his Hypochondriack papers, it is not known when WF did so. Nor is it known when JB first told WF of this intention, although the phrase ‘all along intended’ suggests that WF may have known about the project since, or very shortly after, JB finalized it with Edward Dilly (1732–79) and the other partners at the Lond. Mag. (whose numbers included JB himself since Oct. 1769) in Sept. 1772 (see Dilly’s letters of 4 and 10 Sept. 1772, C 1072.7 and C 1072.8; Earlier Years, p. 436). As shown above, it was just about that time, during the late summer and autumn of 1772, that evidence of JB socializing with WF first appears in the correspondence (To WF, 8 Aug. [1772], and n. 2) and (with BL) in JB’s journal notes (J 26, Oct.–Dec. 1772, as cited

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Tuesday [28 August 1781] in Intro., p. ci, n. 136). JB was then ‘anxious how to begin the Hypochrondriack which I had now undertaken’ (J 26, 18 Sept. 1772), and he was being pressed by Dilly to start delivering text (From Dilly, 5 Oct. 1772, C 1072.9). During one stretch of four days that autumn, JB’s journal notes (J 26) record being with WF (among others) on 6, 7, and 9 Nov., and part of his entry on 8 Nov. reads, ‘Evening did a little of Hypochond.’ If, as seems likely, JB turned to WF and other friends for guidance and support as he struggled anxiously to formalize and implement his Hypochondriack scheme between Aug. and Nov. 1772, this circumstance would help to explain why he wrote in this letter to WF that he had ‘all along intended’ to send the published essays to WF for his ‘consideration’. 4  The Hypochondriack essays all begin with an appropriate quotation or ‘motto’ from a different author. With the exception of no. 39, which uses a quotation from the book of Psalms (given in English from the King James Bible), the ‘mottoes’ in the first forty numbers are all in Latin (34) or Greek (5), followed immediately afterwards by English translations. Several of the translations are credited to others (e.g., Alexander Pope [1688–1744] in paper no. 9, Abraham Cowley [1618–67] in no. 12, William Melmoth [1710–99] in no. 27, and Christopher Pitt [1699–1748] in no. 28), but many others appear to be by JB himself. JB began the series by using quotations from well-known classical authors, such as Horace, Ovid, Virgil, Terence, Aristotle, Plautus, Cicero, Sallust, Homer, and Lucretius in the first ten numbers, but as time passed he relied increasingly on more obscure classical and Renaissance authors in order to avoid repetition. This pattern would continue during the last thirty essays in the series (nos. 41–70), and on two occasions during that run, he drew on an author he had employed before (Aristotle, quoted at the beginning of no. 5, is also quoted at the beginning of no. 44, and quotations from Augustine are used at the beginning of nos. 30 and 51). By the end of the series, he would find it necessary to shift his focus from Latin to Greek authors: ten of the last fifteen Hypochondriack essays (nos. 56–70) employ mottoes in Greek rather than Latin. Several journal entries throw light on the ways in which JB obtained these mottoes, on the anxiety he sometimes experienced with regard to them, and on the importance of the mottoes in the writing process. When working in London on Hypochondriack no. 7 (‘On Conscience’, published in Lond. Mag. Apr. 1778), he ‘Could not fix at all on a

Subject’ and ‘turned over various books in the [Dilly brothers’] shop’ looking for something suitable. ‘At last I lighted on a passage in Cicero’s tusculan questions wc I seised & at once got into the finest frame & wrote my best Hypo. yet introducing Seneca’s Epigram’ (18 Apr. 1778). Similarly, in Edinburgh, when composing essay no. 22 (‘On Similarity among Authors’, published in Lond. Mag. July 1779), JB ‘searched a long while in the Advocates Library, for a motto on Imitation or Coincidence in different Writers, & thought I should never find one, which fretted me’, until ‘I found one in Statuis [i.e., Statius]’, after which ‘I wrote pretty easily’ (16 July 1779). On another occasion, when he ‘could not’ write and decided ‘to make an old Essay serve’, he worried that he ‘could not find a Motto’ for it (15 Oct. 1781). But the next day he recorded having ‘Happily found a Motto for my old Essay in Holyoak’s Dictionary & was content’; the essay, ‘On Identification by Numbers’, originally published in the Pub. Adv. for 22 Jan. 1768, was sent off that day (16 Oct.) and appeared in the Oct. 1781 number of the Lond. Mag. as Hypochondriack no. 49, with a quotation from Vegetius at the head. JB probably found this motto by looking up the article ‘numerus’ in Lexicon Philologicum et Dictionarium Etymologicum (1677) by Thomas Holyoake (1616–75), in the Boswell family library (Boswell’s Books, p. 227)—a method of searching for appropriate quotations ‘in the passages quoted by dictionaries to illustrate usage’ which JB seems to have used often to obtain his Hypochondriack mottoes (Laird, p. 401 n. 3). 5  JB apparently worked on Hypochondriack no. 1 (‘On Periodical Papers’) on 11 Aug. 1777, when he noted in his journal, ‘Wrote for LM & to Dilly’. This untraced letter is probably the one sent to Edward Dilly on 16 Aug. 1777 (Reg. Let. Sent); Dilly’s reply of 27 Sept. 1777 (C 1075) acknowledged receiving the essay, though it was not yet in final form. On 22 Sept. JB wrote to Dilly again, ‘engaging that the 1 No. of the Hypochondriack should be in London on the 6. Octr.’ (Reg. Let. Sent), and on 1 Oct. he recorded ‘revising Hypok No. 1’ (Journ.). It appeared in the Oct. 1777 number of the Lond. Mag., which JB received on 3 Nov. (Journ.). Thus, although JB may have started writing no. 1 much earlier, its completion occurred closer to the deadline than JB’s letter to WF suggests. This was not the case, however, with Hypochondriack no. 10 (‘On Truth’, published in Lond. Mag. July 1778), according to JB’s own account at the

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Tuesday [28 August 1781] beginning of that essay: ‘My scheme of writing a periodical paper, entitled The Hypochondriack, was formed a good many years ago, while I was travelling upon the continent; and in the eagerness of realising it, and seeing how it would do, I sat down one evening at Milan [which JB had visited on 25–27 Jan. and again 26–27 July 1765], and wrote The Hypochondriack, No. X. pleasing myself with the fancy that I was so far advanced’ (Bailey i. 170). JB’s journal demonstrates that composition of the Hypochondriack essays was not always easy and regular, and that JB almost always wrote, as he admits in this letter to WF, ‘while the hour of publication was so near, that I had just time enough to do them with rapid agitation’ (Hypochondriack no. 70). On 17 Apr. 1778 he struggled with essay no. 7, ‘which I had delayed so long by the dissipation of London that instead of its being ready for the press by the first of the month as usual I had very little time’. ‘Could not write a Hypochondriack’, JB remarked just twelve days before writing this letter to WF, when attempting to compose essay no. 47 on 16 Aug. 1781. On that occasion and three others (see the reference to no. 49 in the preceding note, to no. 19 in n. 9 below, and Bailey i. 65, 75), he resorted to re-using old essays. But usually he overcame his anxiety and managed to complete a new essay in time to meet his deadline, as he would do, for example, on 17 Nov. 1781: ‘Had laboured for some days under an impotence of mind, so that I could not write No. 50 of The Hypochondriack. This day wrote it all but a little.’ 6  JB’s awareness that WF was about to leave for ‘the country’ (Aberdeenshire, in this instance) is another indication of a recent, undocumented transfer of information from WF to JB, possibly in an unreported conversation or an untraced communication among family members. 7  This is the earliest known expression by JB of his unrealized plan to revise and publish the complete set of his Hypochondriack papers. JB must have had this plan in mind from the time of his proposal for the series, for Edward Dilly’s letter of 10 Sept. 1772 (C 1072.8) reported that when the partners of the Lond. Mag. agreed to publish it, they also agreed to the second part of JB’s proposal, ‘and have accordingly given you all the Security in their Power, that no Person shall collect the Essays or Papers you send under the Title of the Hypochondriak without your permission, but that the Property of the Copyright will be yours, to collect in Volumes whenever you please’. The intention to publish a collected

set is implicit in To Hugh Blair, [Dec. 1780] (L 59.5), enclosing JB’s three Hypochondriack essays ‘On Death’ (nos. 14–16, Lond. Mag. Nov., Dec., 1778, Jan. 1779) and requesting ‘Remarks and corrections’; the laudatory appreciation in Blair’s reply on 30 Dec. 1780 (C 159.2) must have provided additional encouragement. In July 1782, when JB sent forty numbers (almost certainly P 63, the same bound set which WF had received) to his friend and sometime mentor Henry Home (1696–1782), Lord Kames, whom he credited with inspiring such a project ‘many years ago’, he once again implied a larger publication plan by requesting ‘Critical remarks’ (To Kames, 22 July 1782, L 825; Journ. 11 Oct. 1762, 23 July 1782). Later he organized copies of the entire Hypochondriack series into what he headed a ‘Perfect Set, with additions and corrections, but requiring more’ (P 64, Catalogue iii. 1054–55; see also P 65, headed ‘Imperfect Parcel, some of which may be used for the press, where more corrections are made’). There also survive ‘fifty assorted manuscript leaves of “additions,” supplementary materials which Boswell had gathered from his reading. Preserved with this packet are an index of the authors of Boswell’s mottoes and two specimen printed pages, one small octavo, the other duodecimo, in different sizes of type’ (Applause, p. 177 n. 5). After learning from CD that the other Lond. Mag. partners wished to bring the Hypochondriack series to an end because they ‘did not relish it much’, JB recorded in his journal on 17 Feb. 1783, ‘I wrote to Dilly that I wished to continue it to No. 70, the years of man’s life. But if the Partners really thought they could find a variety of materials all better I should close it next month. It is wonderful how the spur of engagement makes me write’ (similarly summarized under this date in Reg. Let. Sent). On 25 Feb. JB received CD’s reply, summarized in Reg. Let. Received: ‘Mr. C. Dilly that the Partners of the London Magazine are sensible of my liberal contributions to the Miscellany, and I will be so kind as to continue The Hypochondriack to No. 70’. By this time, JB was aware that the Lond. Mag. itself was struggling and in danger of failing, and after meeting with the partners in London on 2 Apr. to devise a restructuring plan, he would eventually withdraw as a partner on 7 Dec. 1783, about six months before the magazine folded (Journ.; Applause, p. 93 n. 7). Meanwhile, on 10 July 1783 JB wrote to CD ‘that I am soon to send The Hypochondriack No 70 to conclude that Collection of Essays’, but on 2 Aug. he received a letter from CD

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Tuesday [28 August 1781] stating that the essay ‘came too late for the Magazine but will appear in the next’ (Reg. Let. Sent/Received). ‘On Swearing’, no. 69, was published in the June 1783 issue, and the final Hypochondriack essay, ‘On Concluding’, no. 70, appeared in Aug., containing the rationalization for ending the series at that number which JB had presented to CD. At some point around this time, SJ had agreed to read a selection of JB’s best essays (Life iii. 179–80, after the date 30 Mar. 1783), and in spring or early summer 1784, JB accordingly ‘read some of my Hypochondriacks to Dr Johnson’ (we do not know which ones). SJ was complimentary about their quality and urged JB to publish them all ‘in a volume & put your name to them’ (quoting SJ in To WJT, 6–8 July 1784, L 1236.9). JB told WJT that SJ would be revising the essays for this purpose, but SJ’s death later that year not only deprived JB of that service but also may have lessened his confidence to carry out SJ’s advice on his own. Nothing more was heard of the book project during the last eleven years of JB’s life. In early 1800 AB would report to WF that his father’s former law clerk, John Lawrie (fl. 1771–93), who had fallen into financial difficulty during the late 1780s and had evidently fled to London to avoid debt (To MMB, 28 Jan. 1789, Rosenbach), was floating proposals in London for a collected edition under JB’s name, with the title ‘Essays reflecting on Men’: ‘I was a good deal surprised to find in Wrights Shop (John Wright [?1770– 1844], a Bookseller in Piccadilly) proposals for publishing as they are called “Essays reflecting on Men” by the late James Boswell Esqr. These are the Papers my Father wrote under the Title of the Hypochondriac—and the proposals mention that they are now collected into one volume by John Laurie his Clerk and private secretary. This Laurie was his Parliament house Clerk as poor a Creature as exists and is publishing them like a catch penny’ (AB to WF, 30 Jan. 1800, FP 87). But the pirated work never appeared, perhaps because WF prevailed on AB to contact EM about taking action (AB to WF, 28 Feb. 1800, FP 87). WF, AB, and EM seem never to have considered, in response to Lawrie’s actions, publishing the Hypochondriack themselves in book form under JB’s name, in accordance with JB’s original intention. The full series of JB’s Hypochondriack remained unpublished until Margery Bailey’s two-volume edition of 1928 (see ‘Bailey’ under Cue Titles), which gave the essays their titles. It was reissued in 1951 in a

one-volume edition titled Boswell’s Column, with abridged introduction and annotation, including some corrections (see also Robert G. Walker, ‘Addenda and Corrigenda to the Annotations of the Bailey Edition of Boswell’s “Hypochondriak”’, English Studies, xci [2010]: 274–88). 8  This did not happen as quickly as JB hoped. A little over three months later, JB recorded in his journal entry for 3 Dec. 1781, ‘Last week I called on Sir W. Forbes who had read 40 of my Hypochondriacks and liked them; said there were many original thoughts, and allways a good tendency. He is to give me Remarks on each.’ These remarks (of which no record survives) may have been made on 18 June 1782, when the journal records that JB ‘sat an hour with Sir William Forbes in high happiness and read to him my 56 Hypochondriack [the first of what would be two consecutive pieces on penuriousness and wealth, appearing in the May 1782 number of Lond. Mag.] with which he was much pleased.’ WF may also have returned the bound collection of numbers 1–40 (P 63) on that occasion (if not earlier), since JB apparently sent it to Lord Kames a month later (To Kames, 22 July 1782, L 825). 9  This concern with secrecy shows that JB believed he was not widely known to be the author of these papers and desired to keep it that way, at least for the time being. He expressed similar sentiments when he sent his three essays on death to Blair (To Blair, [Dec. 1780], L 59.5: ‘You will please not mention my being the Authour of the Hypochondriack’) and forty numbers to Kames (To Kames, 22 July 1782, L 825: ‘Lord Kames will please lock up these Essays when he is not reading them. In short it is beged they may not be communicated to others.’). Yet for one trying to remain anonymous, JB revealed himself as the author to a surprisingly large number of people, as recorded in his journal. Besides WF, Blair, Kames, WJT, and eventually SJ, those in on the secret included: Sir Alexander Dick (1703–85), Edinburgh physician and from 1746 3rd Baronet of Prestonfield, to whom JB showed an early number while on a visit to Dick’s home at Prestonfield on 6 Nov. 1777 (as well as no. 9, ‘On Youth and Age’ [Lond. Mag. June 1778], with an undated letter to Dick in Curiosities, after p. 256); SJ and JB’s friend William Seward (1747–99), to whom JB read ‘some of my Hypoch.’ on 19 May 1781; TDB, to whom JB ‘read my Hypoch on prudence’ (no. 44) on 31 May 1781; JB’s old friend Sir David Dalrymple (1726–92), from 1766 Lord

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1 January 1782 located), because three of the early essays in one of the collections which JB prepared (P 64) contain corrections which appear to be in his hand (Catalogue iii. 1055). On 4 June 1784 the Pub. Adv. carried ‘An Essay on Government. By James Boswell, Esq.; First Published in 1779’, which an inquisitive reader could easily have matched with the anonymous Hypochondriack essay on that subject in the Lond. Mag. (no. 19, Apr. 1779).

Hailes of the Court of Session, from whom JB received an encouraging note about his essay ‘On Pleasure’ (no. 40) on 12 Aug. 1782 (see also To Dalrymple, 9 Aug. 1782, L 617, and From Dalrymple, 9 Aug. 1782, C 1473.4); and Cosmo Gordon (1736–1800), Baron of the Scottish Exchequer, who read several numbers in late Jan. 1783. At some point, JaB must also have been consulted (possibly by WF, although no record of their communication about the Hypochondriack has been

From Sir William Forbes, James Hunter and Company, Tuesday 1 January 1782 Printed form letter, Yale (C 1310). address: James Boswell Esqr. advocate note: A half-sheet, signed by WF and John Hay, folded, sealed, and hand-delivered.

Edinburgh 1st January 1782 Sir: We beg leave to inform you, that we have, this day, assumed into our Co-partnery, Mr. John Hay,1 eldest son of James Hay, Esq; of Haystown, and brother-in-law of our Sir William Forbes, who, for some years past, has acted in our Compting-house in a confidential capacity. You are already acquainted with the signatures of Sir William Forbes, Mr. Hunter-Blair, and Mr. Bartlet;2 we now send you, at foot, that of Mr. Hay. We sincerely express our acknowledgments for your past friendship to our House, and humbly hope for the continuance of it, being respectfully, Sir, Your most obedient, humble Servants, Wm. Forbes Jas. Hunter & Co. [signed] The Signature of Y. M. H. S.3 John Hay, Wm. Forbes Jas. Hunter & Co. [signed] 1  John Hay (1755–1830), LF’s younger brother, was WF’s protégé and intimate friend, and their family, social, and professional ties were intricate. In 1785 Hay would marry Mary Elizabeth Forbes (1760–1803), daughter of James, 16th Lord Forbes (1724– 1804) and granddaughter of WF’s grandmother, Hon. Mary Forbes of Pitsligo (d. ?1739) (sister of Alexander, 4th Lord Forbes of Pitsligo), who had married James, the future 15th Lord Forbes (?1689–1761), one of WF’s four guardians, soon after the death of her first husband, WF’s grandfather, John Forbes (1684–1711). In 1819 one of John Hay’s daughters, Mary (1790–1877), would in turn marry WF and LF’s youngest surviving son, George (1789–1857). In 1810 John would become Sir John Hay, 5th Baronet of Haystown or Haystoun,

succeeding his father, Sir James Hay (?1724– 1810), M.D., an army surgeon and Inspector of the Military Ward in the Edinburgh Infirmary, whose claim to the dormant Nova Scotia baronetcy had been upheld by a jury in Peebles on 9 Nov. 1805. Both men were dedicated agricultural improvers on the large Haystoun estate in Peeblesshire, and John would be remembered as ‘a fine specimen of the well-bred country gentleman, blended with the man of business’ (William Chambers, A History of Peeblesshire, 1864, pp. 331–39, quoting p. 338; see also John Burke, A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire, 2 vols., 4th ed., 1835, i. 594; Kay i. 425). JB records in his journal having John Hay and his father to supper ‘for the first time’ on 11 Apr. 1780. WF had arranged for John Hay to serve

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[between late September and early October 1782] an apprenticeship at the Herries firm in Barcelona from 1774 to 1776. Hay then served two more years working for Herries as a clerk in London, and in 1778, in WF’s account, ‘he came to Edinburgh, and entered our counting-house also on the footing of a confidential clerk during three years. Having thus had ample experience of his abilities and merit as a man of business on whom we might repose the most implicit confidence, a new contract of copartnery was formed, to commence from 1st January 1782, in which Mr Hay was assumed a partner, and the shares stood as follow: Sir William Forbes, 19; Mr Hunter Blair, 19; Mr [James] Bartlet [see next note], 6; Mr Hay, 4—in all, 48 shares. Mr Hay proved himself in every respect worthy of the situation in which he was placed’ (Memoirs of a Banking-House, p. 59). On 30 Nov. 1778 Hay would join Canongate Kilwinning No. 2 (Mackenzie, p. 241), and six years later he would succeed James Hunter Blair as Grand Treasurer of the Grand Lodge of Scotland. He would be re-elected to that position every year until at least 1803 (the last year for which election dates are recorded in [David Brewster and Alexander Lawrie], The History of Free Masonry, Drawn from Authentic Sources of Information; with An Account of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, from Its Institution in 1736, to the Present Time, Compiled from the Records, 1804), thus ensuring that the partners in WF’s bank controlled the purse strings of the Grand Lodge continuously from the 1750s onwards. Hay would be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 25 Jan. 1819 and would become a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of

Scotland and a member of the Highland Society of Scotland. 2  James Bartlet (d. 1788), from Aberdeen, had entered FHC during the early 1770s as a clerk on the recommendation of his relation, Dr. John Gregory (1724–73), Professor of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh and author of popular works on medicine, medical ethics, philosophy, and (posthumously) female education. Gregory also had family connections with WF through his marriage in 1752 to Elizabeth Forbes (1730– 61), daughter of the 13th Lord Forbes (d. 1730), and they were close friends (see From WF, 25 July 1787 n. 19). While ‘our principal clerk’, Bartlet resided in the house that became the bank’s counting house at Whitsunday 1772, ‘to take care of the premises’ (Memoirs of a Banking-house, p. 36). In 1776 he became a partner. WF considered him ‘a person of great merit’, who ‘proved himself not only an able associate in business, but an approved friend and most pleasant companion to the last hour of his life’ (Memoirs of a Banking-House, p. 54). His shares in the partnership were increased from two to six in 1779 (p. 59). In the mid-1780s he would serve as a magistrate on the Edinburgh Town Council while James Hunter Blair was Lord Provost. In 1786 Bartlet would become afflicted with a ‘violent pain’ in his right elbow which led to the amputation of his arm, and after travelling to France in an unsuccessful attempt to recuperate, he died at sea while returning on 9 Feb. 1788 (pp. 67–68). 3  Your Most Humble Servant.

To Forbes, [between late September and early October 1782] Not reported. See From WF, 9 Oct. 1782, below: ‘I am very much concerned to hear of Mrs. Boswell’s having had an attack of her indisposition, since she went to the Country; so violent as to recal you from your journey: you say she is better …’. MMB had been ill with symptoms of consumption in the summer and autumn of 1782. JB succeeded as 9th Laird of Auchinleck on the death of his father, Alexander Boswell (1707–82), Lord Auchinleck, on 30 Aug. JB, MMB, and their children left Edinburgh for Auchinleck (‘the Country’) on 17 Sept., arriving the next day. JB initially set out for London on 24 Sept. because ‘Dr. Johnson’s wisdom was highly requisite’ to him in his new standing as laird (J 83, ‘Notes and Journal of My Wife’s Illness and of my own Life from 22 June to 11 Novr. 1782 inclusive’, 24 Sept.), but he was recalled by an express message that his wife was gravely ill. From the passage quoted, it appears that JB had informed WF of MMB’s ‘violent fit of spitting of blood’ (J 83, 25 Sept.), as well as her subsequent improvement (J 83, 25, 26, 27, and 29 Sept. and 2 and 3 Oct. 1782). Since WF’s reply of 9 Oct. also mentions that he is ‘busy with the Hypochondriack’, apparently referring to a second set which JB recently lent him, this unreported letter may also have enclosed that second set of Hypochondriack essays.

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9 October 1782

From Forbes, Wednesday 9 October 1782 MS. Yale (C 1271). Abbott No. 352. reg. let. received: 13 Oct. 1782: ‘Sir Wm. Forbes a kind letter about my Wife’s illness &c.’ endorsement: Received, 13 Octr. 1782, Sir Wm. Forbes, A kind letter about my Wife’s illness etc.

Edr. 9 Octr. 1782 My Dear Sir: I am very much concerned to hear of Mrs. Boswell’s having had an attack of her indisposition, since she went to the Country; so violent as to recal you from your journey: you say she is better,1 and I shall be much obliged to you to favor me with two lines to tell us how she does:2 for I do assure you Lady F. and I are much interested in her welfare, and in what concerns you so nearly. We have had a dreadful alarm since I saw you by an Accident in our family, of the most frightful nature. Our eldest daughter3 in swinging down the rail of the stair, a very common practice among Children, lost her balance, and tumbled over the rail, from the nursery-floor, and was lying quite motionless on the stone pavement on the kitchen-floor, when I ran down to her on the cry being given that she had fallen. I did indeed think it was all over. She complained much of the back of her head, tho’ no external injury could be perceived; and had the very unfavorable Symptom, for two days, of frequently throwing up, with a good deal of fever: but thank God! She has got quite the better of it; altho during those two days Sandie Wood4 declared her Situation to be very precarious. So that we look on her almost as a Child gained, of addition to the family: and as sweet a Child she is as5 ever breathed.6 I hope yours are all well. I am busy with the Hypochondriack, and against you[r] return shall be ready to hold a Conference with you on that Subject.7 Your friend Mr. Christian arrived this morning at 1 oClock at Dun’s Hôtel8 with Miss Curwen,9 and in the forenoon they were joined in the holy Bands of Wedlock.10 She has, I am told, the greatest fortune in Cumberland. As they choose to remain incog.11 I have not seen them, and they set off for England tomorrow morning. With best Compliments to Mrs. Boswell, I am truly and affectionately, Dear Sir, your most obedient faithful humble Servant, William Forbes 1  See the preceding letter. JB expanded the narrative of his departure and recall in a lengthy letter to SJ from Auchinleck, 1 Oct. 1782: ‘I hovered here in fluttering anxiety to be with you, till tuesday the 24; and on that day, though my dear Wife had the night before a disagreable return of her spitting of blood, and was very uneasy to think of my going away, I set out. I felt myself drawn irresistibly. I imagined I could neither act nor think in my new situation, till I had talked with you. I lay that night at an Inn two stages off, with intention to get next morning into a Fly which crosses the

country there, from Glasgow to London by Carlisle. But before it came up, I was stopped by an express, that my Wife had been seised with her alarming complaint of spitting of blood, more violently than ever, and that she intreated I might return. I hastened home again; and the agitation of her spirits being calmed, she has ever since been pretty easy’ (L 673). 2  See To WF, 20 Oct. 1782. 3  CF, the eldest Forbes daughter, at this time seven years old. The Forbeses were then living in St. Andrew’s Street (see Intro., p. lxxxviii).

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9 October 1782 Alexander ‘Sandy’ Wood (1725–1807), a well-known Edinburgh surgeon, and a popular and sociable figure. He often attended JB’s family in Edinburgh, and his epitaph would be written by JB’s eldest son, AB. In the year of his death, his son Alexander (?1775–1847), later Sir Alexander, would marry CF, the surgeon’s young patient on this occasion. 5  MS. ‘as’ inserted above the line by caret. 6  When JaB learned of this accident, he wrote to WF on 25 Oct. 1782 from Aberdeen, ‘I hope Miss Forbes has now quite got the better of her fall, and Lady Forbes of her fright’ (Beattie Corr. iii. 154). 7  WF was apparently reading a second batch of Hypochondriack essays which JB had recently given to him for critical comment, beginning with no. 41 (published in Lond. Mag. Feb. 1781) and perhaps going through no. 56 (which JB had read to him on 18 June 1782 [Journ.]) or no. 60 (published in Lond. Mag. Sept. 1782). If so, it is possible that this second set of essays was enclosed with To WF, [between late Sept. and early Oct. 1782], which has not been reported. Although JB would return to Edinburgh on 11 Nov. 1782, no record has been located of a meeting with WF to discuss The Hypochondriack after that date, and no mention of the subject occurs at all in the correspondence for five years after an obscure Latin allusion to WF’s assistance in To WF, 20 Oct. 1782 (see To WF, 21 July 1787; From WF, 25 July 1787; To WF, 11 Oct. 1787). 8  Dunn’s Hotel at St. Andrew’s Square, Edinburgh, was opened by the innkeeper James Dunn (d. 1806) in the late 1770s, catering to an affluent clientele. JB frequently records visits, dinners, suppers, assemblies, and social events he attended there between 1779 and 1785 (e.g., Journ. 15 Aug. 1779; 12 Jan., 20 and 21 Sept. 1780; 23 June and 6 Sept. 1781; 19 Mar., 10 Apr., 13 June, and 18 June 1782; 25 Jan. 1783; 5 Mar. 1785; Applause, p. 280 n. 8). In 1779 Hugo Arnot (1749–86), was presumably referring to Dunn’s Hotel when commenting, ‘There is now a lodging house, or hotel, in the New Town, where the accommodation is good, but the charge very extravagant’ (Arnot, p. 353); the next edition in 1788 referred to multiple hotels, including ‘several’ in the New Town ‘not inferior’ to those in London (p. 352). William Creech, writing anonymously in a published letter of 26 Dec. 1783 (reprinted in the 1788 ed. of Arnot, pp. 654–55), remarked that ‘Dunn … now has the magnificent hotels in the New Town’ (Scots Mag. xlv. 618). EB would be housed at Dunn’s Hotel during his visit to Edinburgh in 1785,

and probably also in 1784 (see Intro., pp. civ– cv and n. 147), and in 1786 Alexandre de la Rochefoucauld (1767–1841) would write in his diary, ‘At Dunn’s we had a superb salon, with gilded mirrors and every magnificence’ (quoted in Norman Scarfe, To the Highlands in 1786: The Inquisitive Journey of a Young French Aristocrat, 2001, pp. 106–07 n. 35). 9  JB had become acquainted with John Christian (1756–1828) when they travelled together to the Carlisle Assizes in Aug. 1778, as described in Laird, p. 2, and in journal entries from 19 to 25 Aug. 1778. Their continued, frequent meetings in Edinburgh are documented in JB’s notes for his journal from 5 to 24 Dec. 1778 (J 59) and 14 to 26 Jan. 1779 (J 61), and in journal entries for 2, 7, and 10 Feb. 1779, but they seem to have had no subsequent contact. Christian owned estates on the Isle of Man and in Cumberland. After the death in 1778 of his first wife, Margaret Taubman (1748–78), he would marry his cousin, Isabella Curwen of Workington (1765–1820), who was descended from the wealthy and politically powerful Curwens of Cumberland, and worth £5000 a year in her own right (ODNB, under ‘John Christian Curwen’). Soon after their marriage, Christian (known from Mar. 1790 by his wife’s surname) would embark on a long career as a Whig politician, opposed to the Lowther interest in Cumberland; he would serve as M.P. for Carlisle from 1786 to 1790, 1791 to 1812, and 1816 to 1820, and for Cumberland from 1820 to 1828 (Hist. Parl.). He would also acquire a reputation as an agricultural improver, and would publish Hints on Agricultural Subjects in 1809 as ‘J. C. Curwen, Esq. M.P. of Workington-Hall, Cumberland’. 10   ‘Bands’, referring specifically to a marital union, is a Scotticism (DSL, under ‘band’), and the phrase ‘bands of wedlock’ was found in Scotland (as in Scots Mag. Apr. 1804, lxvi. 292: ‘There they were joined together in the bands of wedlock …’) where ‘bonds of wedlock’ would have been more common in England. WF’s news that John Christian and Isabella Curwen were married on 9 Oct. 1782 differs from standard accounts, which place the marriage in Edinburgh on 5 Oct. (e.g., Hist. Parl.; ODNB). WF’s dating is confirmed by the Cal. Merc., 9 Oct. 1782 (‘This day, was married here …’) and Scots Mag. Oct. 1782, xliv. 558. 11  I.e., incognito. On JB’s notion of travelling incognito or ‘half incognito’, see To WF, [5 Nov. 1785], 11 May 1793 n. 17, and 15 Dec. 1794, and Intro., p. cxxviii, and Appendix 3, p. 342 and n. 30.

4 

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20 October 1782

To Forbes, Sunday 20 October 1782 MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1324. reg. let. sent: 21 Oct. 1782: ‘Sir William Forbes a freindly letter on various topicks (Copy)’.

Auchinleck1 20 October 1782 Dear Sir: I had actually set out for London last month. But was brought back from Douglas Mill by an express that my Wife was seised with a very severe fit of spitting of blood.2 Two days after I received a letter from Dr. Johnson, which with forcible wisdom disuaded me from deserting my Station at a time when there was much to be done; and I have found that my presence here is of more consequence than I imagined.3 I thank God my Wife has ever since my return been better, and I may say she has for some time been much better. I know that this will give sincere pleasure to you and Lady Forbes. We have had agreable experience of your freindship. We cordially congratulate you on the recovery of your daughter after so dreadful an accident.4 You may indeed consider her as an acquisition to your family upon the principle of the common proverb that what is saved is gained, and the recollection of the danger will endear her still more to you. All our children except Veronica who has only a slight indisposition are exceedingly well, and delighted with this Place. I am taking to the country wonderfully; and though I cannot but be sensible that there is a much higher relish of existence in London, I find that Life may be passed very comfortably at this romantick Seat of my Ancestors. I have had letters from Sir Joshua Reynolds and Langton which you shall see when I return to Edinburgh.5 Sir Joshua’s letter renewed my eagerness for London, where I am fortunate enough to have such a circle of freinds as few can boast.6 Your letter7 gave me real satisfaction. I was going to write to you, that as I had fully resolved you should share of my entertainment in London, I was conscious of a claim upon your correspondence when disappointed of that entertainment. I am much obliged to you for your many favours amongst which I reckon your being what Horace finely expresses Nostrorum sermonum candide Iudex.8 My Wife joins me in best compliments to you and Lady Forbes and I ever am, with great regard and affection, Dear Sir, your faithful humble servant, James Boswell Upon my honour I wish you would publish your letters during your Journey to Wales.9 I read them with much pleasure; and the Rev. Mr. Nichols Mr. Gray’s freind who is peculiarly exquisite in descriptive taste, was agreably struck with one of them which I read to him.10 Why should you not communicate the pleasure widely? And why should you not have the fame to which they would entitle you in the Literary World? My mind at present is just as I could wish it to be, owing I beleive to daily reading the sacred scriptures and Thomas a Kempis, and to sincere devotion.11 May we my 25

20 October 1782 excellent Freind! after all our difficulties in this state of being, enjoy that eternal felicity of which I have now a bright though an indistinct view! 1  Following the death of his father on 30 Aug. 1782, JB became the 9th Laird of Auchinleck. It was a prize he had long coveted but about which he had long been apprehensive, and the transition, as recorded in his journal, proved to be emotional and difficult. He was at his father’s bedside on the 29th, weeping, ‘For alas there was not affection between us’. His father had lost the use of his faculties, and what slight chance remained for a reconciliation was therefore lost as well. On the day of his father’s death, MMB ‘had spat blood’. WF visited JB in Edinburgh on 31 Aug., but JB’s journal entry records nothing of the conversation. On 4 Sept., the day of his father’s funeral at Auchinleck, JB recorded that he ‘Wandered—Was in ye state which I suppose a man going to execution is—Hardly was sensible of what was arround me—Was affected much, cried.’ Five days later WF reported the news of Lord Auchinleck’s death to BL, along with a surprisingly rosy forecast about JB’s chances for following the career path of his father as a judge by continuing to practise his profession in Scotland: ‘You have probably heard by this time that Mr. Boswell has lately lost his Father: whose death could not be considered as a matter of regret; as his faculties were much impaired, and he might be said in some measure to have survived himself.—A melancholy thing! Mr. Boswell now succeeds to a very good family estate; but, with great propriety, does not mean to abandon his profession, in which he has a very fair prospect of arriving at a seat on the Bench, in due time’ (9 Sept. 1782, Corr. 3, p. 124; see the similar view expressed in WF [with JJ] to SJ, 13 July 1784, under date in this volume, and n. 19). On 18 Sept., almost three weeks after his father’s death, JB took his family to Auchinleck, which, because of his and MMB’s friction with the elder Boswells—Lord Auchinleck and his second wife, Elizabeth Boswell (1729–99), Lady Auchinleck, JB’s stepmother—MMB had visited only once before, in 1770, and the children had never seen. Yet JB remained anxious and conflicted about his new position and his future, as he would explain to SJ in a letter of 1 Oct. 2  JB appears to have forgotten that he had already informed WF of this incident, as WF acknowledged in the opening lines of his letter of 9 Oct. 1782.

3  SJ’s letter of 21 Sept. 1782 has not survived, except for three sentences from it (all that JB believed was ‘proper for publication’) quoted in Life iv. 155 (Letters SJ iv. 73–74): ‘One expence, however, I would not have you to spare: let nothing be omitted that can preserve Mrs. Boswell, though it should be necessary to transplant her for a time into a softer climate. She is the prop and stay of your life. How much must your children suffer by losing her.’ In his reply of 1 Oct., JB explained that this letter had calmed his wife’s spirits, and ‘that calm she owes to you. For while I was still intent on flying away to you, your most excellent letter forcibly dissuading me from deserting my station arrived, and at once settled me. My words on reading it were. “Well he is a most wonderful Man! He can drive me to the end of the World, or confine me in a dungeon.” My Wife was so affected by your letter that she shed tears of grateful joy, and declared she would write to you herself. Accordingly you have enclosed the spontaneous effusion of her heart’ (L 673). MMB’s grateful letter to SJ, which has not survived, included an invitation to visit Auchinleck, which SJ gracefully declined in his reply to her of 7 Dec. 1782 (wrongly dated 7 Sept. in Life iv. 156) because of the lateness of the season and his own poor health. These letters marked a thawing of MMB’s frosty attitude towards SJ, dating from the time of his visits to the Boswells’ Edinburgh home in Aug. and Nov. 1773, before and after the tour to the Hebrides—a coolness which SJ had repeatedly tried to assuage in his letters to and conversations with JB (see Irma S. Lustig, ‘“My Dear Enemy”: Margaret Montgomerie Boswell in the Life of Johnson’, in Citizen of the World, pp. 228–45). Something similar occurred early the next year, when JB complained in his journal that a letter from SJ was ‘so discouraging to my settling in London, that I was a good deal hurt’ (Journ. 8 Feb. 1783). While suppressing the hurtful parts of this letter in an excerpt in the Life, he quoted a line from it which once again emphasized the need for JB to act in accordance with his ‘new character and new duties’ (iv. 163). Yet when JB began to give serious consideration to moving his family to London in 1784, SJ would show no consideration for MMB’s plight (see WF [with JJ] to SJ, 13 July 1784,

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20 October 1782 under date in this volume, n. 22, and Intro., p. xcvi). 4  See From WF, 9 Oct. 1782. 5  JR’s letter of 1 Oct. 1782 (Corr. 3, pp. 127–28) had reached JB on the 17th. The letter from BL has not been traced. Nor is there any record of JB showing these two letters to WF in Edinburgh, as he intended to do, although it was not unusual for JB and WF to show each other BL’s letters (e.g., Journ. 24 July 1774: ‘It is very wrong that I do not write oftener to Langton. Sir W. Forbes shewed me this evening two letters which he had from him’; To BL, 31 Dec. 1774, Corr. 3, p. 49, quoted in To WF, 11 Apr. 1776 n. 1). 6  In his letter to JB of 1 Oct. 1782, JR wrote that EB ‘says you are the pleasantest man he ever saw and sincerely wishes you would come and live amongst us. All your friends here I believe will subscribe to that wish. Suppose we send you a round Robin, such as we sent to Dr. Johnson, to invite you, will that be an inducement. I think I have many in my Eye that would be eager to subscribe’ (Corr. 3, p. 127). 7  From WF, 9 Oct. 1782. 8  Horace Epistles I. iv. i–ii, where the poet addresses a friend (Albius Tibullus) as ‘impartial critic of my “chats”’: ‘Albi, nostrorum sermonum candide iudex, / quid nunc te dicam facere in regione Pedana?’ (‘Albius, impartial critic of my “chats,” what shall I say you now are doing in your country at Pedum?’; Loeb ed., trans. H. R. Fairclough, 1961), perhaps referring to WF’s efforts as a friendly critic of his Hypochondriack essays, or of his writing (including his journal) more generally. 9  JB refers to a series of letters which WF sent to his brother-in-law, John Hay, while WF and LF were touring Wales and neighbouring regions of England in Sept. and Oct. 1780. In the introduction to his journal of a trip to Italy which he and LF would take in 1792–93, WF explained, ‘When Lady F. & I made a tour through Wales in the year 1780, I wrote from time to time to Mr. Hay to let him know how we did; and in those letters I gave him some account of what we saw as we went along. In the same manner, when we made a tour in Ireland, in Summer 1785, I kept a regular Correspondence with Mr. Hay. My letters to him therefore, contain a sort of a Sketch Journal of those tours’ (Ital. Journ. WF, MS 1539). WF’s letters from both those tours have survived: those from Ireland among the papers of John Hay’s family, Hay of Haystoun (also spelt

Hayston and Haystown) (see from WF, 16 Sept. 1785 n. 4), those from England and Wales among WF’s own papers (FP 83/2)— indicating that JB probably gave the latter group of letters to WF, rather than back to Hay, after reading them. They consist of nine letters (including the first one from Dumfries on 1 Sept. 1780). A letter begun in Chester but finished at Holywell on 8 Sept. marks the entry of WF and LF into Wales, which they toured for several weeks, but they also crossed into Shropshire and Herefordshire, and then south to Bristol and Bath (where their arrival was noted in the Bath Chronicle, 12 Oct. 1780, as also in the Morn. Post, 19 Oct. 1780), and north east to Oxford on their way home. The last letter was sent from Leeds on 21 Oct. Although it is not known how or when JB received and read these letters, circumstantial evidence in the next sentence of JB’s letter and the next note below suggests that Hay was probably passing them to JB as he received them. JB must have read them before 17 Nov. 1780, when he wrote to BL, ‘Our excellent friend Sir Wm. Forbes made the Tour of allmost all Wales with his Lady in Autumn last. The letters which he wrote giving an account of what he saw are I really think the best performance of the kind that I ever read’ (Corr. 3, p. 111). WF’s letters are mainly descriptive and written for a personal audience (e.g., in his last letter, WF writes, ‘I need say nothing of Bath, as you [Hay] have seen it yourself ’), and JB’s extravagant praise, and call for publication, are difficult to comprehend except as an expression of regard for his friend. 10  Rev. Norton Nicholls (?1741–1809), Rector of Lound and Bradwell, Suffolk, since 1767, was the devoted friend of the poet Thomas Gray (1716–71) as well as of WJT, Gray’s former classmate at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, who had introduced Nicholls to JB in London on 13 May 1763 (Journ.). The letter which JB read to Nicholls was almost certainly the one WF had written to John Hay from Bangor, Wales, on 14 Sept. 1780 (FP 83/2); Hay (who first appears in JB’s journal on 11 Apr. 1780) must have passed it to JB soon after receiving it. JB would have read WF’s letter to Nicholls either on 20 Sept. 1780, when ‘I visited today at Dunn’s Hotel [on which see From WF, 9 Oct. 1782 n. 8], the Rev. Mr. Nichols’ (Journ.), or more likely the next day, when JB records that, after dining with Nicholls (and JJ) at the Boswells’ Edinburgh home, ‘I went with him to his lodgings & heard him read his Journal of his

27

17 March 1783 travels in Scotland’ (Nicholls was then on an extended tour of the country), followed by supper and ‘a deal of animated talk’. 11  JB noted in his entry for Sun. 20 Oct. 1782 in ‘Notes and Journal of My Wife’s Illness and of my own Life from 22 June to 11 Novr. 1782 inclusive’ (J 83) that he enjoyed hearing two sermons preached by Rev. Alexander Millar (d. 1804), the assistant minister at Auchinleck, and had evening prayers with his son AB: ‘It was really a good day’s sacred employment.’ The entry for the following day states that ‘every morning before breakfast I read a portion of the sacred scriptures & of Thomas a Kempis [c. 1380– 1471], by which my mind is calmed & sanctified’. In Hypochondriack no. 54, ‘On Religion’ (Mar. 1782), JB used for the motto a quotation from Thomas à Kempis’s ‘valuable, I had almost said divine, treatise’, Imitation of Christ (see Boswell’s Books, p. 250, for the multiple copies owned by JB and his father); the continuation of this essay, Hypochondriack no. 55, states (specifically citing the French quietist Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Mothe Guyon [1648–1717]), ‘The truth is, that there is to me something very pleasing in the mysticks of all denominations’ (Bailey ii. 156, 161, 165). JB had been familiar with the work of Madame Guyon (or Guion) from his youth (on works of hers in his library, see Boswell’s Books, p. 216). While on his travels in Germany in 1764, after an adulterous encounter with a soldier’s wife, he asked himself if he should now torment himself ‘with speculations on Sin’, and answered, ‘Nay your elegant mystics would not do so, Madame Guion was of opinion that Sin should be forgotten as soon as possible. … Her notion is ingenious’ (11 Sept.

1764, Journ. 1, pp. 102–03 and n. 7). In his journal entry for 5 May 1781, he recorded telling a ‘Methodist Member of Parlt.’ who was ‘frightened for me’, “‘No, I’m much of a mystick.”’ JB’s views on religious mysticism were similar to those of WF. On 10 June 1779 JB wrote in his journal that he ‘sat a while in the forenoon with Sir William Forbes, who said he liked the Mysticks because they make every part of life Religion so as to be serving God in all the common affairs of life.’ WF had been raised in the mystical Episcopal tradition of north east Scotland which revered Thomas à Kempis and Madame Guyon (see G. D. Henderson, Mystics of the North-East, 1934). His mother, Christian Forbes (1705–89), regularly read Thomas à Kempis, among others (Dame Christian Forbes, p. 37). As WF told JaB in a letter of 24 Nov. 1789 (FP 98/2), explaining the prevalence of that mystical tradition in his ‘Letters Explanatory’, which he had written for his children and had asked JaB to critique, ‘The truth is, I have read so many of the Mystic Authors, and have lived so much with some valuable friends who thought as they did; that it is no wonder, I feel a partiality to their Opinions’. In general, however, the final version of ‘Letters Explanatory’ does not reveal an extensive mystical influence except in regard to certain specific topics, such as continual and private prayer, where the text pays tribute to an old manuscript which was either the work of WF’s great uncle Lord Pitsligo ‘or perhaps a translation of some French mystic author, done under his impression. The manuscript contains many admirable things, mixed with the mysticism of those times’ (iii. 55–56).

From Sir William Forbes, James Hunter and Company, Monday 17 March 1783 MS. Yale (A 51). header: James Boswell, Advocate address: James Boswell Esq., Advocate enclosure: Bank statement, 31 Dec. 1782 (reproduced below).

Edin. 17 March 1783 Sir: We beg leave to annex a Copy of your Account Current sheet 31 decemr last by a Balance then due us of £277 19s 2d which we have placed to your Dr. in a New Account.1 If on examination you find it free of error we beg you will favor us with your approbation. We remain truly, Sir, Your Most Obedient Servants, W. Forbes J. Hunter Co. 28

5 May 1783 Dr. James Boswell Esqr. Advocate with Sir Wm. Forbes Ja. Hunter & Co. 1782 March 13 Paid per Receit

[£] [s.] [d.] 130 –– ––

Cr.

1782 Janry 1 Balance of last Account

[£] [s.] [d.] 7 3 11

Febry 9 Received per Receit

30 –– ––

April 2

ditto

25 –– ––

June 5

do

20 –– ––

14

ditto

18 –– ––

18

do

10 –– ––

22

do

12 –– ––

July 13

do

40 –– –– March 2

do

100 –– ––

27

do

40 –– ––

May 30

do

20 –– ––

Augt. 14

do

16 –– ––

July 6

do

40 –– ––

19

do

14 –– ––

20

do

40 –– ––

Septr. 2

do

26

5 –– Augt. 13

do

43 –– ––

3

3 –– Decr. 31 Balance due us, at his debit New Accot.

3

3 ––

Octr 28

do

Novr. 9

do

15

do

40 –– ––

22

do

25 –– ––

25

do

20 –– ––

26

do

20 –– ––

Decr. 6

do

25 –– ––

9

do

20 –– ––

23

do

100 –– ––

27

do

10 –– ––

31 Interest due us @5prct 1 Janry. 1 . 2.2 due him @3prct. –10.1 £588

12 3

277 19

2

Edinbr. 31 Decemr. 1782 Errors Excepted W. Forbes Ja. Hunter Co.

1 1

£588

3

1

James Boswell Esq Advocate 1  This letter and bank statement signal the beginning of JB’s heavy borrowing from WF’s bank, which would continue throughout 1783, until JB finally recorded in his journal entry for 29 Dec. 1783 that WF had passed ‘a

delicate hint’ that the bank was cutting off his credit (quoted in To WF, 30 Dec. 1783 n. 1; see Intro., pp. lxxvii–lxxviii, and later bank statements from FHC in this volume).

To Forbes, Monday 5 May 1783 MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1325. reg. let. sent: 5 May 1783: ‘Sir W. Forbes of Pitsligo that I wrote two pages to him at Mr. Burke’s in the country wc. I burnt lest they should seem too hyperbolical1. His house will please give my Wife what money she asks & send me a bill for £40 at sight. Best respects to his beautiful and dear Lady.’ Written in the left margin: ‘He shall read my Journal.’ address: To Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo Baronet, Edinburgh endorsement: Jas. Boswell, Londn. 5 May 1783

29

5 May 1783 London 5 May 1783 My Dear Sir: When at Mr. Burke’s Country-Seat2 I wrote about two pages of a letter to you, describing my happiness in this southern region.3 But, though absolutely true, the account I perceived would appear to you in Edinburgh, so hyperbolical, that I burnt my paper, as I wished to be present, and share your laugh. All my treasures, at least a very great proportion of them, are preserved in my Journal, and shall be shewn to you.4 This is a mere letter of business. I beg your house may give my Wife upon her receipt whatever sums of money she may ask, and charge the same to my account.5 Also be so good as [to] send me a bill for £40 at sight on London, and charge it accordingly. I live at very little expence; but I must have some money.6 Pray present my best respects to your beautiful and dear Lady, and be assured that I ever am with the warmest regard, My Dear Sir, your faithful and affectionate humble servant, James Boswell Please put your letter under cover of George Dempster Esq. M.P. London.7 MS. reads ‘hyperborical’. In Apr. 1768 EB had purchased Gregories, a 600-acre estate near Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire, close to London off the main road to Oxford. It included a fine house (which would burn down in 1813, sixteen years after EB’s death) with a magnificent art collection. EB paid £20,000 for it, mostly on credit, and would spend the rest of his life in financial difficulty as a result (see Lock i. 250–56, and plates 12–14). JB visited Gregories on 21 Apr. 1783 but was called away the next day by news that one of MMB’s nephews, Lt. David Cuninghame (?1759– 1814), had killed a man in a duel, and had himself been dangerously wounded (Applause, pp. 116–17), and he never had an opportunity to return. 3  The incomplete letter to WF to which JB refers is mentioned in Reg. Let. Sent (cited in the headnote above) and in Journ. 21 Apr. 1783: ‘Write to Sr. W. F.’ JB presumably wrote it at Gregories on 21 or 22 Apr. and destroyed it then or soon afterwards. JB’s interrupted journal record (21 Apr. 1783) has left just a few glimpses of Gregories, and his burning of his ‘hyperbolical’ letter to WF has deprived us of a full record of his enthusiastic impressions of EB’s estate. 4  See WF’s enthusiastic response to this offer and praise of JB’s journal in his reply, From WF, 23 May 1783. JB’s declaration (and the corresponding sentence in JB’s entry in Reg. Let. Sent, quoted in the headnote above) suggests that JB was then writing his journal with WF as his intended audience,

or at least among his intended readers. Later remarks which WF made to others seem to indicate that JB was true to his word, although the only three documented instances of WF hearing or seeing JB’s journal predate this letter from JB (see Intro., pp. cviii–cx). It is possible that JB sometimes showed or read portions of the journal to WF without commenting about it in his journal or correspondence. In the case at hand, JB was back in Edinburgh early in Aug. 1783, and the journal records the Boswells and Forbeses socializing together on 6 Aug. 1783, and JB and WF meeting on 28 and 29 Dec. The journal also has substantial lapses during the second half of 1783, and at other times, during which unrecorded encounters and exchanges may have occurred. 5  MMB apparently would ask for and receive £30, as that amount is recorded as ‘Mrs. Boswells receipt’ under 13 May 1783 in the bank statement of 30 June enclosed with From FHC, 23 July 1783. 6  See the next two letters. JB’s request for a bill payable ‘at sight’ indicates that he had a pressing need for funds at this time— even though his bank statement of 30 June 1783, enclosed with From FHC, 23 July 1783, shows that he had withdrawn a sizeable amount (£100) from his FHC account on 11 Mar., apparently in anticipation of departing for London three days later. For a possible explanation, see From WF, 23 May 1783 n. 5. 7  George Dempster (1732–1818), Laird of Dunnichen, Angus, was the M.P. for Fife

1 

2 

30

23 May 1783 and Forfar burghs from 1761 to 1790. He was a friend of JB’s from his youth (see Corr. 9, passim) and frequently appears in the journal, especially the London journal from 1762–63, and he would be among the friends to whom JB would bequeath a mourning ring

in his will (see WF to LF, 8 June 1795, under date in this volume, n. 19). As discussed often in these notes (see esp. To WF, 8 May 1787 n. 1), JB regularly avoided postage fees by taking advantage of parliamentary franking privileges.

From Sir William Forbes, James Hunter and Company, [Monday 12 or Tuesday 13 May 1783] Not reported. To WF, 5 May 1783, contains JB’s request for funds, and From WF, 23 May 1783, contains WF’s statement that ‘I sent you officially, by a letter from our house, the Bill you wisht for’. reg. let. received: 17 May 1783: ‘Sir. W. Forbes Ja. Hunter & Co. that my Wife shall have from their house what money she wants in my absence—that Sir W. F is to write to me—that a Bill for £50 at sight is enclosed.’ enclosure: ‘a Bill for £50 at sight’ from FHC (not located). note: This letter could not have been sent before 12 May 1783, the date of the bank draft for £50 (or £50 5s, perhaps indicating a bank fee of five shillings) enclosed with this letter, as recorded in the bank statement enclosed with From FHC, 23 July 1783. Since JB recorded receiving this letter in London on 17 May (see above), it is unlikely that it was sent any later than the 13th.

From Forbes, Friday 23 May 1783 MS. Yale (C 1272). Abbott No. 353. Draft in FP+ 2 (dated ‘Edinbg. 23 May 1783’; headed ‘Mr. Boswell’). reg. let. received: 29 May 1783: ‘Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo Baronet, a freindly letter of various particulars.’

Edinbg. 23 May 1783 Why did you destroy the letter, My Dear Sir, which you had meant for me?1 To hear of your happiness gives me pleasure at all times: but it is a wonderful addition to my satisfaction to have it told to me in your own words. I console myself, however, with your promise of letting me enjoy that Comfort from a perusal of your journals; than which I know not a more ingenious, more-happily imagin’d performance, nor better executed: for it lets one2 into the intimacies of private Society; and introduces one to the most accomplish’d and most desirable Company in the literary world.3 Remember, therefore, that I trust to the performance of this Promise on your return. I sent you officially, by a letter from our house, the Bill4 you wisht for:5 Should you have occasion for more before you leave London, where, as you say, a man must have some money (an excellent observation, according to Sir Archy MacSarcasm and very new)6 you have only to write to me for it. I shall thereby have a double advantage, that of obliging you, and of receiving another of your letters.7 I request, you will do me the favor to present my most particular8 respects to Sir Joshua Reynolds, to Mr. Langton, and to Dr. Johnson. Assure them, with truth,9 that tho’ I have no prospect of presenting those respects to them personally,10 I earnestly desire to preserve a place in their remembrance, and that I always reflect 31

23 May 1783 on the Kindnesses received from them in London, especially from Sir Joshua Reynolds, with the utmost Gratitude and Satisfaction12. If the Bishop of Kilaloe be in London, and if he can recollect having seen me at Sir Joshuas, be pleased to present my respectful Compliments,13 and assure him that I honor his Lordship for his steady attachment to the Constitution in Church and State, that is, as the Bishop very happily illustrated it in a late letter to you, for14 being a Christian and a Tory.15 I ever am, My Dear Sir, your affectionate and faithful humble Servant, 11

William Forbes Please tell Sir Joshua, that the two admirable Portraits he did for us, are in the highest state of preservation.16 See To WF, 5 May 1783. Draft, ‘one’ reads ‘you’, here and again later in this sentence. 3  At this time WF was forty-four years old but had enjoyed the company of JB’s London literary circle during only one brief period when he and LF visited London in the spring of 1776, and he therefore regarded JB’s journal and correspondence as his only window into that company. 4  Draft, ‘Bill’ reads ‘Sum’. 5  See To WF, 5 May 1783, where JB had asked for ‘a bill for £40 at sight’, and From FHC, [12 or 13 May 1783], the official bank letter to which WF refers (not reported). The bill in question, as reported by JB in his Reg. Let. Received for 17 May 1783 and in the bank statement for 30 June 1783, enclosed with From FHC, 23 July 1783, was for £50 (actually £50 5s, perhaps indicating a bank fee of five shillings), payable ‘at sight’ by Wickenden & Co. (i.e., the firm of Wickenden, Moffatt, Kensington and Boler at 20 Lombard Street in London; see Hilton Price, p. 86). Since it is unlikely that WF would have authorized and processed a withdrawal for an amount greater than JB had requested, JB had probably contacted the bank or WF again before 12 May to ask that the amount of the payment be increased by £10. One presumed reason for this increase— and for the need for an ‘at sight’ bill for this amount so soon after JB had withdrawn £100 from his account on 11 Mar.—was that JB had recently pledged to Lady Margaret Macdonald (?1717–99), a family friend with connections to the Montgomeries and Cuninghames, to supply up to £30 in funds to Lt. Henry Cuninghame (?1765–90), the youngest of five impecunious orphaned Ayrshire nephews of MMB, to all of whom JB gave much financial and other assistance (Journ. 3 Apr. 1783). See also subsequent correspondence with Lady Margaret (C 1840) and TDB (C 503 and 506) about JB’s

payments to Henry Cuninghame at about this time. 6  Draft, ‘, as you say … very new)’ reads ‘(as you observe with more truth than novelty of remark) a man must have some money’. Sir Archy MacSarcasm was a proud and haughty stage Scot, originally acted by the Irish thespian Charles Macklin (?1699–1797) in his hugely popular two-act farce, Love à-laMode. The play was first performed at Drury Lane on 12 Dec. 1759 but does not seem to have been widely available in print until 1782, when it was published in London as it was being staged at Covent Garden, and was reprinted in London and Edinburgh. In the first act, while listening to a letter which another character is reading to him, and after hearing the sentence ‘I do not think it would be consistent for a man of honour to behave like a scoundrel.—’, Sir Archy exclaims, ‘That’s an excellent remark, an excellent remark, and vera new.’ (London, 1782 ed., ESTC N3114; WF changes the stage Scots word ‘vera’ to ‘very’ and writes ‘observation’ instead of ‘remark’, suggesting that he was paraphrasing from memory). By applying Sir Archy’s absurd representation of a truism as both noteworthy and novel to JB’s equally obvious statement about his need for funds in order to live in London (To WF, 5 May 1783), WF attempts to inject a light-hearted tone into his response to JB’s request for money from WF’s bank. Yet the matter was serious, because the money being requested by JB, and provided by WF, was all on credit, and JB was in the process of running up his debt to crisis proportions by the end of 1783. The character of Sir Archy MacSarcasm initially gave great offence among some Scots, who took it to be ‘a satire upon the whole kingdom of Scotland’, but others ‘enjoyed the humour’, and eventually the play was ‘particularly relished by a Scotch Audience’ (James Thomas Kirkman, Memoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin, Esq., 2 vols., 1799, i.

1  2 

32

23 May 1783 402–03). WF had probably seen and enjoyed Love à-la-Mode together with JB in Edinburgh during their most active period as Freemasons, as JB wrote in his journal on 11 Dec. 1775, ‘In the evening I went with a number of my Lodge, to the Recruiting Officer [the 1706 play by the Irish dramatist George Farquhar (1677–1707)], with Love Alamode played by desire of the Free Masons’. There is also evidence of JB seeing Macklin perform the role of Sir Archy MacSarcasm at Covent Garden in London on 17 Apr. 1773 (‘Notes for Journal in London’, J 29), and some of his later journal references show his fondness for the character, and for Macklin in the part. On 5 May 1787 he ‘Wished to shew Jamie [i.e., JBII] Macklin in Sir Archie McSarcasm. But we found the house [Covent Garden Theatre] so crowded we could not get in’ (Journ.). The next month he would have better luck, writing in the journal on 15 June 1787, ‘Took my two sons to the gallery of Drury lane Playhouse [JB’s slip for Covent Garden] & let them see Love Alamode, that they might talk of having seen Macklin play Sir Archy MacSarcasm.’ In 1792 JB would subscribe for a guinea to a 1793 edition of this play, along with another play by Macklin, published in order to support the playwright in old age (Boswell’s Books, p. 270). 7  Draft, this sentence not present. 8  Draft, the preceding phrase reads ‘I must request of you as a particular favor, that you will present my best’. 9  Draft, ‘with truth,’ not present. 10  As will be shown, in the coming autumn WF would have an unexpected opportunity to travel to London and renew his acquaintances with SJ and JR, although he would not be able to see BL on that occasion. 11  Draft, ‘reflect on’ reads ‘think of’. 12  Draft, ‘the utmost Gratitude and Satisfaction’ reads ‘gratitude and pleasure’. 13  Draft, the preceding phrase (‘and if … respectful compliments’) reads ‘present my respectful compliments to him, if he can recollect having ever seen me’. TB, Bishop of Killaloe and Kilfenora since 20 Feb. 1780, had been Dean of Derry for nearly seven years when WF met him at JR’s dinner party in late May or early June 1776, when the Round Robin message to SJ was devised (see From WF, 19 Oct. 1787 n. 18). TB had joined the Literary Club in 1775, and JB’s first known interaction with him had occurred at a dinner at the Royal Academy on 22 Apr. 1776, when the two men had a discussion about SJ. SJ and TB were then in the midst of ‘a pretty smart altercation’ about whether a man could change for the better after reaching the age

of forty-five (Life iv. 115 n. 4, 431–34), and JB took pleasure in the belief that his discussion with TB had contributed ‘to the reconciliation of two Christians’ (Boswell’s Note Book, 1776–1777, ed. R. W. Chapman, 1925, p. 18). JB and TB soon became friendly and would exchange at least thirty-nine letters between May 1781 and May 1794 (Corr. 3). The same attributes that Charles N. Fifer identifies as attracting JB to TB—his stature as a high-church Tory who was ‘successful, witty, urbane, yet religious’ (Corr. 3, p. xxxiii)—would also have appealed to WF, who would visit TB in Dublin in 1785, briefly correspond with him afterwards, and keep up an earnest, ultimately successful, campaign to be allowed to read his long letter to JB on the Lord’s Supper (From TB, 14 Aug. 1785, Corr. 3, pp. 210–11; From WF, 16 Sept. 1785; WF to TB, 29 Apr. 1786, under date in this volume; To WF, 23 May 1789 n. 23). 14  Draft, the preceding phrase (‘as the Bishop … to you, for’) reads ‘as his Lordship very properly explains it,’. 15  See From TB, 2 Mar. 1783: ‘for tho’ between you and me I honest[l]y acknowledge that I am guilty of the atrocious charge of being both a Christian and a Tory, (anglice a Freind to the Constitution in Church and State from Principle) yet I am afraid the first of these Characters you Know must Ruin me with all the men of Sense in England, the second with all the men in Power’ (Corr. 3, p. 135). It is not known when JB showed TB’s letter to WF or revealed its contents to him. 16  Draft, this sentence not present. JR painted portraits of WF and LF in the spring of 1776, as WF told JaB in a letter of 24 Apr. 1776 (FP 98/2): ‘Betsy and I are just now under Sir Joshua’s hands, and the canvass promises extremely well.’ Those portraits are reproduced and discussed in Jennifer Melville, ‘Lady Forbes of Monymusk: A Rediscovered Portrait by Joshua Reynolds’, Burlington Magazine, clviii (2016): 956–60. LF was twenty-three years old at the time of this portrait. She had been married to WF for a little less than six years and was about four months pregnant with her fourth child, John Hay Forbes. In the catalogue for Christie’s auction in London in Dec. 2012, when the painting was seen publicly for the first time since 1859, the sitter is described as ‘Half-Length, in a White Dress and a Pink Mantle, with Feathers, Ribbons and Pearls in her Hair’. The painting appeared again in a June 2013 sale exhibition put on by Richard Green, in London, and it graced the cover of the accompanying catalogue printed by that firm in the same year, British and European Portraiture, 1600–1930 (also pp. 62–63).

33

23 July 1783 The 1776 portrait of WF, privately owned, is reproduced and described in David Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, 2 vols., 2000, ii. 199, cat. no. 657 (also reproduced in Later Years, opposite p. 200). It shows WF as a balding man in his late thirties, wearing around his neck the ribbon and badge of the Nova Scotia baronets (see Intro., pp. lxxx– lxxxi and n. 63). Mannings noted that JR’s ledger records payment of seventy guineas from WF in May 1776, but being unaware of the portrait of LF, he speculated that this unusually high fee was partly for the portrait of WF and partly for a replica. JR and the Forbeses maintained their friendship in later years, through occasional visits in London and correspondence, and through compliments passed on in letters to JB. In June 1786 JR would paint another portrait of WF, this time wearing a wig and, as usual, the badge of the Nova Scotia baronets around his neck (Scottish National Portrait Gallery, PG 1296). A ledger kept by JR records that the portrait was painted in five or six sittings at his studio in Leicester Square between 16 and 26 June 1786 and cost fifty guineas, then the standard rate for JR’s portraits of that size (Mannings ii. 199, cat. no. 658). On 7 July 1786 WF would write to JaB, ‘Sir Joshua Reynolds I never saw better, nor in better Spirits. I have been so extravagant as to sit to him a second time; and I think this portrait is superior to the former’ (FP 98/2). Unlike the 1776 portrait of WF, which is not so well known, the 1786 portrait inspired copies by contemporary artists, engravings, and at least one miniature (Mannings ii. 199, cat. no. 657). For reasons that are not clear, but that may have to do with the reputation enjoyed by George Romney (1734–1802) for painting flattering portraits of female subjects, LF chose while the Forbeses were in London in the spring and summer of 1786 to have her portrait painted by Romney rather than sit once again for JR. She sat for Romney on 6, 7, 13, 15, and 17 July 1786, and her name also appears in Romney’s diary on 17 Aug., perhaps indicating when she came to view or pick up the finished work (Humphry Ward and W. Roberts, Romney: A Biographical and

Critical Essay with a Catalogue Raisonné of His Works, 2 vols., 1904, i. 108–09). In Romney’s portrait (which may be seen in Melville, ‘Lady Forbes’, p. 959), LF wears a large hat with ruffled edges and appears more glamorous and, strangely, younger than in the portrait which JR had painted a decade earlier. In a letter to LF from London on 17 Jan. 1792, about a month before JR’s death, WF would describe a visit with CF to JR’s home: ‘This forenoon, in the course of our progress, I carried Christy to Sir Joshua Reynold’s; my old friend his servant, very obligingly showed us the pictures, which still remain in the house. It was a melancholy remembrance to me, of many an hour that I had spent most agreeably in those apartments. And I could not help marking the very spot where you sate in his painting room; and where I stood looking at you and at the portrait as our excellent friend workt on it. I have never yet had a sight either of him or of Miss Palmer. But Mr. Boswell, who breakfasted with me this morning, tells me he is rather better, tho’ still very low’ (on JR’s niece Mary Palmer, see From WF, 25 Apr. 1787 n. 9). The servant mentioned by WF was Ralph Kirkley, whom WF referred to in another letter to LF as ‘his Man, my old friend Ralph’ (22 Dec. 1791); JR would leave him £1000 in his will (see From WF, 23 Apr. 1792 n. 16). On 30 June 1796 WF would write to EM of JR, ‘I do not wonder at the high estimation in which his admirable performances are held, and I cannot but think myself peculiarly fortunate in possessing three very capital portraits by his pencil, one of Lady F. and two of myself, which have perfectly preserved their coloring, having just mellowed as much as they ought to have done and no more’ (Hyde, 10.233). WF apparently meant that JR had significantly improved his technique and materials in the mid-1770s in response to complaints about the deterioration of red and pink colours in his portraits (Alexandra Gent, Ashok Roy, and Rachel Morrison, ‘Practice Makes Imperfect: Reynolds’s Painting Technique’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, xxxv [2014]: 12–30, esp. 27–28).

From Sir William Forbes, James Hunter and Company, Wednesday 23 July 1783 MS. Yale (A 51). address: James Boswell Esq., Advocate enclosure: Bank statement, 30 June 1783 (reproduced below).

34

[on or shortly after Sunday 7 September 1783] Edinbg. 23 July 1783 Sir: We beg leave to annex a copy of your accot. balanced the 30th ulto. by £760 13s 7d in our favours which is placed to the debit of new accot.1 On examination we beg youll let us know if you find it right. We are, Sir, your most obedient servants, Wm. Forbes, Jas. Hunter & Co. Dr. James Boswell Esqr. Advocate with Sir Willm. Forbes Jas. Hunter & Co. Cr. 1783 Janry 1 25

[£] [s.] [d.] To balance of last account

277 19

paid per receit

65

31

do

70

Febry 13

do

50

March 11

do

100

May 12

Our dft. demd. on Wickenden & Co. 502

50

13

Mrs. Boswells receipt3

30

30

Robt. Boswells do.

50

receit

10

17

do

10

19

do

25

27

do

10

30

Interest due us @ 5 prct.

June 12

12

2

1783 June 30

Balance due us, at debit new Accot.

[£] [s.] [d.] 760 13 7

5

9

5

£760 13

7

£760 13 7

Edinbr. 30 June 1783 Errors Excepted Wm Forbes Jas. Hunter & Co 1  The statement shows that JB charged £470 5s in new expenses to his account between 1 Jan. and 27 June 1783 (excluding interest) without making any payments. 2  On this payment of £50 to JB, see To

WF, 5 May 1783 and n. 6; From FHC, [12 or 13 May 1783]; and From WF, 23 May 1783 and n. 5. 3  On this payment of £30 to MMB, see To WF, 5 May 1783 and n. 5.

From Forbes, [on or shortly after Sunday 7 September 1783] Not reported. See MMB’s letter to WF from Auchinleck, 15 Sept. 1783, which follows below: ‘I thank you most sincerely for your kind letter with the agreable intelligence of Lady Forbes’s Safe Delivery.’ On 7 Sept. LF had given birth to a son, Adam, who would die a few months after his second birthday. The phrasing in MMB’s letter suggests that WF may have addressed this letter to JB and MMB rather than to JB alone. During this period JB ‘marked down my letters sent’ (Journ. summary from 12 Aug. to mid-Oct., written out on 31 Oct), but he made no entries in his Reg. Let. Received from 20 Aug. through the end of his stay at Auchinleck.

35

15 September 1783

Margaret Montgomerie Boswell to Forbes, Monday 15 September 1783 MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1414. address: To Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo, Bart., Edinr. endorsement: Mrs. Boswell, Auchinleck, 15 Septr. 1783

Auchinleck Sepr. 15th 1783 Dear Sir: I thank you most sincerely for your kind letter with the agreable intelligence of Lady Forbes’s Safe Delivery.1 I congratulate you on the addition to your family, and also on Lady Forbes’s good recovery which I pray to god may soon be perfected. Our little Family are all pretty well. We have had a constant succession of Visitors for some time past.2 I’m perswaded Mr. Boswell will write you as soon as Sir Alexr. Dick leaves us but as he has paid him3 such a Compliment as to come so far at his advanced time of Life4 Mr. Boswell devotes his Whole attention to him.5 We have had a long track of stormy disagreable weather6 but I hope for better to come when we flatter ourselves with the prospect of seeing you and Lady Forbes at Auchinleck. I beg my kind Love to Lady Forbes and best wishes to the Children and I remain, Dear Sir, with the most sincere esteem and affection, your much obliged and obedient Servant, Margt. Boswell 1  See From WF, [on or shortly after 7 Sept. 1783]. 2  The Boswells had been at Auchinleck since 12 Aug. 1783 and would remain there until 10 Nov. (see Journ. and Book of Company, pp. 33–51). At the time of this letter from MMB, Sir Alexander Dick, his 10-year-old son, Robert Keith Dick (1773– 1849), later Sir Robert Keith Dick-Cunyngham, 7th Baronet of Prestonfield, and his brotherin-law Lt. Thomas Butler (d. 1797) were in the midst of a visit which would extend from 12 to 16 Sept., and as MMB would remark in her next sentence, Dick was then the focus of JB’s attention. Previous overnight visitors had included CD, from 24 Aug. to 1 Sept., followed by JB’s great uncle Basil Cochrane (1701–88), Commissioner of Customs (see Corr. 9, p. 326 n. 1), and JB’s uncle, Rev. Alexander Webster (1707–84), who arrived together on the same day that CD left and stayed until 4 Sept. (and returned from 13 to 15 Sept.). There were also prominent dinner guests who did not stay overnight, notably Patrick MacDouall-Crichton (1726– 1803), 6th Earl of Dumfries, his wife Margaret (Craufurd) (1744–99), Countess of Dumfries, and their daughter Elizabeth Penelope MacDouall-Crichton (1772–97), styled Lady Crichton, on 21 Aug.; and on 3 Sept. (in addition to Cochrane and Webster) the Lord Justice Clerk, Thomas (later Sir Thomas)

Miller (1717–89), then sitting in the Court of Session as Lord Barskimming (from 1788 Lord Glenlee), and his wife, Anne (Lockhart) (d. 1817), Lady Miller, and Rev. Hugh Blair and his wife Katharine (Bannatine) (d. 1795), with their great-niece and adopted daughter Elizabeth Hunter (b. 1763) (Journ. summary from 12 Aug. to mid-Oct., written out on 31 Oct., and Book of Company, pp. 33–37). In his journal summary, JB wrote, ‘A great variety of other Company was at Auchinleck. I felt the entertaining of them in general as a laborious and anxious task. I several times drank too much wine, and suffered severe distress after it. I was quite averse to writing. I was exact only in keeping my Book of Company & Liquors, in which I marked with more regularity than I supposed possible for me, all the Company with us at dinner in one column, and all night in another, with the different liquors drank each day in separate columns. I also marked down my letters sent which were very few, and kept my Account Book pretty well. But upon the whole I led a life of wretched insignificance in my own estimation, though indeed it was perhaps no worse than that of many Gentlemen of fortune’. When not entertaining visitors, JB often went visiting himself, as when he and MMB made an overnight trip on 10–11 Sept. to visit the 11th Earl of Eglinton and his new wife, Frances Twysden

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15 September 1783 (with whom JB was initially pleased, according to his journal summary, but whose eventual marital downfall he would predict and relish; see From WF, 30 May 1788 n. 3). JB’s hectic schedule and harried, depressed state of mind throughout this period at Auchinleck—exacerbated by heavy drinking and the vexing news of the promotion (on 23 Aug.) of Henry Erskine (1746–1807) to the office of Lord Advocate, which JB ‘thought myself more deserving of’ (Journ. summary)—made correspondence difficult. ‘I had letters from many freinds,’ JB wrote in his journal summary, ‘but deferred from day to day answering them’. These circumstances, along with the attention he was then devoting to Sir Alexander Dick, help to explain why MMB, rather than JB himself, wrote this congratulatory letter to WF. 3  MS. ‘him’ written over ?‘us’. 4  Dick, born 23 Oct. 1703, was described in JB’s journal summary from 12 Aug. to mid-Oct. 1783 as ‘my amiable old freind Sir Alexr. Dick in his eightieth year’ (i.e., about to turn eighty), who ‘paid us a visit most cordially accompanied by his son Robert and his brother in law Captain Butler’. He would live until 10 Nov. 1785. 5  JB’s projected biography of Sir Alexander Dick (who besides his career in medicine had distinguished himself through public service on issues such as entails, turnpikes, and canals) was probably among the main reasons for Sir Alexander’s visit, and MMB’s comment that ‘Mr. Boswell devotes his Whole attention to him’ may be read in that context. Since the end of 1776 JB had been visiting and interviewing Dick with biographical intentions (see Richard B. Sher, ‘“Something that Put Me in Mind of My Father”: Boswell and Lord Kames’, in Citizen of the World, p. 84 n. 9). The project got off to a good start: Dick wrote in his diary on 12 Jan. 1777 that ‘we had some droll interviews and it becomes he says very interesting’ (Curiosities, p. 257). By 3 Sept. 1777 the work had progressed far enough for JB to read ‘the sketch of his life to him so far as done’ (Journ.). The undated letter to Dick with which JB enclosed his Hypochondriack no. 9 (June 1778) concluded, ‘Pray continue the notes of Biography’ (Curiosities, after p. 256). Dick recorded a number of occasions when more work was probably done on the project in 1778, including two visits by JB to Prestonfield during the last week of Sept. (Curiosities, p. 269). JB looked over some of Dick’s correspondence on 5 May 1782 (Journ.), and six months later Dick provided ‘my worthy friend Mr James Boswell of Auchinleck’ with a

formal ‘missive’ authorizing him to peruse his correspondence after his death, ‘for the purpose of making out a Memory of my Life’ (diary entry of 25 Nov. 1782, Curiosities, p. 303). That is where things stood when Dick made this visit to Auchinleck in Sept. 1783. Six months after Dick’s death, an allusion to the biographical project in JB’s letter to MMB of 18 May 1786 (L 178) suggests that MMB had relayed some misgivings about it expressed by Dick’s widow (his second wife, Mary [Butler] Dick of Pembrokeshire [d. 1820]) and his heir (Sir William Dick [1763– 96], 4th Baronet): ‘Lady Dick and Sir William are foolishly affraid. I will publish nothing about Sir Alexander that will not do him credit’. This would be the last reference to the projected biography, raising the prospect that it, like JB’s projected biography of Lord Kames, was a casualty of family concerns based on JB’s reputation for indiscretion (for Kames, see Later Years, pp. 322–23). But whereas JB’s notes for a life of Kames survived in fragmentary form (partially printed in BP xv. 267–302, and in Applause), along with ‘Anecdotes’ on Kames which Dick prepared for JB (BP xv. 314–16), none of JB’s materials relating to the life of Dick are known to have survived, including Dick’s ‘missive’ of 25 Nov. 1782. 6  ‘This month [July] has been remarkable for the most general and most tremendous thunder-storms that have been remembered for many years’ (Scots Mag. July 1783, xlv. 390). The Auchinleck overseer James Bruce (1712–90) had written to JB in Edinburgh on 5 July that ‘This week we have had a dale of rain’, on 12 July that ‘This week in General has been very hot, but yesterday and today exeeds, The air is full of fire we hear thunder at a distenc almost every day, with heive showers at times here’, and on 26 July that ‘This week has been generaly wetish which retards the hay work’, but ‘Its still warm’ (Corr. 8, p. 61, 63, 66). JB reports that on returning to Auchinleck House from a visit to another estate on 6 Sept., on ‘a wet stormy day’, he was ‘wet to the skin and went to bed’ (Journ.). The pattern resulted, as is now known, from a series of major eruptions beginning 8 June 1783 of the Laki Volcano in Iceland, ‘the largest lava-flow eruption of the last millennium’ (David McCallam, Volcanoes in EighteenthCentury Europe: An Essay in Environmental Humanities, 2019, Ch. 6, quoting p. 214). This event generated a poisonous haze over Scotland and beyond, accompanied by extreme heat, intense rain and hail storms, and other unusual climatic events, including an especially cold winter in 1783–84.

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15 October 1783

From Forbes, Wednesday 15 October 1783 MS. Yale (C 1273). Abbott No. 354. JB has drafted his reply of 23 Oct. (L 542) on the back of this letter.

Harrogate 15th Oct. 1783 Dear Sir: It gave me much pleasure to know by a letter of Mrs. Boswells, that you were all well and happy in the Country.1 Our wish was to have had the happiness of spending a few days with you at Auchinleck; of enjoying the beauties of your Grotto-Walks;2 and of discussing a variety of subjects in the calm retreat of the Country, which we are often interrupted in the midst of, when we sit by our parlour fireside in the Parliament Close.3 But to do this properly we found was impossible, from the advanced season of the year: as I had a call of some business to take me farther South. We therefore left home last week; and on arriving here found a few very genteel people; the remains of the Summer Waterdrinkers.4 In a day or two, we go to London. I own, I feel a degree of no ordinary satisfaction in being obliged by business to spend5 two or three weeks there at this time; as it gives me the opportunity of seeing some friends from whom we received infinite Civilities when last there, and whom I esteem in a very high degree.6 The pleasure, too, is the greater that I did not look for it till very lately.7 You will often be the subject of our conversations there; and if there is any thing I can either do or say for you, in London, I request to be charged with your commands. Your letters under cover to Sir Robert Herries, St. James’s Street will come to me safely.8 I pray your attention, if you oblige me with a letter, to the name of the Street in your address, otherwise, it will go into the City. What we have not been able to do this Year, I flatter myself will be in our power the next; and that we shall be able to wait of you in Ayrshire.9 In the meantime, Lady F. joins me in sincere good Wishes to Mrs. Boswell, and I am very truly, My Dear Sir, your most obedient and faithful humble Servant, William Forbes See the preceding letter from MMB. WF refers to his visit to Auchinleck in Oct. 1766—the only time he would ever be there during JB’s lifetime. On 7 Oct. 1766 JB’s brother TDB, who was employed as an apprentice in WF’s bank and would later work with WF’s mentor Robert Herries (Stone, ‘Being Boswell’s Brother’, pp. 211–17), had written to JB, ‘I have now to inform you, that Sir William Forbes Bart. sets out for Ayr-shire tomorrow, and intends paying you a visit at Auchinleck, I hope you will be kind to him, and show him much Civility, let him be entertained in as jenteell a manner as possible; Let the Place be shewn him to Advantage, for I can assure you, Sir William is a man of Taste, and knows how to value natural beauties as well as any man’ (C 485). Three years earlier TDB had also

lauded WF in a letter written from Edinburgh to JB while he was in Utrecht: ‘he is an extremely goodnatured agreeable man, and is as easy with his Clerks and apprentices as if they were just upon a footing with him— he is now in a very fine way, and has a chance to acquire a very handsom Fortune’ ([17 Oct. 1763], C 466). JB at that time was acquainted with WF through their membership at the same Masonic lodge in Edinburgh, Canongate Kilwinning No. 2 (see Intro., pp. lxxi–lxxiii), as well as from a dinner they had in Utrecht on 21 Sept. 1763 (mentioned in TDB’s letter of [17 Oct.] and in Mem., 22 Sept. 1763, J 4: ‘Yesterday, you was necessarily & properly taken up with Sir William Forbes, a Scotch Knight, & who has the care of your Brother’); but WF’s visit to Auchinleck in Oct. 1766 was an important step on their road to intimacy.

1  2 

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15 October 1783 JB must have sent a good account of it to TDB, who wrote to JB on 31 Oct. 1766 (C 486), ‘I am glad to hear Sir Wm. Forbes was pleased with Auchinleck; it is really a noble place but there may be a vast deall done yet to beautify it’. The sites visited by JB and WF in Oct. 1766 were the standard places to which JB guided visitors to Auchinleck at that time. In the journal entry for 30 May 1767, for example, JB describes a walk with his firstcousin-once-removed Claud Boswell of Balmuto, Fife (1743–1824), later Claud Irvine Boswell—a fellow-advocate who would become Sheriff-Depute of Fife and Kinross (1780) and Lord Balmuto of the Court of Session (1799), and was also the brother of JB’s future stepmother, Elizabeth Boswell— the estate overseer James Bruce, and an Ayrshire heiress on whom Lord Auchinleck had pinned some hopes as a marital prospect for JB, Catherine Blair of Adamton (1749– 98): ‘We walked to the Grotto, & down the Grotto-Walk & then to the old Place. Miss Blair & Mr. Claud & I walked to the top of the old Castle, & then with Mr. Overseer Bruce we made the compleat round of the Avenues & came in by the Hern Gate’. The ‘old Castle’ refers to the ruins of a Norman keep, the baronial tower house which had been the residence of the Auchinlecks of Auchinleck, occupants of the lands before they were awarded by James IV of Scotland (1473–1513) to Thomas Boswell (d. 1513) in 1504, at the top of a sandstone cliff at the junction of Dippol Burn and the Lugar Water. The ‘old Place’ is the abandoned Scots Renaissance tower house, built in the early seventeenth century, which Lord Auchinleck’s new villa had been built to replace. The ‘Hern Gate’ stood ‘on the estate road from Auchinleck House towards the turnpike at Howford’ (Corr. 8, p. 223). The following month JB advised WJT, who was about to visit the estate while the family was away, to ask Bruce to take him on a similar walk, including ‘the cab-house; to the old castle; to where I am to make the superb grotto; up the river [i.e., the Dippol Burn] to Broomsholm; the natural bridge; the grotto; the grotto-walk down to the Gothic bridge’ (To WJT, 26 June 1767, Corr. 6, p. 193; p. 194 n. 6 points out that ‘cab-house’ is probably a misreading of ‘old house’). The planned ‘superb grotto’ that JB mentions in this letter to WJT was the ‘Grand Grotto’ along the Lugar Water, on which Bruce would begin work in Nov. 1768 (From Bruce, 26 Nov. 1768, Corr. 8, p. 18). WF would again refer pleasantly to this visit and ‘the Grotto-walk,

and the Sequester’d Banks’ of the Auchinleck estate in his letter to WF of 8 Apr. 1789 (see also From WF, 15 Dec. 1794 n. 15). 3  WF refers to JB’s visits to WF’s counting house or bank in Parliament Close, a number of which are mentioned in JB’s journal (see Chron.). 4  In a letter to JaB sent from Harrogate, the fashionable spa town in the West Riding of Yorkshire, on 16 Oct. 1783 (FP 98/2; the letter had been begun in Edinburgh on 2 Oct.), WF explained that he and LF (who as noted above had recently given birth to their son Adam) had been advised to take ‘a little ramble some where’ for fresh air and exercise. Since it was too late in the season for Aberdeen, and since WF had banking business in London, they went first to Harrogate, where they found ‘about a score of very genteel people, the remains of the Water-drinkers’. Harrogate offered putatively medicinal spa-water rich in sulphur (therefore smelling like rotten eggs), along with, according to Rev. Alexander Carlyle (1722– 1805)—the minister of Inveresk, describing a visit to Harrogate in 1763—‘a constant succession of good company, and the best entertainment of any watering-place in Britain, at the least expense’ (The Autobiography of Dr. Alexander Carlyle of Inveresk, 1722–1805, ed. John Hill Burton, new ed., 1910, p. 455). Its location made it easily accessible from Edinburgh, travelling south via Newcastle, although Carlyle described initial social awkwardness there owing to ‘the shyness of the English, who are backward to make up to strangers till they have reconnoitred them a while’ (p. 454). A later newspaper account of Harrogate remarked, ‘Here are, as usual, numbers of Scotch Visitants, and the waters have their usual effects’ (World, 11 Aug. 1790). 5  MS. ‘a’ deleted after ‘spend’. 6  The friends to whom WF refers included SJ, BL, and JR (see From WF, 23 May 1783). WF sent a letter (untraced) to JR around the same time as this one to JB, as we know from JR’s reply, dated 18 Oct. 1783: ‘I would not neglect a minute acknowledging the receipt of your letter, tho I must tell you this is not very usual with me. It gave me more pleasure to hear you were in England and intend coming to Town, than even the news you give me in it concerning the payment of Lord Errols bill: you dont mention the time of your being here, I hope if you stint your time to a couple of weeks that those weeks will be when the Town is full, at present it is a desert’ (Letters JR, pp. 121–22; see To WF, 23 Oct. 1783 n. 3). The reference to ‘Lord Errols bill’

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23 October 1783 concerns a charge of £163, mainly for painting portraits of James Hay (1726–78), 15th Earl of Erroll, and his second wife, Isabella (Carr) (1747–1808), in 1763–64. The bill was still unpaid when Erroll died on 3 July 1778, and on 6 Aug. 1779 JR mentioned the matter to WF (Letters JR, pp. 84–85), who arranged for payment to be made. 7  In a letter to BL of 9 Sept. 1782, WF had written that ‘I cannot help envying’ JB the pleasure of ‘making a short excursion to London about ten days hence’, adding, ‘I should feel great happiness in being able to enjoy that satisfaction along with him: but it is a happiness of which I have not at present the most distant prospect’ (Corr. 3, pp. 124–25). As things turned out, JB was unable to make his short excursion because of MMB’s

poor health (see To WF, 20 Oct. 1782), whereas unforeseen business in London enabled WF to visit London at this time. 8  At this time Sir Robert Herries was M.P. for Dumfries Burghs, and letters to WF could therefore be sent via Herries at no charge, using Herries’s free franking privileges. The fact that JB’s reply of 23 Oct. 1783 is addressed simply ‘To Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo, Baronet, London’ suggests that it was sent under cover to Herries, at his bank in St. James’s Street, as WF instructed. 9  This opportunity would never arise. LF never visited Auchinleck, and WF would not return there until JB’s funeral on 8 June 1795, when he would comment to LF (in a letter under date in this volume) on the changes since his last visit in 1766.

To Forbes, Thursday 23 October 1783 MS. FP 87 (torn, so that the bottom part of the letter is severed from the rest). Abbott No. 1326. Yale has a copy (L 542; Abbott No. 1115), with extensive abbreviations, written on the back of From WF, 15 Oct. 1783 (C 1273). reg. let. sent: 23 Oct. 1783: ‘Sir Wm. Forbes of Pitsligo at London, a short social letter (Copy)’. address: To Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo, Baronet, London enclosure: An unidentified letter or parcel (not located), which JB asks WF to send to an unidentified recipient in London by the Penny Post. endorsement: Jas. Boswell, Auchinleck, 23 Octr. 1783

Auchinleck 23 Octr. 1783 Dear Sir: After hoping day after day for the pleasure of a visit from you and Lady Forbes, yours of the 15 announced to me your being much happier than if you had visited Ayrshire. You indeed do not say so. But I take it to be impossible for you not to think it. For you really enjoy London; and as Dr. Johnson says ‘He whose plea are intellctual must prefer it to every other place.’1 Beleive me non invideo.2 I have a much more benignant feeling. I share in your felicity by Sympathy in the mean time, and I look forward to my having it still livelier by hearing you recount your excellent conversations. By all means pay assiduous attention to Dr. Johnson, and either go to Rochester and see Langton, or write to him to come to town.3 I have nothing to trouble you with, except to tell my freins in Paradie,4 how much I languish to be there. My Wife joins me in best compliments to you and Lady Forbes, and I ever am, My Dear Sir, your faithful and affectionate humble servant, James Boswell Please send the enclosed by the penny post.5 If you can spare time to favour me with a few lines while you are in London it will be truly kind to do it.6 40

23 October 1783 Although there is no evidence that SJ ever wrote or spoke these exact words, this sentence appears to be a version of remarks which JB attributed to SJ in conversation at SJ’s house on 1 Apr. 1779. In the journal entry for that date, the sentence reads: ‘If pleasure be intellectual more can be had in Lond for ye money even by Ladies.’ In the Life it is rendered this way: ‘London is nothing to some people; but to a man whose pleasure is intellectual, London is the place’ (Life iii. 378; Life MS iii, pp. 277–78). 2  From Virgil, Eclogues i. 11: ‘non equidem invideo’, ‘Well, I grudge you not’; Loeb ed., trans. H. R. Fairclough, 1960 (see also To WF, 2–3 July 1790 n. 51). 3  A letter to JaB of 11 Feb. 1784 (FP 98/2) shows the extent to which WF complied with JB’s advice during his visit to London in autumn 1783. He was unable to see BL either in London or in Rochester, Kent, about thirty miles from London, where BL had moved in the early 1780s in order to work as a military engineer in the Chatham-Rochester area (see Corr. 3, pp. lxxiii, 111 n. 10). As he wrote to JaB, ‘Mr. Langton I did not see, which I regretted exceedingly for I esteem him very highly as a man, I believe verily, of as much real piety and worth as human nature can boast of: he has now fixed his residence with his family at Rochester: and the dissipation of a London life prevented my going thither.’ But he speedily made contact with other friends in JB’s circle. ‘The first day I dined with Sir Joshua’, he told JaB (JB would write to JR, on 6 Feb. 1784: ‘Sir William Forbes brought me good accounts of you’, Corr. 3, p. 148). WF’s letter to JaB continued: ‘I met among other ingenious personages, our friend Dr. Johnson, who was then very well, and I think less given to contradiction than usual. I called on him frequently, as I had occasion to pass into the City: but before I left London he had fallen off a good deal so that when I went to bid him adieu, I did not see him. His friend Boswell has lately heard from his Physicians who say he may still be patch’d up so as to last a little longer but I fear his health is in a very declining way.’ JB wrote of his anxiety at this time about SJ’s declining state—which WF must have described more fully to him when they met in Edinburgh on 28 Dec. 1783 (Journ.)— in his letter to JR of 6 Feb. 1784 (‘My anxiety about Dr. Johnson is truly great’, Corr. 3, p. 149) and in his journal entry for 7 Feb. 1784: ‘I received letters from Dr. Heberden & Dr. Brocklesby in answer to my anxious inquiries about Dr Johnson, and had such accounts as comforted me and made me hope I should

have the happiness of having some more of his admirable counsel in this world, and perhaps get him to put the memoirs of the Family of Auchinleck into the permanent form of his noble Style both in latin and english. I was impatient to be in London, and attend upon him with respectful affection.’ William Heberden (1710–1801) and Richard Brocklesby (1722–97) were prominent London physicians whose letters to JB on this occasion, both dated 3 Feb. 1784, are preserved at Yale (C 578 and C 1521). Brocklesby was also a friend of SJ and would remain his principal attending physician; JB would allude indirectly to his letter of 3 Feb. in the Life (iv. 263) and would later rely on, and share with WF, his Dec. 1784 accounts of SJ’s last days (Life iv. 414–17, and Intro., p. xciii). JB would continue to socialize with Brocklesby after SJ’s death (e.g., To WF, 7 Nov. 1787 and 7 Nov. 1789), and in early Jan. 1792 he would introduce WF to him at the Essex Head Club in London, which Brocklesby had co-founded with SJ in Dec. 1783 (see WF to LF, 5 Jan. 1792, FP 46/4). WF had also communicated information to JB about SJ’s declining health on an earlier occasion. JB’s journal entry for Fri. 6 Mar. 1778 states that ‘on tuesday or wednesday last’ (i.e., 3 or 4 Mar.) WF had ‘made me a little uneasy by mentioning a report in the newspapers that Dr. Johnson was very ill’, but on Wednesday afternoon (4 Mar.) JB received the Lond. Chron., which ‘removed any apprehension by assuring the public that Dr. Johnson had only a slight cold’. On 12 Mar. 1778 JB related this incident in a slightly different way in a letter to SJ which he later inserted into the Life (iii. 221): ‘The alarm of your late illness distressed me but a few hours; for on the evening of the day that it reached me, I found it contradicted in “The London Chronicle,” which I could depend upon as authentick concerning you, Mr. Strahan [the London-based Scottish printer and publisher William Strahan (1715–85), whose relationship with SJ is discussed in J. A. Cochrane, Dr. Johnson’s Printer: The Life of William Strahan, 1964] being the printer of it. I did not see the paper in which “the approaching extinction of a bright luminary” was announced. Sir William Forbes told me of it; and he says, he saw me so uneasy, that he did not give me the report in such strong terms as he had read it. He afterwards sent me a letter from Mr. Langton to him, which relieved me much.’ (The letter from BL to WF has not been traced, but it is alluded to in From BL, 14 Mar. 1778 [Corr. 3, p. 79], where BL remarks, ‘When Your Letter [To

1 

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30 December 1783 remained anxious about SJ’s health despite assurances that he was well, remarking in his letter to SJ of 12 Mar. 1778, ‘I am, however, not quite easy, as I have not heard from you; and now I shall not have that comfort before I see you, for I set out for London to-morrow before the post comes in’ (Life iii. 221). In his journal entry upon his arrival in London, he wrote: ‘I was anxious to see Dr. Johnson as soon as possible’ (17 Mar. 1778). If the exact phrase cited in JB’s letter to SJ of 12 Mar. 1778—‘the approaching extinction of a bright luminary’—was in fact printed in a newspaper, it has not been traced. 4  That is, London. 5  This sentence does not appear in JB’s copy at Yale (L 542), and the enclosure to which it refers has not been identified. The Penny Post started in London in 1680 and soon became part of the General Post Office. For the standard charge of a penny, one could have a letter or parcel not exceeding a weight of one pound delivered anywhere in London or Westminster (see Howard Robinson, The British Post Office: A History, 1948; Frank Staff, The Penny Post, 1680–1918, 1964). 6  There is no evidence that WF complied with this request.

BL, 26 Feb. 1778] arrived I was writing to our Friend Sir William Forbes, and had just been requesting of Him to acquaint You of the state of our respected Friend Johnson’s Health, lest You should have observed the disagreeable account of it in the Papers, and not have had any means of knowing that it was erroneous’.) The source of the worry about SJ’s impending demise was a brief item in the Pub. Adv. for Sat. 28 Feb. 1778: ‘It is with Infinite Concern we hear that the Public is likely to suffer an irreparable Loss by the Death of that great Luminary of the English Language, Dr. Johnson, the Author of the celebrated Dictionary, being now attended by Dr. Jebb [the physician John Jebb (1736– 86)] without the smallest Hopes of ever restoring him to a tolerable State of Health’. That same afternoon the Lond. Chron. responded in the issue of 26–28 Feb. which JB read on 4 Mar.: ‘We have the pleasure to assure our Readers that the paragraph in one of the morning papers relative to the dangerous Illness of the celebrated Dr. Johnson, is without foundation, that gentleman’s indisposition being only a slight cold.’ On this occasion in Mar. 1778, as on the occasion six years later which is discussed above, JB

To Forbes, Tuesday 30 December 1783 MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1327. address: To Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo Baronet endorsement: Ja. Boswell, Ed., 30 Decr., 1783

30 Decr. 1783 My Dear Sir: Upon consideration, I think it will be as well for me to delay making the payments I mentioned,1 till I get in my rents,2 and not to draw any more at present, upon your House to which I already [am] much obliged. I am yours most sincerely, James Boswell 1  JB probably mentioned these payments the day before, when WF ‘drank coffee with us in the evening’ at the Boswells’ Edinburgh home and alarmed JB with ‘a delicate hint … that my credit with his house was exhausted. This gave me a kind of sensation which I had never before experienced. My valuable spouse & I talked together and resolved on strict frugality till I should be easier’ (Journ. 29 Dec. 1783). For a fuller account of the debt referred to here, and its reorganization as an interest-only heritable bond in 1785, see Intro., pp. lxxvii–lxxviii, as well as the letters to JB from FHC of 22 Jan. 1784 and [c. 1 Feb. 1785], below, and

their annotation and enclosures. 2  A combination of illness and severe winter weather prevented JB from going to Auchinleck to collect his rents in late 1783 and early 1784. First he was laid up with ‘a bad cold’ (Journ. 13–14 Dec. 1783), followed by weeks of ‘confinement’ (probably from a bout of gonorrhoea, as noted in Corr. 8, p. 77 n. 1), during which WF was among his visitors (Journ. 7 Jan. and 5 Feb. 1784). JB noted in his journal entry for 7 Jan. (written on the 9th), ‘It hurt me a little that I did not get out to Auchinleck to receive my rents myself, & have my tenants about me. … But I gave a Commission to James Bruce to

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22 January 1784 receive money from the tenants to account of rents, & remit it to me’. Bruce had written to him on 6 Jan., ‘We are all much desapointed at your not geting west But indeed the weather is such that we could hardly have expected you Althow your health had permitted. … I’m sorry you continue Indispos’d’ (Corr. 8, pp. 77–78). On 10 Jan., replying to an untraced letter from JB of 3 Jan., Bruce wrote that he had asked Andrew

Dalrymple (the Auchinleck Baron Officer) to ‘Warn All the Tenents this week to come in punctually the Next which I expect they will generaly comply with’ (Corr. 8, p. 78). But the tenants did not generally comply, and the need to have their rents, and their slowness in paying, would be one of the main topics of JB’s correspondence with Bruce in subsequent weeks (see Corr. 8, pp. 79–86).

From Sir William Forbes, James Hunter and Company, Thursday 22 January 1784 MS. Yale (A 51). address: James Boswell Esqr., Advocate, Edin. enclosure: Bank statement, 31 Dec. 1783 (reproduced below), including later adjustment (dated 10 Mar. 1785) showing the new heritable bond of £1400 which would take effect on 9 Mar. 1785, superseding JB’s previous account.

Edinr. 22d Jany 1784 Sir: We hand you annexed a copy of your accot. curt. balanced 31st ulto. by £1310 2s 6d in our favors, which we place to your Debit in a new accot.1 If on examination you find it correct be pleased to favour us with your approbation. We are always, Sir, your most obedient servants, W. Forbes J. Hunter Co. Dr. James Boswell Esqr. Advocate with Sir Wm. Forbes Jas. Hunter & Co. Cr. 1783

To balance of last Accot. June 30 short charged of Int. on last Aud. 12.9.5 for 12.19.5

[£] [s.] [d.] 1783 760 13 7 July 30 By recd. per receit 10

July 11

paid per receit

10

Augt. 5

do

50

11

do

100

14

do

50

Novr 12

do

75

20

do

75

24

do

100

Decmr 11

do

20

19

do

70

31

Interest due us @ 5 prct.

Decemr. Balance at debit of 31 New Accot. Jany.

[£] [s.] [d.] 25 1310

2

6

£ 1335

2

6

23 18 11 £ 1335

2 6

Edinburgh 31st Decemr. 1783 Errors Excepted Wm. Forbes Ja. Hunter Co

43

17 May 1784 Edinb. 10 March 1785 The above Accot. and all former, examined & Approved of the whole vouchers mutually exchanged & the Balce of Thirteen Hundred & ten pounds 2/6 at Dr. of new accot. W.F. J.H. & Co. [signed] 1  The statement shows that JB withdrew £550 from his account between 11 July and 19 Dec. 1783 (excluding interest) without paying off any principal. This amount, with the £470 5s which he had charged to this

account during the first half of the year, brought his total withdrawals and expenditures for the year to £1020 5s before interest, leading the bank to cut off his credit by the end of Dec.

To Forbes, Monday 17 May 1784 MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1328. reg. let. sent: 17 [May] 1784: ‘Sir William Forbes begging £512 10 may be advanced by his house to Mr. Ro. Boswell for me, & I will honour a draft for it.’ address: To Sir Willm. Forbes Bart., Banker in Edinburgh endorsement: Ja. Boswell, Londn., 17 May 1784

London 17 May 1784 My Dear Sir: I have £500 with half a year’s interest to pay to the Town of Ayr at this ensuing Whitsunday.1 I have secured the money here, which I am to receive the beginning of June. But that I may appear prompt, I beg you may advance £512 10s to my Agent Mr. Robert Boswell2 and draw on me for it payable the first June, and you may depend on my making it good.3 I am with great regard, My Dear Sir, your faithful humble servant, James Boswell 1  In 1782 JB had borrowed £500 from the Town of Ayr to enable another of MMB’s impecunious Ayrshire nephews (see From WF, 23 May 1783 n. 5), Alexander Cuninghame, to recruit soldiers for an army lieutenancy, and he held Cuninghame’s personal bond for the loan (Laird, p. 478 n. 5). After seeing action in the American War, Cuninghame had returned home seriously ill with consumption, and had died on 1 Feb. 1784 (Journ.). Whitsunday was celebrated on different dates each year as a religious holiday (the feast of Pentecost, seven weeks after Easter), and in 1784 it fell on Sunday 30 May. But Whitsunday always fell regularly on 15 May as one of the four Scottish term and quarter days which typically marked the beginning or end of contracts, leases, and employments, and the days when interest on loans came due. It appears from JB’s timing and phrasing (he refers to ‘this ensuing Whitsunday’ in this letter of 17 May), that the deadlines for Whitsunday loan payments like JB’s were not strictly enforced on 15 May, and in practice extended until

the religious holiday. See the similar incident involving an interest payment due on another Scottish term day, Martinmas, in To WF, 7 Nov. 1787. 2  Robert Boswell (1746–1804), W.S., JB’s cousin and financial agent, and Lyon Depute in the Scottish Lyon Office from 1770, was the eldest surviving son of JB’s uncle Dr. John Boswell (1710–80) and Anne (Cramond) Boswell (1710–77) (see Corr. 9, p. 423 n. 4). JB wrote to him on the same day, as recorded in Reg. Let. Sent, 17 [May] 1784: ‘Mr. Ro. Boswell to get the payment of my two Bonds to the Town of Ayr settled; & if needful, to deliver a letter from me to Sir William Forbes, explaining that I am to have the money from Ro. Preston’. Capt. Robert Preston (1740–1834) of Valleyfield, JB’s first cousin once removed, had made his fortune with the East India Company during the 1770s and would subsequently remain affiliated with it in various capacities. In 1784 he was elected M.P. for Dover as a ministerial candidate, opposed to Fox’s East India Bill, which had sought to curtail the East

44

13 July 1784 India Company (Hist. Parl.). JB cultivated his friendship, and he often appears in the journal during this period as well as later, and would receive a presentation copy of the first edition of the Life (Boswell’s Books, p. 423). Preston may have been encouraged to offer JB financial assistance by JB’s defence of the East India Company in A Letter to the People of Scotland, on the Present State of the Nation, which first appeared in Edinburgh at the end of 1783 (Cal. Merc., 31 Dec. 1783) and was reprinted in London in Jan 1784. The £500 loan from Preston would prove troublesome for JB three years later, when Preston would abruptly call for repayment. JB would write to Robert Boswell from Penrith on 25 Sept. 1787, ‘When I was about setting out from Auchinleck, I received a letter from Captain Preston desiring payment

of the £500 which he lent me, three years ago—in terms so urgent, that I should be very sorry not to have it in my power to pay that debt very soon’ (L 216). JB suggested several possible people for Robert Boswell to approach, and in response to Robert Boswell’s reply of 2 Oct. (not traced), which JB wrote ‘gives me a sad view indeed of my credit’, noted that ‘To Sir William Forbes I am allready too much obliged’, and ‘so would by no means ask him for more’ (6 Oct. 1787, L 217). In the event, after some weeks of anxiety, JB received a loan of £200 from his printer, Henry Baldwin (1734–1813) and £300 more from CD, allowing repayment of Preston’s loan (Journ. 26 Oct. 1787). 3  It is not known if WF provided this short-term loan.

Forbes [with John Johnston of Grange] to Samuel Johnson, Tuesday 13 July 1784 Since the sent letter has not been found, WF’s draft in FP+ 2 has been used as the copy-text, cited in footnotes as ‘MS. Draft’. Not in Abbott. header: Dr. Samuel Johnson note: On 18 Oct. 1787 WF sent JB a parcel containing a copy of this letter and the original of SJ’s letter to WF of 7 Aug. 1784, which follows below, as well as a copy of the Round Robin; his cover letter, posted the next day (From WF, 19 Oct. 1787), reveals that the letter to SJ was written with ‘honest Grange’. JB would acknowledge receiving this letter in To WF, 7 Nov. 1787, where he would comment that it ‘is such a proof of the warmth of your friendship for me, that I want words to tell you how gratefully I feel’ (see also Reg. Let. Sent, 7 Nov. 1787: ‘His letter to Dr. Johnson shews such friendship for me that I want words to express my gratitude’).

13 July 1784 Dear Sir: I am happy to hear by a letter from Dr. Beattie that he had dined with you at our friend1 Sir Joshua Reynolds’, and found you much recruited.2 I gladly hope, now that we have fine warm summer weather, your health will be greatly re-established. When I had the pleasure of seeing you last winter in London, you may recollect our conversation turned on our mutual friend Mr. Boswell’s great desire of moving with his family to London; a measure which I was extremely happy to find did not at all meet with your approbation, because I flattered myself by your advice he might have been prevailed on to lay it aside.3 It now gives me great pain however, to hear that he has actually taken this resolution, and that he only returns to Scotland to make the necessary arrangement for putting his design in practice.4 This is a plan which appears so obviously improper to every friend of Mr. Boswell’s5 in this Country,6 that we are all alarmed for its consequences.7 Mr. Boswells estate tho’ a very good one, I believe about £1500 a year, from various rent-charges8 does not afford him of clear9 above half that10 from11 an income which I am afraid is very inadequate to the support and education of numerous family in London, without 45

13 July 1784 a degree of rigid œconomy which can scarcely be expected from one who has been accustomed to the comforts and conveniences of an elegant and hospitable table for a dozen years past, œconomy so rigid will be the more difficult too, to Mr. Boswell that he is happy in a number of acquaintances in London, of whose Society he is extravagantly fond, yet his spirits will not allow him to live with his friends without having them with him in return: thus he must either break in upon his plan of œconomy, or give up in a great measure the enjoyment of that Society which seems at present to be one of his chief motives for making this important change in his Situation. Another point too requires his utmost consideration. Were Mr. Boswell’s estate unintailed he might venture perhaps, tho’ not very prudently to make the experiment of residing sometime in London,12 in order to see how his scheme of œconomy might answer, and how his prospects at the bar might succeed; failing of which, he might return to Scotland a poorer man perhaps by £1000 or £1500 than he went up; an incumbrance however which could not materially hurt his estate;13 but as it is most strictly tied up by an entail if he shall unfortunately plunge himself in debt, which it will not be very possible14 for him to avoid doing, he can have no mode of extricating himself; his rents will be sequester’d by his Creditors15 and altho the estate will go clear to his Son, he himself will be left in great distress as long as he lives, in all probability, on the scanty pittance which his Creditors may allow him for his family’s subsistence.16 Mr. Boswell flatters himself probably with increasing his income by the practice of the Law17, and his abilities are sufficient to warrant such a hope, had he originally pursued that track: but I should fear much at his time of life it is now too late to make so great a change as from the Scotch to the English bar with any prospect of Success. On the other hand, if Mr. Boswell shall give up this wild idea and remain at Edinburgh assiduously18 cultivating that practice which he is already possessed of, he may make a respectable figure in society, and enjoy the prospect of being in due time a judge of one of our Supreme Courts here.19 I have presumed to trouble you with this long detail, from a sincere desire if possible of serving Mr. Boswell for whom I have a real regard. If he has prevailed on you to approve of his plan, I should greatly imagine, that it must have been from his not having laid a perfect20 state of his fortune before you. If what I have now said shall induce you to view the matter in the same light that poor Mrs. Boswell does and his other friends here, I am persuaded a letter from you will have more weight with him than the solicitations of all the world beside.21 My motive I hope will plead my cause for giving you this trouble; and were you to witness the agonies into which this resolution of his has thrown Mrs. Boswell, you would pity her distress. She is a worthy woman but of so delicate a frame that the agitation of mind I fear will bear hard on her and I do not hesitate to say the loss of her would be the severest blow his family ever can meet with. It is most unfortunate that Mr. Boswell should be strongly prepossessed with the rage of living in London, as to be unhappy any where else; but the duty he owes to his family ought to outweigh every other consideration.22 If you do write, I humbly request that you may make no notice of its being at my suggestion. 46

13 July 1784 MS. Draft, ‘?worthy’ deleted before ‘friend’. 2  SJ had been too ill to see WF when he went to say goodbye upon leaving London in Dec.1783 (see To WF, 23 Oct. 1783 n. 3). In a letter to WF of 1 July 1784, JaB had written, ‘Our friend Sir Joshua Reynolds is in perfect health and spirits. I dined with him the day after I came to town, and on Sunday last, when General Paoli, Dr Johnson, Mr Boswel, and several others were there.’ After discussing some of the conversation at this dinner party, which occurred on Sun. 27 June, and is also depicted (with different topics of conversation) in the entry for that date in JB’s journal, JaB commented—far less positively than in WF’s formulation— that ‘Johnson has got the better of his late illness; but has the look of decline’, even though his appetite remained voracious. At the end of this long paragraph, JaB added, ‘I sat an hour with Johnson the other day, and he spoke of you with great kindness’ (Beattie Corr. iii. 204). WF would later publish this paragraph from JaB’s letter (Beattie ii. 139–40), while silently omitting the letter’s eight other paragraphs, and would append the following footnote after the words ‘great kindness’: ‘Dr Johnson’s acquaintance and mine first began when he came to Edinburgh in the year 1773, on his tour to the Hebrides. As he lived in the house of my friend, Mr Boswell, with whom I was extremely intimate, I was very much with Dr Johnson at that time; and ever after, when I had occasion to go to London, I uniformly experienced from him the utmost kindness and attention. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr Langton, Mr Boswell, Dr Beattie, being our common friends formed a sort of bond of union between Dr Johnson and me; to which circumstance I attributed much of the notice with which he honoured me. It is unnecessary for me to say here how highly I respected the talents and the virtues of that truly eminent and good man’ (Beattie ii. 140 n.). 3  WF’s letter to JaB of 11 Feb. 1784 (FP 98/2) mentions that after first seeing SJ at dinner with JR during his recent trip to London, he subsequently ‘called on him frequently, as I had occasion to pass into the City’. This visit to London occurred in autumn 1783, not ‘last winter’, although WF may possibly have still been in London for the first few days of that season. No other record of SJ and WF’s conversation about JB is known to exist. 4  Shortly after arriving in London for what would turn out to be his last visit there during SJ’s lifetime, from 5 May to 2 July

1784, JB came to the determination that he would relocate to London (To WJT, 17 May 1784, as described in Reg. Let), as he had expressed the wish to do for many years. He wrote to JJ on 22 May ‘that I am now resolved to try my fortune at the english bar, to which I am well encouraged’ (e.g., by Henry Dundas) (Reg. Let., quoted in Corr. 1, p. 303), and on his way back to Scotland he wrote similarly to WJT from Carlisle on 8 July, ‘Now that I am resolved to try my fortune at the english bar, you and all my freinds must encourage me, as Dr Johnson mirabile dictu! does in his powerful manner. He tells me, if you only take care not to exceed your income, you cannot be wrong. You have every chance in your favour. You will certainly improve your mind; and you may improve your fortune’ (L 1236.9; see also JB’s letters to various correspondents cited in Corr. 3, p. 180 n. 9). After a brief stop at Auchinleck (9–12 July), JB spent the next month in Edinburgh, where both his plan and his spirits quickly collapsed. As he told WJT on 20 July (L 1237, sent on 22 July), ‘I have been harrassed by the arguments of Relations and Freinds against my animated scheme of going to the english bar. I have lost all heart for it. My happiness when last in London seems a delirium.’ Although JB kept no journal during this period, WF, as JB’s financial adviser, was undoubtedly foremost among the friends who contributed to this deflation. The date of this draft of WF’s letter to SJ, just one day after JB’s return to Edinburgh, demonstrates that JB and WF discussed this matter in person on the 12th or 13th, and WF’s counsel is evident in the dismal financial news which JB communicated to WJT in his letter of 20–22 July: ‘upon making out a State of my Affairs I find my debts amount to so large a sum, that the interest of them and a moderate annual appropriation of rents for a sinking fund will leave me no more than what will maintain my family in Scotland, but would by no means support it in London, unless I could submit to live in penurious privacy, which my Wife with her admirable good sense observes would deprive me of all the felicity which London now yields me’ (L 1237). Both WF’s letter to SJ, arguing against JB’s relocation largely on financial grounds, and JB’s ‘long melancholy letter’ to SJ of 3 Aug. (Reg. Let. Sent), ‘filled with dejection and fretfulness’ (Life iv. 379; see SJ to WF, 7 Aug. 1784, below), must be understood against the backdrop of WF’s disheartening financial advice. 5  MS. Draft, ‘to every friend of Mr. Boswell’s’ replaces deleted ‘for Mr Boswell that every friend to him’.

1 

47

13 July 1784 Except for JJ, whom WF would identify in his letter to JB of 19 Oct. 1787 as a collaborator in the composition of this letter, the Scottish friends to whom WF refers cannot be identified with certainty. One was presumably the Hon. Alexander Gordon (1738–92), youngest son of William Gordon (1679– 1746) 2nd Earl of Aberdeen and his third wife, Lady Ann Gordon (d. 1791). He was a member of Canongate Kilwinning No. 2 since 4 Dec. 1765 (Mackenzie, p. 241) and had been raised to the bench in July 1784 as Lord Rockville (see Intro., p. xcv), so-named after his estate near North Berwick, which JB visited on more than one occasion during the early 1780s (e.g., Journ. 23 Apr. 1782, 2 Aug. 1783). With his wife since 1769—Anne (Duff) (d. 1811), second wife and later widow of William Crichton-Dalrymple (1699–1768), 5th Earl of Dumfries, and so styled Lady Dumfries—he was part of the English Episcopal social circle in Edinburgh to which the Forbeses and the Boswells belonged (see From WF, 18 May 1790, and Intro., pp. ci– ciii). On 6 Dec. 1785 Rockville would write to JB in London: ‘When you become a real Residenter in Londn., I fear you will not be so much intoxicated with its superiority over every other Situation, as you at times were during your Excursions to that overgrown place. … I do fear that the great and necessary Expences occasioned by the changing the place of Residence of your numerous family from the north to the Metropolis, will over Ballance your profits at the Bar. … If you please to let me hear from you, tell me How your week is Employed, and how the Question stands with yourself, when on Cool and deliberate Reflection, you consider that you are about changing your Profes[io]n (for such I hold it) and Residence of your family at a time of life past 40 and upwards’ (C 2402). However, in 1786 JB recorded in his journal that he was encouraged to make ‘a fair trial’ in London by some of his fellow-advocates in Scotland, including George Wallace (1730–1805) on 3 Jan.; John Maclaurin (1734–96), later raised to the bench as Lord Dreghorn, on 6 Jan.; and Ilay Campbell (1734–1823), then Lord Advocate, and later Lord President of the Court of Session (sitting as Lord Succoth), on 3 June. 7  The pessimistic financial arguments which follow (‘my ill-omen’d Prognostications’, as WF called them when alluding to this letter in From WF, 19 Oct. 1787) remained the core of WF’s reasoning on this subject for the rest of JB’s life. When writing to JB on 9 July 1790, WF would comment, ‘you know it has always been my sentiment, that there is very

little hope of success, at your time of life, at the English Bar’; in his letter of 4 June 1794, WF would refer back to this letter to SJ, asking JB ‘to read it over once more; because I can add nothing to what I then said on the subject; except it be, that I have never since varied from the opinion I then exprest’. 8  MS. Draft, ‘rent-charges’ inserted above deleted ‘circumstances’ by caret. 9  MS. Draft, ‘clear’ written above deleted ‘such rent’. 10  The ‘various rent-charges’ to which WF alludes included what JB called, in his letter to WJT of 20–22 July 1784, ‘a moderate annual appropriation of rents for a sinking fund’ (L 1237). JB also had other estate expenses, including improvements, ‘public burdens’ (such as the stipend of the parish minister), and annuities of at least £445 per annum which his father had left to various people. Furthermore, his father had left Lady Auchinleck the profits from much of the best farm land, worth more than £300 a year in rents (Later Years, pp. 332, 538). As a result of such expenses, the discrepancy between the rent-rolls and JB’s net income from the estate after the deduction of expenses was at this time even greater than WF imagined: on 12 Dec. 1785 JB would record in his journal having no more than £500 a year in disposable income, and records of estate income, which began in 1787, show the same amount of income from rents in that year (Corr. 8, p. xlii). Thus, JB’s net estate income in the mid-1780s was approximately a third, rather than half, of the total rent-roll. Yet the matter is complicated by conflicting records, and rental income would increase significantly during JB’s later years (see To WF, 8 May 1787 n. 5). 11  MS. Draft, ‘and Sir so strictly entailed that’ deleted after ‘from’. Here a # mark is inserted, pointing to a marginal addition which carries across three pages, ending with the phrase ‘but as it is most strictly tied up by an entail’, after which WF has written, ‘(return to the mark # on the second page)’. 12  WF’s use of the term ‘experiment’ to refer to JB’s move to London (also in From WF, 18 Dec. 1787, as well as ‘hazardous experiment’ in WF to TB, 29 Apr. 1786, under date in this volume) suggests a temporary or provisional test which could be reversed if it did not succeed. WJT frequently referred to JB’s move to London as an ‘experiment’, as in his letters to JB of 2 Aug. 1784, 4 Jan. 1786, 15–19 Feb. and 24 Mar. 1787, 27 Nov. 1788, and 13 July 1789 (PML), and the term was also used by others writing to JB, such as the M.P. John Lee (1733–93) in a letter of 3

6 

48

13 July 1784 Oct. 1785 (C 1713), and AE, who commented on 6 May 1786 (C 1212), ‘I am happy to hear your experiment turns out well, but don’t be asham’d to return should appearances alter’. JB himself occasionally used the term ‘experiment’ in this sense in his journal, at first in a positive or affirmative sense (e.g., 6 Jan. and 8 June 1786, when he recorded countering TDB’s opposition to the move by defiantly declaring, ‘I must make the experiment’). But increasingly as time passed he used this term in the journal when he had doubts about his decisions, especially about the practice of law and its requirement to go on the provincial legal circuits (e.g., 28 Dec. 1787: ‘I had been flattered and persuaded that I might succeed [at the Bar] in England, in a wider sphere. My ambition had led me to make the experiment. I found I had been deceived’; 29 July 1788: ‘I began to reflect on the expensive dissipation of this circuiting and how unjust it was by an imprudent experiment to deprive my dear Wife of the comfort of having her husband and children always with her’). The journal more commonly employs ‘trial’, the first of at least twenty such instances occurring on 16 Dec. 1785, and that word is regularly used in the exchange of letters between JB and WF in 1787 with qualifying words, including From WF, 25 Apr. (‘some longer tryal’); To WF, 8 May (‘a longer trial’); From WF, 25 July (‘a fair trial’); and To WF, 7 Nov (‘a sufficient trial’). 13  That is, if Auchinleck were not entailed, JB might have sold off some land and possessions in order to cover his expenses in London, without going further into debt. WF would certainly have known that SJ had corresponded extensively with JB about an intense disagreement with his father when the estate was being entailed in 1776, but that disagreement concerned the right of succession to the entailed estate, not entailment itself, which JB ‘heartily concurred with’, as did SJ (Life ii. 413–23, esp. 414, and 428; Later Years, pp. 115–21). 14  MS. Draft, ‘it will be impossible’ corrected to read ‘it will not be very possible’. 15  MS. Draft, ‘Creditors’ written as ‘Credrs.’ here, and as ‘Crs.’ later in this sentence. 16  MS. Draft, a deleted passage follows: ‘That this must happen will be evident when it is considered, how inadequate such an income as I have stated is to the support of so large a family in tending to the furnishing a house, and to the education of his Children. Mr. Boswell is fond of society and is happy in a numerous acquaintance in London; his Spirit will not permit him to

live with his friends without having them with him in return, and such a style of life would but ill sort with the degree of œconomy which could alone ?preserve him from difficulties’. 17  MS. Draft, ‘Law’ written above deleted ‘Bar’. 18  MS. Draft, ‘assiduously’ replaces deleted ‘diligently’. 19  WF gives a similarly optimistic account in a letter to BL of 9 Sept. 1782 (Corr. 3, p. 124). WF would continue to tempt JB with the prospect of an appointment as a judge if he remained in Scotland, and once JB had made the move to London, he would provide comfort by telling him that his being ‘some time in Westminster Hall’ would not disqualify him from this objective (Journ. 11 June 1786)—although that prospect would become less likely, and finally impossible, the more JB distanced himself from Edinburgh and its ways (see Intro., pp. xcv–xcvi, and Journ. 24, 25, 26 Sept. 1793). 20  MS. Draft, ‘a perfect’ written above deleted ‘fairly’. 21  MS. Draft, here a ± mark is inserted, pointing to a marginal addition, which ends with the words ‘the severest blow his family ever can meet with’. Only two days earlier, SJ had sent JB an encouraging letter on this subject, rather than a discouraging one (11 July 1784, Letters SJ iv. 346–48). Although SJ’s letter asserts, ‘The condition upon which You have my consent to settle in London, is that your expence never exceeds your annual income’ (p. 347), this statement merely confirms WF’s fear that SJ never fully understood the dire state of JB’s finances, which did not allow SJ’s condition to be met at this time. 22  WF may have learned of MMB’s ‘agonies’ and ‘distress’ from her directly, or perhaps from LF. As discussed above (To WF, 20 Oct. 1782 n. 3), on 21 Sept. 1782 SJ himself had written a sensitive letter to JB, strongly advising him to stay with and care for his ailing wife (‘the prop and stay of your life’) rather than visit London after the death of his father (Life iv. 155–56), and early in 1783 SJ had continued pushing this line of argument in regard to JB’s larger plan to settle in London (Journ. 8 Feb. 1783; Life iv. 163). Yet in his letter to JB of 11 July 1784 (Letters SJ iv. 347), written when MMB’s illness was more advanced, SJ never so much as mentions MMB or JB’s familial responsibilities as factors to be considered. Even more remarkable, considering the forcefulness of WF’s language in this letter, these topics are also never mentioned in SJ’s reply of 7 Aug. 1784, which follows below.

49

7 August 1784

Samuel Johnson to Forbes, Saturday 7 August 1784 MS. FP 87. Not in Abbott.1 previously printed: Treasure, pp. 325–26; Letters SJ iv. 361–63, which records MS. revisions. address: To Sir William Forbes, Bart., in Edinburgh endorsement: Saml. Johnston,2 Ashbourne, 7 Augt., 1784 postmark: shborne seal: Tulip in grass. note: See the headnote to the preceding letter and From WF, 19 Oct. 1787, for details on the transmission of this letter to JB on 18 Oct. 1787.

Sir: When Mr. Boswel first communicated to me his design of removing his family to London, I thought of it like all the rest of his Friends; for a while it seemed possible that his desire might evaporate in talk, or that the trouble and difficulty of such a migration might over power his inclination. I was therefore content to say little, but what I said, he will tell you, was all discouragement. By degrees however I found his ardour for English Honour, and English Pleasures so strong that, he would have considered all open and declared opposition, as envy or malignity, or distrust of his abilities. I therefore withdrew my prohibition on these terms.3 That he should not come to London till he had money sad by himself, and unborrowed, sufficient for the removal and establishment of his Family. That while he resides in London, he shall live on what he receives from his estate, and gets by his practice, without anticipation, or contraction of debts.4 To these conditions, he will own, that he has agreed, and if he keep his own stipulation, you see, Sir, that no great mischief can be incurred. He can lose nothing but his Scottish business in the Scottish courts, which the appeals, and other incidental employment may easily recompense.5 The danger is, and that danger is very great, lest he should be driven by his passions beyond the bounds which he has consented to fix. The mischief then may be such as both you and I sincerely wish him to escape. I have told him, with as much energy as I could call to my assistance, that He is too rich for an Adventurer, and by a game so hazardous and daring, he stakes more than he can win.6 Since I began this letter, I have received from him a gloomy account of his perplexity and irresolution; and his present intention is to delay his removal.7 To gain time is a great advantage. Reason and the advice of his friends will probably prevail. Every reason against his removal, w be stronger another year. I am, Sir, with great re, your most humble servant, Sam. Johnson 1  Abbott mentions that while he was at Fettercairn House on 29 Nov. 1930, ‘on a shelf in the library cupboard I found what I had long been looking for, and knew must be somewhere—Johnson’s letter to Sir William’ (Abbott, p. xxii). Yet this letter is not listed in Abbott’s catalogue (see Treasure, p. 125 n. 5).

2  Scots commonly wrote the name ‘Johnson’ as ‘Johnston’. JB recorded among his unpublished ‘Boswelliana’, ‘Dr. Johnson could not bear to be called Dr. Johnston, I suppose because that is the scotch name. May 15, 178[0] I wrote to Sir Alexr. Dick, “Pray do not push a ‘t’ up the middle of his name. It is impaling him”’ (M 38).

50

7 August 1784 SJ’s earlier paragraph about this subject in a letter to JB of 11 July 1784 (Letters SJ iv. 346–48), is reproduced (though misdated 11 June) in the Life (iv. 351), introduced by the following passage: ‘Having after repeated reasonings, brought Dr. Johnson to agree to my removing to London, and even to furnish me with arguments in favour of what he had opposed; I wrote to him requesting he would write them for me; he was so good as to comply, and I shall extract that part of his letter to me of June 11, as a proof how well he could exhibit a cautious yet encouraging view of it’. SJ’s treatment of this matter in the 11 July letter is indeed ‘encouraging’ of JB’s scheme to relocate in London, especially since it does not mention JB’s responsibilities to his wife and family (see the last note in the preceding letter) or the serious reservations which appear in the last two paragraphs of this letter from SJ to WF. 4  Both of SJ’s conditions were based on the principle of economic self-sufficiency: JB had to make the initial move to London with his own savings, ‘unborrowed’ (condition 1), and he had to live there solely with income from his estate and profession, ‘without contraction of debts’ (condition 2). JB in the event failed to meet both conditions, as he was seriously underfunded from the outset and could not sustain himself in London without borrowing money, and he could not resist the temptation to expand his estate, thereby contracting new debts. On JB’s difficult financial circumstances after moving to London, see Caudle, pp. 129–32. 5  JB would not be able to establish a satisfactory law practice in London to compensate for the loss of income from legal fees in Edinburgh. SJ’s reference to ‘the appeals’ indicates that JB had told him he expected the Scottish courts to assign him many Scottish cases being appealed to the House of Lords. Several appeals of this kind would come his way (see BEJ, pp. 544–45), but on 29 June 1787 he would complain to Rockville about getting ‘but a small share of scotch appeals’ in the last parliamentary session (Reg. Let. Sent). SJ’s conditionally optimistic outlook on finances also did not take into account the expense of London and of educating children there, as a result of which JB would have had to earn considerably more money from his London practice than his Edinburgh one in order to maintain himself and his family comfortably (see To WF, 8 May 1787: ‘The expence of living too is greater than I flattered myself it might be, and this independently of giving my children such advantages in point of education as I am very

desireous they should have’). Yet if SJ underestimated the financial problems facing JB in London, the next paragraph of this letter demonstrates that he understood very well the risks stemming from JB’s personality. 6  SJ’s last known advice to JB on this subject, in a letter to JB of 11 July 1784, does not express these sentiments at all, but rather tells JB that he has nothing to lose by a move to London except ‘your Scottish business’, which he would be able to more than compensate for in London (Letters SJ iv. 347, and Intro., pp. xci–xcii). 7  The letter from JB to which SJ refers has not been traced but is summarized in Reg. Let. Sent: ‘Sent Aug. 1784’: ‘3 Dr. Samuel Johnson at Ashbourne—a long melancholy letter quite in misery from my ambitious project of going to the english bar, being impracticable at least for some time. Asking him to come to Auchinleck’. JB would also describe this letter—as well as SJ’s disapproving response—in the Life (iv. 379): ‘Having written to him, in bad spirits, a letter filled with dejection and fretfulness, and at the same time expressing anxious apprehensions concerning him, on account of a dream which had disturbed me; his answer was chiefly in terms of reproach, for a supposed charge of “affecting discontent, and indulging the vanity of complaint.”’ SJ’s letter of ‘reproach’ is incorrectly dated 26 July 1784 and selectively quoted in the Life, along with another letter which SJ wrote two days later (iv. 379), which also has not survived. Although these letters have been provisionally dated 5 and 7 Aug. 1784 (Letters SJ iv. 354 n. 1, 358–59 and n. 2, 360), SJ’s remark to WF suggests that he received JB’s letter of 3 Aug. on the 7th, in which case the first of his replies could not have been written before that date (see Radner, Johnson and Boswell, p. 392 n. 18). Gordon Turnbull has plausibly suggested that JB mistakenly wrote July instead of Aug. in the Life, and that SJ’s two letters were actually sent on 26 and 28 Aug. 1784 (‘Yale Boswell Editions Notes’, Johnsonian News Letter, lxix [2018]: 24–27). Both letters are mentioned in JB’s letter to JJ on 12 Sept. 1784: ‘I have had two letters from Dr. Johnson from Dr. Taylor’s at Ashborne. He … abuses me too harshly for complaining to him of melancholy and discontent. … The state of my affairs really distresses me, and the disappointment at least for a time of my scheme of active ambition vexes me’ (Corr. 1, pp. 304–05). Unfortunately, neither the excerpts from these letters in the Life nor the commentary about them to JJ reveal whether the letters

3 

51

[c. 1 february 1785] contained specific advice about JB’s plan to relocate to London, but the first letter’s statement that ‘I consider your fidelity and tenderness as a great part of the comforts

which are yet left me, and sincerely wish we could be nearer to each other’ (Life iv. 379; Letters SJ iv. 359) may have been read by JB as another affirmative response.

From Sir William Forbes, James Hunter and Company, [c. 1 February 1785] MS. (in WF’s handwriting) Yale (C 1311). header: (Private), James Boswell Esqr. enclosure: From FHC, 28 Jan. 1785 (reproduced below, with enclosed bank statement). note: This letter has been tentatively, and plausibly, dated in Catalogue and in Corr. 8, p. 113 n. 1. The reference in the first sentence to an enclosure which brings JB’s account ‘up to the 1st of last month’ (i.e., 1 Jan. 1785) establishes that this letter dates from Feb. 1785, and it was probably written soon after the enclosed bank letter of 28 Jan.

Dear Sir: We beg leave to inclose an official letter of our house with your account Current made up to the 1st of last month, balance then due us £1375 12s 6d.1 In consequence of the conversation we had the pleasure of holding with you on the subject of that balance;2 we are satisfied, in order to accommodate you, altho out of the ordinary course of banking business, to accept of an heritable Security on your house in St. Andrew’s Square, with a power for us to insure that property; but as it is at present life-rented by Lady Auchinleck,3 We understand it to be a Condition between us, that you are annually to pay us the interest of the bond, which may be made £1400 to avoid odd money.4 You will please send the title-deeds to our agent Mr. Walter Scott, Writer to the Signet,5 who will make up the Conveyance. If it shall suite you to make any payments over and above the interest, they will go towards the extinction of the principal; and it will be at all times agreeable to us; for as we said before, the whole thing is a matter of accommodation to you, but quite out of the ordinary line of banking business. We are very truly, Dear Sir, your most obedient humble Servant, Wm. Forbes Jas. Hunter & Co. 1  This is the amount which JB owed FHC as of 1 Jan. 1785, in the form of a standard five per cent loan, as shown in the enclosed letter from the bank, with its accompanying account statement. 2  This important conversation with WF is summarized in JB’s journal ‘review’ of his period in Edinburgh from 13 Jan. to 23 Feb. 1785: ‘The state of my affairs disturbed me a good deal. But Sir William Forbes obligingly proposed I should give Him & Co. security on my house in St. Andrews Square for my debt to them making £1400, & if I paid the interest regularly I might clear off the principal at my leisure. This was a relief to me.’ Although marginal dates in Applause, pp. 277–78, suggest that this conversation

took place in late Feb., it must actually have occurred during the third or fourth week of Jan.—after JB’s return to Edinburgh from Auchinleck (where he had been since 30 Dec.) on 13 Jan. (Journ.) and WF’s return from ‘a very long expedition thro’ the northern parts of Scotland, which detained us till lately’ (WF to BL, 21 Jan. 1785, Corr. 3, p. 177), but before the enclosed bank letter of 28 Jan., which discusses the ‘New Account’, effective 9 Mar. The only meeting which JB and WF are known to have had during this period occurred on an undetermined day during the third week of Jan., when JB showed his friend Dr. Brocklesby’s letter of 27 Dec. 1784 about SJ’s last days (see Corr. 3, p. 179, and Intro., p. xciii), but it is also possible

52

28 January 1785 that the loan conversation took place at another, undocumented meeting between JB and WF before the 28th. 3  Lord Auchinleck had purchased the large house at 20 St. Andrew’s Square, at the corner of Thistle Street, shortly before his death in Aug. 1782, and his will gave his second wife, Lady Auchinleck, JB’s stepmother, the right to live there for the rest of her life rent-free (Later Years, p. 232). 4  That is, JB would be responsible for paying back only five percent interest per annum, or £70, of the full amount of the loan (£1400). As noted later in this letter, he could pay off as much of the principal as

he wished but was under no obligation to do so. Since JB never paid off any of the principal, this heritable bond kept his debt to WF’s bank to a manageable level throughout JB’s lifetime. But it also ensured that JB’s heir, AB, would inherit the full amount of the loan as a debt at the time of JB’s death. On the state of JB’s debts at the time of his death, see Pride and Negligence, pp. 16–17. 5  Walter Scott (1729–99), W.S., father of the poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). No record has been found of JB’s correspondence with the senior Scott or the conveyance which Scott drew up.

From Sir William Forbes, James Hunter and Company, Friday 28 January 1785 MS. Yale (A 51). enclosure: Bank statement, 31 Dec. 1784 (reproduced below), including later adjustment (dated 10 Mar. 1785) showing the new heritable bond of £1400 which took effect on 9 Mar. 1785, superseding JB’s previous account. endorsement: Sir W. Forbes, Ja. Hunter & Co. note: This letter was enclosed with the preceding one from FHC, written by WF.

Edin. 28 Jany. 1785 Sir: Annexed is a State of your Accot. from 1 January 1784 to 31 ultimo and then balanced by £1375 12s 6d in our favors which is at your debit in a New Account. We beg you will examine the same and advise us accordingly. We are always, Sir, Your most obedient servants, W. Forbes J. Hunter Co. Dr. James Boswell Esqr. of Auchinleck with Sir Wm. Forbes Jas. Hunter & Co. Cr. 1784

[£] [s.] [d.]

Janry 1 To balance of last Account. 1310 Decmr 31 Interest due us @ 5pct.

1784

2 6 Decmr 31

[£] [s.] [d.]

Balance at debit of New Accot. 1 Janry.

65 10

£1375 12 6 £1375 12 6

£1375 12 6

Edinburgh 31st Decemr. 1784 Errors Excepted Wm. Forbes Jas. Hunter Co. 1785 Janry 1

1785 To the above balance

1375 12 6

March 9 By his Heritable Bond

March 9 Interest due us @ 5pct.

12 12 5

to us over his house in the New Town

Balance paid him

1400

11 15 1 £1400 –– ––

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£1400 –– ––

16 September 1785 Edinburgh 9th March 1785 Errors Excepted Wm. Forbes Jas. Hunter Co

Edinb. 10th March 1785 The above and all the former accots. examined & approved of the vouchers mutually exchanged & the Balance of Eleven pounds 15/1 str. paid to James Boswell Esq. Wm. Forbes Jas. Hunter Co

From Forbes, Friday 16 September 1785 MS. Yale (C 1275). Not in Abbott. previously printed: BP xvi. 279–81. address: James Boswell Esqr., No. 1 Portman Square, London1 postmarks: (1) MC[illegible letters]OCK 5; (2) ?GREEN; (3) Penny Post Paid W TU

Edinbg. 16 Septr. 1785 You have2 heard me often speak of a wish to make an expedition to Ireland;3 but which I have never been able to accomplish till this Summer. Lady F. and I are just returned from having made a most comprehensive and pleasant tour there, from one end of the island to the other.4 Not the least agreeable part of it was our having the Opportunity of being a good deal with our worthy friend the Bishop of Killaloe,5 whom we had the good fortune to find in Dublin; and who, with Mrs. Barnard,6 loaded us with every possible degree of Kindness and attention. We spoke much of you, and much of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and our other friends in London. I know not the time when I have spent so many hours so happily as in the Worthy Bishop’s Company. Among other things he showed me the original Round Robin, Quorum pars (I cannot say magna) fui:7 and I have brought with me a Copy of it, which shall be at your Service, as a literary Curiosity, connected with the life of Dr. Johnson, if you chuse to make any use of it.8 When I bad adieu to the Bishop, he charged me with a parcel for you, containing the Papers in the great Ely-Cause, in regard to which he told me, you and he had had some Correspondence.9 As I am uncertain whether this may find you in London, I keep the parcel till I hear from you, whether you wish to have it sent to you; knowing that it will not suffer by delay.10 I am happy to know by a letter of yours which he was so good as [to] read to me, that you are already in the Press with your tour to the Hebrides.11 I long to read in print, what gave me much entertainment by the perusal in Manuscript.12 I am just sitting down to the worthy Doctor’s Prayers and Meditations;13 the little of what I have read has edified me much; altho I am not sure, had I been the Editor, but I should have thought myself warranted to omit some superfluous Passages.14 If this still finds you in London,15 do not omit to remember me kindly to Sir Joshua Reynolds; I would rather be forgot by half my acquaintance than by him. It will be agreeable to Sir Joshua to hear that I left the Bishop of Killaloe well. Remember me also kindly to Mr. Langton, to whom I mean to write by and by.16 Tell him, if you recollect it, that I have had a Visit here of Dr. Beattie, who is just 54

16 September 1785 about to print a small Work on the evidences of Christianity, which will be a valuable present to the public.17 The Bishop of Chester thinks well of the execution.18 Farewel, My Dear Sir, let me have the pleasure of a few lines from you, when you are at leisure, and in the meantime, believe me truly, your affectionate and faithful humble Servant, Our friend Mr. Burke is just now here in perfect health.19 1  Catalogue ii. 656 notes that the words ‘No. 1 Portman Square, London’ are in the handwriting of George Dempster. It appears, then, that WF sent this letter to Dempster in accordance with JB’s instructions at the end of To WF, 5 May 1783 (‘Please put your letter under cover of George Dempster Esq. M.P. London’), both because he was unsure of JB’s whereabouts at this time (as shown by the words ‘If this still finds you in London …’ at the beginning of the third paragraph), and in order to save JB the cost of postage by taking advantage of the parliamentary privilege of franking (To WF, 8 May 1787 n. 1). As Dempster knew that JB was then staying at Paoli’s residence in Portman Square (see Applause, p. 218 n. 1), he apparently forwarded the letter there by the Penny Post (on which see To WF, 23 Oct. 1783 n. 5), as indicated by one of the postmarks. 2  MS. ‘have’ inserted above the line by caret. 3  It is not known when WF expressed this wish to JB. 4  In a letter to JaB of 26 July 1785, written from Cashel, near Tipperary, in the south of Ireland, WF explained that this excursion to Ireland in summer 1785 was undertaken to provide consolation for the grief caused to LF by the death of their youngest child (Grace), and he added that the tour through ‘the northern parts of Ireland has been productive of much entertainment to us; and I think Lady F. has improved both in health and spirits’ (FP 98/2). Elsewhere WF wrote that his letters to his brother-in-law John Hay constituted ‘a sort of a Sketch Journal’ of this tour to Ireland (Ital. Journ. WF, MS 1539; To WF, 20 Oct. 1782 n. 9). The itinerary of the tour can be mapped from those letters, now among the Hay of Hayston Papers (part of the Sprot Papers) in the National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh (GD504/9/42–52; see also FP 82/4). After leaving Edinburgh on 24 June, WF and LF travelled southwest through Moffat and Dumfries to Portpatrick, where they crossed to Donaghadee near Belfast (letter of 29 June). They went north to the Giant’s Causeway and then looped down to Dublin by way of

William Forbes

Coleraine, Strabane (letter of 6 July), Enniskillen, Cavan, and Kells, arriving in the capital on 11 July. After ten days or more in Dublin, they undertook a southern tour which included Kildare, Kilkenny, Waterford, Clonmel (letter of 26 July), Cashel, and Cork (letter of 28 July), from which they returned to Dublin via Killarney and Limerick (letter of 7 Aug.). On 24 Aug. WF was writing from Drogheda on their way back to Donaghadee for the return voyage to Scotland, but that letter would not be finished or sent for another month (24 Sept., from Edinburgh). 5  See From WF, 23 May 1783 n. 13; WF to TB, 29 Apr. 1786 (under date in this volume). 6  TB’s first wife, Anne (Browne) (d. 1800), had married TB in 1753. She was the daughter of William Browne (?1684–1772) of Browne’s Hill, County Carlow, and Elizabeth (Clayton), and heiress of her maternal uncle, Robert Clayton (1695–1758), Bishop of Clogher (ODNB). 7  WF means that he played a modest role in the creation of the Round Robin, alluding to Virgil, Aeneid ii. 6, ‘et quorum pars magna fui’ (‘in which things I took a great part’) (Corr. 2, p. 99 n. 4; see Corr. 6, p. 150, and Life iii. 64 for uses of the phrase by JB). 8  Of course, JB would choose to make use of the Round Robin in the Life, and the rest of the story is told in subsequent letters in this volume, especially From WF, 19 Oct. 1787. 9  See From TB, 17 Mar. 1784, raising the issue of ‘the great Cause of Ely and Rochfort’ (Corr. 3, p. 157); To TB, 14 May 1784, explaining that ‘I really love disquisitions of that nature’ (p. 159); From TB, 14 Apr. 1785, on preparing for another round of litigation in ‘the Inextinguishable Ely Cause’ (p. 189); To TB, 1 July 1785, requesting ‘a set of the printed Cases in the great Ely Cause’ (p. 196); and From TB, ?17 July 1785, explaining that ‘The Printed Cases of the Ely Cause are too large to be sent you in a Letter, but I will take care to convey them to you by the first opportunity of a Safe Hand going to England’ (p. 202). As compensation for not being able to send the printed cases immediately, TB drew up a

55

16 September 1785 lengthy account of the Ely Cause and a justification for his own vote on the side of the majority in the Irish House of Lords, affirming the decision of the Court of King’s Bench (pp. 202–05). He was referring to the final judgement in the case on 10 May 1785, when the Lords voted 22–11 not to reverse the ruling of the Court of King’s Bench, which had upheld the disputed 1767 will of Nicholas Hume (1738–69), 2nd Earl of Ely, owner through inheritance from his mother Mary Hume (1715–40) of a vast and valuable estate in Enniskillen which included Castle Hume, in favour of his uncle Charles Loftus (1738– 1806), formerly Charles Tottenham, soon to be Lord Loftus (June 1785), Viscount Loftus of Ely (Dec. 1789), Earl of Ely (Mar. 1794), and 1st Marquess of Ely (Dec. 1800) in the Irish peerage, and finally Lord Loftus in the United Kingdom peerage (Jan. 1801). ‘All the Chat here at present is, upon the Tryal of the Earl of Ely for Idiocy’, the Dublin printer George Faulkner informed EB on 20 Jan. 1767 (Robert E. Ward, Prince of Dublin Printers: The Letters of George Faulkner, 1972, p. 47). Eighteen years later a contemporary newspaper, describing the House of Lords as ‘uncommonly crouded’, concluded, ‘This has put an end to this great cause, which has been near twenty years in litigation; and by this decision the right honourable Charles Tottenham Loftus, as representative and heir of the late Earl of Ely, becomes entitled to the Hume estates worth £14,000 a year’ (Proceedings of the Irish House of Lords, 1771–1800, Volume 1: 1771–1788, ed. James Kelly, 2008, pp. 257–58). In another letter to TB, dated 3 Aug. 1785, JB praised the bishop’s account of the Ely Cause and looked forward to studying the matter more fully (Corr. 3, p. 207). From TB, 14 Aug. 1785 mentions TB’s meeting with WF (who was then in Dublin), adding that WF ‘shall bring over to you the Printed Cases of the Ely Cause’ (Corr. 3, p. 211). WF had already written the following account of the Ely Cause after he and LF visited Castle Hume on Lough Erne during the first leg of their tour of Ireland in July 1785 (WF to John Hay, n.d. but endorsed Clonmell 26 July 1785, Hay of Hayston Papers, GD504/9/47):

standing, a good, roomy house, and finished in the substantial taste of that period. The whole place is at present very much in a state of neglect, however, by reason of its having been the subject of litigation for nearly 20 years past. The estate, which is called £18,000 a year, was the property of Sir Gustavus Hume [1670– 1731], by whom the house was rebuilt as it stands at present: after his death it went to his oldest daughter, married to the Earl of Ely, who had an only son, an idiot: after his father and mother’s death, this idiot was prevailed on to settle this Hume-estate (which failing him without children ought in justice to have gone to a Mr. Rochefort [Gustavus Hume Rochfort of Rochfort (?1750–1824)], the son of the second daughter of Sir Gustavus Hume) or his own heir male, who succeeded him as Earl of Ely, tho’ a remote collateral of the Ely family and no way related to the Hume estate; this produced a tedious law-suit between Lord Ely and Mr. Rochefort, this last attempting to set aside the idiot’s will: in which, however, he did not prevail; as he could not prove him to be insane; and it seems the law of Ireland makes a strong distinction between Insanity, and idiotism or imbecillity of mind. While the suit was depending Lord Ely (the remote collateral) died and left the estate to his own nephew Mr. Loftus, in whose favor the question was finally determined by an appeal to the house of Peers of Ireland about three months ago. Since which time Mr. Loftus has been created a Peer by the title of Lord Loftus. The Voice of the Country about Enniskillen, seem’d, however, to be all in favor of Mr. Rochefort’s claim. I suppose Lord Loftus will now give Castle Hume and its adjoining grounds a thorough repair: and it is capable of being much improved.

WF’s use of the phrase ‘ought in justice to have gone to a Mr. Rochefort’ suggests that his perception of the case, apparently based on the views of people in the immediate vicinity of the estate in question, was on the opposite side from TB, who grounded his decision on a number of prior legal cases which he enumerated for JB, as well as a reluctance to overturn the opinion of a lower court and a preference for ‘supporting, as far as is consistent with Justice; the Common assurances of the Land’ (From TB, ?17 July 1785, Corr. 3, pp. 204–05). 10  See also WF to TB, [on or after 16 Sept. 1785] (draft, FP+ 3): ‘Our friend Mr. Boswell is still in London: but as I hear he is soon to be in Scotland, I have wrote to him to know whether I shall send him the Ely-papers, or keep them till his return.’ No record survives of JB’s response to WF’s question, or of JB

Castle Hume is placed in a low, confined situation, on a little meadow, hard by the Water’s edge: confined, however, only by its own magnificent woods, which cover the hanging banks from top to bottom for a very considerable extent: the town is quite surrounded with a quantity of fine old timber: it is a sumptuous building of about 60 years

56

16 September 1785 ever obtaining the Ely Cause papers which WF had carried to Scotland from Dublin at his request. Although this circumstance may seem surprising, considering all the effort that TB and WF had exerted on his behalf, JB was then consumed with the publication of the Tour, and as time passed he was far more interested in obtaining the other gift which WF had brought back from Dublin for him—a copy of the Round Robin—than the printed records from the Ely Cause. 11  The Tour would be published in London two weeks later, on 1 Oct. 1785, and JB was sending TB the printed sheets as they came from the press, for publication in Dublin (the last sheets would arrive with JB’s letter to TB of 23 Sept.). Since the most recent communication which TB had received from JB was a brief, bland note dated 24 Aug. 1785, the ‘letter of yours’ to which WF refers was probably To TB, 3 Aug. 1785, which praises TB for his report on the Ely Cause, gives some news of JR, and comments on the Tour, ‘I am impatient now to have the Book compleated. But I am unwilling to hurry the publication so as in any degree to lessen its accuracy’ (Corr. 3, pp. 206–08, 211–13). 12  See From WF, [6 Jan. 1775]; To WF, 6 Jan. 1775, 24 Feb 1777; From WF, 7 Mar. 1777. 13  Prayers and Meditations had just been published posthumously by the London bookseller Thomas Cadell (1742–1802). The editor, George Strahan (1744–1824)—son of SJ’s printer and sometime publisher William Strahan, who had died in July— signed the preface 6 Aug. 1785. Towards the end of the year Cadell would publish a second edition, containing two new prayers by SJ added by George Strahan, who would also add another prayer by SJ to the third edition, published by Cadell & Davies in 1796 (see Samuel Johnson, Diaries, Prayers, and Annals, ed. E. L. McAdam, Jr., with Donald and Mary Hyde, 1958, pp. xvi–xviii; From WF, 25 July 1787 and 3 June 1788.) JB owned a presentation copy of the first edition, inscribed by ‘The Editor’ (i.e., George Strahan) (Boswell’s Books, p. 244), and he sometimes consulted it, as when he cited this line in a letter to MMB of 9 Feb. 1789: ‘I am however struck with a serious remark in Johnson’s Prayers and Meditations, upon reviewing a portion of his time—“This is not the Life to which Heaven is promised.” Let me endeavour to do better’ (Rosenbach). 14  WF would elaborate on this criticism of SJ’s Prayers and Meditations in letters to JaB (9 Jan. 1786) and TB (29 Apr. 1786) (both under date in this volume). His views reflected the widespread charges of

impropriety in the press, such as the notice which had appeared in the Aug. 1785 number of the Monthly Rev. (lxxiii. 157), asserting that many of ‘the meditations, and the little details, by way of journal, or diary, … are of too trivial, we had almost said, too ludicrous a nature for the public eye, and unsuitably given as adjuncts to the devotional exercises. Indeed, we wonder that they were not suppressed’ (see also Maurice J. Quinlan, ‘The Reaction to Dr. Johnson’s Prayers and Meditations’, Journal of English and German Philology, lii [1953]: 125–39). 15  As WF would learn upon receiving the reply to this letter (To WF, 19 Sept. [1785]), JB was ‘still detained’ in London because preparing the Tour for the press was taking longer than expected. 16  If WF wrote to BL soon after this date, the letter has not been traced. A letter he sent to BL several months earlier (21 Jan. 1785) is published, along with an earlier letter to BL dated 9 Sept. 1782, in Corr. 3, pp. 122–25, 177–80, but these are the only letters from WF to BL known to have survived. 17  JaB was in Edinburgh from late June to early Sept. 1785. Evidences was printed in Edinburgh for William Creech in two small octavo volumes, co-published by Andrew Strahan (1750–1831) and Thomas Cadell in London. Although JaB said he had been promised, presumably by Creech, that the book would be published before Christmas, as WF apparently still believed at the time of this letter to JB, it would not actually appear in Edinburgh until 22 Apr. 1786, and several weeks later in London (Edin. Eve. Courant, 22 Apr. 1786; Morning Herald, 15 May 1786). Consequently, JaB’s correspondence from late 1785 and early 1786, with WF and other friends, is riddled with complaints about the slow pace of the printing and the shabby treatment he thought he was receiving from the printer, William Smellie (1740–95) (see Beattie Corr. i, esp. item nos. 1316, 1318, 1321, 1322, 1326a, and 1327). WF had played a key role in encouraging JaB to write this book and helping to arrange its publication (see WF to JaB, 24 Feb. 1777, 3 Dec. 1777, 15 May 1778, and 20 May 1785, FP 98/2). JB would purchase three copies from CD on 12 May 1786 (Boswell’s Books, p. 117), perhaps intending to give two copies as gifts, but upon reading it, he wrote in his journal for 5 Nov. 1786 that he ‘was much disatisfied that the Book was so superficial and so dear’. At five shillings, sewed or in boards, the price would not seem to be excessive for two octavo volumes, but the spacing was so sparse that JB may have felt that the publisher had unnecessarily

57

19 September [1785] In the Advertisement prefixed to Evidences, JaB inscribed the book to Porteus ‘as a small, but affectionate, memorial of the friendship with which he has long honoured me, and to which I am indebted for some of the happiest days of my life’ (Evidences i. v; see also JaB to WF, 3 June 1785, Beattie Corr. iii. 229). Porteus was less admiring of JB’s Tour, which would appear less than two weeks after WF’s letter. JaB, writing to his friend and patron Robert Arbuthnot (1728–1803) on 26 Nov. 1785, quoted with admiration the strictures on the Tour in a letter from the Bishop of Chester, received the previous day. Porteus believed that ‘many things’ should have been ‘omitted’ from the book and, more generally, referring to JB and other authors, ‘Johnson’s friends will absolutely kill him with kindness. His own character, if left to itself, would naturally raise him very high in the estimation of mankind; but by loading it with panegyric, anecdotes, lives, journals, &c. and by hanging round it even all his little foibles and infirmities, they will sink it lower in the opinion of the best judges of merit’ (Beattie ii. 178). 19  This sentence appears in the margin on the first side of the manuscript. WF had made the acquaintance of EB at a dinner party at JR’s home in London in spring 1776, when the Round Robin letter was composed, but they had no further contact until EB made two visits to Scotland in 1784 and 1785. On WF’s encounters with EB on those occasions, see Intro., pp. ciii–cv.

expanded it into two volumes. WF would send a copy of Evidences to TB with his letter of 29 Apr. 1786 (under date in this volume). 18  Beilby Porteus (1731–1809) was Bishop of Chester from 1776 to 1787, and subsequently Bishop of London. He was a casual acquaintance of JB (see From WF, 18 Dec. 1787 n. 4 and 9 Feb. 1790 n. 23), who praised him to SJ in a letter of 22 Oct. 1779 when visiting Chester (Life iii. 413), and afterwards to WF, as we know from a letter which WF sent to JaB soon afterwards: ‘Our acquaintance Mr. Boswell is lately returned from an excursion a few days of which he spent at Chester with your friend the Bishop with whose Company and Conversation he is perfectly delighted. He left the Bishop, he says, in perfect good health: a piece of intelligence which I thought would be agreeable to you’ ([autumn 1779], FP 98/3). Porteus befriended and patronized JaB from the time of his initial adulatory introductory letter of 22 May 1772 (Beattie i. 226–28), followed by their first meeting a year later (see Ralph S. Walker, ed., James Beattie’s London Diary, 1946, p. 35). JaB, in turn, valued Porteus’s advice, and in July and Aug. 1784, during an extended visit to Hunton, near Maidstone, Kent—which JaB described in a letter to WF of 14 July 1784 as the Porteuses’ ‘mansion of peace, piety, and chearfulness’ (Beattie Corr. iii. 207), and later as the bishop’s ‘delightful parsonage’ (Evidences i. iii)—he showed Porteus a draft of the first part of the work.

To Forbes, Monday 19 September [1785] MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1329. enclosure: A copy of Francesco Sastres, Proposals for Publishing by Subscription An Introduction to Italian Poetry [1785] (not located, but reproduced below from a copy in the British Library). endorsement: Ja. Boswell, Londn., 19 Septr., 1785 note: Dated 1783 in error for 1785, as determined by internal evidence and the endorsement.

London 19 Septr. 1783 [i.e., 1785] My Dear Sir: I beg leave to recommend to your polite civilities the Marchese Trotti a very rich nobleman of Milan with his companion Signor Buchetti (entre nous a Jesuit, to which you and I have no objection).1 General Paoli is very desireous that they should be well received at Edinburgh where I suppose they will be by the time this reaches you.2 The Bishop of Kilaloe gave me good accounts of you from Dublin.3 I am still detained here by the printing of my Tour to the Hebrides, which is done with great care, comme il faut.4 It will be kind if about the middle of October you will favour me at Auchinleck with a sketch of your last Tour.5 58

19 September [1785] I offer my best compliments to Lady Forbes, and ever am with most sincere regard, My Dear Sir, your faithful friend and humble servant, James Boswell If you can easily be of any service to Signor Sastres whose proposals I send, you will aid one who is mentioned in Dr. Johnson’s Will.6 I know how irksome it is to solicit subscriptions. So I do not press this.7 1  Lorenzo Galeazzo Trotti Bentivoglio (?1759–1840), marchesse di Fresona, travelled widely in England and Europe, especially Austria, but returned to Milan at the end of his life. His companion, Luigi Maria Buchetti (1747–1804), was an Italian Jesuit who served as censor of books in Venice; his publications include Italian translations of poetry and drama from Latin and other languages (e.g., Saggio di poetici componimenti, 1775; Mosco, Bione, e Teocrito, 1784; and an edition of Euripides’s The Supplicants), as well as a biography in Latin of the Jesuit Julius Caesar Cordara (S. B. Chandler, ‘An Unpublished Letter of Parini’, Italica, xxxvii [1960]: 86–88; Cesare Cantù, Scorsa di un Lombardo negli archivj di Venezia, 1856, p. 159). SJ’s friend Giuseppe Baretti (1719–89), who appears frequently in the Life, thought enough of Buchetti to write a complimentary epistle in verse titled ‘All’ Abate Luigi Buchetti’ (Poesie di Giuseppe Baretti, 1819, pp. 209–18). Hester Lynch Piozzi (formerly Mrs. Thrale) (1741– 1821) had encountered Trotti and Buchetti in Paris, while en route to Italy in Sept. 1784, and she would write of that experience in Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, 2 vols., 1789, i. 20, ‘The conversation of the Marquis Trotti and the Abate Bucchetti is likewise particularly pleasing; especially to me, who am naturally desirous to live as much as possible among Italians of general knowledge, good taste, and polished manners, before I enter their country, where the language will be so very indispensable’. Their friendship with Piozzi would continue when they were in England during the late 1780s and early 1790s, but there is no evidence that JB maintained a relationship with them during that period. JB had briefly converted to Roman Catholicism in his youth, had interacted amiably with Jesuits in Mannheim and been thrilled by Holy Week in Rome during his travels in Europe in the mid-1760s, and continued to attend mass with Paoli and occasionally on his own when visiting London (see Sharon L. Priestley, ‘“Happy to Worship in a Romish Church”: Boswell and Roman

Catholicism’, Studies in Scottish Literature, xxxii (2001): 150–63; Murray Pittock, James Boswell, 2007, Ch. 5; James J. Caudle, ‘James Boswell and the Bi-Confessional State’, in Religious Identities in Britain, 1660–1832, ed. William Gibson and Robert G. Ingram, 2005, pp. 119–46; From WF, 4 June 1794 n. 21). Although the source of JB’s confidence about WF’s tolerant attitude towards Jesuits is unknown, there is evidence that WF maintained favourable views of Roman Catholic worship. On 19 July 1788 he advised WFII in Paris to visit Notre Dame Cathedral, where ‘I heard the ArchBishop of Paris perform High Mass … on All Saints day [presumably when he was travelling on the Continent as a young man in autumn 1763]; and think it was one of the most magnificent ceremonies I ever witnessed’ (FP+ 58). In 1793 he had a mixed reaction to the experience of Holy Week in Rome (From WF, 4 June 1794 n. 22). 2  JB anticipates the arrival of Buchetti and Trotti in Edinburgh before the mail coach carrying this letter, which may not have been posted on the same day it was written. He may have met this pair at Paoli’s home in Portman Square in the late afternoon or evening on 18 Sept. 1785, when he recorded in his journal, ‘General’s with Madama Cosway [the Italian-born artist Maria (Hadfield) Cosway (1760–1838)], etc.’ If the Italian travellers had not yet left London on the 19th, they may also have been among the ‘several foreigners’ with whom JB, along with Paoli, dined that day at the home of Maria and Richard Cosway (1742–1821) (Journ.). It is not known if WF entertained Buchetti and Trotti in Edinburgh, as JB wished. 3  See From WF, 16 Sept. 1785 and From TB, 14 Aug. 1785 (Corr. 3, pp. 210–11), quoted in From WF, 19 Oct. 1787 n. 50. 4  Although JB had arranged for the printing of the Tour with the book’s printer, Henry Baldwin, and the ostensible publisher, CD, as early as 30 Apr. 1785, and submitted much of the copy to Baldwin two days later (Journ.), that was hardly the end of the matter. The journal records that JB ‘revised the press’ at Baldwin’s on 1 July and, over the course of the next three months, corrected and revised

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19 September [1785] copy with his editor, EM, whom he described in a letter to TB of 1 July as ‘the best critick [meaning editor] of our age’ (Corr. 3, p. 196). The pace grew particularly feverish during the first three weeks of Sept., leading JB to observe in his journal on 21 Sept., ‘My Book has detained me longer than I expected.’ That day he fixed the title page with EM (to whom the dedication was signed on 20 Sept.) and made a final visit to the print shop. Publication occurred on 1 Oct. 5  JB would be at Auchinleck from 3 Oct. to early Nov., but there is no evidence that WF ever sent him his letters to John Hay written in Ireland in summer 1785 (see To WF, 20 Oct. 1782 n. 9). 6  Francesco Sastres (d. 1822), Proposals for Publishing by Subscription An Introduction to Italian Poetry: Containing, principally, an Account of the Origin and Progress of the Italian Language and Poetry; an Essay on the Italian Versification, and on the Various Compositions in Verse; and a Selection of Poetic Beauties, extracted from the best Italian Poets ancient and modern [1785], bears no date, but it must have been printed in 1785 because of its enclosure with this letter from JB and its reference to SJ, who had died in mid-Dec. 1784, as ‘my worthy and much-lamented Friend’. A teacher of Italian and a translator, and from 1796 the British Consul-General to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Sastres had published An

Introduction to the Italian Grammar in Bristol in 1775, and in 1777–78 he had produced an expanded edition of that work in London, with a second volume containing an anthology of Italian poetry and prose. He was indeed a friend of SJ, who in a codicil to his will left ‘Mr. Sastres, the Italian master, the sum of five pounds, to be laid out in books of piety for his own use’ (Life iv. 403 n. 2). His record of the dying SJ’s remarks of 28 Nov. 1784 (including SJ’s now well-known description of JB as ‘a very clubable man’, which JB would use without attribution in the Life [iv. 254 n. 2]) would be sent to JB on 22 Feb. 1786, but two years later SJ’s letters to him, initially promised to JB, would be given to Hester Lynch Piozzi instead (Corr. 2, pp. 107—09, 210–11). Although four of those letters from the latter half of 1784 contain encouragement for a ‘specimen’ which Sastres was preparing for a projected lexicographic work (see Letters SJ, iv. 378–79, 390, 406, 425–26), no evidence has been discovered of SJ encouraging Sastres’s projected Introduction to Italian Poetry (as Sastres asserts in the Proposals that he did), and neither this work nor the lexicographic one would ever appear in print. 7  WF took JB’s request seriously and would offer to contribute personally, although he was unable to secure other subscribers in Scotland (see From WF, 6 Dec. 1785).

Subscription Proposal of Francesco Sastres Note: Since the enclosure has not been located, what follows is based on a copy in the British Library, 1879.b.1 [Vol.1] (156), signed by Sastres at the foot of the first page.

PROPOSALS

FOR PUBLISHING BY SUBSCRIPTION AN

INTRODUCTION

TO TO ITALIAN POETRY: Containing, principally, an Account of the Origin and Progress of the Italian Language and Poetry; an Essay on the Italian Versification, and on the various Compositions in Verse; and a Selection of Poetic Beauties, extracted from the best Italian Poets ancient and modern.

IN ONE VOLUME QUARTO.

By FRANCESCO SASTRES. 60

19 September [1785]

CONDITIONS. I. Each Subscriber to pay Half a Guinea on subscribing, and another on receiving the Volume. II. The Work will go to the Press as soon as there is a sufficient Number of Subscribers to defray the Expences. Subscriptions are taken in by the Author, No 34, New-Bond-Street; Mess. Payne and Son, Mews-Gate; Robson, New-Bond Street; White and Son, Fleet-Street; Dodsley, Pall-Mall; Dilly, Poultry; Cadell, Strand; Walter, Charing-Cross; Elmsly, Strand; Sewell, Cornhill; Faulder, Hookham, and Booker, New-Bond-Street.1

received the

of 178 of the Sum of Ten Shillings and Six Pence for the above Work. [signed] Franceso Sastres

A

fter many Years not inattentive Study of the Literature of my Native Country, I now respectfully offer to the Lovers of Italian Poetry the Fruits of my Inquiries and Observations. In the long Course of my philological Assistance to many Persons of Rank and Fashion in this Country in reading the Italian Classicks, I have often observed that the Pleasure of those who are fond of reading the Italian Poets would be much greater, and their Lecture2 far more interesting and useful, if they were provided with a proper Key to Italian Poetry. The Works that have been written and published upon the same Subject in Italian, are so many, and so voluminous, that very few Readers wish to purchase them, and, perhaps, still fewer to read them through. These reasons induced me some Years ago to form the Plan of the above Work, which I communicated to my worthy and much-lamented Friend Dr. Samuel Johnson. He was pleased with it; and told me repeatedly, that if diligently treated, it would be a very curious and very useful Work to the Lovers of Italian Literature in this Country.3 The Revival of Learning in Europe began in Italy; and Poetry was the first Dawn which began to dispel the Darkness of Gothick Ignorance. In Consequence of the Approbation of so great a Man, I have endeavoured to procure every Book of Authority, such as Quadrio, Storia d’ogni Poesia; Crescimbeni, Della volgar Poesia; Gravina, Della Ragion Poetica, &c. which I thought were necessary to me in such an Undertaking.4 In the British Museum, and at Oxford, there are some Manuscripts concerning the Italian Language and Poetry, which will not a little illustrate Part of my Work. I shall spare neither Pains nor Expence in collecting interesting Materials for my Subject; and shall use my utmost Endeavours to merit the Approbation of those who will honor these Proposals with their Names. 1  The booksellers receiving subscriptions, all based in London, were Thomas Payne (1719–99) and his son Thomas

(1752–1831); James Robson (d. 1806); Benjamin White (1735/36–94) and his son Benjamin (1754–1821); James Dodsley

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[5 November 1785] (1724–97); CD; Thomas Cadell; John Walter (d. 1803); Peter Elmsley (1736– 1802); John Sewell (1734/35–1802); Robert Faulder (?1747–1815); Thomas Hookham (?1739–1819); and Thomas Booker (d. 1793). 2  Sastres’s use of ‘lecture’ accords with the second definition of this word in Dict. SJ: ‘The act or practice of reading; perusal’. 3  As indicated in n. 6 in the preceding

letter, no evidence has been discovered of SJ’s support for Sastres’s plan for this work. 4  Sastres refers to Francesco Saverio Quadrio (1695–1756), Della storia e della ragione di ogni poesia, 7 vols. (1739–52); Giovanni Vincenzo Gravina (1664–1718), Della ragion poetica (1708); and Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni (1663–1728), L’istoria della volgar poesia (1698).

To Forbes, Saturday [5 November 1785] MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1330 (where it is dated [November 1785]). address: To Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo Baronet enclosures: (1) A letter from AFT to JB, 31 Oct. 1785 (not located, but reproduced below from a copy in AFT’s commonplace book); (2) JB’s ‘scroll of my answer’ to AFT’s letter (not located). endorsement: Ja. Boswell, Ed., Novr., 1785 seal: Full-length robed classical figure standing next to column. note: The date of this letter has been determined from the known chronology of JB’s visit to Edinburgh in early Nov. 1785, as recorded in JB’s journal. The principal annotation appears in Appendix 3 below.

Edinburgh Saturday night My Dear Sir: I am just arrived from Auchinleck to be here a few days in my way to London half incognito;1 so pray say nothing of it. I am exceedingly uneasy about a matter which the enclosed will explain to you, and as to which I am very anxious to talk with you. Please read the letter to me first and then the scroll of my answer. You may depend upon the perfect accuracy of my memory. I would have come out to you directly, but being weary with my journey did not chuse to risk not finding you at home. If you are at home could you be kind enough to come to me this night, or tomorrow morning before breakfast, or meet me at Cameron’s in the Grassmarket tonight or tomorrow morning at eight. It is the strangest thing I ever met with and you will easily conceive what a relief it would be to me to see you speedily. I once thought of writing a short contemptous2 answer. But I believe he is a good man, though hasty in his temper, and upon this occasion egregiously in the wrong, as I am sure you will think. If you are supping in town I depend on seeing you before you go out. I am ever with most sincere esteem and affection, faithfully yours,                                     James Boswell 1  2 

See Appendix 3, p. 342 and n. 30. JB’s characteristic spelling of this word

(as well as others like it ending in ‘ptuous’), probably reflecting his pronunciation.

62

5 June 1785

From Alexander Fraser Tytler, Monday 31 October 1785 Since the sent letter has not been located, the version which AFT copied into his commonplace book (NLS, Acc. 11737/5, fols. 44–45) has been used as the copy-text. previously printed: Lamont, p. 4. note: The sent version of this letter was enclosed with From JB, [5 Nov. 1785]. Annotation appears in Appendix 3 rather than in footnotes to this letter.

Edinr. 31st October 1785 Sir: I was this day informed by Mr. Professor D. Stewart that he lately had some conversation with you in Airshire on that passage in your Journal in which you have thought fit to introduce my name in a very improper and abusive manner, and that you had assured him you had shown to me the same before it was printed or at least repeated it to me; and that I had given you full liberty to publish it on condition of your printing likewise another foolish story of yourself viz. the anecdote of the Cow. As it is absolutely false that you ever had such permission from me, I hope, for your credit, that my friend Stewart has misapprehended or mistaken your words. Had I ever suspected that you intended making mention of me in so ridiculous and impertinent a manner, I would have taken such means as I judged most effectual to have prevented it. Meantime if you act with the same candour which you profess in the conclusion of your book, you will cause that foolish story to be deleted, or at least my name suppressed in your next Edition which is the very smallest reparation (a very inadequate one indeed) which you can make me for a wanton and unprovoked injury. I am, Sir, your humble Servant, Alex. Fraser Tytler

To Forbes, [between 17 November and 2 December 1785] Not reported. This letter from London—acknowledged in the first line of From WF, 6 Dec. 1785—enclosed a letter (reproduced below) from the Irish antiquarian Joseph Cooper Walker (1761–1810) to JB, dated 5 June 1785 (C 3050), which WF would return with his reply. From WF, 6 Dec. 1785 also makes clear that this unreported letter from JB requested (1) information about the unpublished sources of Scottish Freemasonry, probably at the request of someone who is not named, and (2) a copy of the Round Robin, which WF had mentioned in From WF, 16 Sept. 1785.

From Joseph Cooper Walker, Sunday 5 June 1785 MS. Yale (C 3050). Abbott No. 988. previously printed: Corr. 2, pp. 88–89. address: James Boswell Esqr. Auchinleck, Ayrshire Scotland seal: JCW monogram. note: Since JB was in London from 30 Mar. to 24 Sept. 1785, Walker’s letter was forwarded to him from Auchinleck. He received it sometime during June. It was later enclosed with To WF, [between 17 Nov. and 2 Dec. 1785], above, and as with From WF, 6 Dec. 1785, below.

Treasury Chambers, Dublin, 5th June 1785 Sir: I am rejoiced to find that the elegant Author of ‘An Account of Corsica’ meditates a Life of the late Dr. Johnson.1 You have chosen, Sir, a fine Subject for 63

5 June 1785 Biography, and will, I am sure, do it justice. If you mean to publish the Doctor’s epistolary Correspondence, I shall have great pleasure in searching for his private Letters amongst the Literati of this City, and in communicating to you copies of so many of them as I may find. An original Letter from him to my venerable friend, Charles OConor, now lies before me, of which you may command a Copy. This Letter is alluded to in the Preface to the second Edition of Mr. OConor’s Dissertations on the History of Ireland, p. 3. I have Mr. OC’s permission to publish this Letter.2 Historical Memoirs of our Bards and Music, engross, at present, my thoughts and private Pen.3 As the history of the Irish Music involves that of the Scots, I shall most thankfully receive any communications with which you may be so good as to favour me, respecting the latter.4 Was the Crwdd5 ever in use amongst the Scots? I know a representation of it was found amongst the outside ornaments of the Abbey of Melross.6 While I write, Volunteer Corps are pouring into this City from different parts of the Kingdom. Tomorrow a general Review is to be held in Phoenix Park.7 I am, Sir, Your most obedient, humble Servant, Joseph Cooper Walker 1  It is not known how Walker learned of JB’s intentions to write a life of SJ, or whether he was aware that JB’s Tour was to be published in several months, before the full biography. Newspaper announcements at this time were sometimes ambiguous about the precise timing and progress of JB’s biographical endeavours. JB’s self-promotional newspaper article in mid-Mar. 1785, for example, mentions ‘my ambitious designs of erecting a literary monument worthy of that great and good man’ without providing details (Pub. Adv., 17 Mar. 1785, in Facts and Inventions, p. 229; see also the newspaper items cited in Corr. 2, pp. 36–37 n. 2, and p. 41 n. 2). Walker’s phrasing shows the extent to which the publication of Corsica in 1768 had given JB an international reputation as an author long before his books on SJ had begun to appear (see From WF, 16 Oct. 1793 n. 19). 2  Walker alludes to SJ’s letter to the Irish antiquarian Charles O’Conor (1710–91), 9 Apr. 1757 (see Letters SJ i. 151–52, where it is printed from ‘a copy in an unidentified hand’). After JB replied affirmatively to Walker’s offer (To Walker, 1 July 1785, Corr. 2, pp. 90–91), Walker sent him SJ’s letter (From Walker, 18 July 1785, Corr. 2, pp. 91–92), which JB printed in the Life (i. 321–22), introduced as follows: ‘By the favour of Mr. Joseph Cooper Walker, of the Treasury, Dublin, I have obtained a copy of the following letter from Johnson to the venerable authour of “Dissertations on the

History of Ireland”’ (i. 321). O’Conor’s work first appeared in book form in 1753 as Dissertations on the Antient History of Ireland, and was significantly revised in 1766, with the word ‘Antient’ deleted from the title (ODNB). SJ’s letter encouraged O’Conor to continue his investigations into Ireland’s forgotten past, as ‘the seat of piety and learning’ (i. 321). O’Conor’s allusion to SJ in the preface to the ‘second Edition’ (i.e., the 1766 edition) of the Dissertations (which appears on pp. iv–v, not p. 3, as Walker states) was appreciative and laudatory, beginning, ‘The first Hints have been communicated by Dr. Samuel Johnson, a Gentleman not more to be valued for great Extent of Knowledge and Genius, than for the Honour he has done, and the great Service he has rendered his native Country, by bringing most Nations more intimately acquainted with its Language and Literature. Far from joining in the current Prejudice against the present Subject, or oppressing the Writer who undertook it, with Censure, even where Censure was justly due, he approved of an Endeavour to revive (as far as they can be usefully revived) the antient Language and Literature of a Sister Isle, “which was once the prime Seat of Learning in all Christendom.”’ (A footnote attributes the closing quotation to ‘Prideaux’s Connect. of the Old and New Test. Vol. III. p. 341’—i.e., Humphrey Prideaux [1648–1724], The Old and New Testaments Connected in the History of the Jews and Neighbouring Nations. The

64

6 December 1785 quotation appears in vol. 3, pp. 341–42, in the four-volume London ninth edition of 1725 but reads ‘which was in that age the prime seat of Learning in all Christendom.’) Walker would subsequently send JB a second letter from SJ to O’Conor, dated 19 May 1777 (From Walker, 13 Nov. 1785, Corr. 2, p. 100), and JB would reproduce that letter in the Life as well, along with a footnote again crediting Walker and briefly identifying O’Conor (Life iii. 111–12 and n. 4; Letters SJ iii. 23–24). 3  In 1786 Walker’s book would be published under his own name (‘Joseph C. Walker’) by Luke White (?1750–1824) of Dublin (the principal publisher of the Dublin edition of JB’s Tour, whom Walker would identify in From Walker, 31 Dec. 1785 [C 3055] as ‘the most eminent Bookseller in this City’), as Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards. Interspersed with Anecdotes of, and Occasional Observations on, the Music of Ireland. It was reissued in London in the same year.

4  For JB’s handling of this request, including WF’s involvement, see From WF, 6 Dec. 1785 and the supporting annotation. 5  A five-string ancient Gaelic instrument in the violin family, more commonly spelt ‘crwth’ or ‘crowd’ (OED). See Dict. SJ: ‘[from crwth, Welsh.] A fiddle.’ 6  Walker apparently alludes to a paper by the English lawyer and antiquary Daines Barrington (1727/28–1800), ‘Some Account of Two Musical Instruments Used in Wales’, read at the Society of Antiquaries of London on 3 May 1770 and published in its Archaeologia: or Miscellaneous Tracts relating to Antiquity, iii (1775), 30–34, which stated that there was ‘an instrument, which bears an almost exact resemblance to the Welsh Crwth, amongst the outside ornaments of the abbey of Melross [i.e., Melrose], in Scotland’ (p. 30). 7  On the review of Volunteers in Phoenix Park, Dublin, on 8 June 1785, see Corr. 2, p. 89 n. 5.

From Forbes, Tuesday 6 December 1785 MS. Yale (C 1276). Abbott No. 355. JB has written the first two paragraphs of his reply on the eighth side of this letter, dated 20 Dec. 1785 (L 543); see To WF, [20 Dec. 1785]. address: James Boswell Esqr. (This information has been taken from Abbott, as the wrapper is no longer preserved with the letter.) enclosures: (1) A letter from Joseph Cooper Walker to JB, 5 June 1785 (reproduced above), which JB had enclosed with To WF, [between 17 Nov. and 2 Dec. 1785], and which WF returned with this letter; (2) a letter from Thomas Blacklock to JB, 12 Nov. 1785 (C 152, reproduced below), objecting to the account in the first edition of the Tour of his conversation with SJ in Edinburgh on 17 Aug. 1773 (Life v. 47, 417–19).

Edinbg. 6 Decr. 1785 Dear Sir: I received the favor of your letter covering the inclosed from Mr. Walker,1 wishing to be informed as to Scottish musick.2 The best account I know of, is that in Arnot’s history of Edinburgh, which was wrote by the elder Mr. Tytler;3 and something in the article, Musick, in the Encyclopedia Britannica written I believe by Dr. Blacklock:4 those books are no doubt in the Shops in London. You will also find, I suppose at Bremner’s Musick-Shop opposite Somerset-Place in the Strand,5 a collection of Highland instrumental Musick, with a long, tedious Preface; in which, however, I believe you will find something historical on the Subject.6 If I should hear of any other materials for your friends work I shall not fail to mention them to you. You may consult, too, Dr. Beattie’s Essay on Poetry and musick; and Dr. Gregory’s Chapter on that Subject in his comparative view.7 In regard to M.S.S. respecting Masonry,8 I have not yet got an answer from Mr. Mason,9 but I shall tell you when I do. 65

6 December 1785 I am sorry I can give you but an indifferent10 account of my success in the matter of your friends Italian publication.11 So little is that language cultivated here, that I scarcely know one person who reads it; nor have I been able to procure a single Subscription. Be so good as put down my name, however, and send me the book when published: I will remit you the money or pay it to Mrs. Boswell here. While I am writing, Mr. Mason has come to me: he says there are no M.S.S. nor can there well be any: for the Grand Lodge of Scotland had long lain dormant; and was only revived in 1736: since which their archives consist entirely of Journals and registers.12 Happening to see Dr. Blacklock, he said your memory had not served you quite correctly as to a conversation between him and Dr. Johnston: I desired him to put it in writing and he has sent me the inclosed.13 If that part of your second edition be already reprinted, you may perhaps put it by way of addenda et corrigenda, at the end.14 May I likewise beg the favor of you, if you think it necessary to reprint my letter in the conclusion of your work,15 to add, after mentioning your having received such a letter, long before I had any thought of giving my Journal to the World, or words to the purpose. My reason for this is, that many people not attending to the date of my letter, and supposing that you had consulted me as to the propriety of the publication, consider that letter as my giving my approbation either16 of your printing the Journal17 at all; or of your publishing it exactly as it stands in the first edition: and18 they blame me for doing so:19 now you know, my letter related merely to the pleasure I had received from the perusal of it, as a private and friendly communication of yours, without knowing at that time any thing of your intention of printing the journal. I take the liberty of mentioning this, from my Knowledge of its being your wish to make any corrections of this Nature that may be pointed out to you.20 I trust with some confidence, that you will pay a particular attention, in your life of Dr. Johnson, to insert nothing that can give either pain or offence to any mortal.21 I will send you the round Robin in my next.22 I trouble you to remember me with affection and respect to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and to Mr. Langton, and Mr. Burke.23 I will be happy to have the pleasure of hearing from you soon, and I remain truly, Dear Sir, your most obedient and faithful humble Servant, William Forbes 1  See the headnote to this letter. JB had left Edinburgh for London on 12 Nov. (arriving 17 Nov.), and this letter was forwarded to him there. 2  In his reply of 1 July 1785 to Walker’s request for information on Scottish music, JB had remarked that he was ‘very ill informed upon that subject. But when I get back to Scotland, which will be some time in Autumn next, my exertions shall not be wanting’ (Corr. 2, pp. 90–91). After returning to Scotland in the autumn, JB sent Walker’s letter to WF, who was generally recognized

to be knowledgeable about music. On 20 Dec.—shortly after receiving WF’s reply, but more than six months after Walker sent his request for assistance, and on the same day he thanked WF—JB would send Walker a letter listing all the sources cited by WF (though not mentioning WF as his informant), and implying, in its opening sentence on the subject, that he had made more of an effort to assist Walker than he probably did: After all the inquiry which I have made concerning Ancient Scottish Musick, I have

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6 December 1785 progressively embellished by JB to read ‘the acute vindicator of Mary Queen of Scots’ in the Tour (Life v. 387, 10 Nov. 1773) and ‘the acute and able vindicator of Mary Queen of Scots’ in the second edition of the Life (Life ii. 305). Tytler’s ‘A Dissertation on the Scottish Musick’ (sometimes incorrectly attributed to Thomas Blacklock) was originally published anonymously as Appendix VIII of Arnot, pp. 624–42, and was subsequently reprinted in various formats. In a brief published sketch of Tytler’s life, WF would later call this work ‘most ingenious’, on ‘a subject of which he was peculiarly fond’ (Beattie ii. 374). Tytler was said to be an excellent performer on the harpsichord and ‘uncommonly good’ on the German flute (The Anecdotes and Egotisms of Henry Mackenzie, 1745–1831, ed. Harold William Thompson, 1927, 1996, p. 77). He and WF— who also played the German flute (see Appendix 2)—were both prominent in the Edinburgh Musical Society. WF joined the society in 1762, served as one of the Directors from 1773 to 1781, and was Deputy Governor from 1781 until the society disbanded in 1797. Equally important, his financial management and support kept the society afloat for many years. Tytler joined in the 1740s, served as treasurer from 1747 to 1748 or 1749, and was a Director from 1771 until the year of his death, exerting enormous influence. Although JB (assuming he is the James Boswell listed in the membership records) was only briefly a member of the Edinburgh Musical Society, from 1769 to 1771, his father had been a Director in 1738– 39 (see Jennifer Macleod, ‘The Edinburgh Musical Society: Its Membership and Repertoire, 1728–1797’, Ph.D. diss., University of Edinburgh, 2001, pp. 42–43, 45, 84, 212–20, 240, 298–99; Roger L. Emerson and Jenny Macleod, ‘The Musick Club and the Edinburgh Musical Society’, Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, x [2014]: 45–105). 4  Rev. Thomas Blacklock (1721–91), the blind Edinburgh poet and critic, was a close friend of WF (see WF’s biographical sketch in Beattie ii. 370–72), who had introduced him to SJ at the Boswells’ Edinburgh home on 17 Aug. 1773 (Life v. 46–47). On 16 Apr. 1777 Blacklock had written to WF for assistance in negotiating a price for his article on music in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which he threatened to publish elsewhere if he was not adequately compensated (see David Shuttleton, ‘The Journalistic Life: Thomas Blacklock’, in The Edinburgh History of the

only obtained references to several publications on that subject, which I now communicate. 1. Dissertation annexed to Arnot’s History of Edinburgh (written by Mr. Tytler the vindicator of Mary Queen of Scots) 2. Article Musick in the Encyclopedia Britannica said to be written by Dr. Blacklock 3. Collection of Highland Musick (1784) with a long Preface See also Dr. Beattie’s Essay on Poetry and Musick, and Dr. Gregory’s chapter on that subject, in his Comparative View. I am sorry I have not been able to do more for you. (TIS)

On the same day, JB wrote this memorandum of his letter: ‘Sent him references to several publications on the subject, communicated to me by Sir William Forbes’ (L 1266, quoted in Corr. 2, p. 91 n. 2). Although the preface to Walker’s Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards was signed 15 May 1786, the main body of the book may have been completed earlier, and it is possible that JB’s letter arrived too late to be of use. That inference may explain why Walker’s preface does not include JB among ‘those Gentlemen, who have honoured me with their countenance and aid in my researches’ (p. vii), as well as why the voluminous footnotes cite only one of the five sources on Scottish music which JB had recommended (see n. 6 below). But Walker did insert a reference (p. 92) to the tradition of drinking whisky from a shell, credited in a footnote to the Dublin edition of JB’s Tour, not published until 12 Nov. 1785 (see From Walker, 13 Nov. 1785, Corr. 2, p. 100). 3  William Tytler (1711–92), W.S., was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a leading associate with WF in the administration of English Episcopal affairs in Edinburgh (see Appendix 3). In 1760 he published a Marian tract, An Historical and Critical Enquiry into the Evidence Produced by the Earls of Murray and Morton, against Mary Queen of Scots, which had four lifetime editions, the last three retitled An Inquiry, Historical and Critical, into the Evidence against Mary Queen of Scots (a copy with WF’s bookplate of the expanded two-volume fourth edition of 1790, the first with the author’s name on the title page, was sold at Taylor’s Auction Rooms in Montrose on 12 Nov. 2016). This work gave rise to JB’s description of him in the letter to Walker of 1 July 1785 (cited in the preceding note) as ‘the vindicator of Mary Queen of Scots’,

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6 December 1785 contains two anonymous pieces: a ‘Preface’ (pp. 1–7) and a ‘Dissertation’ titled ‘Of the Influence of Poetry and Music upon the Highlanders’ (pp. 8–15), which the author of the preface attributes to ‘an ingenious friend, to whom nothing, that tends to throw light upon the ancient manners and customs of nations, is indifferent’ (p. 7). In his posthumously published memoirs, Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Alexander Allardyce, 2 vols., 1888, ii. 411 n., John Ramsay of Ochtertyre (1736–1814) claimed the dissertation as his own, adding that Rev. Walter Young (1745–1814), minister of Erskine, ‘an eminent musician’ (both were subscribers, Ramsay for three copies) ‘superintended the publication and wrote the preface’. In a letter reproduced in Keith Sanger, ‘A Letter from the Rev. Patrick MacDonald to Mrs. Maclean Clephane, 1808’, Scottish Gaelic Studies, xxvi (2010): 23–34, Patrick McDonald stated that he and his brother had collected the airs, but ‘their Correct arrangment, with the Excellent Basses adapted to them were by that Prodigy of musical Knowledge Dr Young—together with a Scientific & Explanatory Preface to them by him to the first Edition of them’ (p. 29). Different views of the relative contributions of McDonald and Young are expressed in William Donaldson, The Highland Pipe and Scottish Society, 1750–1950, 2000, p. 46, and Karen McAulay, Our Ancient National Airs, 2013, p. 23. Ellen L. Beard, ‘Rob Donn Mackay: Finding the Music in the Songs’, Ph.D. diss., University of Edinburgh, 2015, pp. 92–93, argues convincingly that Young’s chief contribution to the preface was the portion containing a technical discussion of music theory—almost certainly what WF means by ‘a long, tedious Preface’. At two different places in his Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (pp. 131, 157), Walker cites the front matter of McDonald’s book (appearing to conflate the preface and dissertation), but as noted above, it is not known if he first learned of that work from JB’s letter containing WF’s list of recommended sources. In both places, Walker praises the author as ‘an ingenious Scottish writer’, indicating that he had a higher opinion than the one which WF communicated to JB. But JB had softened WF’s derogatory comment in his letter to Walker of 20 Dec., which identifies McDonald’s work simply as a ‘Collection of Highland Musick (1784), with a long Preface’ (see n. 2 above), omitting the word ‘tedious’. 7  JaB’s ‘Essay on Poetry and Music’ appeared in his Essays (1776), and was

Book in Scotland, Volume 2: Enlightenment and Expansion, 1707–1800, ed. Stephen W. Brown and Warren McDougall, 2012, pp. 533–34). It is therefore not clear why WF used the qualifier ‘I believe’ in regard to Blacklock’s authorship of this article. 5  Robert Bremner (?1713–89) was a Scottish music publisher and seller whose shop at the sign of the Harp and Hautboy, across from Somerset House in the Strand, was the principal place to purchase Scottish music in London. He had maintained a music business in Edinburgh for eight years before moving to London in 1762, and served as an agent for the Edinburgh Musical Society, scouting for talent in London and Dublin (ODNB). WF’s financial records show purchases from Bremner in 1763, 1766, and 1767 (FP 216), but there is no evidence that JB ever visited his shop. 6  The book referred to is A Collection of Highland Vocal Airs, Never Hitherto Published. To Which Are Added a Few of the Most Lively Country Dances or Reels, of the North Highlands, & Western Isles: and Some Specimens of Bagpipe Music. By Rev. Patrick McDonald, Minister of Kilmore in Argyllshire, Edinburgh, 1784 (see the entry in the ODNB, under ‘Patrick MacDonald’). Patrick McDonald or MacDonald (1729–1824) had compiled the book largely from the manuscripts of his late brother, Joseph (d. ?1762). It was published by subscription as a thin folio after a patriotic campaign that began with distribution of subscription proposals in 1781 and continued in the newspapers for the next three years (e.g., St James’s Chron., 21–23 Feb. 1782; Morn. Post, 16 Nov. 1784). Priced at just 7s 6d (though according to some newspaper advertisements, the price to non-subscribers was significantly higher at 10s 6d), the work attracted 837 subscribers, including some of the leading noblemen (and, conspicuously, noblewomen) in Scotland. WF was among the subscribers, as was his business partner James Hunter Blair, who took three copies. JB did not subscribe, but ‘Mrs. Boswell, of Auchinleck’ did, in what may have been her first public act of this kind since JB became the Laird of Auchinleck two years earlier. All three of the living authors on Scottish music whose works WF recommends in this letter to JB (i.e., JaB, Thomas Blacklock, and William Tytler) subscribed, as did (for three copies) SJ’s friend Charles Burney (1726–1814), ‘Doctor of Music’. The work was dedicated to the Highland Society in London, which subscribed for sixty copies. The front matter of McDonald’s book

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6 December 1785 sometimes singled out for praise by critics, such as the reviewer in the London Review (Jan. 1777, v. 9–12). In A Comparative View of the State and Faculties of Man. With Those of the Animal World (1765), John Gregory argued that music is the most influential of the fine arts and used the contrast between cheerful and plaintive modes of Scottish music to exemplify the fit between music and emotion in particular national contexts. JB had praised Gregory’s book as ‘ingenious & elegant’ in a letter to WJT of 4 Mar. 1767 (Corr. 6, p. 167; Boswell’s Books, p. 213), but there is no indication that he was thinking specifically of Gregory’s discussion of music. 8  WF apparently alludes to a question which JB had posed in To WF, [between 17 Nov. and 2 Dec. 1785]. On JB and WF’s intertwined Masonic careers, see Intro., pp. lxxi–lxxiii. 9  William Mason (d. 1795), writer (solicitor) in Edinburgh, was elected Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Scotland for twenty consecutive years, from Nov. 1774 through Nov. 1794 ([Brewster and Lawrie], History of Free Masonry, pp. 210–11, 232–35, 241–42, 244, 255–56, 262–64). He would publish an effusive tribute to WF in a letter dated 8 Oct. 1794 in The Freemasons’ Magazine, Oct. 1795, iii. 258: ‘Soon after the appointment of Sir William Forbes, Bart. to be Grand Master Mason of Scotland, I had the honour to be in company with his Excellency Sir James Adolphus Oughton, Commander in Chief for North Britain, who five years before had also filled the honourable office of Grand Master. He asked me if Sir William visited the Lodges, and if in the course of these visits he gave Charges, and was well received by the Brethren? I with pleasure answered in the affirmative; to which he replied, “It could not otherwise be, for I have known him long, and take him as a man, a Christian, a Mason, or a citizen, he has not his equal in Scotland!” Such a compliment from a person of so distinguished a rank, taste, and abilities, pleased me much, and the more so as the worthy baronet complimented was not only then, but even still is, deservedly esteemed, as a man of uncommon taste, gentle manners, humane, and benevolent. As a Christian, pious, charitable, and exemplary; as a Mason, knowing in the science, zealous to preserve its original purity, and a pattern of its amiable virtues; as a citizen, pointed in business, upright in his transactions, public-spirited, peaceful in his demeanor, and liberal to the poor.’ Oughton (1719–80), a member of Canongate Kilwinning No. 2 since 4 Dec. 1754

(Mackenzie, p. 244) and Grand Master Mason from 1769 to 1771, had been appointed Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in Scotland in 1767 and Commander-inChief in 1778. WF, who was closely connected with him in regard to English Episcopal affairs in Edinburgh, considered him ‘my valued and much honoured friend’ (‘Letters Explanatory’). Oughton had been among the guests, with WF, at the dinner for SJ at the Boswells’ Edinburgh home on 16 Aug. 1773, before the Highland and Hebridean tour, and after the tour, on 17 Nov., SJ had dined at Oughton’s home, in the Governor’s House at Edinburgh Castle. During the tour, at Fort George on 28 Aug., SJ called Oughton ‘a very extraordinary man; a man of boundless curiosity and unwearied diligence’ (Life v. 43–44, 125, 394; Hebrides, p. 486). 10  MS. ‘a’ changed to ‘an’, and ‘indifferent’ inserted above deleted ‘sorry’ by caret. 11  See To WF, 19 Sept. [1785], and n. 6, regarding JB’s request for assistance with the subscription proposals for Sastres’s projected edition of a book on Italian poetry. 12  Although the museum of the Grand Lodge of Scotland on George Street in Edinburgh currently houses the oldest known Masonic manuscript records, dating from Musselburgh in the late sixteenth century (see R. E. Wallace-James, The Minute Book of Aitchison’s Haven Lodge, 1598–1764, 1911), that acquisition was apparently made in 1980. 13  Blacklock’s letter to JB, dated 12 Nov. 1785, is reproduced immediately following this letter from the original manuscript (C 152). It concerns a breakfast discussion between Blacklock and SJ on 17 Aug. 1773, after WF introduced them (Life v. 47). 14  JB heeded WF’s advice by printing Blacklock’s letter in an appendix to the second edition of the Tour (Life v. 117–18; see To WF, [20 Dec. 1785]). 15  From WF, 7 Mar. 1777, praising the Hebrides journal, had been reproduced near the end of the Tour (Life v. 413–14). 16  MS. ‘either’ inserted above the line by caret. 17  MS. ‘the Journal’ inserted above deleted ‘it’ by caret. 18  MS. several illegible words deleted before ‘and’. 19  WF does not identify the ‘many people’ who blamed him on these grounds. However, as discussed in To WF, [20 Dec. 1785] n. 1, and Intro., pp. cxiii–cxiv, Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat (?1745–95) on the Isle of Skye, Lord Macdonald in the Irish peerage, had raised this objection in a hostile letter to JB of 26 Nov., and it is likely that

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12 November 1785 he also spread this criticism among others. 20  See To WF, [20 Dec. 1785], for JB’s affirmative reply to WF’s request, although JB believed that WF was being ‘too Scottish’ about this matter. 21  WF was probably thinking principally of the painful quarrel in the Tour between JB and WF’s family friend AFT, about which JB had recently consulted him (see To WF, [5 Nov. 1785]; From AFT, 31 Oct. 1785; and Appendix 3 below), but this criticism would remain a running theme in WF’s commentary on JB’s writings (e.g., WF to JaB, 9 Jan.

1786, and WF to TB, 29 Apr. 1786, both under date in this volume; From WF, 25 July 1787; and Intro., pp. cxiii–cxvi). 22  WF would not send his copy of the Round Robin with his next letter, however. JB would renew his request in To WF, 8 May 1787 and 11 Oct. 1787, and WF would finally oblige in connection with his letter of 19 Oct. 1787, as acknowledged in To WF, 7 Nov. 1787. 23  EB’s first appearance among those to whom WF sends greetings is explained in Intro., pp. ciii–cv.

Thomas Blacklock to Boswell, Monday 12 November 1785 MS. Yale (C 152). address: James Boswell Esqr. note: Enclosed with From WF, 6 Dec. 1785, Blacklock’s letter was printed in Appendix No. I in the second and later editions of the Tour in (Tour2, pp. 529–30; Life v. 417–18).1

Edinr. Novr. 12th 1785 Dear Sir: Having lately had the pleasure of reading your account of the journey which you took with Dr. Samuel Johnson to the Western Isles, I take the liberty of transmitting my idea of the conversation which happened between the Doctor and myself concerning Lexicography and Poetry, which as it is a little different from the delineation exhibited in the former edition of your Journal, cannot, I hope, be unacceptable; particularly since I have been informed that a second edition of that work is now in contemplation, if not in execution:2 and I am still more strongly tempted to encourage that hope from considering that, if every one concerned in the conversations related were to send you what they can recollect of these colloquial entertainments, many curious and interesting particulars might be recovered, which the most assiduous attention could not observe, nor the most tenacious memory retain.3 A little reflection, Sir, will convince you, that there is not an axiom in Euclid more intuitive nor more evident than the Doctor’s assertion that poetry was of much easier execution than Lexicography. Any mind therefore endowed with common sense must have been extremely absent from itself, if it discovered the least astonishment from hearing that a poem might be written with much more facility than the same quantity of a dictionary. The real cause of my surprise was, what appeared to me much more paradoxical, that he could write a sheet of dictionary with as much pleasure as a sheet of poetry. He acknowledged, indeed, that the latter was much easier than the former. For in the one case, books and a desk were requisite; in the other, you might compose when lying in bed or walking in the fields etc. He did not, however, descend to explain, nor to this moment can I comprehend, how the labours of a mere Philologist in the most refined sense of that term, could give equal pleasure with the exercise of a mind replete with elevated conceptions, and pathetic ideas, while taste, fancy, and intellect were deeply enamoured of nature, and in full exertion. You may likewise, perhaps, remember, 70

[20 december 1785] that when I complained of the ground which scepticism in religion and morals was continually gaining it did not appear to be on my own account, as my private opinions upon these important subjects had long been inflexibly determined. What I then deplored, and still deplore was the unhappy influence which that gloomy hesitation had not only upon particular characters but even upon life in general; as being equally the bane of action in our present state and of such consolations as we might derive from the hopes of a future. I have the pleasure of remaining with sincere esteem and respect, Dear Sir, your most obedient humble servant, Thomas Blacklock 1  Appendix No. I in the second edition of the Tour reproduces this letter in its entirety (Tour2, pp. 529–32), but that version differs from the original letter, as printed here, in a number of minor ways. The version in the Tour changes the word ‘idea’ to ‘ideas’ in the first sentence and adds italics to the phrase ‘with as much pleasure’. It also reduces to lower case the first letter of the words ‘Doctor’ (but not ‘Doctor’s’), ‘Lexicography’ (the second time it appears), and ‘Sir’ (in the body of the letter), but capitalizes the first letter of the word ‘Scepticism’, which is in lower case in the original. There are also eleven instances in which the second edition of the Tour inserts commas which do not appear in the original manuscript. Besides these alterations in the body of the letter, the second edition of the Tour changes the

dateline from ‘Edinr. Novr. 12th, 1785’ to ‘Edinburgh, Nov. 12, 1785’ and moves it from the beginning to the end of the letter, and it inserts a centred header, ‘To James Boswell, Esq.’ in place of the separate address in the original, which reads ‘James Boswell Esqr.’. Several additional changes were introduced into the third edition (in Life v. 417–18), most notably the creation of a new paragraph after the third sentence (beginning with the words ‘The real cause’). 2  The source of this information about a second edition was undoubtedly WF (see From WF, 6 Dec. 1785). 3  JB would respond to Blacklock on grounds of ‘authenticity’ in his reply to WF, which follows below, and in Appendix No. I in the second edition of the Tour (Tour2, pp. 531–32; Life v. 418–19).

To Forbes, [Tuesday 20 December 1785] MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1331. Yale has a clean draft, or more likely a copy, of the first two paragraphs only (L 543; Abbott No. 1116), written on the eighth side of From WF, 6 Dec. 1785 (C 1276), to which this letter is a reply. Although incomplete, the copy contains the date, which does not appear in the original letter below. address: To Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo Baronet, Edinburgh endorsement: Ja. Boswell, London, Decr., 1785 note: Dated from L 543.

My Dear Sir: While I have taken care to put it beyond a doubt that you were not consulted as to the publication of my Tour, forgive me for telling you that your anxiety not to appear to have approved of a work which is unpopular in Scotland, is too Scottish. Your letter, entre nous, is as strong an imprimatur as can well be conceived. But among the numerous attacks upon my Book, it having been insinuated that your letter of approbation was produced by your having previously read your own Elogium,1 I have put a note mentioning that the papers perused by you contained only the Journal from the time when Dr. Johnson and I set out from Edinburgh, and that you then did not even know my intention of publishing it.2 I have put Dr. Blacklock’s letter into an appendix.3 I am glad that I misunderstood him as to scepticism.4 But he is undoubtedly wrong as to the other point, as I 71

[20 December 1785] have shewn in a note. People must be satisfied to appear as they really did. Should they be allowed to improve and enlarge their conversations, upon after thought, the labour would be endless and the Book not authentick.6 I am much obliged to you for your communications concerning Musick and Masonry,7 by which I am enabled to shew that I have done my best to obtain intelligence.8 All your friends remember you with great regard, and none more warmly than My Dear Sir, your much obliged and faithful humble servant, James Boswell Be pleased to present my compliments to Dr. Blacklock to whom it is unnecessary for me to write, after what I have mentioned to you.9 5

1  The published Tour contains a generous tribute to ‘my friend Sir William Forbes, now of Pitsligo; a man of whom too much good cannot be said; who, with distinguished abilities and application in his profession of a Banker, is at once a good companion, and a good christian; which I think is saying enough. Yet it is but justice to record, that once, when he was in a dangerous illness, he was watched with the anxious apprehension of a general calamity; day and night his house was beset with affectionate inquiries; and, upon his recovery, Te deum was the universal chorus from the hearts of his countrymen’ (Life v. 24–25; see Intro., pp. cx–cxii). At the end of the work, WF’s letter praising JB’s Hebrides journal is introduced with the following sentence: ‘It would be improper for me to boast of my own labours; but I cannot refrain from publishing such praise as I received from such a man as Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo, after the perusal of the original manuscript of my Journal’ (Life v. 413). In the course of his furious assault on JB for the harsh treatment he had received in the first edition of the Tour, where he was depicted as a stingy and inhospitable host (Life v. 148 n. 1, 2 Sept. 1773), Lord Macdonald wrote to JB on 26 Nov. 1785 of reading ‘a Letter from a respectable person annexed to your publication who gives his sanction and approbation to the work in which he must have discovered his own just panegyric’ (C 1830, quoted in an editor’s note in Life v. 577). Macdonald’s letter, and JB’s response, left JB fearful of being called out in a duel (see the summary of the exchanges in Catalogue i. 207–08), and it seems likely that Macdonald was among those who spread this insinuation about WF, as part of his attack on JB (see Journ. 8 Dec. 1785: ‘I found his attacking me was known’). WF certainly found the accusation troubling, and he would refer to this matter again in

his letter to JaB of 9 Jan. 1786 (under date in this volume), which he later published (see Intro., pp. cxiii–cxiv). 2  The footnote in the second edition of the Tour, placed at the conclusion of the paragraph introducing WF’s letter of 7 Mar. 1777, reads, ‘In justice both to Sir William Forbes and myself, it is proper to mention, that the papers which were submitted to his perusal contained only an account of our Tour from the time that Dr. Johnson and I set out from Edinburgh (p. 46), and consequently did not contain the elogium on Sir William Forbes, (p. 16), which he never saw till this book appeared in print; nor did he even know, when he wrote the above letter, that this Journal was to be published’ (Tour2, p. 524 n.; Life v. 413 n. 3, with different internal page numbers). Even if WF had read the Edinburgh portion of the Hebrides journal in 1775 and 1777, he would not have ‘discovered his own just panegyric’ there, as Lord Macdonald charged, because, as discussed in Intro., pp. cx–cxii, JB’s praise of WF was added for publication and did not appear in the original journal. 3  See Appendix No. I in the second edition of the Tour (Tour2, pp. 529–31), with a headnote, ‘In justice to the ingenious Dr. Blacklock, I publish the following letter from him, which did not come to my hands till this edition was nearly printed off.’ (p. 529). In the third edition, the words after ‘him,’ were altered to read ‘relative to a passage in p. 34’ (Life v. 417–18). 4  Immediately after Blacklock’s letter in Appendix No. I, JB wrote, ‘I am very happy to find that Dr. Blacklock’s apparent uneasiness on the subject of Scepticism was not on his own account, (as I supposed,) but from a benevolent concern for the happiness of mankind’ (Life v. 418). 5  The ‘other point’ was Blacklock’s challenge to JB’s statement that ‘Blacklock seemed

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9 January 1786 to be much surprized, when Dr. Johnson said, “it was easier to him to write poetry than to compose his Dictionary…”’ (Life v. 47, 17 Aug. 1773). In his letter, Blacklock countered that he had been surprised because SJ actually said that writing the dictionary was more pleasurable than writing poetry, and he jabbed at JB’s ‘attention’ and ‘memory’ when he observed that recollections like his could correct misperceptions ‘which the most assiduous attention could not observe, nor the most tenacious memory retain’. In Appendix No. I, JB disputed Blacklock’s claim at length, mainly on the grounds that the ‘authenticity of my journal’ rested ‘not upon memory, but upon what was written at the time’ (Life v. 419). JB was not, however, keeping a fully written journal at this time, and in the original journal, the entire account of the exchange between SJ and Blacklock on this subject is contained in a single, heavily abbreviated and ambiguous sentence: ‘He confounded Black[lock] by saying it was easier to him to write Poetry than Dict[ionary] mind less on stretch & Dict[ionary] requires books & desk Poem walking in fields lying in bed &c.’ (J 32). JB does not seem to have considered the possibility that, in his haste, he had misunderstood part of SJ’s point and the reason for Blacklock’s surprised reaction, or that, while making his expansion of his brief original record many years later, he had misremembered or misinterpreted the finer details of the exchange. These points are especially

significant in view of WF’s comment that Blacklock compensated for his blindness with ‘the strongest and most retentive memory’ (Beattie ii. 370). 6  Despite what JB asserts here and in his response to Blacklock in the second and later editions of the Tour, he writes of SJ in his entry for 13 Oct. 1773, on Coll, ‘He read this day a good deal of my Journal. … He helped me to fill up blanks which I had left in first writing it, when I was not quite sure of what he had said, and he corrected any mistakes that I had made’ (Life v. 307). Thus, JB allowed SJ the opportunity, emphatically denied to Blacklock in Appendix No. I, to make later alterations and corrections from memory, although within a much shorter span of time. 7  Although the juxtaposition of ‘Musick and Masonry’ may be coincidental in these letters, the two topics were very closely linked in eighteenth-century Scotland. See Intro., pp. lxxiii–lxxiv, and the publications cited in n. 44. 8  As previously noted, on the same day he drafted this letter to WF, JB wrote a letter to Joseph Cooper Walker containing the information on Scottish music in From WF, 6 Dec. 1785. It is not known who requested information from JB about Freemasonry or how he responded to that request. 9  It is not known if WF contacted Blacklock about this matter, or how Blacklock reacted to Appendix No. I in the second edition of the Tour.

Forbes to James Beattie, Monday 9 January 1786 Since the MS. of this letter has not been located, the copy-text is the version printed in Beattie ii. 181–84. note: This letter is introduced by a paragraph in which WF declares it to be his ‘first and only time, to insert in this work a letter of my own’, out of the ‘hundreds’ of his letters which Beattie had preserved (Beattie ii. 180). He states that he has done so in this instance because Beattie’s letter to him on this subject, dated 12 Feb. 1786 (ii. 184–86), ‘refers to one of mine, to which it is an answer; and as that letter contains some information respecting the publication of that work of Mr Boswell’s which I am not ill pleased should be known’ (ii. 180). The uncharacteristically abrupt opening and closing of this letter suggest that WF edited it for publication, as he often did with JaB’s letters.

Edinburgh, 9th January, 1786 Boswell’s1 book, which I dare say you have seen before now, contains many things that might, and several that ought to have been omitted. In regard to those of the first description, Mr Boswell seems to have adopted the idea of the writers on glass, so well described by Lord Hailes in one of his papers in the ‘World,’ who think a fact ought to be recorded, merely because it is a fact:2 for surely he has retained a great deal of conversation neither instructive nor entertaining; although other 73

9 January 1786 parts again are highly so. As to the offensive passages, I really do not believe that he considered them in that light when he gave them to the press: for I do believe him to have been sincere in his declaration, that it was not his intention to hurt any mortal;3 and my memory serves me to recollect many passages of the original MS. which he has omitted for that very reason; and in his second edition, which is now printed, he tells me he has omitted a good deal of the first.4 I have been accused of being his adviser to print the book, from a letter of mine towards the conclusion; which, by the by, he inserted without my knowledge or permission: but that letter merely related to a perusal of the MS., at a time when I had not the most distant idea of his printing his Journal. I have also been accused of having written that complimentary letter, because of the eulogium with which he has been pleased to honour me in his book: but that passage, in which I am mentioned in so flattering a manner, was not in the original MS. which I saw.5 As his ‘Life of Dr Johnson’ will probably be a work of a similar nature, I have taken the liberty of strongly enjoining him to be more careful what he inserts, so as not to make to himself enemies, or give pain to any person whom he may have occasion to mention:6 and I hope he will do so, as he seems sorry for some parts of the other.7 I have been much pleased with Dr Johnson’s ‘Prayers and Meditations:’ they show him to have been a man of sincere and fervent piety: but I think Mr Strahan has been much to blame in printing the MS. verbatim.8 I do not think an editor is at liberty to add a single iota to the work of his author; but surely there could have been no crime in Mr Strahan’s retrenching occasionally a few things, which throw in some degree an air of ridicule on a work of so serious a nature; and which, by giving cause for scoffing, will perhaps diminish the good effects the book might otherwise be expected to produce:9 had he likewise substituted Elizabeth, (which Boswell tells me was Mrs Johnson’s real name) in the place of such a ridiculous appellation as Tetty,10 surely no man could have found fault with the change. It is somewhat extraordinary to see a mind so vigorous as his was, distressing itself with terrors on subjects apparently of no great importance, while the whole tenor of his life had been so irreproachable and useful to the world by his writings; which one should think are of sufficient magnitude to render unnecessary his self-accusation of idleness.11 It would give you pleasure, I am sure, to hear of Mr William Gregory’s12 having got a living. He is a most excellent young man; and has well supported Dr Reid’s character of him, when in a letter to me while he was at Glasgow college, the Doctor called him one of the incorruptibles.13 The living is worth about £160, and it is a good thing to have such a patron as the Archbishop of Canterbury.14 1  At this point in the text of his biography of JaB, WF inserted the following footnote: ‘Mr Boswell’s acquaintance and mine began at a very early period of life, and an intimate correspondence continued between us ever after. It scarcely requires to be mentioned here, that he was the chosen friend of General Paoli and of Dr Johnson. The circle of his acquaintance among the learned, the witty, and indeed among men

of all ranks and professions, was extremely extensive, as his talents were considerable, and his convivial powers made his company much in request. His warmth of heart towards his friends, was very great; and I have known few men, who possessed a stronger sense of piety, or more fervent devotion, (tinctured, no doubt, with some little share of superstition, which had probably been in some degree fostered by his habits of intimacy

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9 January 1786 with Dr Johnson) perhaps not always sufficient to regulate his imagination or direct his conduct, yet still genuine, and founded both in his understanding and his heart. His “Life” of that extraordinary man, with all the faults with which it has been charged, must be allowed to be one of the most characteristic and entertaining biographical works in the English language. For Mr Boswell I entertained a sincere regard, which he returned by the strongest proof in his power to confer, by leaving me the guardian of his children. He died in London, 19th May, 1795, in the fifty-fifth year of his age’ (Beattie ii. 181 n.). This footnote was proofread, and apparently modified, by WF’s friend, the philosopher Rev. Archibald Alison (1757– 1839), who remarked in an undated letter from late 1805 or early 1806: ‘Your Testimony to poor Boswell’s memory I respect and love. As his character is perhaps misunderstood in England, and as I fear, in his last years, the Society of London had a little corrupted his Conduct, tho’ not his principles, I have ventured to make a little Addition upon the Margin, of which you will determine. Perhaps also the last sentence may be shorten’d (as I have presumed to suggest) without destroying the kind Effect you would wish it to have’ (FP 96). Although Alison’s specific suggestions have not survived, it seems from the reference to the second one that the last sentence in WF’s note originally contained an additional compliment to JB. On WF and Alison, see also From WF, 9 Feb. 1790 n. 22. 2  ‘Various Classes of Scribblers on Glass’ originally appeared anonymously on Thurs. 23 Oct. 1755 as essay no. 147 in The World, the popular periodical produced between 1753 and 1757 by the dramatist and miscellaneous writer Edward Moore (1712–57), and a list of authors first appeared in the edition published in London 1761 (see George P. Winship, Jr., ‘The Printing History of the World’, in Studies in the Early English Periodical, ed. Richmond P. Bond, 1957, pp. 183–95; Corr. 9, p. 122 n. 1). In the passage to which WF refers, Hailes (then Sir David Dalrymple) criticizes historians, and particularly the sub-class of historians called ‘annalists, who imagine that fact deserves to be recorded, merely because it is a fact; and on this account, gravely tell the world that on such a day they fell in love, or got drunk, or did some other thing of equal insignificancy. … Let them reflect on the nothingness of such incidents, and surely they will abstain from recording them’

(The World, 6 vols., 1757, v. 58–65, quoting pp. 61–62). 3  JaB replied on 12 Feb. 1786, ‘What you say of Mr Boswell coincides with my sentiments exactly. I am convinced he meant no harm; but many things in his book are injudicious, and must create him enemies, and are really injurious to the memory of Dr Johnson. Johnson’s faults were ballanced by many and great virtues; and when that is the case, the virtues only should be remembered, and the faults entirely forgotten. But in this book Johnson’s want of temper, want of candour, obstinacy in dispute, and rage of contradiction (for most of his speeches began with No Sir) are minutely recorded and exemplified’ (Beattie Corr. iii. 248; also in Beattie ii. 184–85). 4  The second edition of the Tour was published on 22 Dec. 1785 (Lit. Car., p. 122). The phrase ‘he tells me’ indicates that WF had not actually seen the second edition at the time of this letter (see WF to TB, 29 Apr. 1786, under date in this volume, n. 10) but had received assurances from JB about revisions to make it less offensive. JB may have passed this news to WF in his unreported letter sent between 17 Nov. and 2 Dec. 1785, or he may have done so at a meeting in Edinburgh in early Nov. to discuss how to resolve the complaint made by AFT (see To WF, [5 Nov. 1785] and Appendix 3 below). 5  WF placed this footnote in Beattie ii. 182: ‘He has mentioned this in his second edition, p. 524.’ As noted in To WF, [20 Dec. 1785] n. 1, WF’s accusers have not been identified, although it seems likely that Lord Macdonald was among them. 6  See From WF, 6 Dec. 1785: ‘I trust with some confidence, that you will pay a particular attention, in your life of Dr. Johnson, to insert nothing that can give either pain or offence to any mortal.’ 7  The foundation for this remark is not known. JB’s last letter to WF (To WF, [20 Dec. 1785]) was hardly the work of someone who ‘seems sorry’ for his frankness in the Tour. 8  The reference is to George Strahan, who edited the work after SJ’s death (see From WF, 16 Sept. 1785 n. 13). 9  Twelve years later, WF would have occasion to repeat these principles of editing in his correspondence with EM regarding the third edition of the Life. After WF suggested softening some hurtful portions of the text in a letter to EM of 22 May 1798, and EM replied on 5 July that ‘the work of an author is sacred’ (see From WF, 8 July 1793 n. 14),

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9 January 1786 WF clarified his position in a letter of 20 July 1798: ‘I do not think an editor at liberty to add a Single Syllable to the text of his Author because that would certainly be to make it the work of the Editor not of the Author: but I Confess, I think him by no means restrained from omitting what appears to his best judgement to be derogating from the Character of the Writer’ (Corr. 2, pp. 463–64). 10  See From WF, 3 June 1788 n. 3. 11  In his reply of 12 Feb. 1786, JaB was also critical of SJ’s Prayers and Meditations: ‘Johnson’s book of Prayers is, as Macbeth says, “a sorry sight.” In themselves the prayers have merit; but the best passages are taken from the “Book of Common Prayer,” which is indeed a rich and inexhaustible fund. To compose forms of devotion is a most improving exercise; and to publish them may be beneficial: but to publish a history of one’s own devotions and alms, is something so like “praying in the corners of the streets,” that I cannot think Johnson would have consented to it till want of health had impaired his faculties. Some of the memorandums are such as cannot be read without pain and pity. Others are of a different character. To set down in a devotional diary, “N. B. I dined to-day on herring and potatoes,” is a most extraordinary incongruity’ (Beattie ii. 186). JaB alludes to SJ, ‘faint’ from fasting, having recorded on Holy Saturday, 30 Mar. 1782, ‘dined on herrings and potatoes’ (Prayers and Meditations, p. 246)—a criticism which WF would borrow, slightly corrupted, in his letter to TB, 29 Apr. 1786 (under date in this volume). JaB’s use of the phrase ‘praying in the corners of the streets’ derives from Matthew 6:5, where Jesus says, ‘And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men’. 12  In Beattie ii. 183, WF inserted the following footnote at this place in the text: ‘Son of the late Dr John Gregory. He is since dead.’ William Gregory (1759–1803) was the second son of Dr. John Gregory and Elizabeth Forbes. After studying at Glasgow University in the early 1770s with Thomas Reid (1710–96) and John Anderson (1726– 96), among others, he had gone to Balliol College, Oxford (B.A., 1780; M.A., 1783), and had been ordained in the Church of England in 1783 (W. Innes Addison, The Matriculation Albums of the University of Glasgow from 1728 to 1858, 1913, p. 103; A. E. Smith, ed., ‘Register of St. Paul’s Episcopal

Chapel, Aberdeen, 1720–1793’, Miscellany of the New Spaulding Club, 1908, ii. 208). One of his college friends at Balliol, Archibald Alison (see above, n. 1, and From WF, 9 Feb. 1790 n. 22), had married in 1784 his sister Dorothea Gregory (1754–1830), ([Sir Philip Spencer Gregory], Records of the Family of Gregory, 1886, pp. 58–59). 13  The phrase ‘one of the Incorruptibles’ (playing on the early medieval Christian tradition which referred to saints whose bodies do not deteriorate after death as the ‘Incorruptibles’) occurs in Reid’s letter to WF of 4 May 1777 (when William was actually at Oxford, not Glasgow), one of three surviving letters (the others are dated 26 Oct. 1775 and 20 May 1776) which Reid sent WF in the latter’s capacity as one of the guardians of William and his younger brother John (1761–83) (reproduced in Thomas Reid and the University, ed. Paul Wood, 2021, pp. 259–63). Reid used the phrase to contrast William’s character with that of his less praiseworthy brother John. Reid—whose mother, Margaret Gregory (1673–1732), was the great aunt of William and John—wrote warmly of William in other letters which are published in The Correspondence of Thomas Reid, ed. Paul Wood, 2002. William, in turn, praised Reid in letters to the advocate (later judge) Allan Maconochie (1748–1816), when William was studying at Glasgow in 1774. See, for example, his letter of 9 Nov. 1774: ‘Dr. Reid’s is my principal class. … I like … Dr. Reids Lectures very well, and whenever I am in doubt about any thing, he is always ready to resolve it to me, which is a great advantage’, and Gregory’s letter of 27 Dec. 1774, where Reid is described as ‘exceedingly kind and civil to me, and very ready to communicate to me what I don’t know’ (Meadowbank Papers, EUL, Mic.M. 1070). WF’s status as one of the five ‘tutors’ (i.e., guardians) of the children of John Gregory is discussed in a letter from WF to JaB, 23 Feb. 1773 (FP 98/1). 14  This year William Gregory ‘was presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury [John Moore, (1730–1805)] to the United Rectories of St. Andrew and St. Mary Breadman in Canterbury’, and in 1788 ‘the same patron’ would appoint him ‘Master of Eastbridge Hospital, in right of which he presented himself to the Vicarage of Blean, Kent. He was afterwards appointed one of the “Six Preachers” in Canterbury Cathedral’. He died on 31 Jan. 1803 ‘“at his house in the Archbishop’s palace” at Canterbury’ (Records of the Family of Gregory, p. 74).

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[26 January 1786]

To Forbes, Thursday [26 January 1786] MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1332 (where it is dated [January 1786]). address: To Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo Baronet, with a Book1 enclosure: Probably a copy of the two-volume third edition of Samuel Ogden’s Sermons (not located). endorsement: Ja. Boswell, Edr., Janry., 1786 seal: Faintly visible imprint which appears to be the classical figure used in To WF, [28 Aug. 1781] and [5 Nov. 1785], in black wax. note: The date of this letter has been determined from internal evidence. The third sentence of the letter refers to JB’s departure for London as imminent. Since JB left Edinburgh for London early on the morning of Friday 27 Jan. (Journ.), he must have written this letter on the ‘Thursday night’ before his departure.

Thursday night My Dear Sir: You have my most sincere sympathy.2 But it is a comfort to me to recollect a late conversation in which you expressed a calm confidence in the goodness of God.3 I wished much to have seen you before I set out again for London.4 But could not disturb the House of Mourning.5 Wherever I am, I trust you shall ever find me, My Dear Sir, your very faithful and affectionate friend, James Boswell 1  Although the book which JB sent with this letter cannot be identified with certainty, circumstantial evidence points to the third edition of Sermons by Samuel Ogden (1716– 78), published early in 1786. The letter attempts to console WF after the loss of a young child, by reminding him of his own remarks on belief in the goodness of God, and it therefore seems likely that the accompanying book was meant for the same purpose. JB had carried a copy of Ogden’s little volume, Sermons on the Efficacy of Prayer and Intercession (1770), on his tour to the Highlands and Hebrides with SJ; ‘Ogden on Prayer’ protrudes from his pocket in ‘The Journalist’, one of the twenty caricatures designed by Samuel Collings (d. 1793?) and etched by Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827) in Picturesque Beauties of Boswell (1786), and Ogden’s book is clutched by JB in another piece in that series, ‘Veronica A Breakfast Conversation’ (see also Boswell’s Books, p. 293). In the Tour, which had appeared in print less than four months before this letter to WF, JB lauds Ogden (‘my favourite preacher’) for the comfort provided by his sermons, and he takes obvious delight in drawing out SJ’s approval (Life v. 350–51, 24 Oct. 1773; see also iii. 248; Robert G. Walker, ‘Boswell’s Use of “Ogden on Prayer” in Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides’, Age of Johnson, xix [2009]: 53–68). The clearest instance of the consolation which Ogden brought JB occurs

in his account of 3 Oct. 1773, when, terrified at the thought of his death by drowning in the dangerous seas off the Hebrides, he is ‘disturbed by the objections that have been made against a particular providence, and by the arguments of those who maintain that it is in vain to hope that the petitions of an individual, or even of congregations, can have any influence with the Deity; … but Dr. Ogden’s excellent doctrine on the efficacy of intercession prevailed’ (Life v. 282). Five years before publication of the Tour, following a ‘serious conversation last night’ with Hugh Blair, apparently about death, JB sent him a copy of Ogden’s Sermons along with ‘three essays of my own on death’ from his Hypochondriack series (To Blair, [Dec. 1780], L 59.5; To WF, [28 Aug. 1781] n. 7). The book sent to Blair was probably the newly available, enlarged, two-volume second edition of 1780, in which the sermons ‘on the Efficacy of Prayer and Intercession’ became the first of three parts; in a letter of 28 Nov. 1780 (L 1087), JB told Sir John Pringle (1707–82) he was ‘glad to see’ this edition. A further expanded third edition of Ogden’s Sermons—perhaps published in response to the favourable publicity generated by the Tour—had appeared early in 1786, shortly before JB sent this letter to WF. JB had recently announced in the press that he had sent Hester Lynch Piozzi a copy of this ‘new edition, with notes and illustrations, of

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29 April 1786 his celebrated Vade Mecum [guidebook], Ogden on Prayer’ (Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 13 Jan. 1786), and he presumably sent it to WF as well. WF already owned a copy of the second edition of the 1770 one-volume format of Ogden’s Sermons on the Efficacy of Prayer and Intercession, purchased from Kincaid & Creech in 1773 (FP 216; now held in a privately owned bound volume of WF’s ‘Theological Pamphlets’), but the second volume of the third edition contained not only the second and third parts, which had been added to the second edition, but also a new fourth part, with two sermons on the Lord’s Supper which would have been of great interest to both JB and WF. In 1792 WF would also purchase a two-volume edition of Ogden’s Sermons (probably the fourth edition, 1788) from the Edinburgh bookseller William Laing (fl. 1780–1835) (FP 218), perhaps as a gift. 2  A letter from JaB to WF, 12 Feb. 1786, Beattie Corr. iii. 248 (also in Beattie ii. 184), refers to ‘your late afflictions’ and ‘Those, whom a wise Providence has been pleased

to take away’, indicating that WF and LF had recently suffered the loss of two of their children. The two children were Adam (1783–86) and Daniel (1782–86), aged two and three, who died, as WF would make clear in the draft of his letter to TB of 29 Apr. 1786 (the next letter below), within a few days of each other, from an outbreak of ‘hooping cough and measles’. On 8 Dec. 1791 WF would write to JaB about ‘a most malignant Fever and sore throat which has proved very fatal in many families’ and taken the lives of John Hay’s two eldest sons, aged four and five, thereby distressing Hay’s sister, LF, ‘by bringing back to her memory a very similar event in our own family five years ago’ (FP 98/3). 3  JB may be referring to a private conversation on Fri. 6 Jan., when he ‘Sat some time with Sir Wm Forbes’ (Journ.). 4  JB would set out for London on the 6 AM fly to Newcastle on Fri. 27 Jan. (Journ.). Except for one brief visit in early spring 1793, he would never see Edinburgh again. 5  Ecclesiastes 7:2, 4.

Forbes to Thomas Barnard, Saturday 29 April 1786 Since the sent letter has not been found, WF’s draft in FP+ 3 has been used as the copy-text, cited in footnotes as ‘MS. Draft’. header: Bishop of Killaloe now Limerick1 enclosure: A copy of JaB’s Evidences (not located).

29 Apr. 1786 My Lord: I have long hesitated between the very great desire I have of expressing my best thanks for the very obliging letter with which your Lordship was pleased to honor me,2 and my fear by an intrusion, of making your Lordship regret your having shown that piece of politeness. Yet the idea lest I should appear ungrateful for the honor you had done me, has prevailed over every other motive; and I now venture to assure your Lordship, that I esteem it one of the most fortunate circumstances attending our very agreeable expedition across the Irish Channel my having had the happiness of renewing that acquaintance the value of which I first owed to our worthy friend Sir Joshua Reynolds; but which your Lordship’s goodness to Lady F and me at Dublin has greatly enhanced.3 How remote so ever, and unconnected our present residences, I will not deny myself the hope of yet profiting of your Lordship’s kindness on some future occasion. One reason, indeed, has made me omit to do many things which I ought to have done since I had the honor of hearing from your Lordship; early in the beginning of last winter, the hooping cough and measles attacked our4 family; by which the children were knockt down almost all at once; and within five days of each other, we had the very heavy misfortune of burying two charming boys of two and three years old—another of eight years is still in a very lingering way but I trust if the 78

29 April 1786 summer were come on, he will yet do well.5 These shocks have affected Lady F. very much, yet she has supported herself under an amazing exertion both of body and mind in a very wonderful manner, and I hope her health has not materially suffered. Our friend Mr. Boswell, as your Lordship has no doubt heard from himself has now past the Rubicon,6 and I heartily wish it may prove to his advantage, altho I confess I am very doubtful of it, for it is a hazardous experiment for a man to change his profession (as this plan must in some degree be considered) after forty; and as his estate is strictly entailed, and his income from the annuities with which his father charged it, confessedly unequal to what his7 family expences in London will be, I am much afraid his practice at the Bar will scarcely make up the deficiency, and of course he will run himself into difficulties, that may embarrass him as long as he lives.8 His book, I believe, has brought him a considerable sum, for the sale has been very extensive;9 yet altho it be in many respects very entertaining and in some parts really instructive, I am not sure but it may create him enemies that may more than counterbalance the profit for it contains many things that might and some that ought to have been suppressed; altho my memory supplies me with several anecdotes of the last class, which he has wisely omitted even in the first edition, and he tells me he has left out a good deal more in the second.10 I am really not sure if the plan itself11 of the publication be altogether a proper one; had he only published what Dr. Johnson and he himself said, there could have been no harm in it, as the Doctor knew that it would be published but it is scarcely fair to record what other people said without their consent; for many a man spouts opinions in the carelessness of familiar conversation, which he would not chuse should be printed; and it would be a great restraint on society, were we to meet under such an impression. I have strongly charged him carefully to attend not to insert any thing in his next publication which can be supposed to give offence.12 I am indeed convinced that he is sincere in his declaration in his present book that he did not mean to hurt any mortal. I have been much pleased and I hope edified by Dr. Johnson’s prayers and meditations:13 I know not whether your Lordship has seen that publication; there are things even in it that in my humble opinion14 had better have been omitted; because they throw an air of ridicule on the scrupulousness15 of his piety which may give occasion to scoffing. It is surely not necessary, in a book of devotions, to record that he dined on salt herring and potatoes;16 had the editor suppressed that and some other similar passages, I do not think he could have been accused of being unfaithful to his trust, by vitiating the Manuscript; and had he substituted Elisabeth (which I am told was Mrs. Johnson’s name) for Tetty,17 the Book could have been improved by the alteration. I have only seen some extracts in the newspapers from Mrs. Thrale’s anecdotes. Neither she nor Mr. Boswell, represented him in an amiable light, how much so ever they may have done justice to his virtues and learning.18 I wish I could think or know of any thing which this country affords that could be acceptable to your Lordship or Mrs. Barnard, that I might have it in my power now and then to preserve your remembrance of us. Along with this I presume to send your Lordship a little work just printed here, because it is written by a very 79

29 April 1786 intimate and valuable friend of mine, Dr. Beattie, whose character I dare say is not altogether unknown to you. I am not to think that any thing contained in it can possibly be new to your Lordship; but probably your Lordship will not be displeased with the elegance as well as19 neatness and perspicuity with which he has treated the important subject of it.20 But it is more than time that I should leave off (for I am to have written a book myself rather than a letter) by assuring Your Lordship 1500 copies each (Later Years, p. 296), and both editions would have been exhausted before the third edition appeared 10 Oct. 1786. Nearly three thousand copies sold less than seven months after initial publication would certainly constitute a ‘very extensive’ sale. Furthermore, the book was self-published in association with CD (as the Life would be also), and JB received all the profits (Later Years, p. 272; Enlightenment and the Book, pp. 220–24). For these reasons, the first two editions of the Tour must have brought JB ‘a considerable sum’ by the standards of an octavo, rather than an expensive quarto, edition—which is to say, hundreds of pounds. 10  Most of this paragraph, and the next paragraph about SJ’s Prayers and Meditations, repeat the sentiments expressed in WF’s letter to JaB, 9 Jan. 1786 (under date in this volume), including the ‘might’/‘ought’ judgement which appears repeatedly in WF’s letters on JB’s Johnsonian writings. As in that letter, the words ‘he tells me’ demonstrate that WF still had not seen the second edition of the Tour at this time, although he would eventually receive a presentation copy of it from JB, bearing this inscription: ‘To Sir William Forbes / of Pitsligo Baronet / from his much obliged / and affectionate friend / The Authour’ (English Literature, p. 33, lot 46). There being no evidence in the correspondence of this presentation copy being sent or received, it is likely that JB gave it to WF on one of their frequent meetings in London during June and July 1786 (see From WF, 25 Apr. 1787 n. 2, and Chron., p. li), when remaining copies of the second edition were probably being offloaded in preparation for the third edition. 11  MS. Draft, ‘itself’ inserted above the line by caret, and ‘whole’ deleted before ‘plan’. 12  See From WF, 6 Dec. 1785, and WF to JaB, 9 Jan. 1786 (under date in this volume), n. 6. 13  See From WF, 16 Sept. 1785, and WF to JaB, 9 Jan. 1786 (under date in this volume). 14  MS. Draft, ‘even in it’ and ‘in my humble opinion’ inserted above the line. 15  MS. Draft, ‘scrupulousness’ replaces deleted ‘fervour’.

1  Since TB did not become Bishop of Limerick until 1794, WF must have inserted or modified this header at a later time. 2  TB to WF, 15 Oct. 1785, Corr. 3, pp. 213–15. TB’s letter was a reply to one from WF which survives only as an undated draft fragment in FP+ 3, datable from internal evidence and the first sentence in TB’s letter to on, or just after, 16 Sept. 1786. 3  WF had met TB at the Round Robin dinner party at JR’s home in the spring of 1776. The draft fragment of WF’s letter to TB cited in the previous note expresses thanks for ‘the kind attentions with which Your Lordship and Mrs. Barnard were pleas’d to honor us while in Dublin’, and TB’s reply mentions ‘the unexpected Enjoyment of your Company for a few days’ (Corr. 3, p. 214). On WF and LF’s Irish tour in the summer of 1785, see From WF, 16 Sept. 1785 nn. 4, 9. 4  MS. Draft, ‘large young’ deleted after ‘our’. 5  On the deaths of Adam and Daniel Forbes, see the preceding letter, n. 2. James Forbes (1778–87)—eight years old at the time of this letter to TB, but seven when he became ill—would survive in a sickly state until his death at the age of nine on 17 Dec. 1787 (see From WF, 18 Dec. 1787, esp. n. 10). 6  After much preparation, JB had finally moved from Edinburgh to London in late Jan. 1786, and his family would give up the flat in James’s Court in May. TB probably had not heard from JB since the move, as there is no evidence of any communication between them until they breakfasted together in London with JR on 18 May (Journ.; Corr. 3, pp. 220, 239). 7  MS. Draft, ‘but narrow’ deleted after ‘his’. 8  See the similar doubts in WF’s letter to SJ, 13 July 1784 (under date in this volume). TB, however, was in favour of JB making ‘a fair trial’ at the English Bar, even after seeing him ‘in sad despondency as to my London plan’ (Journ. 7 June 1786). 9  It is not known how much JB earned from the Tour, which was at this time in its second octavo edition. The first and second editions apparently had large print runs of

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25 April 1787 WF appears to have adapted this criticism from JaB’s letter to him of 12 Feb. 1786 (see WF to JaB, 9 Jan. 1786, under date in this volume, n. 9), but he has replaced SJ’s ‘herrings’ with ‘salt herring’. 17  MS. Draft, ‘I do not think’ deleted after ‘Tetty,’. 18  Here WF agrees with JaB’s critique of the Tour for displaying and exemplifying SJ’s faults (see WF to JaB, 9 Jan. 1786, under date in this volume, n. 3), and he extends this criticism to the newspaper extracts from Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. during the Last Twenty Years of His Life, published on 25 Mar. 1786 (Corr. 2, p. 113 n. 1) by Hester Lynch Piozzi (formerly Mrs. Thrale). For example, a section in one newspaper extract titled ‘Mrs. Piozzi’s Apology for the Doctor’s odd Manners’ explains that SJ ‘did not hate the persons he treated with roughness, or despise them whom he drove from him by apparent scorn. … He was even ungenteel with those for whom he had the greatest regard’ (Gen. Eve. Post, 1–4 Apr.

1786). Piozzi notes in another excerpt that showing such traits of SJ’s character ‘will only serve to correct the extravagance of adulation’ found elsewhere (Lond. Chron., 1–4 Apr. 1786). In another extract, one of the most venomous expressions of ‘Mr. Johnson’s hatred of the Scotch’ (in which he calls Scotland ‘a very vile country to be sure’, and replies to someone who points out that it was created by God, ‘God made hell’) is immediately followed by a comment beginning, ‘That natural roughness of his manner, so often mentioned, would, notwithstanding the regularity of his notions, burst through them all from time to time’ (Lond. Chron., 13–15 Apr. 1786). 19  MS. Draft, ‘elegance as well as’ inserted above the line by caret. 20  Evidences, published in Edinburgh in two volumes on 22 Apr 1786, was not yet available for purchase in London (see From WF, 16 Sept. 1785 n. 17). WF had purchased two bound copies from Creech (FP 215), one of which was presumably meant for TB.

16 

From Forbes, Wednesday 25 April 1787 MS. Yale (C 1277). Not in Abbott. address: James Boswell Esqr., Great Queenstreet, Lincoln’s Innfields, London1

Edinbg. 25 Apl. 1787 Not having heard a syllable from, or of you, since we parted in London;2 except one short notice from our worthy friend Mr. Langton;3 I cannot, My Dear Sir, write to Mrs. Boswell, without adding a word or two to yourself,4 to enquire how you have done since I had the pleasure of seeing you; and how all goes with you: I hope well. When you have a spare moment from the more weighty business of the Law, as Ranger says,5 I shall be happy to know, what your prospects now are, after some longer tryal, in regard to that Object, which I thought when we last talked together you seem’d as good as resolved to abandon.6 Mr. Langton tells me you are busily employed on your Life of Dr. Johnson.7 Pray when are we to be favored with that work?8 I trouble you to remember me in the kindest manner to the worthy Sir Joshua Reynolds and Miss Palmer;9 to Mr. Malone, of a place in whose remembrance I shall be very proud;10 and to Mr. Burke. Is the Bishop of Killaloe in London this Spring? If so, I beg to be respectfully presented to his Lordship. Since I saw you, I had the happiness at Tunbridge to become known to the excellent Bishop of Chester, an acquaintance which I prize very highly.11 Adieu, My Dear Sir, let me have the pleasure o hearing from you what you are about, and believe me ever most sincerely, your affectionate and faithful humble Servant, William Forbes 81

25 April 1787 On 16 May 1786 JB had rented ‘a dark, old-fashioned, and, as it turned out, rat-infested house on Great Queen Street [no. 56], near to the Inns of Court’, which the entire family moved into on 25 Sept. (Later Years, p. 336). MMB soon became uncomfortable there because the polluted London air irritated her diseased respiratory system. This house was demolished in the early twentieth century, but some visual evidence of it has survived (see James S. Ogilvy, ‘Plate 8 – James Boswell’s House, Great Queen Street’, Relics and Memorials of London Town, 1911). 2  During June and early July 1786, JB and WF were frequently in each other’s company in London, with more documented meetings between them than during any other comparable time in their lives, even though in Edinburgh they had worked for many years very near each other in Parliament Close. JB’s journal from this period records their encounters in London—alone, with LF, or with their mutual friends—on eight different days in the space of about three and a half weeks (11, 12, 16, 17, and 23 June, and 1, 3, and 5 July; see Chron., p. li). The Forbeses spent most of the late summer at the fashionable spa at Tunbridge Wells in Kent, arriving home around the same time that JB, his wife, their five children, and the family housekeeper, Isabel ‘Bell’ Bruce (the sister of JB’s overseer James Bruce, and previously the nurse of the Boswell children), left Auchinleck (where JB had been for a month) for London on 20 Sept. There is no evidence of any communication between JB and WF in the nearly ten months since their last documented meeting in London. 3  The letter from BL referred to here and in the following paragraph is presumably the one which WF acknowledged receiving a few days earlier in WF to JaB, 3 Mar. 1787 (FP 98/2). Although WF would sometimes complain to JB about BL’s failure to write to him (e.g., From WF, 2 Nov. 1790 and 28 May 1791), other sources indicate the existence of at least twelve letters from BL to WF including this one from Feb. 1787, all untraced: two mentioned by JB in his journal entry of 24 July 1774 (one of which, if not another letter entirely, is acknowledged in WF’s letter to JaB of 24 Sept. 1774, FP 98/1); another of early Mar. 1778, cited in Life iii. 221 and alluded to in From BL, 14 Mar. 1778 (Corr. 3, p. 79); another for which BL is thanked at the beginning of WF’s letter to him of 9 Sept. 1782, Corr. 3, p. 122; another received before a letter from WF to JaB of 5 July 1784 (FP 98/2) which alludes to it; another acknowledged at the beginning

of WF’s letter to BL of 21 Jan. 1785 (Corr. 3, pp. 177–78); another implied by WF’s comment in From WF, 16 Sept. 1785, indicating his intention to write to BL (suggesting that BL had replied to WF’s letter of 21 Jan. 1785); another from [Sept.] 1789 referred to in a discussion in From WF, 30 Sept. 1789 on WF’s manuscript book on religion having reached BL at Oxford, and which is also referred to indirectly in the postscript of From WF, 28 May 1791, where WF says that the letter he has just received from BL is the first from him in ‘two years’; another of May 1791, acknowledged in the postscript just mentioned (this was probably the letter from BL which WF enclosed with a letter to JaB of 30 Aug. 1791, FP 98/3, unless WF received yet another letter from BL in Aug.); another which WF mentions having received in a letter to JaB of 30 Aug. 1791 (FP 98/3); and another after JB’s death, received by WF on 6 June 1795, as mentioned in a letter from WF to LF, 9 June 1795 (under date in this volume). 4  This allusion to an unreported letter from WF to MMB from around this time probably explains the source of the reference to news about the declining health of young James Forbes in JB’s reply to this letter on 8 May 1787 (‘The account you give is dreary … ’), as WF’s account of James’s intensifying illness is not found in any of WF’s extant letters before that date. It is not known why WF would have sent this family news to MMB rather than to JB. On James Forbes, see To WF, 8 May 1787 n. 13, and From WF, 18 Dec. 1787, esp. n. 10. 5  As WF must have known, Ranger, the rakish young London lawyer in Benjamin Hoadly’s (1705/6–57) comedy The Suspicious Husband (1747), had been among the young JB’s favourite theatrical characters. JB referred to Ranger in an unpublished ‘Prologue to the Coquettes’ which he wrote in Feb. 1759 (M 266), and footnoted Ranger as ‘The principal Character of The Suspicious Husband acted in the year 1747’. He must have seen the play performed by 8 Aug. 1759, when it was acted on the Edinburgh stage while he was enthusiastically attending the theatre there (see A View of the Edinburgh Theatre during the Summer Season, 1759: Containing, an Exact List of the Several Pieces Represented, and Impartial Observations on Each Performance. By a Society of Gentlemen, published in London in Feb. 1760, and commonly attributed to JB). By 1761 JB was regularly alluding to Ranger, as in the draft version of his poem ‘An Epistle to Lady Mcintosh’ (‘Law is a study very dry / Ranger thought thus—and so do I.’); in the letter to Alexander Montgomerie

1 

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25 April 1787 (1723–69), 10th Earl of Eglinton which he published in the Scots Mag. for Sept. 1761 (‘How becoming would the volatile pate of Ranger look, when wrapp’d up in the matrimonial nightcap!’); and in a letter to an early mentor, the Irish actor, theatre manager, and elocutionist Thomas Sheridan (1719–88) of 25 or 26 Nov. (‘What would I give to be, as you buckishly talk—reigning in my chambers a thousand degrees beyond Master Ranger.’) (Corr. 9, pp. 80, 106, 142, and corresponding notes). In his journal entry for 9 Jan. 1768, while in Edinburgh, JB wrote of a night at the theatre, ‘Went & saw the Suspicious Husband & Citizen; had my London ideas revived.’ The afterpiece—‘Citizen’—is the two-act farce The Citizen (1761), by Arthur Murphy (1727–1805), who sometimes wrote under the pseudonym ‘Charles Ranger’. It is actually Ranger’s cousin Clarinda, not Ranger himself, who mentions the ‘weighty Business of the Law’ in a jesting visting-card she writes to him, predicated on her knowledge that he is a tavern-roisterer, an idler, and a lounger: ‘Rang. [Reads.]: “Clarinda’s Compliments to her Cousin Ranger, and should be glad to see him for ever so little a time that he can be spar’d from the more weighty Business of the Law.”’ Ranger, as much as or more than JB when he was supposed to be preparing for the bar, is a dilatory and unenthusiastic law student. In the first scene, set in ‘Ranger’s Chambers in the Temple’, he announces, ‘And now for the Law’, but then begins reading aloud a love poem by William Congreve (1670–1729). JB knew and admired the comical disdain for legal education spoken by Ranger near the beginning of the play: ‘The law is a damnable dry study, Mr. Bellamy, and without something now and then to amuse and relax, it would be too much for my brain, I promise ye—But I am a mighty sober Fellow grown—Here have I been at it these three Hours—but the Wenches will never let me alone—’ (I. i). One of Ranger’s speeches later in the play may also have resonated with JB: ‘It is as you say; when we are sober, and reflect but ever so little on the follies we commit, we are ashamed and sorry; and yet the very next minute we run again into the very same absurdities’ (IV. iv). 6  JB’s journal entry for 1 July 1786 reads, ‘Had breakfasted with Sir W. Forbes, & settled that I should quit english bar, either directly, or after a winter’s trial. My valuable spouse’s health was one great objection’ (see Intro., p. xcvi). But JB had not given up his hopes of a legal career in London, either immediately or after the winter of 1786–87, and he would explain why in his reply to this letter,

To WF, 8 May 1787. 7  BL had been involved in helping JB with the Life since as early as 1776, and he would continue to supply JB with numerous anecdotes and documents after SJ’s death, as recorded in JB’s journal, e.g.: ‘I got [Langton] to talk of Johnson & he told me some particulars which are to be found in the little book which I keep solely for Dr. Johnson’s Life. I hope I shall have many of them filled’ (15 Apr. 1776); ‘Dined worthy Langton en famille quiet & comfortable. Got [SJ’s] Letter to Lord Chesterfield’ (12 July 1785); ‘Langton … gave me Johnsoniana’ (11 Nov. 1786); ‘Breakfasted with Langton & got from him his letters from Johnson’ (1 Mar. 1787) (see also To WF, 12 Dec. 1788 n. 12; Lady Rothes to WF, 6 Dec. 1790, under date in this volume, n. 4; and the many references in Corr. 2). 8  This enquiry is the first of several WF would make over the next four years about when the Life was to appear, often linked with parallel enquiries about the expected appearance of EM’s edition of Shakespeare (see From WF, 18 Dec. 1787 n. 5). At this time JB was giving out optimistic projections about completion of his work, both publicly and privately. On 6 Jan. 1787 he had informed TB, ‘My great Volume will not be finished for some time. I have waited till I should first see Hawkins’s compilation. But my friends urge me to dispatch, that the ardour of curiosity may not be allowed to cool’ (Corr. 3, p. 240). The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. by Sir John Hawkins (1719–89), first announced on 6 Jan. 1785 (St James’s Chron.) and written to accompany the multi-volume edition of SJ’s Works, was published on 20 Mar. 1787 (Corr. 2, p. 155 n. 2), though JB purchased his copy from CD on 7 Feb. (Boswell’s Books, p. 220). This publication date was almost exactly a year after JB’s other major biographical rival, Hester Lynch Piozzi, published Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, a copy of which reached JB on 30 Mar. 1786 (Boswell’s Books, p. 307; on the wider competition among Johnsonian biographers, see From WF, 8 Apr. 1789 n. 10). With Hawkins in print, JB confidently, if vaguely, announced in the newspapers in May 1787 that ‘Mr. Boswell’s Life of Dr. Johnson is in great forwardness’, having been delayed by his waiting for other publications on the subject, which lacked the wealth of materials and ‘authentic precision’ that he alone would be able to provide (Lond. Chron., 19–22 May 1787, in Facts and Inventions, p. 241). These advertisements were partly the product of pre-publication bravado, but they also signify JB’s inability

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25 April 1787 to gauge the enormous amount of time which would be required to produce the Life. His letter to WF of 8 May 1787 suggested the possibility of publication in late 1787 or the beginning of 1788; his letter of 12 Dec. 1788 would raise the prospect of publication in May 1789; and his letter of 7 Nov. 1789 would express his hope for publication in May 1790 (see other examples in Facts and Inventions, pp. 240–41, and the ‘Chronology of the Making of the Life’ in Corr. 2, pp. xlix–lxix, which charts JB’s ‘real or imagined’ progress on the Life). 9  JR’s niece and companion, Mary Palmer (1750–1820), daughter of John Palmer of Devon (1708–70) and JR’s sister Mary (1716– 94), had met WF and LF when JR painted their portraits in Apr. 1776, and they subsequently maintained friendly relations (e.g., From WF, 23 May 1783, 9 Feb. 1790, 23 Apr. 1792; To WF, 11 Oct. 1790). JB knew Mary well, and she makes frequent appearances in his journal. After JR’s death in Feb. 1792, when she inherited more than £30,000 from her uncle, JB would briefly entertain thoughts of marrying her, but WJT set him straight by pointing out that she would probably ‘aspire to a title’ on account of her newfound fortune (From WJT, 11 and 30 Mar. 1792, C 2918 and 2920). Within four months of these letters from WJT, on 25 July 1792, she was married at the home of EB (her trustee), becoming the second wife of the debt-ridden M.P. for Richmond, Murrough O’Brien (1726–1808), 5th Earl of Inchiquin, who was sixty-six years old (she was forty-two), and she became the Countess of Inchiquin (from 1800 the Marchioness of Thomond, after her husband became Marquess of Thomond, and from 1801 Lady Thomond, after her husband became Baron Thomond in the United Kingdom peerage) (Corr. 3, p. 382 n. 13). JB’s playful designation of her as ‘the fair Palmeria’ was harmless enough in itself to be referred to in communications with JR (e.g., To JR, 6 Feb. 1784, Corr. 3, p. 149), but it became offensive when JB carried the notion beyond good taste by writing sexually suggestive poetry about her, her suitors, and her marriage (M 66 and M 334). In one such poem, ‘Palmeria it seems will be wedded at last’, written just before her marriage, JB mocks himself (‘Bozzy’) as one of the unsuccessful suitors for Mary’s hand:

Such doggerel was probably among the chief offences which prompted JB to send her two letters of apology, one undated but addressed to the still single Miss Palmer (L 651), the other (L 652) dated 30 July 1792, five days after her marriage and twelve days before JB told WF that their ‘fair friend’ was now ‘agreably as well as honourably wedded’ (To WF, 11 Aug. 1792). For her part, Mary graciously accepted JB’s apologies and years later expressed appreciation to the painter and diarist Joseph Farington (1747–1821) for JB’s capacity for ‘removing reserve & causing mirth in Company’, but she also wondered whether JB possessed ‘any strong feeling of regard for anybody’ and believed he ‘was only induced to exert Himself much when He had a desire to shine before somebody’ (28 Sept. 1806, Diary Farington viii. 2865). 10  The inclusion of EM in this letter was the result of WF having socialized with him in London on at least two occasions during the previous spring and summer (Journ. 16 June, 3 July 1786). 11  WF had met Beilby Porteus, then Bishop of Chester, later Bishop of London, at the fashionable spa town of Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in Aug. 1786, after LF had become ill and had an accident (the nature of which is not known) during their visit to London. In a letter to JaB of 2 Sept. 1786 (FP 98/2), WF provided a detailed description of Tunbridge Wells (where, as at Peterhead, ‘the air, moderate exercise, regular hours, an absence from care, and agreeable society’ formed part of the cure) and also described the meeting with Porteus, who had entertained the Forbeses at his nearby country home, Hunton (see From WF, 16 Sept. 1785 n. 18). He would subsequently write to JB that Porteus was ‘not only one of the most estimable Characters I ever knew; but one of the most agreeable, sensible men’ (From WF, 18 Dec. 1787). WF would honour Porteus for his decades of devotion to JaB by dedicating his biography of JaB to him in 1806, and his dedication, signed 24 Mar. 1806, noted that ‘it was to Dr Beattie’s kind partiality that I owed my first introduction to your Lordship, and the beginning of that friendship with which you have ever since been pleased to honour me’ (Beattie i. ‘To the Right Honourable and Right Reverend Beilby Porteus, D.D., Lord Bishop of London’). Although his friendship with JaB was undoubtedly responsible for the bishop’s warm reception, WF had told JaB in a letter of 11 Jan. 1787 (FP 98/2) that he owed his introduction to Porteus to another guest whom he met at Tunbridge Wells on this occasion,

Each ill fated rival who put in his claim Is bamboozled and bit by the opulent dame Says Bozzy of arrogance pray don’t accuse me But I thought that no woman alive could refuse me.

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8 May 1787 who would become a lifelong correspondent: ‘one of the Miss Bowdlers who is a very intimate friend of Mrs. Montague’s and the Bishop of Chester’s’. A lengthy footnote in WF’s life of JaB, paying tribute to the various members of the Bowdler family, shows (though she is not named) that WF was referring to Frances Bowdler (1747–1835), who ‘though she has never published any literary work, possesses a taste and an understanding highly cultivated, with powers of epistolary composition, which speak her to be mistress of talents, were she to employ them for the press, by no means inferior to those of the other branches of this extraordinary family. I have long enjoyed the

happiness of her classical and instructive correspondence’ (Beattie ii. 202–06). She was the daughter of Thomas Bowdler (1719–85) and the religious writer Elizabeth Stuart (Cotton) Bowdler (d. 1797), and the sister of Jane Bowdler (1743–84), whose popular Poems and Essays first appeared in 1786 (WF sent a copy to JaB); the writer and editor Henrietta Maria (‘Harriet’) Bowdler (1750– 1830); the religious writer John Bowdler (1746–1823); and Dr. Thomas Bowdler (1754–1825), whose editions of The Family Shakspeare (1818), in collaboration with Henrietta, would give rise to the term ‘Bowdlerized’.

To Forbes, Tuesday 8 May 1787 MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1333. Yale has a fragmentary copy (L 544) which omits the salutation and closing and the first, fourth, and most of the fifth paragraphs; it paraphrases the portion of the fifth paragraph dealing with materials requested for the Life, as well as the first two sentences of the sixth paragraph. reg. let. sent: 8 May 1787: ‘Sir Wm. Forbes (Copy)’, referring to L 544. previously printed: Partially printed in Corr. 2, p. 167, and Later Years, pp. 355–56.

London 8 May 1787 My Dear Sir: You cannot blame me more than I blame myself for my long silence. I however have at least intended better than as yet appears, as you will see from the various dates of the frank which covers this.1 I have upon the whole had a very good life since we parted. Sir Joshua, Malone and Courtenay and I have been so much together and so ‘loth to part’2 that we have got the name of the Gang.3 Then there has been the extensive variety which it would require a Volume to relate, but which you can very well imagine. As to the Law, I cannot say that the prospect is as yet brilliant; but I have no reason to complain of this my first year as an english barrister, when I consider that I was employed as Counsel for the Mayor in the Election at Carlisle, and received a fee of one hundred and fifty guineas. Such chances keep one’s hopes alive, and I cannot help thinking that it would be wrong were I to abandon Westminster Hall without making a longer trial. I may venture to say to you, that the thought of shrinking into the narrow sphere which I quitted after many a weary languishing day distresses me.4 I am more and more confirmed in my love of London. In short you see plainly how it is with me. But on the other hand the alarming return which my Wife has had of her dangerous illness, and the apprehension that the air of London is hurtful to her, presses me in a most interesting manner. I thank God she is at present better; but she has so many turns, that appearances are sadly precarious. The expence of living too is greater than I flattered myself it might be, and this independently of giving my children such advantages in point of education as I am very desireous they should have. Thus am I painfully distracted by different considerations. I write thus freely to you, My Dear Sir; because I assure myself that I have in you a real steady friend. A little time may clear the prospect. 85

8 May 1787 My Wife’s constitution may be reconciled to London, and my Rentroll is every year increasing.5 It is no small comfort to my Wife that Mrs. Young is here.6 She is to dine with us today, with General Paoli, Sir Joshua Reynolds etc.7 Sir Joshua is delightfully well and you live both in his remembrance and in that of Mr. Malone. Mr. Burke is so engrossed with Mr. Hastings, that I hardly see him.8 I have had a letter from the Bishop of Kilaloe and am much disappointed that he is not to be with us this year.9 The worthy Langton and I meet seldom, for which both of us are to blame; but he more than I. My Life of Dr. Johnson is in great forwardness; but on account of many avocations, and of additional materials which come to me from different quarters, I shall not be able to have it in the press till July or August, so that it cannot be published till the end of this year or the beginning of the next.10 I beg that you may now favour me with a Fac Simile of the Round Robin, and if you will also let me have a copy of your letter and his answer concerning my coming to the English bar I will be much obliged to you;11 though as they entirely concern myself, I should think I ought not to insert them in my Book.12 Most sincerely do I, and I am sure all my family sympathise with you and yours on the severe illness of your son James.13 The account you give is dreary,14 and makes us fear the worst. I know how happy you are in resignation to the divine will. I own that certain dispensations put my faith to the torture. Yet I trust that it is firm.15 We join in affectionate compliments and I ever am, My Dear Sir, your much obliged and faithful humble servant, James Boswell The envelope wrapper used for this letter to WF has not survived, but it presumably showed that JB had wasted more than one frank by failing to send a letter on the designated date (for another, better documented example, see To WF, 29 May 1794). The franking system instituted in mid-seventeenth-century England allowed M.P.s to send and receive mail free of charge. As a result of widespread abuse, in which franking privileges were commonly used for purposes other than official business, an act was passed in 1764 ‘for preventing frauds and abuses in relation to the sending and receiving of letters and packets free from the duty of postage’, followed by another act twenty years later and still another in 1795. By requiring each frank to be used on the specific ‘day, month, and year’, and to be sent from the specific post town, designated by an M.P. in words (rather than numbers) and in his own handwriting (Postage Act, in A Concise Abstract of the Most Important Clauses in the Following Interesting Acts of Parliament, Passed in the Session of 1784, 1784), the 1784 act put an end to the practice of M.P.s franking large stacks of wrappers for future use by friends, family, and business associates at an

indefinite time. Although this reform posed an obstacle for users, the practice of franking for private purposes would continue until the franking system was abolished in 1840. In the late 1780s it was said that franking cost the government £70,000 per annum, and that ‘merchants and bankers get into Parliament for no other purpose; and two or three thousand pounds for a borough is well laid out, when we consider that many great houses save nearly that sum annually by the privilege of franking’ (Edin. Adv., 9–12 June 1789). JB would continue throughout his life to rely on various M.P.s to provide him with free franks for his correspondence with WF and others. He also observed that letters sent to him under cover of an M.P. such as JC arrived ‘safely and speedily’ (see To WF, 29 May 1794 n. 1), suggesting another advantage besides expense. On the franking system and its abuses, see Robinson, British Post Office, pp. 113–19 (quoting from the Act of 1764 on p. 116); Kenneth Ellis, The Post Office in the Eighteenth Century, 1958; George Brumell, A Short Account of the Franking System in the Post Office, 1652–1840, 1936, esp. the summary of changes in the franking system on p. 13; Corr. 6, p. 35; Corr. 9, p. 161 n. 10.

1 

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8 May 1787 In Popular Music of the Olden Time, 2 vols., 1859, 2005, i. 173, William Chappell observes that beginning in the Elizabethan period, ‘a Loth to depart was the common term for a song sung, or a tune played, on taking leave of friends’. 3  According to a later entry in JB’s journal (4 Jan. 1790), the term ‘the Gang’ was coined by the wealthy distiller, collector, patron of the arts, and M.P. Philip Metcalfe (1733–1818) to refer to JB and the three others named in this letter to WF, and that is how JB usually used the term (e.g., Journ. 17 Nov. 1787: ‘The Gang ie Sir Joshua Malone & Courtenay dined with me on a pheasant, not a formal dinner, & sat the evening also’). The members of ‘the Gang’ had special attributes and needs which contributed to their collective chemistry. JR, an affable bachelor cared for by his niece Mary Palmer, was a venerated figure and a mainstay of the London cultural establishment from whom his younger friends gained status through association, but as he aged he also would be increasingly in need of social and physical support, which the others were happy to provide. JB particularly relished his friendship with the members of ‘the Gang’ as part of his process of social and emotional assimilation in London—a process which EM and JC had already gone through after moving to London from Ireland. Shortly after his own move to London, while his wife and family remained in Scotland, JB wrote in his journal on 8 Mar. 1786: ‘A man exists just as he chuses his atmosphere. I am quite another man with M.C. [JB’s London mistress, Margaret Caroline Rudd (?1745– ?1798), discussed in Intro., p. xcvii] Malone, Courtenay. So let me be civil to all, even the rankest scots, but let my free intimacies be select’. EM—like JB, a politically conservative lawyer who preferred literary to legal life—was a sincere, scholarly, and sometimes socially awkward bachelor. JB’s intimacy with, and increasing dependence on, him derived chiefly from EM’s work as the devoted editor of both the Tour and the Life, while EM benefitted from the cheerful camaraderie of others in ‘the Gang’. In contrast to EM, JC was sociable, witty, and outgoing, and during this period he differed from the others in his radical political views and his practical experience in Parliament, where he served as M.P. for Tamworth (1780–96) for all the years that JB knew him in London. Although JB and JC took different positions on the American War of Independence (with JB generally supporting the colonists), were on opposite sides in the trial of Warren Hastings (1732–1818) for alleged misconduct and corruption while

Governor-General of India (with JB being a supporter and admirer of Hastings, as noted in n. 8 below), had contrary opinions about William Pitt (1759–1806) (whom JB respected), differed in their religious views (see the journal entry for 31 July 1785, relating JB’s fear that JC was ‘a sceptick’ on the subject of an afterlife), and would later diverge widely in regard to the French Revolution (which JB opposed) and the slave trade (which JB supported), these differences did not affect their relationship, which was fundamentally social rather than political or religious. 4  By emphasizing the word ‘you’, JB appears to mean that his dissatisfaction with his former professional life in Edinburgh should not be circulated in Scotland as a reason for his staying in London, although he would freely admit it to WF in this private and confidential manner. 5  JB’s financial optimism was probably premature. Although Auchinleck alone supposedly had a rent-roll of £1500 a year when JB inherited it in 1782, in addition to other farmland he owned at Dalblair (see To WF, 7 Nov. 1787 n. 5), the net income from the estate was only about a third of that amount up to this time (see WF [with JJ] to SJ, 13 July 1784, under date in this volume, n. 10), and in 1791 JB would complain that during his first nine years as a laird he had received ‘only a scanty and difficult subsistence’ (To Robert Boswell, 1 Nov. 1791, L 250). In a letter of 28 Nov. 1789, however, he would tell WJT that he received ‘about £850 to spend’ out of a total rent-roll ‘above £1600’ (PML). By 1791 his rental income would reach £900, and it would surpass £1000 in the year of his death in 1795 (Corr. 8, p. xlii). 6  Barbara (Gibson) Young (1737–1803), was the widow of Dr. Thomas Young (?1726– 83), Professor of Midwifery at the University of Edinburgh from 1756 (jointly with Dr. Alexander Hamilton [1739–1802] from 1780) until his death, Deacon of the Incorporation of Surgeons in Edinburgh 1756–58, M.D. 1761, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh from 1762, and MMB’s obstetrician (see Christopher Hoolihan, ‘Thomas Young, M.D. (?1726–1783) and Obstetrical Education at Edinburgh’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, xl [1985]: 327–45). He was also the developer of the stylish New Street on the north side of the Canongate (see D. Bell, Edinburgh Old Town: The Forgotten Nature of an Urban Form, 2008, pp. 196–99, and Appendix 2 below). Barbara Young and her youngest sister and frequent companion Catherine Gibson (1743–1825) had been among MMB’s close childhood

2 

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8 May 1787 friends. During JB’s lengthy absence in London in the spring and summer of 1786, MMB’s visitors at Auchinleck had included ‘Mrs. Young and her sister’ and other old friends (Book of Company, p. 71). JB’s journal entry in London for 24 Apr. 1787 noted that ‘Mrs. Young & her sister had come from Bath last night’, and ‘It was very consolatory to my Wife to meet them’. Dr. Young delivered the Boswell children, and JB’s journal entry for 9 Oct. 1775 gives an account of the birth of JBII, followed by supper with the doctor. The Youngs and Boswells sometimes socialized in Edinburgh before JB’s move to London (e.g., Journ. probably 28 Oct. and 19 Nov. 1774 at Prestonfield [although the ladies are not specifically mentioned], 1 Mar. 1776, 7 Jan. 1777 [when JB and Mrs. Young were dancing partners, MMB not being present], 6 Mar. 1778, 10 Feb. 1779, 9 Mar. 1780, 11 Apr. 1780, 23 Mar. 1782). The Forbeses were part of the company on the last two of these occasions—first at the Boswells and then at the Forbeses—as well as on two occasions recorded in JB’s journal notes (J 23, 20 Feb. 1773 at the Boswells, along with ‘Miss Gibson’, and nine days later at the Forbeses). Sir Alexander Dick’s diary for 15 Nov. 1779 records that ‘Mr Boswell and Dr Young and their ladies … all dined here [i.e., Prestonfield]’ (Curiosities, p. 275). The cordiality would continue after MMB’s death: on 17 Dec. 1794 AB would write from Edinburgh to JB at Auchinleck, ‘I sup’d at Mrs. Youngs on Friday last [12 Dec.], and met with Good Sr. William and a Squad of Relatives’ (C 268). Years earlier Barbara Young had played a crucial matchmaker role in WF’s courtship of LF at the Youngs’ new home in New Street (see Appendix 2). JB’s journal records many other occasions on which JB drank tea or conversed with Dr. Young (including at least once, on 5 Jan. 1776, when WF seems to have been present), and it is likely that MMB, Mrs. Young, and Catherine Gibson had friendly meetings of their own that did not find their way into JB’s journal. Thomas Young’s sudden death on 5 Feb. 1783, at the age of fifty-six, was a shock, and JB recorded it, as well as attending the funeral four days later (Journ. 5, 9 Feb. 1783) and calling on Mrs. Young and her sister the following year (Journ. 28 Feb. 1784). The Forbeses were part of the same English Episcopal circle as the Youngs, and Dr. Young was buried in WF’s tomb in Greyfriars Churchyard (Hoolihan, ‘Thomas Young’, p. 344). 7  As confirmed in the journal entry for 8 May 1787, which also mentions among the

diners Mrs. Young’s sister (Miss Gibson); Antonio Gentili (1743–98), Paoli’s former companion in arms in Corsica and travelling companion since Mar. 1776; JR’s niece Mary Palmer; James Duff (1729–1809), 2nd Earl Fife in the Irish Peerage and M.P. for Elginshire from 1784 to 1790, when he acquired a British peerage as Baron Duff of Fife, and is thereafter referred to as Lord Fife; and William Fullarton (1754–1808), a fellow Ayrshire laird who had recently returned from distinguished military service in India and became M.P. for Haddington burghs this year. 8  EB managed the parliamentary impeachment of Warren Hastings which began in 1787–88 and eventually resulted in Hastings’s acquittal by the House of Lords in 1795. Besides occupying much of EB’s time and energy, the Hastings case contributed to a growing rift with JB, who supported Hastings (see To WF, 11 Oct. 1790, esp. n. 7, and Appendix 4). 9  In From TB, 23 Jan. 1787, the Bishop of Killaloe had written, ‘I envy you the Happy days that you pass with our Mutual Freinds at London. I hoped to have been amongst You this Spring, But the great and Interesting Business that is now before our Parliament here, calls for my attendance upon my Post, and the Joint Exertions of every Freind of the Establish’d Church to prevent its enemies from seizing upon the Inheritance of the Clergy, or themselves from Surrendring it upon Composition for their own present ease and Convenience’ (Corr. 3, p. 243 and n. 4). 10  Later this month JB would use similar language to describe the progress of the Life in a newspaper piece (‘Mr. Boswell’s Life of Dr. Johnson is in great forwardness’; see From WF, 25 Apr. 1787 n. 8 and 18 Dec. 1787 n. 5), but his public announcement focussed on reasons for delay, without offering the anticipated (and unrealistic) publication date which he provided to WF in this sentence. 11  On WF’s delivery of the items JB requests in this sentence, see From WF, 19 Oct. 1787. 12  JB would not in fact reproduce or cite in the Life either WF [with JJ] to SJ, 13 July 1784, or SJ to WF, 7 Aug. 1784 (both under date in this volume), but he would discuss and quote extensively from SJ’s more encouraging letter to him on the same topic of 11 July 1784 (Life iv. 351). 13  On the ‘severe illness’, apparent improvement, and eventual death (during the night of 17/18 Dec. 1787) of WF’s son James, see WF’s letters to JB of 25 July, 19 Oct., and 18 Dec. 1787, esp. n. 10. JB would

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21 July 1787 continue to wish for James’s recovery in his letters to WF of 21 July, 11 Oct., and 7 Nov. 1787, and he would send condolences in To WF, 29 Jan. 1788, remarking that he had ‘taken a particular liking’ to the boy. 14  WF’s account of young James’s condition

was presumably contained in an unreported letter from WF to MMB which is referred to in From WF, 25 Apr. 1787 (see n. 4 in that letter). 15  See From WF, 18 Dec. 1787 and 9 July 1790, esp. n. 7, on ‘particular Providence’.

To Forbes, Saturday 21 July 1787 MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1334.

London 21 July 1787 My Dear Sir: Our worthy friend Langton has comforted me with hopes of hearing from you soon.1 I can easily excuse your delay, when I consider the shock of your Partner’s death,2 your anxiety about your fine boy, James, and Lady Forbes’s situation. My Wife and I heartily join in compliments of congratulation on Lady Forbes’s happy delivery,3 and it gives us great pleasure to hear by a letter from Mrs. Young, that your son is much better.4 May God grant a perfect recovery. I remember him distinctly, and am truly concerned. May I beg that you will at your leisure send me the numbers of my Hypochondriack in your possession, with any remarks you have made.5 I am ever My Dear Sir, most faithfully yours, James Boswell I wish you had been with us on Wednesday at dinner. You would have found Sir Joshua, Dr. Scott of the Commons,6 Mr. Malone Mr. Langton and Dr. Burney.7 Langton sups with me tonight to confer upon the state of Holland with a gentleman newly come from thence.8 He and I you know are zealous Kings Friends.9 1  JB probably received this communication from BL three days earlier, when he and JB both dined and supped together (Journ. 18 July 1787; BL would also sup with JB on this day, but only after he wrote this letter to WF, as suggested by the order of events in his journal entry for 21 July—where ‘Home & wrote letters’ precedes ‘Langton with us’— and confirmed by the postscript below). If the source of BL’s information was a letter from WF, it has not been traced. 2  Sir James Hunter Blair had died at Harrogate on 1 July 1787, aged 46, as related in the letter which follows. 3  On the birth of Jane Forbes in June, see the next letter. 4  See To WF, 8 May 1787 nn. 6, 13, and From WF, 18 Dec. 1787, esp. n. 10. The letter in question from Barbara Young on the health of James Forbes, probably sent to MMB, has not been located. 5  See From WF, 9 Oct. 1782 n. 7, and 25 July 1787 n. 24. 6  William (from 1788 Sir William) Scott

(1745–1836), 1st Baron Stowell from 1821, was a prominent barrister, a good friend of JR, and a member from Dec. 1778 of the Literary Club, with whom JB frequently socialized and occasionally corresponded during his years in London (see Corr. 2, p. 337 n. 1). He had accompanied SJ on the Oxford-to-Edinburgh portion of his journey north to meet JB for the Highland and Hebrides tour, and WF had met him at a breakfast at the Boswells’ home on 15 Aug. 1773 (Life v. 24; WF is pictured between JB and Scott in Collings and Rowlandson’s 1786 caricature of this event, ‘Veronica A Breakfast Conversation’). Early in July 1786 Scott had favoured JB’s ‘quietly returning to the Scotch bar’, but later that month, after JB enjoyed some small professional successes, ‘he acquiesced’ in JB’s plan to remain at the English bar (Journ. 4 and 30 July 1786). He would sit in Parliament as the member for Downton (1790–1801) and then for Oxford University (1801–21), where he had taught ancient history from the time JB met him in 1773 until 1785. The epithet ‘Dr.

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25 July 1787 Scott of the Commons’ (also in the Journ., e.g. 4 July 1786) referred to his affiliation since 1780 with Doctors’ Commons, which housed the Admiralty Court where Scott would distinguish himself as a lawyer and, from 1798, a judge (see Corr. 3, pp. lxxxviii–xc, and passim). JB would present him with a handsomely inscribed gift copy of the first edition of the Life (Boswell’s Books, p. 420). WF sometimes saw Scott in London, and on 12 Feb. 1792 he would write to LF of accompanying him the previous evening to the scientific salon hosted by the eminent botanist Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820), where they met JB among the company (FP 46/4). 7  JB’s journal entry for Wed. 18 July notes the presence of all those mentioned for dinner at his home, as well as VB’s friend ‘Miss Buchanan’ (on whom see To WF, 11 Oct. 1787 n. 5) and a ‘Mr. William Gordon’. 8  William Laurence Brown (1755–1830), Church of Scotland minister and author, was born in Utrecht, where his father William (1719–91) was minister of the Scots Kirk, but he was raised in Scotland after his father’s appointment as Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of St. Andrews in 1757. His uncle Robert Brown (1728–77) succeeded his father as minister of the Scots Kirk in Utrecht, and JB had socialized with him extensively when studying law in Utrecht in 1763–64, and corresponded with him afterwards. Young William was ordained in St. Andrews in Jan. 1778, after which he returned to Utrecht, where he had, like JB, studied civil law, to succeed his recently deceased uncle as minister of the Scots Kirk. He was elected Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Moral Philosophy at the University of Utrecht in 1787 and Professor of Natural Law three years later. He would flee to London in 1795 in anticipation of a French invasion, and would live the rest of his life in Aberdeen, as a minister and Professor of Divinity at

Marischal College, and then its Principal. From the late 1780s he published a variety of works, mainly on religious topics (ODNB). Three days before writing this letter to WF, JB wrote in his journal, ‘Dr. Brown of Utrecht breakfasted’, adding cryptically, ‘Curious thoughts’—perhaps a reference to memories of his emotionally tumultuous time studying law at Utrecht in 1763–64, when Robert Brown had been his confidant and mentor (see Holland, passim). The Netherlands had been torn by years of civil war, compounded by a Prussian invasion in May 1787, and Utrecht, where JB had lived during a more peaceful era, was at the centre of the conflict. JB looked forward to discussing ‘the state of Holland’ with Brown and BL at supper, but in the event he was disappointed. Writing in his journal later in the day on 21 July, he commented, ‘Dr. Brown made an excuse for not coming—Ill bred.’ There is no evidence that JB ever interacted with him again. 9  BL came from a Tory, though not Jacobite, background (Life i. 430, 14 July 1763) and was described by Hester Lynch Thrale as ‘a Tory & a high Church man up to the Eyes’ (Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale (Later Mrs. Piozzi), 1776– 1809, ed. Katharine C. Balderston, 2 vols., 1942, i. 106). JB, like WF, identified with the values of BL and other Tory friends in his London circle, including TB and Sir William Scott. JB appears to be playfully appropriating, as apposite to himself and his circle, the term put into circulation disapprovingly by EB, whose 1770 essay Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents had attacked a ministerial cabal, a ‘Court faction’, which perpetuated its interests with systematic rewards to placemen: ‘The name by which they chuse to distinguish themselves, is that of King’s men, or the King’s friends, by an invidious exclusion of the rest of his Majesty’s most loyal and affectionate subjects’ (p. 20).

From Forbes, Wednesday 25 July 1787 MS. Yale (C 1278). Abbott No. 356. previously printed: Partially printed in Corr. 2, p. 179.

Edinbg. 25 July 1787 I am to blame, very much to blame indeed! My Dear Sir, for not having replied to your very friendly letter,1 and your very obliging inquiry about our family: and I have been living in that most painful of all situations, a state of perpetual self-reprehension, as our worthy friend Dr. Johnson would have expressed it,2 ever since I received your letter for my neglect. Now, you are so good as [to] heap coals of fire on my head, by favoring me with another.3 90

25 July 1787 I have the pleasure to tell you that about 6 weeks ago, Lady F. was safely delivered of a daughter4 and on no former occasion has she ever had a better recovery, which is much more than could have been looked for, considering her bad state of health after her accident last summer,5 and her constant distress and anxiety all the Spring on poor James’s account, who to our very great satisfaction, no less than surprise, after languishing since the beginning of March last, in such a state of weakness, that it would not have been any matter of wonder to6 me, to have heard any day of his death, has of late begun to get some strength; and even gives us hopes that he may yet live.7 All the rest of the family are in perfect health. I was exceedingly sorry to hear by your former letter that Mrs. Boswell had been so very ill: but as you say nothing to that purpose in your last, I trust she is now quite well; and that London begins to agree with her Constitution.8 I hope, too, you begin to find Westminster Hall a more productive field than it seemed at first to promise to be.9 You are perfectly right surely to give that project a fair trial: and indeed till you finish your life of Johnson I suppose you cannot well be any where else; as you will have the best opportunities in London of getting materials and assistance.10 I have always declared my conviction of the sincerity of your assertion that you meant not to do an injury to any man by any thing inserted in the Tour to the Hebrides;11 but as the feelings of some were hurt by their names being introduced without their previous knowledge, I make no doubt you will be particularly careful in that respect, in your next publication.12 I am confident you will pardon me for mentioning this once more, by reason of my motive; which purely proceeds from my friendship to you. I thank you truly for your kind condolence on the loss I have sustained by the death of poor Sir Jas. Blair. Nothing could be more unexpected by me than this unhappy event. The very last letter I received from him about ten days before his death: he said he should set out on Wednesday the 27th June, and be at home the 30th13 and I was exulting in the prospect of getting away in a few days to Aberdeenshire,14 where I have not been these three years, when on that very 30th Mr. Hamilton of Wishaw15 arrived express from Harrowgate in three and twenty hours for Lady Blair; having left Sir James in the utmost danger and next day he breath’d his last, before her Ladyship could reach that place.16 Poor Woman! She has met with the heaviest of all human Afflictions; which, however, she supports with a degree of composure perfectly astonishing. As for myself, after one and thirty Years of the strictest intimacy, during which long period we never had a difference nor a separation of interests, I am not to look at this time of day, to have the loss ever made up to me.17 Too true, indeed, is the observation that Mrs. Montague once made, in a letter of hers I had occasion to see,18 after the death of the late Dr. Gregory,19 that when one20 has passed forty, one can scarce walk a step without treading on the grave of a friend.21 It is not easy for you to conceive the lamentation that was made for him here, by all ranks of people; any little foibles he had, which used to be matter of pleasantry to his friends, seemed to be forgotten as if they had never existed; and no thing was heard of but the loss the public had sustained by the death of so public-spirited a man; who to a mind of the firmest texture, added a degree of active Zeal that spurn’d at all difficulty in carrying a favorite plan into execution.22 91

25 July 1787 By a Gentleman who sets out in a few days I will send you your Hypochondriacs:24 together with Dr. Johnson’s letter, and the Round Robin. I had markt a few passages in the first, with a pencil on the Margin in regard to which I meant to have had some conversation with you: but it would lead to a too laborious discussion to attempt it on paper. Indeed, it is of no great consequence; for if I recollect right they were25 chiefly some inconsiderable remarks that had occurred to me on the language as I went along. Are you about to publish these, in a collected form?26 I lately heard of a singular enough will of a man of this Country, but who had been long settled in England, where he died leaving all his effects, likewise situated in England, to the University of Aberdeen for a charitable purpose, to the exclusion of some nephews and nieces (I believe they are so nearly related to him) who are so poor that they are not able to enter into litigation with the University for the recovery of the Money; altho they are informed that by some point or other of the law of England, the donation to the University may be set aside.27 Now, altho I am no enemy to Charity in general, nor to public Charities in particular, yet I confess I am of opinion that there is no better applied Charity than that of providing for one’s poor relations when they are not undeserving.28 I should therefore think it no breach of Charity in me if I could assist those poor people to the recovery of the money; provided I were sure that their Claim is well founded in law. Some litigation took place in the Court here; but the Lords29 thought I believe, that it came more properly to be tried in the Courts in England, where the property lies. Would you give me leave to send you the Session-papers in the Case when tried here, by which you will see the strong and the weak side of the question. If you think the law of England in their favor, perhaps you might not dislike, till more profitable business comes in the way, to undertake the Cause.30 I do not mean that you should be at any expence but merely your own aid as Counsel, and to suspend the payment of the fees as such, until you gained the Cause. Any fees of Court, I should pay myself; as I have been told there is no such thing as a poor’s roll in Westminster hall.31 I will be happy to have the pleasure of hearing from you, to tell me how you and Mrs. Boswell do. Lady F. joins me in sincere good wishes to you and her. My heart, I do assure you, is always with you and our friends in London, but Alas! this unhappy catastrophe of poor Sir James’s puts my chance of seeing them again at an almost immeasurable distance.32 Remember me with gratitude, affection, and respect, to Sir Joshua, Mr. Langton, Mr. Malone, Mr. Burke: and if you happen to see the worthy Bishop of Chester and Mrs. Porteous,33 I entreat you to present me dutifully to them. I remain ever, My Dear Sir, your most obedient and faithful humble Servant, William Forbes 23

To WF, 8 May 1787. WF would use the phrase ‘perpetual self-reprehension’ again in From WF, 9 Feb. 1790, writing of ‘perpetual self-reprehension, as Dr. Johnson would have exprest it’, in regard to WF’s guilty feelings about failing to reply sooner to JB’s last letter; a similar usage appears in regard to SJ in a letter from WF

to James Mercer, 12 May 1803 (FP 83/5). Although this precise phrase seems not to occur in SJ’s publications, WF uses it to refer to SJ’s well-known tendency to turn ‘with inward hostility against himself’, as Arthur Murphy put it (quoted in W. Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson, 1975, p. 377). WF would have encountered this characteristic in reading

1 

2 

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25 July 1787 WF (‘Far may we search before we find / A heart so manly and so kind!’) and romanticizes the coincidence of his death (on 10 Nov. 1806) occurring shortly after Jane’s wedding, as well as so soon after the appearance (in June 1806) of WF’s biography of JaB (‘Scarce had lamented Forbes paid / The tribute to his Minstrel’s shade’ / The tale of friendship scarce was told / Ere the narrator’s heart was cold.’). Scott explained the allusions to Jane (referred to as ‘one of Sir William’s daughters’) and JaB in a footnote (quoted in Intro., pp. lxix), which heaped additional praise on WF. See Walter Scott, Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field, ed. Ainsley McIntosh, 2018, pp. 100–01, 246 (and the editor’s note on p. 410, regarding Scott’s disyllabic rendering of ‘Forbes’ in the lines quoted above). 5  See From WF, 25 Apr. 1787 n. 11. 6  MS. ‘to’ written over ‘in’. 7  See To WF, 8 May 1787 n. 13. James’s death would be reported to JB in From WF, 18 Dec. 1787. 8  In To WF, 8 May 1787, JB had written that ‘the alarming return which my Wife has had of her dangerous illness, and the apprehension that the air of London is hurtful to her, presses me in a most interesting manner. I thank God she is at present better; but she has so many turns, that appearances are sadly precarious’. These ‘many turns’ are reflected in JB’s journal from this period: e.g., on 19 May: ‘When we came home my Wife was seised with another severe fit of spitting blood, so that Mr. John Hunter [(1728–93), eminent Scottish-born London surgeon] was called. She grew easier soon’; but on 27 May: ‘M.M. very good’. WF could only hope that JB’s failure to mention MMB’s health in To WF, 21 July 1787, was an indication of her becoming acclimated to London, but this was not the case. 9  WF is responding to JB’s remarks in To WF, 8 May 1787, which begin, ‘As to the Law, I cannot say that the prospect is as yet brilliant; but I have no reason to complain’. Yet WF seems to have understood that the situation was worse than JB indicated. On 26 May JB wrote in his journal of being rebuked by the leading counsel in a case in the Court of King’s Bench for which he had failed to appear because he had never received notice of the time and date. His journal for 11 June reads, ‘my brother T.D. … pressed upon me the discreditable appearance which I made here, not being either in parliament, or in practice at the bar, or having fortune sufficient to enable me to make a figure suitable to the rank of my family. I resolved to quit

SJ’s posthumous Prayers and Meditations (see From WF, 16 Sept. 1785 and WF to JaB, 9 Jan. 1786, under date in this volume), where SJ repeatedly scourges himself for being lazy and for drifting unproductively through life, in the process exacerbating his anxiety. On 7 Sept. 1738 SJ prays for help ‘to redeem the time which I have spent in sloth, vanity, and wickedness’; on 1 Jan. 1757 he asks God to forgive him ‘that I have mispent the time past’; on 18 Sept. 1771: ‘I have neither attempted nor formed any scheme of life by which I may do good, and please God.’; on 7 Apr. 1776: ‘My reigning sin, to which perhaps many others are appendant, is waste of time, and general sluggishness’; and SJ’s entry for 2 Apr. 1779 includes, ‘I am now to review the last year, and find little but dismal vacuity, neither business nor pleasure; much intended, and little done. My health is much broken; my nights afford me little rest. I have tried opium, but its help is counterbalanced with great disturbance; it prevents the spasms, but it hinders sleep. O God have mercy on me’ (Prayers and Meditations, pp. 2, 24, 99, 139, 168). Early in the Life, JB would describe SJ’s youthful attack of depression, ‘in the college vacation of the year 1729’, as the beginning of a lifelong affliction: ‘he felt himself overwhelmed with an horrible hypochondria, with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which made existence misery. From this dismal malady he never afterwards was perfectly relieved; and all his labours, and all his enjoyments, were but temporary interruptions of its baleful influence’ (i. 63–64). 3  WF refers to To WF, 21 July 1787, which JB sent before WF could reply to his letter of 8 May. His allusion is to Proverbs 15:21– 22: ‘If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink: For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the Lord shall reward thee’; and to Romans 12:19–21: ‘Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath. … Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.’ 4  Jane Forbes (1787–1862) had been born on 10 June. On 11 Sept. 1806 she would marry James Skene of Rubislaw (1775–1864), Edinburgh advocate, a good friend of both Sir Walter Scott and AB. Scott would also become fond of Jane, referring to her as ‘a most excellent person’ in a diary entry of 4 Jan. 1826. The fourth canto of Scott’s 1808 poem Marmion, dedicated to Skene, praises

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25 July 1787 London as a residence at the end of two years from my being called to the bar [i.e., 13 Feb. 1786–Feb. 1788], should no fortunate event raise me.’ His journal for the spring and summer suggests he was hanging about Chancery on unspecified business (8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15 June) or on the Quarter Sessions/ Assize Circuit (Chelmsford, Essex, 10–12, 24–26 July) in a generally unsuccessful attempt to obtain briefs. He seems to have enjoyed what work he found, reporting in his journal on 19 and 20 July 1787, ‘Well in Court’; on 24 July from the Home Circuit jaunt, ‘All day in Court excellently entertained’; and the next day, ‘Court still most entertaining’. But there was too little work to be had. 10  In regard to finishing the Life, WF was correct. The journal shows that during this period JB was obtaining documents such as SJ’s diary (20 Mar., 20 July 1787) and working on the biography with EM (e.g., 21 July: ‘Malone’s wt. some of Johns. Papers’), and when the work was farther along in 1790 and 1791 he would need to spend time with his printer, Henry Baldwin, among others. Yet the time JB devoted to the Life prevented him from actively pursuing his legal career (see Caudle, pp. 125–28; Corr. 2, ‘Chronology’). 11  JB made this assertion at the end of the Tour, remarking that ‘I have suppressed every thing which I thought could really hurt any one now living’ (Life v. 415–16). This Forbesian point had been an issue in the dispute with AFT over an offending passage in the first edition (see From AFT, 31 Oct. 1785, under date in this volume, and Appendix 3 below), and JB reinforced it in a footnote added to the second edition in Dec. 1785. After stating that he has tried to delete from this edition ‘a few observations … which might perhaps be considered as passing the bounds of a strict decorum’, he adds, ‘If any of the same kind are yet left, it is owing to inadvertence alone, no man being more unwilling to give pain to others than I am’ (Tour2, p. 527; Life v. 415 n. 4). By the third edition of 1786, however, JB was feeling decidedly less conciliatory, as shown by the Advertisement he prefixed to it, signed 15 Aug. 1786 (although the book would not be published until 10 Oct., Whitehall Eve. Post, 7–10 Oct. 1786). It was a response to criticism and mockery, beginning with the publication on 22 Feb. 1786 of ‘a scurrilous attack in verse upon me under the name of Peter Pindar’ (Journ. 24 Feb. 1786), titled A Poetical and Congratulatory Epistle to James Boswell, Esq. on His Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with the Celebrated

Dr. Johnson. By Peter Pindar, Esq. (the satirist John Wolcot [1738–1819]), followed two months later by the same author’s Bozzy and Piozzi, or, the British Biographers, a Town Eclogue. Each of those satirical pamphlets passed through ten large authorized editions over the next two or three years (see James R. Alexander, ‘Publishing Peter Pindar: Production, Profits, and Piracy in Georgian Satire’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, cxii [2018]: 149–82, esp. 156). Pindar’s first pamphlet claimed that JB had softened his harsh references to Lord Macdonald in the second edition (see Life v. 148 n. 1) out of fear and intimidation. In association with EM, JB set out to defend himself publicly against Pindar’s insinuations by firmly denying that he had been intimidated (Journ. 10 Mar. 1785; JB’s letter—dated 9 Mar.—in, e.g., St. James’s Chron., 11–14 Mar. 1786, in Facts and Inventions, pp. 231–32). But it was too late. The theme of intimidation was picked up by Collings and Rowlandson in their satirical print, ‘Revising for the Second Edition’ (published in June 1786), which shows JB cowering in fear as Macdonald, whom JB had ridiculed as ‘a rapacious Highland Chief’, stands over him with a cudgel in order to force the revisions (on this affair, see Later Years, pp. 306–11). The new Advertisement to the third edition of the Tour stated that ‘A few notes are added of which the principal object is, to refute misrepresentation and calumny’ (Life v. 3). For example, a paragraph was tacked onto the gracious footnote from the second edition, cited above, attacking a ‘contemptible scribbler’ (i.e., Pindar) who had ‘impudently and falsely asserted that the passages omitted [in the second edition] were defamatory, and that the omission was not voluntary, but compulsory’ (Life v. 415 n. 4). In the main text, the third edition placed new emphasis on the word ‘really’ in the first sentence quoted above—‘I have suppressed every thing which I thought could really hurt any one now living’—implying that many of JB’s alleged offences were not actually hurtful at all. Having tried to do the right thing, JB now believed that his attempts at conciliation had backfired. Faced with this turn in JB’s attitude, WF was trying to convince his friend to remain true to the conciliatory principle he had articulated at the end of the Tour. 12  WF had made this point in more general terms in From WF, 6 Dec. 1785. In his view, the easiest way to avoid giving pain or offence was to conceal the names of the people mentioned in anecdotes. Although WF would tell JaB in a letter of 9 July 1791

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25 July 1787 that he knew firsthand of places where JB had sometimes done this in the first edition of the Life (‘I could in many places of the Book, supply the names of Gentlemen whom I remember to have heard him mention, when he has been relating occasionally many of his anecdotes to me, and whom he has had the judgement to conceal by merely alluding to them; I only wish he had more frequently made use of this discretion’, FP 98/3), he was convinced that JB did not practice this policy of concealment enough, either in the Tour or later in the Life, and he would regularly press for it to be applied more broadly and more rigorously in JB’s writings. Research by L. F. Powell shows that the number of names concealed by JB was proportionally much greater in the Life than in the Tour: he found only 70 ‘anonymous persons’ in the third edition of the Tour but 511 in the third edition of the Life (Life i. ix; see also Life vi. 425–29, 431–75). There is no way to ascertain exactly what effect WF had in achieving these results, but his persistent campaign to have JB suppress or remove names of living people, strive to avoid giving offence in references to the living or the dead, and soothe hurt feelings is evident throughout the last decade of this correspondence, and he also expressed his anxiety about these issues in letters to others (e.g., see WF to TB, 29 Apr. 1786, under date in this volume, the letter to JaB cited above, and the draft of WF’s letter to Frances Bowdler, 11 July 1788, FP 78/3 [1788]: ‘My friend Boswell is preparing a Quarto on that subject [i.e., SJ’s life], which I shall be desirous of seeing because he tells me he has collected a number of curious materials; I hope he will [be] careful to avoid inserting anything that may give offence to any’). WF was perhaps the only person who could have pressed JB so relentlessly about the need to avoid giving offence without ever losing JB’s respect or friendship. 13  James Hunter Blair had not actually stated that he would be arriving in Edinburgh on the 30th, but his letter to WF of 20 June 1787 justified the inference: ‘P.S. I still think of leaving this the 27th; I propose being at Brodie’s at New[c]astle on the 28th—and Dunbar the 29th—if you have occasion to write me’ (FP 119/3). This usage of ‘this’, as a pronoun ‘used elliptically for “this time” or “this place”’ (DSL), is a Scotticism, and appears in the list of Scotticisms which David Hume appended to the first edition of his Political Discourses in 1752 (see also WF to LF, 8 June 1795, under date in this volume, n. 24). ‘Brodie’s’ was the inn owned by ‘Hugh

Brodie [fl. 1774–1800], inn-keeper, turk’s head, Bigg-market’, as listed in William Whitehead, The Newcastle and Gateshead Directory, for 1782, 83, and 84, [1782], p. 10. 14  WF would postpone this excursion to Aberdeenshire until Sept. (From WF, 19 Oct. 1787). Ten years earlier WF had postponed an excursion to Aberdeenshire because his partner had been directed by his physicians to go to Harrogate for a few weeks for his health (WF to JaB, 27 Mar. 1777, FP 98/2). 15  William Hamilton of Wishaw (1765– 1814), 7th Lord Belhaven and Stenton (George Hamilton, History of the House of Hamilton, 1933, p. 134). 16  Hunter Blair’s wife had been styled Lady Blair since succeeding to the Dunskey estates in 1777. JB had visited her childhood home near Portpatrick in spring 1769 and described her in a journal entry of 1 May as ‘a very pretty girl’ who ‘seems to have much goodness’. 17  WF later wrote of his partner, ‘I, in particular, was deprived by his death of a friend whom I can never replace, with whom I had lived in a degree of intimacy which few brothers can boast of during one-andthirty years, in which long period we never had a difference nor a separation of interest. It has been stated how we went together from the time of our apprenticeship, till we gradually arrived, after a variety of changes, to be at the head of the house. But I should do great injustice to his superior talents, did I not declare that to him it was chiefly owing that the house rose to such a pitch of unlooked-for prosperity and reputation. He possessed a sound and manly understanding and an excellent heart. In his friendships he was warm, steady, and sincere, and ever ready to promote the interest of those to whom he formed an attachment. In his disposition he was cheerful and fond of society, and his house was at all times distinguished for hospitality’ (Memoirs of a Banking-House, p. 65). 18  This letter from the prominent bluestocking and author Elizabeth (Robinson) Montagu (1718–1800) has not been identified. 19  Dr. John Gregory was widely admired for his character and piety. WF was closely connected with him through friendship, religion, and kinship ties (see From FHC, 1 Jan. 1782 n. 2). Gregory’s will named WF one of the five tutors (i.e., guardians) of Gregory’s children (see above, From FHC, 1 Jan. 1782; From WF, 6 Dec. 1785; WF to JaB, 9 Jan. 1786, under date in this volume), as he noted in a long, adulatory footnote in Beattie i. 34. News of Gregory’s apparent death in Edinburgh on 1 Feb. 1773 at the age of forty-eight shocked

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25 July 1787 and sorrowed his friends, including Elizabeth Montagu and JaB, and the situation was made more gruesome by a period of uncertainty about his status while he lay in a coma, delaying his funeral for more than three weeks (WF to JaB, 23 Feb. 1773, FP 98/1). Mrs. Montagu, who had already informally adopted Gregory’s daughter Dorothea as her companion (see Betty Rizzo, Companions without Vows: Relationships among Eighteenth-Century British Women, 1994, Ch. 6), wrote on the occasion of his death, ‘The hours I have passed in his company were amongst the most delightful of my life. He was instructive and amusing, but he was much more; one loved Dr. Gregory for the sake of virtue and virtue (one might almost say) for the sake of Dr. Gregory’ (quoted in Mrs. Montagu, ‘Queen of the Blues’, ed. Reginald Blunt, 2 vols., 1923, i. 270). JaB reminded Mrs. Montagu of Gregory’s ‘zeal in promoting my interest and reputation’ and remarked that ‘of all his friends … none has so much cause of sorrow, on this occasion, as I’ (Beattie i. 249–50). Understanding the depth of JaB’s grief, JB sent him words of condolence on 20 Apr. 1773 (L 53), to which JaB replied from Edinburgh on 1 May 1773 (C 105) that everything there now filled him with sadness because of this loss. There are indications that JB himself was deeply affected by Gregory’s death. He had written to WJT as early as 4 Mar. 1767 that ‘I have got pretty well acquainted with Doctor Gregory … one of the most amiable pleasant Men alive’ (Corr. 6, p. 167), and his journal notes (J 26) record dining with Gregory three times within the last nine months of his life (19 and 21 May 1772 and 12 Jan. 1773). It is likely that he conveyed the news of Gregory’s death with much emotion in either or both of two unreported letters to WJT (8 Mar. and 18 Mar. 1773), for on 30 Mar. WJT replied, ‘Dr Gregory’s fate is enough to alarm the strongest of us. Good God, how short, how precarious is life! We seem born only to die’ (Corr. 6, pp. 323–24). A few days later, JB joined Lord Lyttelton (George Lyttelton [1709–73], 1st Baron Lyttelton), ‘in lamenting the death of Dr. Gregory’, whom he praised as ‘a distinguished tree as the apple tree among the trees of the wood’ (Journ. 6 Apr. 1773). 20  MS. ‘one’ inserted above the line by caret. 21  Following the death of WF and JB’s mutual friend Dr. John Cairnie (d. 1791), WF would use a similar phrase in a letter to JB (From WF, 28 May 1791), although without allusion to Mrs. Montagu and with fifty rather

than forty given as the critical age: ‘it is a truth but too plain, that when one passes fifty years of age, one scarcely makes a step without treading on the grave of an old acquaintance’. 22  WF elaborated candidly on the life and character (including the ‘foibles’) of his partner in Memoirs of a Banking-House, pp. 65–66: ‘As a magistrate, he was active and zealous in the discharge of his duty; as a senator [i.e., M.P.], he was honestly independent, supporting the measures of the ministers of the crown when he thought them consistent with the principles of the constitution and the good of the people. Too early and too deeply immersed in business, he had little or no leisure for study, and was therefore but little acquainted with books or literature; but he possessed, in an eminent degree, a species of knowledge of the utmost importance to him as a man of business—great knowledge of the world, and an almost intuitive discernment of the characters of men. In business, both of a public and private nature, he was skilful and active, and capable of the most unwearied application, and his plans in general were contrived with prudence and executed with steadiness. Of this a memorable proof was afforded by the magnificent idea, which he formed on his being elected Lord Provost of Edinburgh, of a communication between the High Street and the south side of the city, by a bridge over the Cowgate. In the prosecution of which extensive and important improvement, notwithstanding he met with no inconsiderable degree of opposition from ignorant and interested individuals, he was not to be discouraged, but kept on the even tenor of his way, combating the prejudices of some and the influence of others, till at last he accomplished his purpose. In his temper there was a degree of warmth, which, in the pursuit of a favourite object, or in the heat of an argument, occasionally bordered on vehemence and impetuosity, and which sometimes, in the intercourse of society, led him to forget or overlook what Lord Chesterfield [Philip Dormer Stanhope (1694– 1773), 4th Earl of Chesterfield] calls the graces [referring mainly to ‘the countenance, and the way of speaking’, considered essential aspects of ‘the art of pleasing’ in Chesterfield’s Letters, ii. 32–33]. In his notions of right and wrong, he was rigid and even stern, and he had no allowance to make where he perceived in others any departure from the standard he had formed of propriety of conduct. But his virtues will be remembered and the utility of his public conduct felt and applauded long after those slight

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25 July 1787 imperfections are consigned to oblivion.’ According to the obituary in the Gent. Mag. (July 1787, lvii. 641), ‘the music bells of Edinburgh have not been allowed to be played upon since accounts were received of his death’ (on the music bells of St. Giles Church, on which tunes were played for an hour each afternoon except Sunday, see BEJ, p. 12). 23  Identified in the first sentence of the next letter as Andrew Blane of Blanefield (1744–1839), W.S., with whom JB had sometimes associated in Edinburgh, nearly always in connection with Blane’s role as the business agent of MMB’s nephew, and JB’s client, Sir Walter Montgomerie-Cuninghame (d. 1814), 4th Baronet of Corsehill in Ayrshire (e.g., Journ. 27, 29 Jan. 1780; 20 Feb. 1782; 16, 22 Dec. 1783). 24  JB had asked WF to return the Hypochondriack essays in his possession in To WF, 21 July 1787, and he would acknowledge receiving them in To WF, 11 Oct. 1787. It is uncertain which ‘Hypochondriacs’ were being returned to JB at this time, however. After JB lent WF the first forty numbers in a bound volume in late summer 1781 (see To WF, [28 Aug. 1781]), WF returned the volume within months of receiving it (it was then sent to Lord Kames), and it appears that JB subsequently lent WF a second batch of Hypochondriack essays (possibly enclosed with To WF, [between late Sept. and early Oct. 1782]), to which WF referred when he wrote in From WF, 9 Oct. 1782, that he was ‘busy with the Hypochondriack’. Although it is unlikely that WF would have retained that second batch of essays for five years, there is no reference to this matter in the correspondence or the journal between Oct. 1782 and July 1787, and there are no further references after JB’s acknowledgement in To WF, 11 Oct. 1787. 25  MS. ‘are’ altered to ‘were’. 26  See To WF, [28 Aug. 1781] n. 7. JB never replied to this question. 27  WF refers to the case of Alexander Macra (d. 1780), a Scot from Ross-shire who prospered as an ironmonger in Bristol and died there without a wife or children. In his will, Macra left annuities to his sisters, Mary (‘spouse to James Matheson, in Rairaig’) and Margaret (‘spouse to John Matheson, in Duiriness’), and a larger bequest to a cousin, John Macra. But he left most of his money to a fund that would continue to earn interest until it reached the sum of £20,000 Scots (which it did in 1794, when it was valued at £1666 13s 4d sterling), after which the interest was to be used for the education (including clothing and maintenance costs) of indigent

Scottish boys who shared his surname (not objecting to those born with an e, h, w, or y added to the end of it), with a preference for descendants of Macra’s paternal great grandfather. Qualifying boys between the ages of nine and eleven would be selected to attend one of the burgh schools in Aberdeen, and at the age of thirteen they would either be apprenticed to a trade or, if found ‘to have an extraordinary genius for Letters’, sent to King’s College, Aberdeen, for a full education in arts and—if so inclined—divinity (P. J. Anderson, ‘The Macra Bursaries, 1794– 1888’, Scottish Notes and Queries, x (1897): 177–79, quoting Macra’s will at p. 178). Macra’s sisters, being the nearest relations, sued to set aside this settlement, but the Court of Session sustained it in a ruling on 1 Feb. 1786 (‘Margaret and Mary Macra against the Principal of the College of Aberdeen, and others’, in Decisions of the Court of Session. From November 1781 to August 1787, ed. Alexander Law, William Steuart, and Robert Craigie, 1792, pp. 388–89). 28  WF’s views on charity, as derived from ‘natural feeling’, ‘Reason’, and ‘Religion’, including ‘various methods of practising’ it, are discussed in ‘Letters Explanatory’ iii. 171–216. WF had been actively involved in the administration of poor relief in Edinburgh, and in Mar. 1777 he published anonymously A Plan for the Better Providing for the Poor of the City of Edinburgh, by an Alteration of the System of Management of the CharityWorkhouse … By a Citizen of Edinburgh (see ‘Forbes’, p. 352, and David Robertson, ‘The Charity Work House’, in The Princes Street Proprietors and Other Chapters in the History of the Royal Burgh of Edinburgh, 1935, pp. 274–309). 29  That is, the judges in the Scottish Court of Session. 30  WF alternates between the English word ‘Case’ and the Scottish word ‘Cause’. 31  JB appears not to have responded to WF’s offer to pursue the case in London on behalf of Alexander Macra’s sisters, and no evidence has been found of any further legal action. The Macra Bursaries were accordingly established in Aberdeen, but their impact seems to have been greater in the schools than at the university level. 32  Thanks in part to his increased responsibilities after the death of his partner, as well as family matters in Edinburgh and other responsibilities in Aberdeenshire, WF would not have an opportunity to travel to London to see JB and their mutual friends for nearly four and a half more years (late Dec. 1791). 33  Beilby Porteus and his wife Margaret

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11 October 1787 (Hodgson) (d. 1815). JaB had written to WF from Hunton on 14 July 1784, ‘You are no stranger to the character of this amiable man. Mrs Porteus is not less amiable’ (Beattie Corr. iii. 207). The Forbeses had met Mrs. Porteus along with the bishop in Kent in late summer 1786, but JaB, perhaps not realizing this, wrote to WF on 14 Sept. 1786, ‘You would

like Mrs Porteus greatly. Her cheerfulness, good sense, and goodness of heart, make her a most excellent companion for the Bishop, and exceedingly beloved by all who know her’ (Beattie ii. 195). WF’s letter to JB of 18 Dec. 1787 would praise both the bishop and ‘Mrs. Porteous a most excellent, pleasant, agreeable woman’.

To Forbes, Thursday 11 October 1787 MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1335. reg. let. sent: 11 Oct. 1787: ‘Sir W. Forbes that his last packets did not contain the Round Robin & Dr. Johnson’s Letter; begging to have them. Have been somewhat troubled with my old inexplicable complaint lowness of spirits. No situation I believe is proof against it, otherwise I think I should not have it in London. However one finds here the best remedies, Sir Joshua, Courtenay etc. I am warmly sensible of my obligations, & wish much to have it in my power to diminish my debt to his house; but do not see a prospect this year. Shall be very desireous to hear particularly about his family.’ previously printed: Partially printed in Corr. 2, p. 187.

London 11 Octr. 1787 My Dear Sir: By Mr. Andrew Blane I received a packet from you, upon opening which I found the numbers of The Hypochondriack which I had lent you,1 but to my great disappointment, did not find the Round Robin, and the Letter from Dr. Johnson, which you had mentioned in your last, were to be sent at the same time. I shall be much obliged to you, if you will now be so good as to let me have them. My Work has been retarded by my having gone to Ayrshire, which cost me seven weeks; but I did essential service in the management of my Estate, and made some progress in canvassing the County against the next election; and my Wife and eldest son and daughter who were with me, were all much the better for the jaunt.2 Since my return, I have been somewhat troubled with my old inexplicable complaint Lowness of Spirits,3 of which you are happy enough to know nothing by experience, and I sincerely hope never shall.4 No situation I believe is proof against it; otherwise I think I should not have it in London. However one finds here the best remedies. The day before yesterday Sir Joshua and Courtenay dined and supped with me;5 and tomorrow Courtenay and I are to dine at Sir Joshua’s.6 Malone is at Cambridge, and does not return till saturday. We miss him much. Till Michaelmas term begins,7 I shall be close at Work upon Johnson’s Life.8 I long to have it finished. My chief merit I find will be that of a diligent Collector. But the Book will be very valuable. We shall be very desireous to hear particularly about you and your family, and would fain flatter ourselves that your fine boy James will have a perfect recovery.9 I am warmly sensible of my obligations to you, My Dear Sir, and I wish much to have it in my power to diminish my debt to your house. But I do not see a prospect of doing any thing towards it for a year yet.10 We join in kind compliments to you and Lady Forbes and I ever am with most sincere regard, your faithful and affectionate humble servant, James Boswell 98

11 October 1787 See From WF, 25 July 1787 and n. 24. JB, MMB, AB, and VB lived at Auchinleck for five weeks, from 20 Aug. to 24 Sept. 1787 (Later Years, pp. 356–58; Book of Company, pp. 77–79), but adding eleven days of travel time (six from London to Auchinleck, and five back to London, where they arrived on 29 Sept.) brings the total closer to the seven weeks mentioned by JB. From the journal kept intermittently during this visit (J 104, partially summarized in Experiment, p. 145), we know that JB collected his rents (4 and 5 Sept.) and participated in various activities which reinforced his status as the laird, including attending numerous sermons as part of the annual communion celebration involving Auchinleck and other nearby parishes (23–27 Aug.). He also attended the Auchinleck Lamb Fair which followed the sacramental festivities on 28 Aug., and on 22 Sept., two days before his departure, he hosted a dinner for his tenants, which he thought went ‘wonderfully well’ (Journ.). Both in his journal and Book of Company he recorded frequent meetings with his second cousin and land agent Bruce Campbell of Mayfield and Milrig (?1734– 1813), whom he had retained at the beginning of 1785 ‘for a gratuity of ten guineas yearly to survey my farms with attention to see if the tenants complied with the obligations in their leases, and to assist me in letting farms’ (Journ. beginning of Jan. 1785). But the most likely candidate for the ‘essential service’ of estate management referred to in this letter was noted in JB’s journal entry on 20 Sept.: ‘Mr Grieve concluded contract with Iron Company’, a reference to an agreement made with John Grieve (?1741–1813), manager of the newly established Muirkirk Iron and Coal Tar Works, to provide ironstone, limestone, and coal from parts of JB’s estate, which subsequently became ‘a principal concern’ (Corr. 8, p. xlviii). It is more difficult to substantiate JB’s claim in this letter of making ‘some progress in canvassing the County against the next election’ during this visit to Auchinleck. The next parliamentary election (or by-election) would not occur until Aug. 1789, when JB would fail badly in his effort to win the parliamentary seat for Ayrshire, just as he had done in Apr. 1784 (Pol. Car., pp. 108–14, 152–61). JB made a conspicuous display as croupier (assistant chairman) at the circuit court dinner held in Ayr on 13 Sept. 1787, and he presumably attempted to make political headway at the previously mentioned local events and when socializing with Ayrshire landowners. But no evidence has

been found of direct political canvassing during this period. 3  On 2 Oct. 1787 JB had left London for Chelmsford to attend the Essex Sessions, during and after which he regularly recorded feelings of depression in his journal: ‘Rose lowspirited, & very anxious to see my family again. Drove to London in the Chelmsford Coach—Not at all well’ (4 Oct.); ‘I was not well’ (6 Oct.); ‘Still not well’ (7 Oct.); ‘I was not well’ (9 Oct.). His situation was such that his journal entry on 10 Oct.—the day before this letter to WF—concluded, ‘N. B. Understood not well till a change is marked’. This bout of depression would last for months, exacerbated by unpleasant dealings with his new political patron—Sir James Lowther (1736–1802), from 1784 1st Earl of Lonsdale (see To WF, 29 Jan. 1788 n. 1)—guilt about MMB’s suffering, feelings of anxiety ‘that I had done wrong to come to the english bar’ (Journ. 22 Oct. 1787) and, presumably, concern about the slow progress of the Life. 4  JB’s journal entry for 11 Mar. 1778 had recounted the following conversation with WF: ‘He told me he never had experienced one moment of vapours or melancholy, so could not conceive another afflicted in that way. He never was uneasy but from some cause which he could distinctly tell.’ JB marvelled at this circumstance—just as he did when Paoli told him in Corsica, ‘I hold always firm one great object. I never feel a moment of despondency’ (Corsica, p. 350)— and he would refer to it again in his last known letter to WF, 15 Dec. 1794. JB may not have known that, as a young man, in Jan. 1769 WF had confided in JaB and several other friends about a personal crisis, during which he contemplated giving up his promising banking career, taking Anglican orders, and living his life as a clergyman in a country parish in England (see Intro., p. lxxxv, n. 70). But this experience, which followed two unsuccessful courtships of young women, was nothing like the recurring bouts of depression to which JB was prone throughout his life. 5  As noted in the journal entry for 9 Oct. 1787, ‘Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Courtenay & son Mr. Langton and son, Mr. Devaynes Mrs. & Miss Buchanan dined with us. All but Devaynes supt. I was not well’. John Devaynes (?1726–1801) would be identified in the Life, on the occasion of a dinner he attended with JB and SJ at Richard Brocklesby’s on 15 May 1784, as ‘that ever-cheerful companion Mr. Devaynes, apothecary to his Majesty’ (iv. 273). BL was probably accompanied by the eldest of his

1 

2 

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19 October 1787 four sons, George (1772–1819), who was then fifteen years old. JC’s son was probably his eldest, Kenneth (?1769–1838), then about eighteen, who would dine at JB’s home with his father again six years later (Journ. 25 Oct. 1793). The Buchanans would be described by JB in a letter to WJT of 2 Aug. 1789 as ‘the good Widow Lady with an accomplished daughter’ (PML), at whose London home in Southampton Row VB would board during the winter of 1789–90 (see also To WF, 15 July 1789). The journal records numerous dates besides this one in which one or both of the Buchanans supped or dined with JB during this period (e.g., 30 May, 18 July, 22 Oct., 23 Nov., and 5 Dec. 1787, 9 Nov. 1788, and an unspecified date several weeks later). 6  ‘Dined at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s with Courtenay & son, Langton & son & Hoole. Revived somewhat’ (Journ. 12 Oct. 1787). John Hoole (1727–1803), a playwright and translator of Tasso and Ariosto, had been a close friend and correspondent of SJ, and appears frequently in the Life. He was the owner of the house in Great Queen Street which JB rented in May 1786 (Journ. 2 Feb. 1786). JC and BL’s sons at this dinner were presumably the same ones mentioned in the last note.

7  Michaelmas is the first of four terms in the English legal calendar. Today it extends from Oct. to Dec., but in 1787 it ran from 6 Nov. to 28 Nov. (‘A Table of Law Terms from the Year 1726, to the Present Time’, in Richard Preston, A Treatise on Conveyancing, 3rd ed., 3 vols., 1819–29, i. xxx). 8  Despite his recurrent depression, JB recorded in his journal working on the Life most days between the date of this letter and the start of the Michaelmas term, although his entry for 3 Nov. reads, ‘I grew so much hyp’d [i.e., depressed] that I could not write any Life.’ When the new term began, he seems to have obtained few cases and continued to work on the Life as best he could. By late Nov. the combination of depression, lack of legal work, and political ambition would make him receptive to opportunities to engage with Lonsdale. 9  On James Forbes, see To WF, 8 May 1787 n. 13, and From WF, 18 Dec. 1787, esp. n. 10. 10  On JB’s plan to use profits from the Life to pay off some of the principal from his heritable bond with WF’s bank, see To WF, 2–3 July 1790 and 27 Sept. 1791. The phrase ‘for a year yet’ is another indication that at this time JB believed the Life was much closer to publication than it actually was.

From Forbes, Friday 19 October 1787 MS. Yale (C 1279). Abbott No. 357. Draft in FP+ 3 (undated; headed ‘Mr. Boswell’), up to the sentence beginning ‘I consider this Round Robin …’. reg. let. received: 22 Oct. 1787: ‘Sir William Forbes sending me the Round Robin,—his letter to Dr. Johnson concerning my going to the english bar, & Dr. Johnson’s answer.’ previously printed: Partially printed in Life iii. 83–85,1 and in Corr. 2, pp. 187–88. address: James Boswell Esqr, No. 56 Great Queenstreet, Lincoln’s Innfields, London enclosures: (1) a copy of WF [with JJ] to SJ, 13 July 1784 (not located, but reproduced under date in this volume from a surviving draft); (2) SJ to WF, 7 Aug. 1784 (reproduced under date in this volume); (3) a ‘faithful transcript’ (i.e., copy) of the Round Robin letter written at a dinner party at the home of JR in spring 1776 and presented to SJ soon afterwards (reproduced below). See note below. endorsement: Sir W. Forbes 12 [i.e., 19] Octr. 1787 postmarks: (1) OC 19; (2) OC 22 seal: Forbes of Pitsligo Coat of Arms2 in black wax. note: As explained in the last sentence below the signature of this letter, and in n. 55 below, a parcel containing the three items intended as enclosures (as listed above) was actually sent separately one day earlier than this letter (i.e., 18 Oct. 1787), so that a frank could be used to avoid a postage charge for them.

Edinbg. 19 Octr. 1787 I am favored, My Dear Sir, with your very obliging letter, by which I am exceedingly sorry to hear, you were then3 in a state of depression of spirits: I hope, however, it will be of no long continuance.4 I have heard of but two remedies for such a 100

19 October 1787 Complaint; the Society of agreeable and valuable freinds; and the regular habit5 of exercise. The last is in every one’s power who possesses the use of his Limbs: the first you enjoy in a superlative6 degree in your present situation. You reproach me not without reason7 for not having sent you the papers promised.8 I attempt no apology; tho’ while you were in the shire of Ayr, I went for a very short space of time9 to Aberdeenshire, to look after some Country business, which did not admit of delay.10 I now fulfil my promise of sending you Dr. Johnson’s letter, and the Copy of mine which gave occasion to it.11 This last, as you will perceive, was never meant for your inspection; and, indeed, I know not how I ever came to mention it to you at all. But I trust the tenor of it will at least show how much I had your interest at heart: and I beg leave to add12 that it will afford13 me sincere14 pleasure to find that my ill-omen’d Prognostications are15 falsified by the event. It was never seen by any body but honest Grange, in conjunction with whom it was written.16 I likewise inclose the Round Robin.17 This jeu d’esprit took its rise one day at dinner at our friend Sir Joshua Reynolds’s in Spring 1776,18 when it was in agitation to erect a monument in Westminster-Abbey to the memory of Dr. Goldsmith19. All the Company present, except myself, were20 friends and acquaintance of Dr. Goldsmith’s. The Epitaph written21 by Dr. Johnson became22 the subject of conversation, and various emendations23 were suggested24, which it was agreed should be submitted to the Doctor’s consideration25; but the question26 was, who should have the courage to propose them to him27. At last it was hinted28 that there could be no way so good as that of a Round Robin as the sailors call it, which they29 make use of when they enter into a conspiracy, so as not to let it be known who puts his hand30 first or last to the paper31. This proposition32 was instantly assented to; and the Bishop of Killaloe33 drew up34 an address to Dr. Johnson on the occasion,35 replete with36 wit and humour; but which it was feared37 the Doctor might think treated the subject with too much38 levity. Mr. Burke then proposed the address as it stands in the paper39; in writing which40 I had the honor to officiate41 as Clerk.42 Sir Joshua agreed to carry it to Dr. Johnson, who received it with much good humour; and desired Sir Joshua to tell the Gentlemen that43 he would alter the inscription44 in any manner they45 pleased as to the sense of it; but he would never consent, he said,46 to disgrace the walls of Westminster-Abbey with an inscription in English47; It was accordingly put up, I believe, on the monument, as originally written by Dr. Johnson.48 I consider this Round Robin, as a species of literary curiosity, worth preserving; as it marks in a certain degree Dr. Johnson’s character.49 The inclosed is a faithful transcript which the Bishop of Killaloe who has the original in his possession, was so good as [to] allow me to make, when I was in Dublin two years ago.50 Should you think it worth while to make a Fac simile of it, to be inserted in your life of Dr. Johnson, for the sake of showing the Subscriptions, I dare say the good Bishop will let you have the use of the original for that purpose.51 I am glad to hear you say, that Mrs. and Miss Boswell were both the better for your expedition to Scotland.52 Lady F. joins me in best wishes to her and you, with many thanks for your kind inquiry about our family. We are all in perfect health except poor James, who tho’ much better, is still in a very languishing state.53 101

19 October 1787 I will be happy to have the pleasure of hearing from you when you are at leisure; and I beg you will beleive me ever Most Sincerely, My Dear Sir, Your most obedient and faith[ful] humble Servant, William Forbes I beg to be most kindly remembered to Sir Joshua, Mr. Langton, Mr. Burke, Mr. Courtney,54 and Mr. Malone. Has the Bishop of Killaloe been in London since last year? This letter not being ready in time for yesterday’s post, I was obliged to dispatch the frank with the papers by thems for fear of losing it.55 1  The third paragraph and the first sentence of the fourth paragraph of this letter appeared (with no date and some stylistic alterations) in the first edition of the Life, along with an engraved reproduction of the Round Robin (facing ii. 92), titled ‘Round Robin, addressed to Samuel Johnson, L.L.D. with Fac Similes of the Signatures’ (see Life iii. 83–85, and Fig. 3 below). The stylistic revisions to this letter in the Life include significant insertions and deletions of words and phrases (also present, unless otherwise noted, in the original manuscript, Life MS iii, pp. 67–68), beginning with the deletion of the word ‘likewise’ in the first sentence of the third paragraph. These revisions are cited in footnotes below, but minor stylistic variations in the version of this letter in the Life, such as changes in punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and emphasis, are not noted. 2  This oval seal shows the new Forbes of Pitsligo coat of arms granted to WF by the Lyon Office in 1782 or 1783, after he was confirmed as the acknowledged heir of the childless son of Lord Pitsligo, John Forbes (?1713–81), Master of Pitsligo (so called, rather than 5th Lord Forbes of Pitsligo, because the title had been attainted after the 1745 uprising), by virtue of his blood ties through his grandmother, Mary Forbes, sister of Lord Pitsligo. It shows two rampant bears supporting a quartered shield representing both Forbes of Monymusk and Forbes of Pitsligo, and the Forbes of Pitsligo motto (‘nec timide nec temere’; ‘Neither Rashly Nor Timidly’) sits above the crest, which consists of a right hand holding a scimitar issuing out of a baron’s coronet. The badge of the Nova Scotia baronets is suspended from the shield by a ribbon (see Intro., p. lxxx). This seal is similar to the bookplate which WF used from the early 1780s until his death, but it lacks the additional motto (‘adversis major par secundis’; ‘Superior to Adversity, Equal to Prosperity’) and the name ‘Sir William Forbes Bart. of Pitsligo’, which appear below the coat of arms and the badge in the bookplate.

3  Draft, ‘tho I hope not now distressed with’ deleted after ‘then’. 4  See To WF, 11 Oct. 1787 and n. 3. As noted there, and in Intro., p. cxxi, JB’s current bout of what WF calls ‘depression of spirits’ would not pass quickly. The day before WF’s letter, 18 Oct., JB would write in his journal, ‘Sad depression. Vexed to find this in London. Thought of returning to Edinburgh. Wife spit some blood. Uneasy that Sandie’s health was such that it was thought not safe to board him at a school or academy, as I perceived him growing unruly. Was so dreary, that I could not perceive the just distinction between good & evil, so that I was inwardly indifferent as to the success of my children. … My only comfort at present was eating & sleeping.’ On the day after WF sent his letter, JB’s journal entry concluded, ‘Some Life, but still hyp’d.’ 5  Draft, ‘regular habit’ reads ‘regular course’, with ‘constant’ deleted before ‘regular’. 6  Draft, ‘a superlative’ reads ‘an eminent’. 7  Draft, ‘not without reason’ reads ‘with some reason’. 8  See To WF, 11 Oct. 1787. 9  Draft, ‘space of time’ reads ‘span’. 10  WF’s excursion is documented in a series of letters to LF written between 1 Sept. and 20 Sept. 1787, preserved in a folder marked ‘Journey to Aberdeenshire 1787’ (FP 46/2). Its chief purpose was to lay the foundation for ‘the City of New Pitsligo’, a new town that WF established in the parish of Tyrie in order to encourage industry and settlement in the region of the ancestral lands of his extended family (see Intro., p. lxxxviii). His letter to LF of 14 Sept. 1787 describes the event (held two days earlier), including a banquet for 50–60 people in the miller’s barn, which caused him to fantasize about similar events ‘during the time of the feudal System’. WF situated the town in the lands he had acquired, along with the Pitsligo title and coat of arms, after the death in Aug. 1781 of the Hon. John Forbes, Master of

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19 October 1787 Pitsligo (see n. 2 above). A long, detailed account of WF’s improvements at New Pitsligo appears in a letter of 14 Feb. 1797 to another new town innovator, George Dempster, on the occasion of WF sending Dempster the mourning ring which JB had bequeathed to him in his will (Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto; see WF to LF, 8 June 1795 n. 19). A second piece of ‘Country business’ which WF conducted on this excursion to Aberdeenshire was at least as momentous: on 10 Sept. 1787 he wrote to LF that he had ‘purchased a certain estate in this corner, for which I have agreed to pay the sum of £20,000. … I truly hope I have not got the estate a single guinea under its real value.’ He bought the estate in question, Pittulie and Pittendrum, from his close friend William Cumine of Pittulie, partly to support his friend but also ‘from a belief that land is the best of all securities for money; that those estates, besides their Contiguity to the Property already belonging to our family in that part of the Country, are exceedingly Valuable because consisting of excellent soil in a State of nature, with much means of improvement’ (‘State of my Affairs’, 1 Jan. 1788, FP 201; From WF, [6 Jan. 1775] n. 4). News of the purchase provoked an anxious reply from LF (not traced), to which WF responded on 18 Sept. by acknowledging his wife’s ‘regret at this transaction; and I can by no means call it unnatural that you should not entertain any partiality for a spot so remote, so bleak, and so uncomfortable. Yet there is a feeling with regard to that part of the Country, of which I cannot possibly divest myself: and I likewise think I have more than once heard you say that you had no objection to my making that purchase, provided I did not insist on our living on the spot, of which, I give you my word, I have not the most distant intention.’ WF had already inherited the ‘upper barony’ of Pitsligo, as previously noted, and shortly before that he had ‘repurchased the estate of Pitsligo from Mr. Garden of Troup’ (Alexander Garden of Troup [1714– 85], M.P. for Aberdeenshire, 1768–85), as he told James Hunter Blair—meaning that he had purchased a small portion of the ‘lower barony’ of Pitsligo, namely ‘the ruins of the Castle, the Gardens, and about 28 Acres around it; of which I do not mean to make any other immediate use, than preserve the memory of the family to whom it formerly belonged’ (WF to Blair, 7 Oct. 1779, FP 84/6; John B. Pratt, Buchan, 4th ed., rev. Robert Anderson, 1901, pp. 287–88, 293). After Garden’s death, WF wrote on 20 Nov. 1786

to his brother Francis Garden (1721–93), Lord Gardenstone of the Court of Session, in an effort to purchase more of the adjacent Pitsligo lands (draft, FP+ 3), but it is not known if he succeeded in doing so. The purchase of Pittulie and Pittendrum in 1787 marked the culmination of the longterm effort by WF to re-establish his family’s land and reputation in Aberdeenshire. A ‘Schedule of Income for the Year 1798’ (FP 89) provides a rough idea of the value of WF’s Aberdeenshire lands towards the end of the century: in round figures, WF received £322 in rent from ‘Pitsligo, Upper Barony’ that year (£295 after subtracting his contributions to the small salaries of the minister and schoolmaster); £107 from ‘Pitsligo, Lower Barony’; and £971 from ‘Pittulee and Pittendrum’ (£904 after subtracting his contributions to the salaries of the minister and schoolmaster)—£1306 in all, after expenses. The fact that neither the launch of New Pitsligo nor the purchase of the Pittulie and Pittendrum estate receives any mention in this letter is not surprising. In his letters to JB, WF generally did not share details about his Aberdeenshire properties and activities, or for that matter his other properties or his activities as a banker or civic improver, or other aspects of his life which were not likely to be of direct interest to JB. 11  WF [with JJ] to SJ, 13 July 1784, and SJ to WF, 7 Aug. 1784 (both under date in this volume). In his letter to WF of 8 May 1787, JB had requested ‘a copy of your letter and his answer’. In his reply of 25 July 1787, however, WF had stated that he would soon be sending ‘Dr. Johnson’s letter’, with no mention of his own letter to SJ, and the reply which JB sent on 11 Oct. 1787 had followed WF’s lead by limiting his renewed request to SJ’s letter. By sending at this time both a copy of his letter to SJ and the original of SJ’s reply, WF complied with JB’s initial request. 12  Draft, ‘with equal sincerity’ deleted after ‘add’. 13  Draft, ‘afford’ reads ‘give’. 14  Draft, ‘the most’ deleted before ‘sincere’. 15  Draft, ‘are’ reads ‘shall be’. 16  Draft, this sentence not present. Nothing more is known about WF’s epistolary collaboration with JJ, such as where and when they met to discuss the letter to SJ of 13 July 1784, and what JJ contributed to that undertaking. Prior contact between WF and JJ appears to have been infrequent and largely incidental (such as their dining together with JB and a large company at Fortune’s Tavern on 16 Feb. 1781, as recorded in JB’s

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19 October 1787 journal), and no evidence has been found to support the assertion of the editor of JJ’s correspondence with JB that JJ ‘prevailed on Sir William Forbes to write to SJ and enlist his help to convince JB that it would be wiser to remain in Scotland’ (Corr. 1, p. 309 n. 4). There can be no doubt, however, that JJ, like WF, consistently disapproved of JB’s plan to move to London. JB’s journal entry for 7 Aug. 1783 reported that JJ ‘endeavoured to soothe me, and to persuade me that I should reconcile my mind to living in Scotland’, and less than three months before collaborating with WF on the letter to SJ, JJ wrote to JB, ‘A Seat on the bench here, the Education of your Children, the Managing of your Estate, are objects within your reach, and will afford you Sufficient Employment, and for your amusement, an Annual visit to London’ (21 Apr. 1785, Corr. 1, p. 308). 17  What WF sent JB on this occasion has been preserved among JB’s manuscripts at Yale (C 1280) and is reproduced as Fig. 1. This version of the Round Robin was a copy (or a copy of the copy) which WF had made from the original in the possession of TB when he and LF visited Ireland in 1785 (see From WF, 16 Sept. 1785). The copy WF kept for himself remained in the library at Fettercairn House until sold by Sotheby’s in Mar. 2017 (Two Great Scottish Collections, p. 99, lot 165), with the following note placed on the verso by WF no earlier than Sept. 1794 (when TB became Bishop of Limerick): ‘Copy of the Round Robin written at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s in Spring 1776, & presented to Dr. Johnson, in wch. I had the honour to be included. I copied this from the original in the hands of the Bishop of Limerick, one of the number by the name of Dr. Barnard, then Dean of Derry. A fac Simile of the Subscriptions is in Mr. Boswell’s Life of Johnson; but the remonstrance itself, which was written (tho’ not composed) by me, is not a fac Simile’ (Abbott 1604, corrected). 18  JB deleted the words ‘in Spring 1776’ from the version of this letter in the Life (iii. 83), leaving no indication about the date of the dinner party at JR’s house where the Round Robin letter to SJ was created. That event could not have occurred before 16 May 1776, when SJ sent his Latin epitaph on his friend Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) to JR, with instructions to ‘shew it to the Club’ if he liked it (Life iii. 81), in order to solicit comments and corrections. The dinner probably did not occur for some time after that date, because JB left London on 17 May (Ominous Years, p. 352), and it is difficult to imagine that he would not have delayed his

departure if a dinner party at JR’s house loomed on the near horizon—especially since it appears from his journal notes that he had no pressing obligations in Scotland until leaving Edinburgh for a visit to Auchinleck on 28 May (J 48). At the other end of the season, WF wrote in a letter to John Mackenzie of Delvine (d. 1778), W.S., from London on 18 May 1776 (NLS, MS 1273, fols. 133–34), ‘I shall be here for a fortnight’ (i.e., until the beginning of June), but he may actually have stayed a little longer, as his papers include a receipt for the purchase of three books at the London bookshop of John Donaldson (1729– ?82) on 10 June, paid for on 12 June (FP 216). He had a meeting with JB in Edinburgh on 7 July, very soon after his return (Journ.). In a letter to JaB of 9 July, WF described a leisurely trip home from London via ‘a very indirect road; for we went first to Portsmouth; afterwards to Bath and Bristol; and travelled very slowly down by Birmingham, Manchester, and Carlisle: turning out of the way occasionally to view any object that attracted our notice: particularly, we were tempted by Mr. Gray’s elegant description of the Lakes of Westmoreland, to come by Keswick’ (FP 98/2)—alluding to Thomas Gray’s popular Journal of His Tour in the Lake District, published posthumously in 1775. Travelling as tourists, at a time when a direct journey between London and Edinburgh by coach normally took several days, WF and LF would probably have required at least three weeks to complete such an excursion, and it is therefore likely that they left London by the middle of June at the latest. Moreover, as WF’s account includes SJ’s reaction to the Round Robin, after JR presented it to him, it would seem that WF was also still in London when that part of the story occurred a ‘few days afterwards’ (see n. 43 below). Thus, we can safely rule out both early and very late spring, and surmise that the Round Robin dinner party at JR’s home took place in late May or early June 1776. 19  ‘, when it was in agitation to erect a monument in Westminster-Abbey to the memory of Dr. Goldsmith’ deleted in the Life (iii. 83). 20  Draft, ‘. All the company present, except myself, were’ reads ‘; the Company was the Circumscribers of the Round Robin together with our friend Mr. Langton; and all the Company, except myself, the’. On BL’s presence at the Round Robin dinner, see n. 49 below, and From WF, 28 May 1791 n. 3. 21  The words ‘for him’ were inserted after the word ‘written’ in the Life (iii. 83). 22  Draft, ‘became’ reads ‘was introduced as’.

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19 October 1787 Draft, ‘emendations’ reads ‘amendments’. 24  Draft, ‘suggested’ reads ‘proposed’. 25  Draft, ‘to the Doctor’s consideration’ reads ‘to Dr. Johnson’s consideration’. 26  Draft, ‘question’ reads ‘difficulty’. 27  Draft, several false starts deleted as WF struggles to find the right words for the preceding phrase. 28  Draft, ‘hinted’ reads ‘suggested’. 29  Draft, ‘as the sailors call it, which they’ reads ‘such as sailors’. 30  The word ‘hand’ was changed to ‘name’ in the Life (iii. 84). 31  Draft, ‘so as not … first or last’ reads ‘whereby it shall not be known who were either first or last in the subscription’. 32  Draft, ‘proposition’ reads ‘proposal’. 33  Draft, ‘(the Dean of Derry proposed a very humorous’ deleted after ‘Killaloe’, indicating that WF was considering how to handle the fact that TB was the Dean of Derry at the time of the Round Robin dinner but Bishop of Killaloe when WF sent this letter to JB. The words ‘the Bishop of Killaloe’ appear in the original manuscript of the Life (Life MS iii, p. 67 n. 7), but this phrase was amended in the Life as published to read ‘Dr. Barnard, Dean of Derry, now Bishop of Killaloe’ (iii. 84). 34  Draft, ‘drew up’ reads ‘suggested’. 35  Draft, ‘which I am sorry I do not do not remember’ deleted after ‘occasion,’. 36  Draft, ‘infinite’ inserted by caret after ‘with’. 37  Draft, ‘thought’ deleted before ‘feared’. 38  Draft, ‘much’ reads ‘great a degree of’. 39  Draft, ‘inclosed’ appears before ‘paper’. 40  Except for minor changes in punctuation and capitalization, the preceding words are true to WF’s meaning in the original manuscript of the Life, which reads ‘as it stands in the Paper;—in writing which’ (Life MS iii, p. 68). However, in the published Life, this phrase appears differently: ‘as it stands in the paper in writing, to which’ (iii. 84)—‘a mangled compositorial reading that has gone uncorrected’ (Life MS iii, p. 68 n. 8). 41  Draft, ‘I had the honor to officiate’ replaces deleted ‘I found myself’. 42  Compare the account in From TB, 20 Dec. 1790 (Corr. 3, p. 322): ‘I confess that I was a Principal in that Mutinous act, being Employ’d to draw it up at the Table; And though I might be a Little Pot Valiant, when I wrote it, I am still of the Same opinion.’ Although TB’s comment, written more than fourteen years after the event, could be taken to mean that he was both the author of the text of the Round Robin and the person who 23 

wrote it down, WF’s account in this letter counters both claims. WF points out that TB’s original version of the text was scrapped in favour of EB’s because it seemed to have ‘too much levity’. WF also states here that he was appointed ‘clerk’, and this circumstance explains why he observes in the note on the verso of his personal copy of the Round Robin that ‘the remonstrance itself … was written (tho’ not composed) by me’ (see n. 17 above)—a claim which appears to be borne out by an examination of the handwriting in Fig. 1 and Fig. 3. 43  Draft, ‘Dr. Johnson, who received it with much good humour; and desired Sir Joshua to tell the Gentlemen that’ reads ‘him; and Mr. Colman invited the Company to come with him the few days afterwards to receive the Drs answer which Sir Joshua accordingly deliverd. Dr. Johnson received the Round Robin with much pleasure, and good humour. He said’. The dramatist and theatre manager George Colman the Elder (1732–94), best known for his successful comedy The Jealous Wife, first produced in 1761, had been a member of the Literary Club since 1768 (see Corr. 9, p. 421 n. 8). This meeting at Colman’s home would explain how WF obtained the information which follows about SJ’s reaction to the Round Robin. But WF’s wording is vague, and does not reveal who was present on this occasion. In all later references to people whom he had not seen since the Round Robin episode, WF would mention their last meeting at JR’s dinner party, not at Colman’s home several days later (e.g., WF to EB, [6 Apr. 1784], in Intro., p. civ, n. 144; From WF, 23 May 1783, regarding TB; and the Round Robin below, n. 2, regarding Joseph Warton). 44  The word ‘inscription’ was changed to ‘Epitaph’ in the Life (iii. 85). 45  Draft, ‘manner they’ reads ‘shape the gentlemen’. 46  The phrase ‘, he said,’ was deleted in the Life (iii. 85). 47  Draft, ‘inscription in English’ reads ‘English inscription’. The phrase was changed back to ‘English inscription’ in the Life (iii. 85). 48  Draft, ‘on the monument, as originally written by Dr. Johnson’ reads ‘according to the first intention of Dr. Johnson’. This sentence was deleted in the Life (iii. 85). SJ did in fact ignore the advice in the Round Robin, and his original Latin inscription (Life iii. 83) can be found on the white marble memorial to Goldsmith above the doorway to St. Faith’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey. The following translation appears on the

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19 October 1787 Westminster Abbey website, : ‘To the memory of Oliver Goldsmith, poet, philosopher and historian, by whom scarcely any style of writing was left untouched and no one touched unadorned, whether to move to laughter or tears; a powerful, yet lenient master of the affections, in genius sublime, vivid, and versatile, in expression, noble, brilliant, and delicate, is cherished in this monument by the love of his companions, the fidelity of his friends, and the admiration of his readers. Born in the parish of Fernes, in Longford, a county of Ireland, at a place named Pallas, on the 29th November 1731. He was educated at Dublin and died in London on 4th April 1774.’ 49  In the Life, JB remarks after the preceding sentence: ‘Sir William Forbes’s observation is very just. The anecdote now related proves, in the strongest manner, the reverence and awe with which Johnson was regarded, by some of the most eminent men of his time, in various departments, and even by such of them as lived most with him; while it also confirms what I have again and again inculcated, that he was by no means of that ferocious and irascible character which has been ignorantly imagined’ (Life iii. 85). However, the Round Robin can also be used to support the opposite of the point intended by JB, for only a man known to have a ‘ferocious and irascible character’ could have occasioned such extraordinary behaviour among his closest friends. We do not know with certainty which of these interpretations WF had in mind when he observed that the Round Robin episode ‘marks in a certain degree Dr. Johnson’s character’, because WF did not comment further about his intended meaning, either in this letter or later, when he indicated his ‘pride’ and ‘pleasure’ at reading the Round Robin section in the Life (From WF, 28 May 1791). But in a suggestive passage deleted from a draft of the latter letter (see From WF, 28 May 1791 n. 3), WF indicated that BL failed to sign the Round Robin out of fear of SJ’s wrath, rather than because he was acting ‘like a sturdy scholar’, as JB put it in the Life (iii. 84 n. 2). Similarly, TB believed, again contrary to JB’s argument, that the Round Robin ‘serves to shew how much he was fear’d by his most Intimate Freinds; who, tho’ they agreed in their gaieté de Coeur to pen a Remonstrance against his Composition, yet no one of the Company had the Courage to present it, or even to appear as a Ring leader in the Transaction’ (From TB, 15 Oct. 1785, Corr. 3, p. 217). 50  See From WF, 16 Sept. 1785. See also From TB, 15 Oct. 1785, Corr. 3, p. 217: ‘Sir

William Forbes took the Copy of the original Round Robin when he was in Dublin at my house; and will give you all the particulars of the Business, (being then one the Subscribing parties) if you think it worthy of I’. It is likely that WF made his copy of the Round Robin during his second visit to Dublin on his Irish tour, in mid-Aug., rather than during his first visit there in mid-July. In From TB, 14 Aug. 1785, TB writes, ‘I had the Pleasure of meeting Sir William Forbes the other day, who has been the Tour of Ireland. He was so good as to call on me with Mr. Lees of the Post office, at [whose] house I am to meet him to day at Dinner’ (Corr. 3, pp. 210–11). John (later Sir John) Lees (?1737–1811), a Scotsman by birth, was Secretary of the Irish Post Office from 1774 until his death (see Beatrice Bayley Butler, ‘John and Edward Lees: Secretaries of the Irish Post Office, 1774–1831’, Dublin Historical Record, xiii [1953]: 138–50; Corr. 4, p. 377 n. 15). WF’s use of the term ‘faithful transcript’ generated some later confusion, since JB used the same term in the Life to describe the version of the Round Robin which he reproduced there from the original (iii. 85). Although WF was careful to explain in this sentence and the following one that he was sending a copy, and that the ‘original’ was still in the possession of TB, those two sentences were not included in the Life. For this reason, in 1804 EM inadvertently insulted TB by observing that WF had sent the original of the Round Robin to JB, requiring WF to write a letter of explanation in response to EM’s enquiry and TB’s pique (see EM to WF, 3 Mar. 1804, and WF to EM, 9 Mar. 1804, Corr. 2, pp. 464–67). In fact the situation was even more complicated, because the ‘faithful transcript’ which WF sent to JB may have been a copy of the copy which WF had made from the original in Dublin (see n. 17 above). 51  JB would not make this request of TB until early Dec. 1790 (To TB, 7 Dec. 1790, not reported, Corr. 3, p. 322; To EM, Corr. 4, p. 380), but fortunately for him TB would comply promptly by enclosing the ‘True original Round Robin’ (Fig. 2) with his letter of 20 Dec. 1790 (Corr. 3, p. 322), leaving JB sufficient time to have an engraving of the Round Robin prepared for inclusion in the Life (Fig. 3), with near-facsimiles of the signatures. On the basis of a parenthetical remark by TB that he was ‘Disclaiming however all Recollection of any Promise to that Effect’, it appears that JB’s unreported letter of 7 Dec. had referred to TB’s ‘promise’ to send the original of the Round Robin, although TB

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[between late May and early June 1776] recalled no such pledge. TB added a request that JB ‘return it to me’ after using it, ‘that I may preserve it as an archive’. This was apparently done, since John Wilson Croker (1780–1857) stated, in a footnote in his edition of The Life of Samuel Johnson (10 vols., 1835, vi. 208 n. 1), first published in 1831, that the original had passed via TB’s daughter-in-law, Lady Anne Lindsay (1750–1825), who had married TB’s son Andrew Barnard (1767–1807) in 1793, to her nephew, James Lindsay (1783–1869), 7th Earl of Balcarres. It subsequently was passed down the line of the Earls of Crawford and Balcarres, and that family still owns it today. No known records survive showing how, when, or why TB initially obtained the ‘True original Round Robin’ after JR had presented it to SJ on behalf of the signers in the spring of 1776. 52  See To WF, 11 Oct. 1787 n. 2. WF inadvertently omits AB, who was also

mentioned in JB’s letter. 53  See To WF, 8 May 1787 n. 13 and From WF, 18 Dec. 1787, esp. n. 10. 54  The inclusion of JC in this letter was the result of WF having socialized with him in London on at least two occasions during the spring and summer of 1786 (Journ. 16 June, 3 July 1786). 55  As noted in To WF, 8 May 1787 n. 1, at this time franks were invalid unless used on the day they were signed and dated by an M.P. In this case WF took advantage of a frank which was apparently dated 18 Oct. 1787 in order to send off a parcel containing a copy of his letter to SJ of 13 July 1784, SJ’s reply to him of 7 Aug. 1784, and a copy of the Round Robin. He then sent this letter to JB by itself the following day. Since the wrapper for the parcel has not survived, the identity of the M.P. who provided the frank is not known.

The Round Robin: Reynolds, Burke, Forbes, Barnard and others to Samuel Johnson, [between late May and early June 1776] MS. Yale (C 1280), intended as an enclosure with C 1279, although sent separately on 18 Oct. 1787.1 Note in JB’s handwriting on verso, ‘When he saw Dr. Joseph Warton’s name he said I did not think Joe a scholar by profession would have been such a fool.’2 note: C 1280 (Fig. 1) was a copy (or a copy of the copy) which WF had made of the original Round Robin (Fig. 2) when he had visited TB in Dublin in Aug. 1785. JB had an engraving made of the original Round Robin for publication in the first edition of the Life, opposite ii. 92 (Fig. 3).3

The text in the centre of the Round Robin was the same in all versions: We the Circumscribers,4 having read with great pleasure, an intended Epitaph for the monument of Dr. Goldsmith; which, considered abstractly, appears to be, for elegant Composition and masterly Stile, in every respect worthy of the pen of its learned author; are yet of opinion, that the character of the deceased as a Writer, particularly as a poet, is perhaps not delineated with all the exactness which Dr. Johnson is capable of giving it. We therefore, with deference to his superior judgement, humbly request, that he would at least take the trouble of revising it; and of making such additions and alterations as he shall think proper, upon a farther perusal. But if we might venture to express our wishes, they would lead us to request, that he would write the Epitaph in English rather than in Latin: as we think that the memory of so eminent an English writer ought to be perpetuated in the language, to which his works are likely to be so lasting an ornament; which we also know to have been the opinion of the late Doctor himself. 107

[between late may and early june 1776] See From WF, 19 Oct. 1787, headnote and n. 55. 2  This jotting about the clergyman, schoolmaster, poet, and literary scholar Joseph Warton (1722–1800), with the additional detail giving JR as its source, became the beginning of JB’s footnote in the Life (iii. 84 n. 2), keyed to WF’s statement that SJ received the Round Robin ‘with much good humour’: ‘He, however, upon seeing Dr. Warton’s name to the suggestion, that the Epitaph should be in English, observed to Sir Joshua, “I wonder that Joe Warton, a scholar by profession, should be such a fool.” He said too, “I should have thought Mund Burke [i.e., EB] would have had more sense.”’ In the year following publication of the Life, when describing a dinner party at Elizabeth Montagu’s London home in a letter to LF of 8 Jan. 1792 (FP 46/4), WF would write, ‘Dr. Joseph Warton came in after dinner; who is one of the Circumscribers to the round Robin recorded in Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and whom I have not seen, since that day, that we dined together at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s, sixteen years ago.’ 3  CD’s accounting of the expenses charged to JB for the first edition of the Life (in A 59) discloses the costs associated with the production of the Round Robin, along with a page of SJ’s facsimile signatures (bundled together): £5 5s for the engravings, £4 7s for printing (or ‘working’) these items, and £3 3s for the super royal paper on which these engravings were printed—for a total of £13 2s 6d. 4  Circumscribed clockwise, beginning at the top centre: Edm Burke, Tho. Franklin, Anty. Chamier, G. Colman, Wm Vachell, Joshua Reynolds, William Forbes, Thos. Barnard, RB Sheridan, P. Metcalfe, E Gibbon, Jos. Warton (see Fig. 1 and Fig. 2). When 1 

the names were reproduced in the engraving which JB used in the first edition of the Life, ‘Joshua Reynolds’ became ‘J. Reynolds’, ‘William Forbes’ became ‘W. Forbes’, and ‘Thos. Barnard’ became ‘T. Barnard’ (see Fig. 3). These changes were apparently made to save space at the bottom of the circle, where these three names appear together. Of the signers who have not previously been identified in these notes, Thomas Francklin (1721–84) was an Anglican clergyman, playwright, and miscellaneous writer best known for his editions and translations of Greek and Roman works; Anthony Chamier (1725–80) was a politician with cultural interests; William Vachell (1735– 1807) was a close friend of JR who became High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire in 1790 (Life iii. Appendix F, pp. 482–83); Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) was a prominent playwright, politician, and theatre manager; Edward Gibbon (1737–94), the historian, was just beginning to publish his six-volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. At the time, JR, EB, Chamier, Colman, Gibbon, and TB were, as Goldsmith had been, members of the Literary Club (the first three were founding members), and Warton and Sheridan would be elected to membership within a year or two. Francklin, Metcalfe, and Vachell were never members, although Metcalfe might possibly have become a member if JB had been more favourably disposed towards him (Life iv. 159 n. 2, and 505). As noted in Intro., p. ciii and n. 141, WF himself was also never a member, despite mistaken claims to the contrary. BL, a founding member, was also present at JR’s house on this occasion but did not sign the Round Robin (Life iii. 84 n. 2; From WF, 19 Oct. 1787 n. 49, and 28 May 1791 n. 3).

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The Round Robin

The Round Robin

Fig. 1: Copy of the Round Robin (C 1280) sent to Boswell by Forbes on 18 October 1787, to accompany From Forbes, 19 Oct. 1787 109

The Round Robin

Fig. 2: Facsimile of the ‘Original’ Round Robin, 1776, from Boswell’s Life of Johnson, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, 6 vols., 1887, iii., facing p. 82 110

The Round Robin

Fig. 3: ‘Round Robin, addressed to Samuel Johnson, L.L.D. With FacSimiles of the Signatures’, from James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 2 vols., 1791, ii., facing p. 92 111

7 November 1787

To Forbes, Wednesday 7 November 1787 MS. FP 87. Abbott No. 1336. reg. let. sent: 7 Nov. 1787: ‘Sir W. Forbes that the Round Robin came in good time when Sir Joshua dined with me. His letter to Dr. Johnson shews such friendship for me that I want words to express my gratitude. For his comfort I have not made my circumstances worse last year, nor shall—and if after a sufficient trial my scheme does not succeed I will give it up—I could say much to him that it would be improper to write. Troubling him with draft for £100 on Ayr Bank to pay my interest to Mr. Kerr & get his discharge. Between ourselves—prefer this mode to making my Agent do it. It may appear that I have money passing through his hands.’ previously printed: Partially printed in Corr. 2, p. 189. enclosure: A draft for payment of £100 interest to ‘Mr. Kerr of Blackshiels’ (not located).

London 7 Novr. 1787 My Dear Sir: Your last packet with the Round Robin came most opportunely, on a day when I had at dinner with me Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Langton, Mr. Malone, Dr. Brocklesby, Mr. Murphy, and Mr. Kemble of Drury lane. We were much entertained by it, and your friends remembered you kindly.1 When Sir Joshua heard me mention your name, he was in hopes you were come. Dr. Johnson’s letter to you is a very good one, but from its subject cannot appear for some time.2 Yours to him3 is such a proof of the warmth of your friendship for me, that I want words to tell you how gratefully I feel. For your comfort, as you really take such an interest in my wellfare, I can assure you that I have made my circumstances no worse, as yet; and that it is my determined resolution that I shall not, in time coming. Also that when upon a sufficient trial I find that my scheme has no probability of success, I shall give it up. Were I with you, I could say many things which it would not be proper to write.4 May I beg leave to trouble you to pay for me £100 to Mr. Kerr of Blackshiels, being interest on my Bond to him for £2000 at Martinmas next.5 Between ourselves, I wish to have the matter transacted in this manner, rather than by my Agent.6 I beg pardon for taking so much liberty with you. But it may appear that I have money passing through your hands, and so no offence can be taken.7 I should think that a draft on Hunters & Co. sent directly to Mr. Ker may do next time. Enclosed is a draft for the money.8 He will give you a discharge. I have allways been very punctual in paying this interest.9 We are all pretty well, except that my wife is much troubled with a cough. We flatter ourselves that we shall have still better accounts of your son James,10 and we join most sincerely in best compliments to all your family. I ever am, My Dear Sir, your much obliged and faithful humble servant, James Boswell 1  WF had sent the packet on 18 Oct., and it had arrived on 22 Oct. In the journal entry for that day, JB records the guests at dinner, adding VB’s friend Miss Buchanan, but does not mention that the Round Robin was a subject of entertaining conversation among them. John Philip Kemble (1757– 1823), actor and later theatre manager,

and brother of the actress Sarah (Kemble) Siddons (1755–1831), was beginning his fifth season as the lead actor at Drury Lane, and would receive a presentation copy of the first edition of the Life (Boswell’s Books, p. 420). 2  SJ to WF, 7 Aug. 1784 (under date in this volume). JB presumably means the same

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18 December 1787 thing here as in To WF, 8 May 1787, with regard to this letter and WF’s letter to SJ mentioned in the next sentence: ‘as they entirely concern myself, I should think I ought not to insert them in my Book’. 3  WF [with JJ] to SJ, 13 July 1784 (under date in this volume). 4  JB provides no indication of the meaning of this suggestive sentence. 5  In 1769 JB had borrowed £2000 at 5 per cent interest from James Kerr of Blackshiels (1750–1819) (who as a young man had apprenticed in WF’s bank) in order to finance the purchase two years earlier of Dalblair, a large, marshy piece of farmland east of Auchinleck. Although the purchase made JB a landowner in his own right fifteen years before he inherited Auchinleck, it also increased the level of his debt for years to come (see the annotation below; Intro., pp. lxxix; and Journ. 1 Jan. 1777). Martinmas (St. Martin’s Day) was one of the four Scottish term and quarter days when interest on loans was typically due. Although Martinmas in the sense of a term day always fell on 11 Nov., it appears from the timing of this letter (which could not have reached WF in time for payment to be made by that date), and the allusions to JB’s punctuality below, that in practice Martinmas, like Whitsunday (see To WF, 17 May 1784 n. 1), referred to a period of approximately two weeks between the legal term day and the traditional religious holiday (in this case, Sunday 28 Nov. 1787). 6  JB’s agent Robert Boswell had handled this interest payment the preceding year. JB had written to him from London on 31 Oct. 1786, ‘I enclose a bill for £100 on Messieurs Hunters and Company of Ayr [founded in 1773 by James Hunter (1727– 76), a cousin of Sir James Hunter Blair, to succeed the bankrupt Ayr Bank] with whom I now have a Cash Account. I am not quite

sure if the mode of drawing be perfectly regular. But I have no doubt it will be paid. Sir James Hunter Blair is one of the Partners. The money is to be applied in payment of a year’s interest on a Bond for £2000 due by me to Mr. Kerr of Blackshiels at Martinmas next. I borrowed it many years ago to pay the price of some land, which has proved a dear purchase; but I cannot bring myself to part with it now. Better times may come. I am anxious that this interest should be most punctually paid. Were the principal to be called up, I should be much at a loss’ (L 207). 7  JB’s complicated financial situation, involving multiple loans, frequent borrowing, and consequent demands for interest repayments, led him into concurrent dealings with several banking operations, and he was continually scheming not only to make required payments but also to ‘appear’ to be financially healthier than he actually was. 8  Receipt of this draft was acknowledged in an unreported letter from FHC to JB, as noted in the first sentence of WF’s reply below. 9  After making his interest payment to James Kerr the following year, JB would tell MMB in a letter of 5 Dec. 1788 that Kerr had sent him a letter (not traced) ‘thanking me for my punctuality which he says is very rare in Scotland’ (L 184). Three years later JB, having been advanced £4000 by Quintin McAdam of Craigengillan (1769–1805) at 4½ per cent, repaid his entire £2000 loan to Kerr, thereby saving ½ per cent in interest. See From Kerr, 10 Oct. 1791 (C 1660) and To Robert Boswell, 1 Nov. 1791 (L 250). By that time JB had paid Kerr more in interest than the total amount of the loan but still had not touched the principal. 10  On James Forbes, see To WF, 8 May 1787 n. 13, and From WF, 18 Dec. 1787, esp. n. 10.

From Forbes, Tuesday 18 December 1787 MS. Yale (C 1281). Abbott No. 358. reg. let. received: 31 Dec. 1787: ‘Sir Wm. Forbes of his son James’s death &c &c.’ address: James Boswell Esqr., No 56 Great Queenstreet, Lincolns Innfields, London postmarks (faintly inked): (1) 18; (2) D