appealed to Lord Hailes, who admitted conscience and self
formed a strong plea when found on different sides. Finally, after the
judge had inserted in the deed his precautions against 'a weak, foolish
and extravagant person,' the estate was entailed on Boswell. 'My
father,' he tells Temple, 'is so different from me. We _divaricate_ so
much, as Dr Johnson said. He has a method of treating me which makes me
feel like a timid boy, which to _Boswell_ (comprehending all that my
character does in my own imagination and in that of a wonderful number
of mankind) is intolerable. It requires the utmost exertion of practical
philosophy to keep myself quiet; but it has cost me drinking a
considerable quantity of strong beer to dull my faculties.' The picture
of the son drinking himself down to the level of the father is truly
inimitable!

He feared the final settlement. He might be disgraced by his father, and
not a shilling secured to his wife and children. Then he is comforted by
the thought that his father is visibly failing, and he consults his
brother David with a view to a settlement, should the succession pass to
him. The birth of a son, who was diplomatically called Alexander, was
taken by the old man as a compliment, and we find Boswell visiting at
Auchinleck, 'not long at one time, but frequent renewals of attention
are agreeable,' he finds, to his father. He proposed to Johnson a tour
round the English cathedrals, but a brief trip with him to Derbyshire
was all that resulted. We now find for the first time in the _Life_
indications of what would ensue when the strong hand of Johnson was
removed from the guidance of his weaker companion. 'As we drove back to
Ashbourne,' he writes with curious frankness, 'Dr Johnson recommended to
me, _as he had often done_, to drink water only,' and we meet with as
curious a defence of drinking--the great difficulty of resisting it when
a good man asks you to drink the wine he has had twenty years in his
cellar! Benevolence calls for compliance, for, 'curst be the _spring_,'
he adds with a change of Pope's verse, 'how well soe'er it flow, that
tends to make one worthy man my foe!' 'I do,' he wrote in the _London
Magazine_ for March 1780, 'fairly acknowledge that I love drinking; that
I have a constitutional inclination to indulge in fermented liquors, and
that if it were not for the restraints of reason and religion, I am
afraid that I should be as constant a votary of Bacchus as any man.