Drinking is in reality an occupation which employs a considerable
portion of the time of many people; and to conduct it in the most
rational and agreeable manner is one of the great arts of living. Were
we so framed that it were possible by perpetual supplies of wine to keep
ourselves for ever gay and happy, there could be no doubt that drinking
would be the _summum bonum_, the chief good to find out which
philosophers have been so variously busied.' It looks as if poor Bozzy,
when he wrote this, had heard of the Brunonian system of medicine, and
of the unfortunate exemplication of it in practice and in precept by its
founder in Edinburgh. No wonder such excesses produced violent reaction
to low spirits and the 'black dog' of hypochondria. He finds it, after
going to prayers in Carlisle Cathedral, 'divinely cheering to have a
cathedral so near Auchinleck,' one hundred and fifty miles off, as
Johnson sarcastically replied. Bozzy had been writing a series of
articles, 'The Hypochondriack,' in the _London Magazine_, for about two
years, but he was advised not to mention his own mental diseases, or to
expect for them either the praise for which there was no room, or the
pity which would do him no good. The active old man was now in better
health than he had been upon the Hebridean tour, and was in hopes of yet
shewing himself with Boswell in some part of Europe, Asia, or Africa.
'What have you to do with liberty and necessity?' cries the doctor to
his friend, who had been worrying himself and his correspondent with
philosophical questions, on which some six years before he had got some
light from the _Lettres Persanes_ of Montesquieu. 'Come to me, my dear
Bozzy, and let us be as happy as we can. We will go again to the Mitre,
and talk old times over.' Thrice during the 1781 visit to London do we
see his unfortunate habits breaking out; and, when we find him saying he
has unfortunately preserved none of the conversations, Miss Hannah More,
who met him that day at the Bishop of St Asaph's, explains it--'I was
heartily disgusted with Mr Boswell, who came upstairs after dinner much
disordered with wine.'

Let us hear his own confession over his conduct at the house of Lady
Galway.

'Another evening Johnson's kind indulgence towards me had a pretty
difficult trial. I had dined at the Duke of Montrose's with a very
agreeable party, and his Grace, according to his usual custom, had
circulated the bottle very freely. Lord Graham