scenity. He had no delicacy
of feeling. No principle restrained him. When he comes to bear testimony,
and aims a shaft at any man's character, the bow that he draws is drawn
with the weakness of the hand of a worn-out and shameless profligate.

Mr. Shepherd quotes an unpublished letter of Boswell to Wilkes, dated
Rome, April 22, 1765, to show 'that the two men had become familiars,
not only long before Wilkes's famous meeting with Dr. Johnson was brought
about, but before even the friendship of Boswell himself with Johnson
had been consolidated.' It needs no unpublished letters to show that. It
must be known to every attentive reader of Boswell. See _ante_, i. 395,
and ii. 11.

_Frederick III, King of Prussia_.

(Vol. i, p. 308.)

Boswell should have written Frederick II.

_Boswell's visit to Rousseau and Voltaire_.

(Vol. i, p. 434; and vol. ii, p. 11.)

_Boswell to Andrew Mitchell, Esq., His Britannic Majesty's
Minister at Berlin_.

'Berlin, 28 August, 1764.

... 'I have had another letter from my father, in which he continues of
opinion that travelling is of very little use, and may do a great deal
of harm. ... I esteem and love my father, and I am determined to do what
is in my power to make him easy and happy. But you will allow that I
may endeavour to make him happy, and at the same time not to be too hard
upon myself. I must use you so much with the freedom of a friend as to
tell you that with the vivacity which you allowed me I have a melancholy
disposition. I have made excursions into the fields of amusement, perhaps
of folly. I have found that amusement and folly are beneath me, and that
without some laudable pursuit my life must be insipid and wearisome.....
My father seems much against my going to Italy, but gives me leave to go
from this, and pass some months in Paris. I own that the words of the
Apostle Paul, "I must see Rome," are strongly _borne in_ upon my mind. It
would give me infinite pleasure. It would give taste for a life-time,
and I should go home to Auchinleck with serene contentment.'

After stating that he is going to Geneva, he continues:--

'I shall see Voltaire; I shall also see Switzerland and Rousseau. These
two men are to me greater objects than most statues or pictures.'
--Nichols's _Literary History_, vii. 318.

_Superficiality of the French writers_.

(Vol. i, p. 454.)

Gibbon, writing of the year 1759, says:--

'In France, to which my ideas [in the _Ess