rict feudal notions, had the bad taste
to give his son a step-mother, and to be as unlike him as possible in
the matter of good spirits. Scarcely anything could interfere with the
judge's cheerfulness, while Boswell was always falling into depressions
about nothing in particular and perhaps indulging in the "foolish
notion," rebuked by Johnson, that "melancholy is a proof of acuteness."
But in spite of their differences the father and son managed to avoid
anything like a definite breach. Boswell was sincerely anxious to
please his father, and was constantly urged in that direction by his
great mentor: and after all the judge went some way to meet his
singular son, for he paid his debts and entertained both Paoli and
Johnson at Auchinleck. The latter visit was naturally a source of some
anxiety to Boswell and it did not go off without a storm when the old
Whig and the old Tory unluckily got on to the topic of Charles I and
Cromwell: but all {73} ended well, and Boswell characteristically ends
his story of it, written after both were dead, with the pious hope that
the antagonists had by then met in a higher state of existence "where
there is no room for Whiggism."

Full of activities as Boswell's life was, the definite facts and dates
in it are not very numerous. He was sent to Glasgow University, and
wished to be a soldier, but was bred by his father to the law. No
doubt he gave some early signs of intellectual promise, for which it
was not thought the army provided a fit sphere, for the Duke of Argyle
is reported to have said to his father when he was only twenty: "My
lord, I like your son: this boy must not be shot at for
three-and-sixpence a day." He paid his first visit to London in 1760;
and, having heard a good deal about Johnson from one Mr. Gentleman, and
from Derrick, a very minor poet, he at once sought an introduction, but
had to leave London without succeeding in his object. He was equally
unsuccessful when he was in London the next year, during which he
published some anonymous poems which would not have helped him to
secure the desired introduction. The great event occurred at last in
1763. The day was the 16th of May and the scene the house of Davies,
the bookseller. "At last," says Boswell, "on {74} Monday the 16th of
May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies's back-parlour, after having
drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson unexpectedly came into the
shop; and Mr. Davies having perceived him