se of life may begin.' This is a revelation of the inner Boswell. On
the eve of the appearance of the _Tour in Corsica_, he had written to
Temple, about 'fixing some period for my perfection as far as possible.
Let it be when my account of Corsica is finished. I shall then have a
character to support.' On landing at Rasay, he noticed the remains of a
cross on the rock, 'which had to me a pleasing vestige of religion,' and
he 'could not but value the family seat more for having even the ruins
of a chapel close to it. There was something comforting in the thought
of being so near a piece of consecrated ground.'

Oban received them with a tolerable inn. They were again on the
mainland, and found papers with conjectures as to their motions in the
islands. Next day they spent at Inverary. The castle of the Duke of
Argyll was near, and now, for the first time on the tour, the
indefatigable agent in advance was completely nonplussed. The spectre of
the great Douglas Trial loomed large in the eyes of the pamphleteer and
the hero of the riot. He had reason, he says, to fear hostile reprisals
on the part of the Duchess, who had been Duchess of Hamilton and mother
of the rival claimant, before she had become the wife of John, fifth
Duke of Argyll. It is from this scene and from the Stratford Jubilee
fiasco that the general reader draws his picture of poor Bozzy, and the
belief remains that James Boswell was a pushing and forward interloper,
half mountebank and half showman. Read in the original, as a revelation
of the writer's character, the very reverse is the impression; he is
there presented not in any ludicrous light but rather in a good-humoured
and fussy way. He met his friend the Rev. John Macaulay, one of the
ministers of Inverary, who accompanied them to the castle, where Boswell
presented the doctor to the Duke. 'I shall never forget,' quaintly adds
the chronicler, 'the impression made upon my fancy by some of the
ladies' maids tripping about in neat morning dresses. After seeing for a
long time little but rusticity, their lively manner, and gay inviting
appearance, pleased me so much, that I thought, for a moment, I could
have been a knight-errant for them.' This grandfather of the historian
and essayist, the man who has dealt the heaviest blow to the reputation
of poor Bozzy, was to encounter some warm retorts from the Rambler like
his brother, Macaulay's grand-uncle, the minister at Calder. Mr
Trevelyan is eager for th