ok. He had not long, it would seem, to wait for the
breaking of the storm, as we find him writing to Temple in ominous
language. 'My father,' he says, 'is most unhappily dissatisfied with me.
He harps on my going over Scotland with a brute (think how shockingly
erroneous!) and wandering, or some such phrase, to London. I always
dread his making some bad settlement.' Then the old judge would grimly
relate how Lord Crichton, son of the Earl of Dumfries, would go to
Edinburgh, and how, when he was carried back to the family vault, the
Earl, as he saw the hearse from the window, had said, 'Ay, ay, Charles,
thou went without an errand: I think thou hast got one to bring thee
back again.'

But had the son chosen to be quite candid here, we should see how just a
cause the father had for his displeasure. In the spring of 1774, he had
written to Johnson suggesting a run up to London, expressing the
peculiar satisfaction which he felt in celebrating Easter at St Paul's,
which to his fancy was like going up to Jerusalem at the feast of the
Passover. The doctor was wisely deaf to this subtle appeal. 'Edinburgh,'
said he, 'is not yet exhausted,' and reminded him that his wife, having
permitted him last year to ramble, had now a claim upon him at home,
while to come to Iona or to Jerusalem could not be necessary, though
useful. Next year, however, Boswell was in London, 'quite in my old
humour,' as he tells Temple, arguing with him for concubinage and the
plurality of the patriarchs, from all which we may see that the plea
urged to Johnson for the visit was to be taken in a lax sense by
Boswell, who made his chief excuse out of some business at the bar of
the House over an election petition in Clackmannan. He waited on Temple
in Devon and shocked his host by his inebriety, but 'under a solemn yew
tree' he had vowed reformation. But his return to town, if it 'exalted
him in piety' at St Paul's, seems to have led but to fresh dissipation.
He hints at 'Asiatic multiplicity,' but this is only when he has taken
too much claret. The good resolutions at Iona and the influence of the
ruins had passed away, the trip is extended to two months, and he frets
irritably over his old friend Henry Dundas's election as King's
Advocate,--'to be sure he has strong parts, but he is a coarse
unlettered dog.' Harry Dundas at least was never found philandering as
we find Bozzy on this occasion, where the mixture of religion and
flirtation is so confusing.