s of Boswell improve both in form and
matter. It is painful to see him on every hand seeking the Parliamentary
interest out of which he was all the while doing his best to write
himself. No party could or would take him seriously. His rent-roll was
over L1600, a large sum in these days, and it was yearly rising.
Earnestly did his brother David press upon him a return to Auchinleck
and the retrenchment of his expenses. But the spell of the lights of
London was on him, and 'I could not endure Edinburgh,' he tells us,
'unless I were to have a judge's place to bear me up,' and that was a
thing not to be dreamed of after the publication of the _Letter_. He
dispersed his family to various schools, finding the eldest of the boys
beginning to oppose him, 'and no wonder,' as he bitterly adds. Then the
cry is forced from him in allusion to the famous passage in Shakespeare
on Wolsey's hopes and fall--a passage which, curiously enough, we have
come upon in the common-place book which Boswell had kept as a boy--'O
Temple, Temple, is this realizing any of the towering hopes which have
so often been the subject of our letters. Yet I live much with a great
man, who, upon any day that his fancy shall be inclined, may obtain for
me an office.' Everywhere he casts about, trying the Lord Chancellor,
not seeing the smallest opening in Westminster Hall, but buoyed up by
'the delusion that practice may come at any time.'

'We must do something for you,' Burke had said in a kindly way, 'for our
own sakes.' He recommended him to General Conway, but though the place
was not obtained the letter was valued by Boswell more. Writing to Mr
Abercrombie in America, even as late as the July of 1793, he is found
expressing 'a great wish to see that country; and I once flattered
myself that I should be sent thither in a station of some importance;'
and from a letter to Burke we learn that this expected post had been a
commissionership in the treaty between America and Britain. Dundas was
another of his hopes. 'The excellent Langton says it is disgraceful, it
is utter folly in Pitt not to attach to his administration a man of my
popular and pleasant talents.' Dundas, however, after having been given
a margin of two months for a reply, has made no sign; 'how can I delude
myself? I will tell you,' he informs Temple, 'Lord Lonsdale shews me
more and more regard. Three of his members assure me that he will give
me a seat at the General Election.' Then that las