period he tells us he was flattered by being
held forth as a patron of literature. In the course of his assiduous
visits to the local theatre he met with an old stage-struck army officer
from Ireland, Francis Gentleman, who had sold his commission to risk his
chances on the boards. By this worthy an edition of Southern's
_Oroonoko_ was dedicated to Boswell, and in the epistle are found some
of his qualities:--

'But when with honest pleasure she can find
Sense, taste, religion, and good nature join'd,
There gladly will she raise her feeble Voice
Nor fear to tell that Boswell is her Choice.'

Thus early had the youthful patron of the drama blossomed into
notoriety, and having also commenced attendance at the Roman Catholic
Chapel he had now resolved to become a priest, though curiously enough
he began this career by eloping, as we are assured by Ramsay of
Ochtertyre, with a Roman Catholic actress. His father followed the pair
to London, and there, it would seem, prevailed on the erratic neophyte
to abandon his fair partner, whose existence would certainly have been a
fatal barrier to the proposed priesthood. At least, like his friend
Gibbon of later days, if he sighed as a lover, he obeyed as a son, and a
compromise by which he was to enter on the profession of arms was
effected. His father called on Archibald, Duke of Argyll, an old
campaigner with Marlborough. 'My Lord,' said the Duke, 'I like your son;
this boy must not be shot at for three shillings and sixpence a day.'
This scene reads like a pre-arranged affair calculated to flatter the
erratic Bozzy out of his warlike schemes, for which it is clear he was
never fitted. Indeed, the true aim was really, as he confesses to
Temple, a wish to be 'about court, enjoying the happiness of the _beau
monde_ and the company of men of genius.' Temple had come forward with
an offer of a thousand pounds to obtain a commission for him in the
Guards, and Boswell assures us repeatedly, 'I had from earliest years a
love for the military life.' Yet we can with equal difficulty figure
'our Bozzy' as priest or soldier. Like Hogg who hankered after the post
of militia ensign with 'nerves not,' as Lockhart says, 'heroically
strung,' Boswell in his own _Letter to the People of Scotland_ confesses
himself 'not blest with high heroic blood, but rather I think troubled
with a natural timidity of personal danger, which it costs me some
philosophy to overcome.' Nor was his de