votion to charmer or chapel
likely to weather the dissipated life he led in London. In later life he
may have had thoughts of his own feelings when he proposed to publish,
from the manuscript in his possession, the life of Sir Robert Sibbald.
That antiquary had been pressed by the Duke of Perth to come over to the
Papists, and for some time embraced the ancient religion, until the
rigid fasting led him to reconsider the controversy and he returned to
Protestantism. Bozzy thought the remark of his friend, that as ladies
love to see themselves in a glass, so a man likes to see and review
himself in his journal, 'a very pretty allusion,' and we may be sure, in
spite of his reticence, that his own case was present at the time to his
mind. His distressed father enlisted the interest of Lord Hailes, who
requested Dr Jortin, Prebendary of St Paul's, to take in hand the
flighty youth, and to persuade him to renounce the errors of the Church
of Rome for those of the Church of England, for it was plain that
Boswell had broken loose from his old moorings, and some middle course
might, it was hoped, prove to be possible. 'Your young gentleman,'
writes Jortin to Hailes, 'called at my house. I was gone out for the
day; he then left your letter and a note with it for me, promising to be
with me on Saturday morning. But from that time to this I have heard
nothing of him. He began, I suppose, to suspect some design upon him,
and his new friends may have represented me to him as a heretic and an
infidel, whom he ought to avoid as he would the plague.' More likely the
Catholic fit had passed away. But what a light does this phase, erratic
even among his countless vagaries, shed on his relation to Johnson!
Never, we may rest assured, did he tell the sage of this hidden passage
in his life; yet how often do we find him putting leading questions to
his friend and Mentor on all points of Catholic doctrine and casuistry,
purgatory, and the invocation of the saints, confession, and the mass!
There can be no doubt that this wrench left a deep impress on the
confused religious views of Boswell, and this is the clue which explains
the opening conversation with Johnson at the beginning of their
intimacy. 'I acknowledged,' he writes, 'that though educated strictly in
the principles of religion, I had for some time been misled into a
certain degree of infidelity; but I was now come to a better way of
thinking, and was fully satisfied of the truth of th