which I am reading carefully helps me to recover
the language.' He has his little scraps of irritating Latinity which he
loves to parade, and when he dined at Eton, at the fellows' table, he
'made a considerable figure, having certainly the art of making the most
of what I know. I had my classical quotations very ready.' Besides, the
easy allusiveness of Boswell to books and to matters beyond the scope of
general readers, his interest in all things going forward in the
Johnsonian circle, his shewing himself in some metaphysical
points--predestination, for example--fully a match for Johnson, and his
own words in the _Journal_--'he had thought more than anybody supposed,
and had a pretty good stock of general learning and knowledge'--all
conspire to shew that, if he had no more learning than what he could not
help, James Boswell was altogether, as Dominie Sampson said of
Mannering, 'a man of considerable erudition despite of his imperfect
opportunities.'

Nor were his entire interests Johnsonian. Scattered through his writings
we find allusions to other books, in a more or less forward stage of
completeness, and of which some must have been destroyed by his
faithless executors. We hear of a _Life of Lord Kames_; an _Essay on the
Profession of an Advocate_; _Memoirs_ of Hume when dying, 'which I may
some time or other communicate to the world;' a quarto with plates on
_The Beggar's Opera_; a _History of James IV._, 'the patron of my
family;' a _Collection of Feudal Tenures and Charters_, 'a valuable
collection made by my father, with some additions and illustrations of
my own;' an _Account of my Travels_, 'for which I had a variety of
materials collected;' a _Life of Sir Robert Sibbald_, 'in the original
manuscript in his own writing;' a _History of the Rebellion of 1745_; an
edition of _Walton's Lives_; a _Life of Thomas Ruddiman_, the Latin
grammarian; a _History of Sweden_, where three of his ancestors had
settled, who took service under Gustavus Adolphus; an edition of
_Johnson's Poems_, 'a complete edition, in which I shall with the utmost
care ascertain their authenticity, and illustrate them with notes and
various readings;' a work on _Addison's Poems_, in which 'I shall
probably maintain the merit of Addison's poetry, which has been very
unjustly depreciated.' His _Journal_, which is unfortunately lost, he
designed as the material for his own _Autobiography_. A goodly list, and
a varied one, involving interest, kno