e Christian
revelation, though I was not clear as to every point considered to be
orthodox.' Never in any way does he refer to this episode of his life,
but the _Life of Johnson_ is, as we shall have occasion to show, the
life in many ways also of its author, who says of himself that, 'from a
certain peculiarly frank, open, and ostentatious disposition which he
avows, his history, like that of the old Seigneur Michael de Montaigne,
is to be traced in his writings.'

Left to himself and the guidance of the writer Derrick, 'my first tutor
in the ways of London, who shewed me the town in all its variety of
departments, both literary and sportive,' he was now busily spelling
through the pages of the Gull's Hornbook. From this course of idle
dissipation he was saved by the interposition of an Ayrshire neighbour
of the family, the Earl of Eglintoun, though were we to credit the
account of the waif himself the Earl 'insisted that young Boswell should
have an apartment in his house.' Certain it is that by his lordship he
was taken to Newmarket and introduced to the members of the Jockey Club.
He would appear to have fancied himself a regularly elected member, for
here his eccentricity broke forth into a yet more violent form. Calling
for pen and paper, while the sporting fraternity gathered round, he
produced the _Cub at Newmarket_, which he printed and dedicated to the
Duke of York in a characteristically Boswellian strain. In doggerel
which defies rhyme or reason he tells how his patron

'By chance a curious cub has got
On Scotia's mountains newly caught;'

and then--the first of his many portraits drawn by himself, and
prophetic of the lover of hospitable boards and good cheer as we know
him in his works--he describes the writer as

'Not of the iron race
Which sometimes Caledonia grace;
Though he to combat should advance,
Plumpness shone in his countenance;
And belly prominent declared
That he for beef and pudding cared;
He had a large and ponderous head,
That seemed to be composed of lead;
From which hung down such stiff, lank hair,
As might the crows in autumn scare.'

At this time it is likely took place the escapade with which he must
have convulsed the gravity of the Edinburgh _literati_ invited to meet
Johnson on their return from the Hebrides. 'I told, when Dr Hugh Blair
was sitting with me in the pit of Drury Lane, in a wild freak of
youthful extravag