genealogy of the biographer the position
of prominence which Wat of Harden holds in the line of the novelist. He
obtained a grant of the lands in Ayrshire belonging to the ancient house
of Affleck of that ilk, when they had passed by forfeiture into the
hands of the king. Pitcairn, in his _Collection of Criminal Trials_ is
inclined to regard this ancestor as the chief minstrel in the royal
train of James IV.; but, as he fell at Flodden, this may be taken as
being at least not proven, nor would the position of this first literary
man in the family have been quite pleasing to the pride of race so often
shewn by his descendant. A Yorkshire branch of the family, with the
spelling of their name as Bosville, was settled at Gunthwait in the West
Riding, and its head was hailed as 'his chief' by Bozzy, whose
gregarious instincts led him to trace and claim relationship in a way
even more than is national. By marriage and other ties the family in
Scotland was connected with the most ancient and distinguished houses in
the land.

The great grandfather of the biographer was the Earl of Kincardine who
is mentioned by Gilbert Burnet in his _History of His Own Time_. He had
married a Dutch lady, of the noble house of Sommelsdyck who had once
held princely rank in Surinam. With that branch also of the name did
Boswell, in later years, establish a relationship at the time of his
continental tour, when at the Hague he found the head holding 'an
important charge in the Republick, and is as worthy a man as lives, and
has honoured me with his correspondence these twenty years.' From the
Earl Boswell boasted 'the blood of Bruce in my veins,' a descent which
he seizes every opportunity of making known to his readers, and to which
we find him alluding in a letter of 10th May, 1786, now before us, to
Mickle, the translator of the _Lusiad_, with a promise to 'tell you what
I know about our common ancestor, Robert the Bruce.' When Johnson, in
the autumn of 1773, visited the ancestral seat of his friend, Boswell,
'in the glow of what, I am sensible, will in a commercial age be
considered as a genealogical enthusiasm,' did not forget to remind his
illustrious Mentor of his relationship to the Royal Personage, George
the Third, 'whose pension had given Johnson comfort and independence.'
It would have required a much greater antiquarian than Johnson, who
could scarcely tell the name of his own grandfather, to have traced the
well-nigh twenty generat