he 5th August started with him for
Harwich in the stage coach, half in hopes of visiting Holland in the
summer, and accompanying Bozzy in a tour through the Netherlands. 'I
must see thee out of England,' said the old man kindly. On the beach
they parted, and 'as the vessel put out to sea, I kept my eyes upon him
for a considerable time, while he remained rolling his majestic frame in
his usual manner; and at last I perceived him walk back into the town
and he disappeared.' Boswell's attendance upon his new friend had not
escaped the notice of the doctor's circle. 'Who,' asked one, 'is this
Scotch cur at Johnson's heels?' 'Not a cur, but a bur,' was Goldsmith's
reply, 'and he has the faculty of sticking.' With what effect the world
was to know.

CHAPTER II

THE CONTINENT--CORSICA. 1763-66

'That's from Paoli of Corsica.'--GOLDSMITH, '_The Good Natured
Man_.'

'Utrecht,' writes Boswell, 'seeming at first very dull to me after the
animated scenes of London, my spirits were grievously affected.' But the
depression was not destined to last, and soon we hear of his having
wearied of the proposed two years' course of study. The custom of legal
training in some of the universities of the Continent was about this
time coming to a close, though for long it had remained usual, at least
with the landed classes of Scotland, to secure such an extended field of
study for the bar by an attendance at some of the more developed schools
of jurisprudence in Holland. Cunningham, the celebrated critic of
Bentley, had given prelections in Leyden, and no reader of the _Heart of
Midlothian_ will forget the laments of the inimitable Bartoline
Saddletree over his not being sent to Leyden or Utrecht to study the
Institutes and the Pandects. Since the days of Gilbert Jack at Leyden,
the connection between Holland and the Scottish universities had been
close, and the garrets of Amsterdam had been crowded before the
Revolution by refugees from both Scotland and England who maintained,
upon their return, the ties they had contracted in their exile. Even
Fielding had been sent to Leyden for law, and just before the visit of
Boswell, to which his father had consented rather as a compromise than
from any practical benefit that might ensue, the law of Scotland,
largely based on Roman and feudal precedents, had received fresh
extensions of conveyancing and other branches of jurisprudence, through
the mass of forfeited estates brought i