nto the market after the
suppression of the Jacobite Rebellions. What country, then, could so
rapidly afford such a course of legal study as the Protestant and
commercial Holland? The reputation of Boerhaave had drawn medical
students from all quarters, and Boswell's uncle John, and the celebrated
Monro _primus_ of the Edinburgh Medical School had been among the
number. Goldsmith in 1755 met Irish medical students there, and some
twenty years before the time we have reached Carlyle of Inveresk had
found in Leyden 'an established lodging-house' where his countrymen,
Gregory and Dickson, were domiciled, and numerous others, among whom he
expressly mentions Charles Townshend, Askew the Greek scholar, Johnston
of Westerhall, Doddeswell, afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer, and
John Wilkes then entering, at eighteen, on the career of profligacy that
was to render him notorious. Carlyle describes their meetings at each
other's rooms twice or thrice a week, when they drank coffee, supped on
Dutch red herrings, eggs and salad, and never sat beyond the decent hour
of twelve. For such a style of living Boswell's annual allowance of L240
was certainly handsome in a place where the fuel, chiefly peat, was the
only expensive item.

But such a quiet style of life was not congenial to the lively tastes of
our traveller. He soon tired of the civil law lectures of Professor
Trotz, and longed for fresh woods and pastures new. He sighed to be
upon his travels again. Of his life abroad some isolated notes may be
gathered from the _Boswelliana_, and, as has been mentioned, he sought
out his relatives at the Hague 'of the first fashion,' the Sommelsdycks,
and with his facility of manners, and his father's credentials to the
_literati_ and scholars of the place, his circle of acquaintance was
large and influential. We hear of an intimacy with the Rev. William
Brown, minister of the Scottish congregation at Utrecht, the father of
Principal Laurence Brown of Marischal College, Aberdeen; and with Sir
Joseph Yorke, whom he met later in Ireland, then the Ambassador at the
Hague, he would appear to have been acquainted. But Sir Joseph does not
seem to have welcomed the easy manners of his young friend, and the dull
life of the burgomasters was little suited to Boswell who ridicules
their portly figures and their clothes which they wore as if they had
been 'luggage.'

The two years' course of study was abruptly reduced to one. At its close
we t