r's house, riding through
Glasgow 'in a cocked hat, a brown wig, brown coat made in the court
fashion, red vest, corduroy small clothes, and long military-looking
boots, with his servant riding a most aristocratic distance behind.' He
had left it likely to vex the soul of his father, the laureate of
doggerel, threatening to be the disgrace of the family; he returned as
the acquaintance, in varying degrees of intimacy, of Johnson, Wilkes,
Churchill, Goldsmith, the Earl Marischal, Voltaire, Rousseau, Paoli,
Chatham, and plenipotentiaries of all kinds. A wonderful list for the
raw youth they had known at home; yet nowhere in all his intercourse
does he show the least want of self-possession or easy bearing. The
'facility of manners' and his good humour had carried him all through
his curious experiences with German courts and Italian peasants. A
'spirited tour,' truly, if perhaps the moral results had been greater.
The nobility and gentry of this country were welcomed abroad with but
too great avidity. Italy, the garden of Europe, Bozzy declared to be the
Covent Garden, and isolated passages in his book shew that he could not
claim, like Milton, to have borne himself truly 'in all these places
where so many things are considered lawful.' Fox, we know, did not
escape the contagion of the grand tour, and Boswell had been 'caught
young.'

Nor will the reader find much fault in what the adverse critics have
unduly emphasized--his interviewing or forcing himself upon men. A man,
as Johnson said to him when seeking an interlocutor on this point,
always makes himself greater as he increases his knowledge. When he was
at Dunvegan on his northern tour, and Colonel Macleod seemed to hint at
this, Bozzy offers as his defence of what 'has procured me much
happiness' the eagerness he ever felt to share the society of men
distinguished by their rank or talents. If a man, he adds, is praised
for seeking knowledge, though mountains and seas are in his way, he may
be pardoned in the pursuit of the same object under difficulties as
great though of a different kind. And the defence will not be refused
him for the use he has made of the means. Wisdom and literature alike
are justified of their children, and the masters in either are not so
numerous that we can afford to quarrel with them, or wrangle over their
respective merits. 'Sensation,' said Johnson, '_is_ sensation,' and the
pretty general feeling now is that in his department Boswell i