us expression of
Boswell we shall refer when we discuss at the close his religious and
philosophical views, but it is distressing to find such whimsicalities
colouring his sense of the old man's kindness when he writes but
shortly after, 'I must stay at Auchinleck, I have there just the kind of
complaining proper for me. All must complain, and I more than most of my
fellow-creatures.'

On the 26th July 1766 he passed advocate at the bar. On putting on his
gown he remarked to his brother-advocates, as he says, that his natural
propensities had led him to a military life, but now that he had been
pressed by his father into the service he did not doubt but that he
should shew as good results as those who had joined as volunteers. His
gay friend Wilkes had declared that he would be out-distanced in the
professional race by dull plodders and blockheads, but at the outset he
appears to have started with a fair amount of zest. He dedicated his
inaugural thesis to the son of the Earl of Bute, Lord Mountstuart, with
whom he had travelled in Italy, and on whom he flattered himself he had
made some impression, the first of Boswell's many ineffectual attempts
to secure place and promotion, for on a seat in Parliament he had four
years before set his heart. A copy of the thesis was sent to Johnson,
who by this time had rather cooled over the proposed publication by his
friend of a book on Corsica. 'You have no materials,' he said, 'which
others have not or may not have. You have warmed your imagination. I
wish there were some cure like the lover's leap for all heads of which
some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession.
Mind your own affairs and leave the Corsicans to theirs.' Touching on
the faulty Latinity of the essay, 'Ruddiman,' added the old man, 'is
dead.' On entering his new career Bozzy began by vows for his good
conduct. These, a remnant of his old Catholic days, we shall find him
renewing again and again, ludicrously and pathetically enough, however,
as we draw to the close. Sometimes they appear with reference to
matters with which the knowledge of the unpublished parts of the letters
to Temple, now in the possession of an American collector, has to deal
without suggesting unduly to the more fastidious sense of the present
day the vagaries and weaknesses of their writer. Johnson protested
against this attempt to 'enchain his volatility' by vows. But Boswell
replies that they may be useful to one