at Scots strength of sarcasm which is
peculiar to a North Briton,' and that time was when it would have
depressed him. But now he is firm, and, 'as my revered friend Mr Samuel
Johnson used to say,' he feels the privileges of an independent human
being! To add to the confusion of Lord Auchinleck his son had flung
himself with all his enthusiasm into the famous Douglas Trial, the cause
that figures so much to the confusion, it is to be feared, of the
general reader. Of this some full account is necessary in order to
explain that extraordinary trial,--perhaps the most protracted and
famous that ever came before a court,--which, dragging its slow length
along through a longer course than the Peloponnesian War, fills the
shelves of legal libraries with eighteen portly volumes of papers and
reports. In the case Boswell really held no actual brief, though were we
to follow the impression he gives of his services we should infer he had
been leading counsel for the plaintiff, Douglas. 'With a labour of which
few are capable,' says Bozzy, many years after, 'he compressed the
substance of the immense volumes of proofs and arguments into an octavo
pamphlet,' to which its author believed 'we may ascribe a great share
of the popularity on Mr Douglas's side.' Then he adds in a
characteristic sentence, the meaning of which can be fully appreciated
only by those who have followed his contributions to magazines and the
press of the day, 'Mr Boswell took care to keep the newspapers and other
publications incessantly warm with various writings, both in prose and
in verse, all tending to touch the heart and rouse the parental and
sympathetic feelings.'

Lady Jane Douglas, sister to Archibald, Duke of Douglas, had been
privately married in 1746 to Colonel Steuart, afterwards Sir John
Steuart of Grandtully. She was then in the forty-ninth year of her age,
and the marriage was not divulged till May 1748 to her brother who had
not been reconciled and had in consequence suspended her allowance. At
Paris, in very humble lodgings, she gave birth to male twins in the
house of a Madame le Brun. The parents in 1749 returned to Scotland
where one of the children died; in 1761 the Duke of Douglas had himself
followed. Three claimants took the field, the Duke of Hamilton as heir
male of line, the Earl of Selkirk as heir of provision under former
deeds, and Archibald Steuart or Douglas. Lady Jane died in 1753, and Sir
John in 1764, both on their death-be