dignity; she has no refinement, but she is very handsome and very
lively."

What he did was to break with her; four weeks later he writes:

"My life is one of the most romantic that I believe either you or I
really know of; and yet I am a very sensible, good sort of man.
What is the meaning of this, Temple? You may depend upon it that
very soon my follies will be at an end, and I shall turn out an
admirable member of society. Now that I have given my mind the
turn, I am totally emancipated from my charmer, as much as from the
gardener's daughter who now puts on my fire and performs menial
offices like any other wench; and yet just this time twelve month I
was so madly in love as to think of marrying her."

The frequency and solemnity of Boswell's resolutions to amend are
extraordinary, though the fact that his correspondent was a curate
suggests an explanation; in carrying them out he was perfectly normal.

Boswell tells us that he "looks with horror on adultery," and the
love-affairs with which his letters overflow appear, for the most part,
to have been sufficiently innocent; for an "Italian angel," Zelide (whom
he knew at Utrecht), Miss Bosville, and "La Belle Irlandaise" he
cherished at different times a chaste flame; while Miss Blair, a
neighbour and lady of fortune, very nearly caught him. But Boswell
decided that he would not have a "Scots lass." "You cannot say how fine
a woman I may marry; perhaps a Howard or some other of the noblest in
the kingdom." "Rouse me, my friend!" he cries; "Kate has not fire
enough; she does not know the value of her lover!" Nevertheless, he was
to have a "Scots lass" after all, for in the autumn of 1769 he married
Miss Margaret Montgomerie, "a true Montgomerie, whom I esteem, whom I
love, after fifteen years, as on the day when she gave me her hand"
("Letter to the People of Scotland").

After his marriage Boswell's life continued agitated and desultory: he
practised at the Scotch Bar, without much success, and was called to the
English; almost every year he visited London, where he cultivated
Johnson, enjoyed good company and fine, made the most of his social and
literary importance, and revelled in the genuine and flattering
friendship of Paoli, who seems to have made him free of his house: "I
felt more dignity when I had several servants at my devotion, a large
apartment, and the convenience and state of a coach."