"Johnny" Johnson followed with his familiar correspondence, and Grimshaw and Southey in turn republished in rival editions all the letters they could get. Others have since been added. By now it is possible to maintain that it is rather as a letter-writer than as a poet that Cowper will live, or at least that the letters will be read more than the poems. Yet one writes it with reluctance. In any case, letters and poems together give us such a picture as we have nowhere in English, save in Boswell and Lockhart-and one which, it is possible to maintain, surpasses both in charm. W BOSWELL HO is this Scotch cur at Johnson's heels?" some one asked Goldsmith in 1763. "He is not a cur," said Goldsmith; "he is only a bur. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of sticking." 1 2 The bur was James Boswell, Esquire, eldest son of a Scottish Judge, Lord Auchinleck. He was twenty-two years old, and had already begun to pack his life with vivid interests. Johnson, he says, "used to tell with great humour, from my relation to him, the following little story of my early years, which was literally true: 'Boswell, in the year 1745, was a fine boy, wore a white cockade, and prayed for King James, till one of his uncles (General Cochran) gave him a shilling on condition that he should pray for King George, which he accordingly did. So you see (says Boswell) that Whigs of all ages are made the same way." The delicate way in which he transfers his autobiography to Johnson's lips is characteristic. When rather older, he went to Edinburgh University, and there made the friendship of W. J. Temple, who soon went on to Cambridge, and with whom he kept up a correspondence through life. In 1759 he went to Glasgow to attend Adam Smith's lectures. It is something to captivate one's professors, and Boswell did it; for Adam Smith gave him a testimonial to the effect that he was "happily possessed of a facility of manners." 3 "Some days ago," writes Boswell (29 July 1758), “ I 1 Life, i. 417. Throughout references are made to Dr Birkbeck Hill's sixvolume edition. • Rae, Adam Smith, p. 58. * Life, i. 431. was introduced to your friend Mr Hume; he is a most discreet, affable man, and has really a great deal of learning and a choice collection of books. He is indeed an extraordinary man,-few such people are to be met with nowadays. . . . Mr Hume, I think, is a very proper person for a young man to cultivate acquaintance with. Though he has not perhaps the most delicate taste, yet he has applied himself with great attention to the study of the ancients, and is likewise a great historian, so that you are not only entertained in his company, but may reap a great deal of useful instruction." David Hume was nearly thirty years older than his critic of eighteen, and had already published most of his more notable books. So early did Boswell consider with whom a young man might profitably cultivate acquaintance, and conclude to aim at the best.1 He goes on to tell Temple that " "your grave, sedate, philosophic friend "-it is not Hume that is meant-has been "violently in love with" Miss W—t, but now "it is changed to a rational esteem of her good qualities, so that I should be extremely happy to pass my life with her; but if she does not incline to it, I can bear it æquo animo, and retire into the calm regions of philosophy. She is indeed extremely pretty . . . at the same time she has a just regard for true piety and religion, and behaves in the most easy, affable way. She is just such a young lady as I could wish for the partner of my soul; and you know that is not every one; for you and I have often talked how nice we would be in such a choice. I own I can have but little hopes, as she is a fortune of thirty thousand pounds." Temple was to receive such confidences for many years about many "charmers" and princesses." In Glasgow Boswell fell in with Roman Catholics and decided to become one; but, according to the anecdote 1 Years later we find Hume still entertaining him-"an elegant supper, three sorts of ice-creams. What think you of the northern Epicurus style ?" Letter to Temple, 19 June 1775. flippantly told, the family lawyer represented that it was no gentleman's act to save his soul at the cost of such annoyance to his relatives, and he gave up the notion. His parents' distress was exactly the reason to reach and touch his imagination. He compacted however that he should enter the army. His father took him to London in March 1760, and asked the Duke of Argyle for a commission in the Guards. The Duke got out of it very happily: "I like your son; that boy must not be shot at for three-and-sixpence a day." He seems to have visited Cambridge, for years later he reminds Temple of the days" when you and I sat up all night and read Gray with a noble enthusiasm ; when we first used to read Mason's Elfrida and when we talked of that elegant knot of worthies Gray, Mason and Walpole, etc."1 Temple was at Trinity Hall, and Gray was the great poet of the day, in residence half a mile away at Pembroke. He returned to Scotland, and now began to plunge into literature, prose and verse. The Cub at Newmarket has an autobiographical suggestion intended by the author. About the same time (1761) Boswell received the honour of a dedication. An Ode to Tragedy appeared, from the hand of one who had,-like most young persons,A soul by nature formed to feel Grief sharper than the tyrant's steel, From ancient lore's remembrance brought. The dedicator in his preface says: "I should be sorry to contribute in any degree to your acquiring an excess of self-sufficiency. . . . I own indeed that when . . . to display my extensive erudition, I have quoted Greek, Latin and French sentences one after another with astonishing celerity; or have got into my Old-hock humour and fallen a-raving about princes and lords, 1 Letter to Temple, 4 April 1775 knights and geniuses, ladies of quality and harpsichords ; you, with a peculiar comic smile, have gently reminded me of the importance of a man to himself and slily left the room with the witty Dean lying open at-P.P. clerk of this parish." The author evidently knew himself and was aware of his weaknesses, for he lays them out frankly enough; and he knew Boswell. Who was he? That question was put to Boswell by the Hon. Andrew Erskine, who was carrying on a very lively correspondence with him-each with his eye on the press, for these gay letters were written for the world, every line of them. "The author of the Ode to Tragedy," replies Boswell, “is a most excellent man: he is of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a little. At his nativity there appeared omens of his future greatness; his parts are bright, and his education has been good; he has travelled in postchaises miles without number; he is fond of seeing much of the world; he eats of every good dish, especially apple pie; he drinks old hock; he has a very fine temper; he is somewhat of a humourist, and a little tinctured with pride; he has a good, manly countenance, and he owns himself to be amorous; he has infinite vivacity, yet is observed at times to have a melancholy cast; he is fat rather than lean, rather short than tall, rather young than old; his shoes are neatly made, and he never wears spectacles. The length of his walking stick is not as yet ascertained, but we hope soon to favour the republic of letters with a solution of this difficulty, as several able mathematicians are employed in its investigation, and for that purpose have posted themselves at different given points in the Canongate; so that when the gentleman saunters down to the Abbey of Holyrood House, in order to think of ancient days, on King James the Fifth and Queen Mary, they may compute its altitude above the street according to the rules of geometry." 1 1 Letter to Erskine, 17 Dec. 1761. › |