But the particular form of his self-indulgence was drunkenness. Besides frequent references to his habit of drinking, there are, altogether, some half-dozen recorded instances of Boswell being drunk or intoxicated, and as they are referred to only because they had some curious results they suggest that this was far from being unusual. In the letters, Boswell records on several occasions that he has been drinking too much lately, or that he was becoming a drunkard. His mode of resisting what he quite well saw to be an evil habit was to take a series of vows. It is a method which seems to have had a curious appeal for Boswell's nature. There was something to his mind rather romantic about a vow: something heroic in taking that great resolve, made so quickly to endure for so long, something of the saintly penance; and there was something of the martyr about one who had bound himself in this way. In Boswell's drunkenness, however, there was nothing romantic; it was rather sordid; and he was neither saint, nor hero, nor martyr, for the vows, even if they could have made him all these, were too frequently broken. There was no doubt some serious effort on Boswell's part; but the impulse of the moment was always too strong for him, and the efforts which lasted too short a time were apparently followed by grave relapses. Boswell's drinking habits had ill effects. Johnson, when reminded of the headache which his companion was wont to feel after sitting up with him, exclaimed: 'Nay, Sir, it was not the _wine_ that made your head ache, but the sense that I put into it.' But though the nature of Johnson's sense and of Boswell's head may fortify the explanation, it was not the common case; excess of alcohol was injurious to Boswell's health. It has been pointed out with justice that Boswell's melancholy was to some extent the result of this excess. How much of it was affectation we cannot easily tell. When Boswell first made his appearance to the world as the young _littérateur_, he may have hoped to increase the appearance of genius by assuming hereditary hypochondria. But it must be remarked that he seems, as far as we can judge, to have given very little impression of ever being morose; it is on the contrary his gaiety and good spirits that are always emphasised. And we may at least suppose when, as has been mentioned above, he entirely denies, in a number of the 'Hypochondriack,' that genius and melancholy have any particular connection, that he had by that time outgrown any affectation there may originally have been. That one of Boswell's great vivacity should sometimes be dejected, is really very natural, and when we add to this his self-indulgent habits, it is not hard to account for occasional attacks of low spirits. Sir Walter Scott remarks: