I can assure you [he writes to Temple] the study of law here is a most laborious task. In return for yours, I shall give you an account of my studies. From nine to ten I attend the law class; from ten to eleven study at home, and from one to two attend a College upon Roman Antiquities. The afternoons and evenings I likewise spend in study; I never walk except on Saturdays. This is hard work for one at a University! And especially for one of Boswell's temperament. There is no great amount of diligence associated as a rule with the youth of either the literary or the very sociable character. The truth is that Boswell was very far from being idle; he had great energy, and often applied himself to something which interested him with fervent industry; he was irregular no doubt, as are very many people who work in this way. An indication of the channel into which his industry was to be turned is provided by that journal (and what pains it must have cost!), which he began to keep while travelling with Lord Hailes and his father; and at the same time he was made aware of the existence of Dr. Johnson as a great writer in London, began to read his works, and also no doubt to feel, as he afterwards said, that 'highest reverence for their author, which had grown up with my fancy into a kind of mysterious veneration, by figuring to myself a state of solemn elevated abstraction, in which I supposed him to live in the immense metropolis of London.' Boswell also seems to have been deeply interested in religion even during these early years. While at Glasgow University his views underwent a violent revolution, most distressing to his parents, and he became for a short time a Roman Catholic. There is no reason to suppose that Boswell was in any way frivolous when he took this decisive step. He clearly hated the Presbyterianism of his youth and was probably in search of some creed to take its place. He cannot, however, have gained much credit from this episode, since it was mixed up in some way with an elopement with a Roman Catholic lady.