In these early years Boswell was glad to make a friend of any particularly intelligent person, and his acquaintances included characters widely differing--Hume and Rousseau, Johnson and Lord Hailes, Wilkes and Paoli. Boswell clearly had pleasure in the society of them all; he did not, like Johnson, condemn them to a place beyond the range of his acquaintance; these men were specimens of human nature worthy to be studied; he saw some good in all of them. There is a characteristic passage in the 'Life' about the meeting of Johnson and Wilkes which illustrates the attitude: My desire of being acquainted with celebrated men of every description had made me, much about the same time, obtain an introduction to Dr. Samuel Johnson and to John Wilkes, Esq. Two men more different could perhaps not be selected out of all mankind. They have even attacked one another with some asperity in their writings; yet I lived in habits of friendship with both. I could fully relish the excellence of each; for I have ever delighted in that intellectual chymistry which can separate good qualities from evil in the same person. He looked upon men much as we look upon works of art, distinguishing that which, as art, has merit, and crediting with a certain value every design or idea which has been executed well, but attaching ourselves more particularly to a few rare objects which have some special significance or appeal for our own nature. Johnson and Paoli had this appeal for Boswell. Wilkes and Hume attracted him more because they were interesting individuals for whom, though he really disapproved of them, he might retain some slight affection because they were representative men. He might dislike the things they represented, but like them in spite of this: like them, one might almost say, for representing something. With Hume, for instance, he had a considerable friendship at one time. He was of course, an individual to be studied; to Temple, Boswell related his conversations much as he recorded those of Johnson and Paoli. But he did not see him merely because he was interested; he liked him too: 'David is really amiable; I always regret to him his unlucky principles and he smiles at my faith.' It is probable that as he grew older Boswell grew less tolerant. He was always somewhat of an experimentalist, interested in various sides of life and fitting one or another to his own case; but though he became with maturity more definitely attached to the conventional Christianity, to 'belief,' as he termed it, as opposed to 'infidelity,' and less tolerant of the people who held different views, he never hated a man for being a Whig or an atheist as Johnson did. Interest and affection: these, then, are real motives with Boswell for seeking as he did the company of distinguished men. The question, however, of a further motive--of the snobbishness in Boswell's nature--still remains.