But Boswell no doubt wanted to be a faithful husband: 'I can unite little fondnesses with perfect conjugal love.'[15] His idea of fidelity would seem to involve no kind of restriction upon his natural inclinations except in so far as that he should appear to be a good husband in the eyes of the world and particularly of his wife. However sensible this view may have been, it was not such as commonly finds favour among the female sex. But he was undoubtedly in his own view a faithful husband and he had really at heart the welfare of his wife. 'Upon the whole I do believe,' he says, 'I make her very happy.'[16] [Footnote 1: _Tour to the Hebrides_, September 17.] [Footnote 2: _Autobiography, Letters, &c., of Mrs. Piozzi_, ii, 124.] [Footnote 3: Perhaps the best evidence of all for this quality is Boswell's habit of attending executions (mentioned several times in the _Life_ and also in the _Life of Reynolds_, by Leslie and Taylor), and his acquaintance with Mrs. Rudd, a notorious criminal.] [Footnote 4: _Life of Johnson_, ii, 59. This letter is an admirable instance of Boswell's affected manner of expressing real feelings.] [Footnote 5: _Life of Johnson_, ii, 3, note 1.] [Footnote 6: _Letters to Temple_, p. 126.] [Footnote 7: _Boswelliana_, p. 186.] [Footnote 8: _Life of Johnson_, ii, 20.] [Footnote 9: Fitzgerald's _Life of Boswell_, i, 111.] [Footnote 10: Boswell's authorship proved by _Letters to Temple_, p. 89.] [Footnote 11: Fitzgerald's _Life of Boswell_, i, 113.] [Footnote 12: Fitzgerald's _Life of Boswell_, i, 116.] [Footnote 13: _London Magazine_, 1, 40.] [Footnote 14: Temple, it appears, was promised payment for his services: 'You shall have consultation guineas, as an ambassador has his appointments.' This seems to imply more than the mere travelling expenses which Dr. Rogers suggests as an explanation.] [Footnote 15: _Letters to Temple_, p. 159.] [Footnote 16: _Ib._ p. 137.] CHAPTER IV A biography of Boswell, though it might profess to be complete, could say little about his domestic life. If he has told us very little about it, there is, however, no reason that we should seek to know more. It was a very essential part of Boswell that he should have a wife and family: a wife, because she adds a certain flavour of respectability and is a definite asset to the social position of a man, still more perhaps because she increases responsibility and so intensifies the sensation of importance; a family, because to the man of estate there must be born an heir. But the mere fact of his being married was, in a sense, of far less consequence to him than to most men.