Of his mother we know but little; she was, however, a woman of 'almost unexampled piety and goodness.' Lord Auchinleck, his father, figures occasionally in the various authorities for Boswell's 'Life,' and we can get a very good picture of him. Scott gives the following account: Old Lord Auchinleck was an able lawyer, a good scholar, after the manner of Scotland, and highly valued his own advantages as a man of good estate and ancient family; and, moreover, he was a strict Presbyterian and Whig of the old Scottish cast. This did not prevent his being a terribly proud aristocrat, and great was the contempt he entertained and expressed for his son James, for the nature of his friendships and the character of the personages of whom he was _engoué_ one after another. 'There's nae hope for Jamie, mon,' he said to a friend. 'Jamie is gaen clean gyte.... Whose tail do you think he has pinned himself to now, mon?' Here the old judge summoned up a sneer of most sovereign contempt. 'A _dominie_, mon--an auld dominie; he keeped a schule and cau'd it an acaadamy.' The Laird, as is evident from the account in the 'Tour to the Hebrides' of Johnson's visit to Boswell's home, held his opinions with that conviction which admits of no discussion. A story of him is related by Scott that when challenged by Johnson to explain the utility of Cromwell's career, he very curtly remarked: 'God, Doctor, he gart kings ken they had a lith[1] in their neck.' Boswell seems to have summed up the situation at home when he wrote in the _London Magazine_ for 1781: I knew a father who was a violent Whig and used to attack his son for being a Tory, upbraiding him with being deficient in noble sentiments of liberty, while at the same time he made this son live under his roof in such bondage as he was not only afraid to stir from home without leave like a child, but durst scarcely open his mouth in his father's presence. This was sad living.