There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.... You know a gentleman who, when first he set his foot in the gay world, as he prepared himself to whirl in the vortex of pleasure, imagined a total indifference and universal negligence to be the most agreeable concomitants of youth, and the strongest indication of an airy temper and a quick apprehension. The result which he particularly deplored was Boswell's idleness: Vacant to every object, and sensible of every impulse, he thought that all appearance of diligence would deduct something from the reputation of genius; and hoped that he should appear to attain, amidst all the ease of carelessness, and all the tumults of diversion, that knowledge and those accomplishments which mortals of the common fabrick obtain only by mute abstraction and solitary drudgery. He then alludes to the wrong conclusions which might be drawn by one in Boswell's mental condition from the difficulties which attend a return to a normal course of life: He tried this scheme of life awhile; was made weary of it by his sense and his virtue; he then wished to return to his studies; and finding long habits of idleness and pleasure harder to be cured than he expected, still willing to retain his claim to some extraordinary prerogatives, resolved the common consequences of irregularity into an unalterable decree of destiny, and concluded that Nature had originally formed him incapable of rational employment. And finally he gives some very solemn advice: Let all such fancies, illusive and destructive, be banished henceforward from your thoughts for ever. Resolution will sometimes relax, and diligence will sometimes be interrupted; but let no accidental surprise or deviation, whether short or long, dispose you to despondency. Consider these failings as incident to all mankind. Boswell was too honest not to realise the truth of what Johnson said, and we cannot but think of this letter when we read a number of years later, in the _London Magazine_ of 1778, an attack written by Boswell upon the association by Aristotle of melancholy with genius; for this essay seems to aim at undermining the same kind of affectation as that which Johnson had seen in him.