The result of Johnson's honesty acting upon Boswell's conventional affectations was not to make him less but rather more conventional. It gave him a surer foundation. An affectation does not as a rule become less affected but rather the reverse. But Boswell's affectations tended rather to become the substantial and real expression of a mind as he came to understand that they were affectations. He saw that the manners and opinions which he affected because they pleased him had a value in life and a value for him. The lessons which he learnt from Johnson in this way were, for the most part, moral; they were concerned with the piety and goodness which were so much a part of Johnson himself. Boswell was able to reinforce a set of religious beliefs with a little real piety, and a set of moral axioms with a little real goodness. If it were necessary to point to one definite quality in the Johnsonian atmosphere which we might suppose to be of special value to Boswell, it would be the genuine kind-heartedness and benevolent interest, the 'tenderness' which we find so carefully recorded in the 'Life.' It was to some purpose that the naturally egotistical Boswell was reminded of a duty towards other men, was told more than once without compromise that he must be kind to his father and kind to his wife. But it is not so much in any minute particular that Johnson was reflected by his biographer, but rather in a more general way, in a whole attitude towards life, in the one significant fact that Boswell himself as we see him, not only in the biographical writings but in his own letters too, is essentially a moralist. The one difficulty which his conscience found in writing the 'Life' was that he might, by showing the failings of so great a man, give support to those who were inclined to the same faults so that they should conceive themselves to be justified by that example. And so he points out with zealous care that, where the 'practice' of Johnson does not agree with his 'principle,' it is not because the principle is not good but that even so great a man was not quite perfect; _humanum est errare_. Undoubtedly the influence of Johnson was a moral influence; this in itself may be considered as one aspect of its complete respectability. Johnson wanted Boswell to be a sober, honest, contented citizen, a hard-working, successful lawyer, a good son, a good husband, a good friend and a religious man. 'I have always loved and valued you,' he wrote in 1769, 'and shall love you and value you still more, as you become more regular and useful.' And again, in 1771: