I never was so much pleased as now with your account of yourself; and sincerely hope, that between publick business, improving studies, and domestick pleasures, neither melancholy nor caprice will find any place for entrance. Whatever philosophy may determine of material nature, it is certainly true of intellectual nature that it 'abhors a vacuum'; our minds cannot be empty; and evil will break in upon them, if they are not preoccupied by good. My dear Sir, mind your studies, mind your business, make your lady happy, and be a good Christian. There was no place for any intellectual unquiet--and herein it was essentially respectable--in Johnson's scheme of life as he presented it to others. If a subject were unpleasant to think of, it were better not to heed it. He wished himself to walk through life in a calm, majestic, and dignified way, with firm knowledge of good and a resolute purpose to follow it. He never, if we may judge from Boswell, was in any serious doubt as to the right course, and he seems to have thought the matter as easy for Boswell as it was for him. It is because he himself desired to be like this that Boswell found Johnson such a valuable friend. But it was unfortunate, as it turned out, that he attached so much importance to mere success in the world, in his profession, in politics; in these, with the encouragement of Johnson, he so completely believed, that when he discovered that he had failed, or had at least fallen far short of his ambitions, he was bitterly disappointed. [Footnote 1: For Boswell's political career see pp. 174-182. He published this letter in 1783, and a second two years later.] [Footnote 2: _London Magazine_, vol. xlvi, pp. 492-3.] [Footnote 3: _Ibid._, vol. xlix, p. 542.] CHAPTER VI Lord Auchinleck died in 1782. His relations with Boswell are of some interest in this place, because they exhibit Boswell in the _rôle_ of son and incidentally raise an important question. The two never agreed very well. Was this the fault of the son? Was he deliberately unkind, or negligent, or disagreeable? There is no reason to suppose that Boswell was culpable in any such way: indiscretion on the one hand and intolerance on the other are sufficient to account for all the friction. Lord Auchinleck had evidently a very rigid view of the career fitting for his eldest son. His ideal of progeniture seems to have assumed with a not uncommon complacency that the ego was worthy of a second edition. James Boswell must be after the pattern of his father--a Scotch lawyer, a hard-headed, practical man of affairs, a wise man of business successful in his profession.