Boswelliana: The Commonplace Book of James Boswell, with a Memoir and AnnotationsBoswell, James
History
Boswelliana: The Commonplace Book of James Boswell, with a Memoir and Annotations
Boswell, James
Boswell, James, 1740-1795
“I said to General Paoli, it was wonderful how much Corsica had done
for me, how far I had got in the world by having been there. I had got
upon a rock in Corsica and jumped into the middle of life.”
27th May, 1783.
* * * * *
“It was observed by somebody that Lord Dundonald attended to the
church very ill. Miss Preston said that their two black servants were
generally there every Sunday,—‘Ay,’ said Mr. Charles Preston, ‘but two
blacks don’t make a white.’”
Valley Field, 17th October, 1778.
* * * * *
UXORIANA.
“When I was warm, telling of my own consequence and generosity, my wife
made some cool humbling remarks upon me. I flew into a violent passion;
I said if you throw cold water on a plate of iron much heated it will
burst into shivers.”
* * * * *
“She recommended reading the ‘Arabian Nights Entertainments’ to one
in bad health and low spirits; ‘not,’ said she; ‘to be taken into the
mind, but to keep out disturbing thoughts; let them be like a sentry,
whom we do not admit into the chamber of a sick person, but place at
the door to prevent noisy intruders.’”
* * * * *
“She disapproved of my inviting Mr. M——sh, a man of ability but
of violent manners, to make one in a genteel party at our house one
evening. ‘He is,’ said she, ‘like fire and water, useful, but not to be
brought into company.’”
* * * * *
“Dr. Grant asked if Mr. Macadam of Craigengellan had but one daughter.
I said he had properly speaking but one—one beautiful daughter, the
other poor girl was very ugly. My wife said that it was hard that want
of good looks should make her not be reckoned his daughter; she was
more a daughter on that account, as being more likely to continue with
him.”
APPENDIX.
_Page 52._—In his “Life of Garrick” (Lond., 1868, vol. I., p. 422)
Mr. Percy Fitzgerald presents the following narrative of Boswell’s
appearance at a dinner in Guildhall. The date 1759 assigned to the
occasion is evidently erroneous. It is not improbable that it took
place shortly after the interchange of letters between him and Mr.
Pitt. “The Grocer in London” was probably composed in the manner of the
“Song of the Barber,” quoted at page 36.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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