sir, you will not forget me in my absence.’ _Johnson_: ‘Nay, sir, it is more likely that you should forget me than that I should forget you.’ As the vessel put out to sea I kept my eyes upon him for a considerable time, while he remained rolling his majestic frame in his usual manner; and at last I perceived him walk back into the town, and he disappeared.” On the 8th December Dr. Johnson addressed to Boswell his first letter. He entreated him to study civil law as his father had advised, and the ancient languages, as he had personally resolved upon. He then proceeds to depict his friend’s weaknesses in these forcible terms:— “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 easy temper and a quick apprehension. Vacant to every object, and sensible of every impulse, he thought that an 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 tumult of diversion, that knowledge and those accomplishments which mortals of the common fabric obtain only by mute abstraction and solitary drudgery. 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 wishing 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 enjoyment. Let all such fancies, illusive and destructive, be banished henceforward from your thoughts for ever. Resolve and keep your resolution; choose, and pursue your choice. If you spend this day in study, you will find yourself still more able to study to-morrow; not that you are to expect that you shall at once obtain a complete victory.” Johnson had commended his friend for keeping a journal.[31] He concludes his letter by expressing a hope that he is “enriching his journal with many observations upon the country” in which he was residing. At Utrecht Boswell obtained the friendship of M. Trotz, the learned civilian, whose prelections on civil law he attended for some months. He also became intimate with the Rev. William Brown, pastor of the English congregation at Utrecht, subsequently Professor of Church History at St. Andrews. Anecdotes related by M. Trotz and Mr. Brown are preserved in Boswell’s Commonplace-book.