Inflated with his success as an author, and his supposed popularity as the friend of the Corsicans and of Paoli, Boswell, on his return to Edinburgh in the summer of 1768, began to eschew his legal duties and spend his evenings at the gambling-table. To this practice he had been formerly addicted, but he had temporarily renounced it, on the counsel of Mr. Sheridan. In August, 1768, he reported to Mr. Temple that “he found the fever still lurking in his veins,” and so indulged his propensity. During the previous autumn he had experienced his father’s resentment for his encouragement of theatricals and constant talk about Paoli. In reference to his father’s displeasure he thus communicated with Mr. Temple in September, 1767:— “How unaccountable is it that my father and I should be so ill together! He is a man of sense and a man of worth; but from some unhappy turn in his disposition he is much dissatisfied with a son whom you know. I write to him with warmth, with an honest pride, wishing that he should think of me as I am; but my letters shock him, and every expression in them is interpreted unfavourably. To give you an instance, I send you a letter I had from him a few days ago. How galling is it to the friend of Paoli to be treated so! I have answered him in my own style. I will be myself.... Temple, would you not like such a son? would you not feel a glow of parental joy? I know you would; and yet my worthy father writes to me in the manner you see, with that Scots strength of sarcasm which is peculiar to a North Briton. But he is offended with that fire which you and I cherish as the essence of our souls; and how can I make him happy? Am I bound to do so at the expense, not of this or the other agreeable wish, but at the expense of myself? The time was when such a letter from my father as the one I enclose would have depressed; but I am now firm, and as my revered friend Mr. Samuel Johnson used to say, I feel the privileges of an independent human being. However, it is hard that I cannot have the pious satisfaction of being well with my father.”