“I rejoice that you got so well to Gainslaw. I was afraid you might find the journey very fatiguing; but you water-drinkers are Herculean fellows. I believe it would be better for me were I to adopt your system; but this is only _en passant_. It is a bill which would meet with a good deal of opposition in my lower house. How agreeable is it to me to find that my old and most intimate friend was so happy in my house! We must really contrive it so as to pass a good part of our time together. I never will rest till you have a living in the north, I hope in Northumberland or Cumberland. “You cannot say too much to me of my wife. How dare you quote to me _sua si bona norint_? I am fully sensible of my happiness in being married to so excellent a woman, so sensible a mistress of a family, so agreeable a companion, so affectionate and peculiarly proper helpmate for me. I own I am not so much on my guard against fits of passion or gloom as I ought to be; but that is really owing to her great goodness. There is something childish in it, I confess. I ought not to indulge in such fits; it is like a child that lets itself fall purposely, to have the pleasure of being tenderly raised up again by those who are fond of it. I shall endeavour to be better. Upon the whole I do believe I shall make her happy. God bless and preserve her!” For eighteen months subsequent to his marriage Boswell applied himself with unwonted steadiness to literary study, and the systematic practice of his profession. If he corresponded regularly with Mr. Temple during this period few of his letters have been preserved, and he has recorded in his Life of Johnson that he and the lexicographer resumed, in June, 1771, a correspondence which had for a year and a half been intermitted. To a letter from Boswell, soliciting a renewal of epistolary intercourse, Dr. Johnson wrote as follows:— “_London, June 20th, 1771._ “I never was so much pleased as now with your account of yourself; and sincerely hope that, between public business, improving studies, and domestic 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. After this,— ‘Tristitiam et metus, Trades protervis in mare Creticum Portare ventis.’ “If we perform our duty we shall be safe and steady, ‘_sive per_,’ &c., whether we climb the Highlands or are tost among the Hebrides; and I hope the time will come when we may try our powers both with cliffs and water.”