“Mr. Hume said he would give me half a crown for every page of his dictionary in which he would not find an absurdity, if I would give him half a crown for every page in which he did find one; he talked so insolently, really, that I calmly determined to be at him; so I repeated, by way of telling that Dr. Johnson could be touched, the admirable passage in your letter, how the Ministry had set him to write in a way that they ‘could not ask even their infidel pensioner Hume to write.’ Upon honour, I did not give the least hint from whom I had the letter. When Hume asked if it was from an American, I said ‘No; it was from an English gentleman.’ ‘Would a gentleman write so?’ said he. In short, Davy was finely punished for his treatment of my revered friend; and he deserved it richly, both for his petulance to so great a character, and for his talking so before me.” In a letter dated 12th August he informed his reverend correspondent that he had been suffering from his “atrabilious temperament.” In his melancholy he had been strongly impressed by the phrase in Scripture, “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found.” From sleep at night he had awakened “dreading annihilation or being thrown into some horrible state of being.” He proceeds:— “My promise under the solemn yew I have observed wonderfully, having never infringed it till the other day a very jovial company of us dined at a tavern, and I unwarily exceeded my bottle of old hock; and having once broke over the pale I run wild. But I did not get drunk; I was, however, intoxicated, and very ill next day. I ask your forgiveness, and I shall be more strictly cautious for the future. The drunken manners of this country are very bad.” The distinction between being _intoxicated_ and _drunk_ is not very obvious, and the allusion by way of defence to the intemperate habits of the country is _Boswellian_. Amidst his general gloom Boswell experienced comfort in the assurance by Mr. Temple that he was preparing for the press a portion of their correspondence. A specimen was transmitted, and Boswell tendered his advice. He insisted that anonymous authorship would not suit, and suggested that his own name as “James Boswell, Esq.,” should be displayed upon the title-page. Mr. Temple subsequently published selections from his own letters under the title of “Selection of Historical and Political Memoirs.” About the middle of August Boswell begged Dr. Johnson for a prescription against melancholy. The moralist replied:—