new edition of Strabo, at the desire of the University of Oxford; he was exceedingly obliging to me.” At Chester Boswell found the young ladies to be especially charming. Forgetting that he and his correspondent were both married, he informed Mr. Temple that several of the ladies had “capital fortunes.” He wrote to Dr. Johnson that he had complimented Miss Letitia Bainston, niece of one of the prebendaries, in these words:—“I have come to Chester, madam, I cannot tell how; and far less can I tell how I am able to get away from it.” In his journey from Chester to Scotland Boswell lingered at Carlisle. He wrote to Dr. Johnson that he had received the sacrament in the cathedral, and that it was “divinely cheering to him that there was a cathedral so near Auchinleck.” Dr. Johnson reminded his correspondent that Carlisle cathedral was at least one hundred and fifty miles from Auchinleck, adding, “If you are pleased, it is so far well.” In the spring of 1777 Boswell obtained a connection with the _London Magazine_. He then commenced in its pages a series of papers, which he styled “The Hypochondriack.” These papers are generally short, and often disconnected; they abound in allusions to the writer’s personal tastes and peculiar opinions, while classical quotations are interspersed without point and without purpose. But Boswell was pleased to see himself in print, and so he complacently reports to Mr. Temple, in January, 1780, that his “Hypochondriack gets on wonderfully well.” In his paper for March, 1780, he thus alludes to his love of dissipation:— “I do fairly acknowledge,” he writes, “that I love drinking; that I have a constitutional inclination to indulge in fermented liquors, and that were it not for the restraints of reason and religion, I am afraid I should be as constant a votary of Bacchus as any man.”[67] At the close of his letter of January he informs Mr. Temple that his father had been ill of fever, with his pulse at ninety-five; he then begs a loan of £200, to satisfy a demand which his father could not be informed of. The loan was not granted, and Boswell afterwards sought repayment of an advance made to his friend at a former period, and which remained undischarged. In September Boswell experienced a family loss in the death of Dr. John Boswell, his father’s brother. Of his deceased relative he writes to Mr. Temple that he was “a good scholar and affectionate relative,” but “had no conduct.” He adds, “He had a strange kind of religion, but I flatter myself he will be ere long, if he is not already in heaven.” This passage might imply that in abandoning the Romish faith he had not abjured the doctrine of purgatory; yet that doctrine is inconsistent with the following aspiration contained in the same letter:—