Thus early had the youthful patron of the drama blossomed into notoriety, and having also commenced attendance at the Roman Catholic Chapel he had now resolved to become a priest, though curiously enough he began this career by eloping, as we are assured by Ramsay of Ochtertyre, with a Roman Catholic actress. His father followed the pair to London, and there, it would seem, prevailed on the erratic neophyte to abandon his fair partner, whose existence would certainly have been a fatal barrier to the proposed priesthood. At least, like his friend Gibbon of later days, if he sighed as a lover, he obeyed as a son, and a compromise by which he was to enter on the profession of arms was effected. His father called on Archibald, Duke of Argyll, an old campaigner with Marlborough. 'My Lord,' said the Duke, 'I like your son; this boy must not be shot at for three shillings and sixpence a day.' This scene reads like a pre-arranged affair calculated to flatter the erratic Bozzy out of his warlike schemes, for which it is clear he was never fitted. Indeed, the true aim was really, as he confesses to Temple, a wish to be 'about court, enjoying the happiness of the _beau monde_ and the company of men of genius.' Temple had come forward with an offer of a thousand pounds to obtain a commission for him in the Guards, and Boswell assures us repeatedly, 'I had from earliest years a love for the military life.' Yet we can with equal difficulty figure 'our Bozzy' as priest or soldier. Like Hogg who hankered after the post of militia ensign with 'nerves not,' as Lockhart says, 'heroically strung,' Boswell in his own _Letter to the People of Scotland_ confesses himself 'not blest with high heroic blood, but rather I think troubled with a natural timidity of personal danger, which it costs me some philosophy to overcome.' Nor was his devotion to charmer or chapel likely to weather the dissipated life he led in London. In later life he may have had thoughts of his own feelings when he proposed to publish, from the manuscript in his possession, the life of Sir Robert Sibbald. That antiquary had been pressed by the Duke of Perth to come over to the Papists, and for some time embraced the ancient religion, until the rigid fasting led him to reconsider the controversy and he returned to Protestantism. Bozzy thought the remark of his friend, that as ladies love to see themselves in a glass, so a man likes to see and review himself in his journal, 'a very pretty allusion,' and we may be sure, in spite of his reticence, that his own case was present at the time to his mind. His distressed father enlisted the interest of Lord Hailes, who requested Dr Jortin, Prebendary of St Paul's, to take in hand the flighty youth, and to persuade him to renounce the errors of the Church of Rome for those of the Church of England, for it was plain that Boswell had broken loose from his old moorings, and some middle course might, it was hoped, prove to be possible. 'Your young gentleman,'