Authors, Scottish -- 18th century -- Biography; Biographers -- Great Britain -- Biography; Boswell, James, 1740-1795
But the highstrung Bozzy had to experience a revulsion of low feelings
to which he was ever prone. He is soon in a sort of Byronic fit, and he
continues in a strain with which we should have not credited the 'gay
classic friend of Jack Wilkes' and of that Sienese _signora_, unless he
had turned evidence against himself. He declared his feelings to Paoli,
as he had done to Johnson, whose curt advice had been not to confuse or
resolve the common consequences of irregularity into an unalterable
decree of destiny. To the general he now attributed his feeling of the
vanity of life, the exhaustion in the very heat of youth of all the
sweets of being, and the incapacity for taking part in active life to
his 'metaphysical researches,' his reasoning beyond his depth on such
subjects as it is not given to man to know. These hesitances the other
wisely pushed aside with the soldierly advice to strengthen his mind by
the perusal of Livy and Plutarch. In return Bozzy gave an imitation of
'my revered friend Mr Samuel Johnson,' little dreaming that all three
would one day be intimate in London, and the general's house in Portman
Square be always at the traveller's disposal. From the palace, as he
styles it, of Paoli, Nov. 1765 he wrote to Johnson, as he had done
before, 'from a kind of superstition agreeable to him as to myself,'
from what he calls _loca solennia_--places of solemn interest. 'I dare
to call this a spirited tour. I dare to challenge your approbation;'
and, reading it twenty years later in the original which the old man
had preserved, he found it full of 'generous enthusiasm.' No account of
the continental travels of Boswell would be complete without the
reproduction of his letter to the doctor from Wittenberg. It is one of
the most important for the more subtle shades of psychology in the
writer's character.
'_Sunday, Sept. 30, 1764._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account