The effect of this, aided by friends properly planted in different parts of the theatre, Boswell assures us was instantaneous and effectual. But the plaudits given would have been better in a strictly professional court, and it led, we can see, to the association of Boswell with but questionable society. 'The joyous crew of thunderers in the galleries,' as Robert Fergusson describes them, the vulgar cits applying to their parched lips 'thirst quenching porter,' and the notoriously irregular lives of the players, all these were ties and associations ill calculated to appease the just indignation of his father or to add to forensic reputation in Edinburgh. The Scottish Themis, says Scott, speaking from his own early experience of much higher literary pursuits, is peculiarly jealous of any flirtation with the muses on the part of those who have ranged themselves under her banners, and to them the least lingering look behind is fatal. Little wonder, then, that the paternal anger was again roused, when 'the look behind' on his part was coupled with the bitter remembrances of the laureate of the Soapers, of the Erskine Correspondence, and his own long indulgence destined at last to bear such sorry fruits. 'How unaccountable it is,' he cries impatiently to Temple, 'that my father and I should be so ill together! He is a man of sense and a man of worth; but from some unhappy turn in his disposition he is much dissatisfied with a son you know.... To give you an instance. I send you a letter I had a few days ago. I have answered in my own style; I will be myself! How galling it is to the friend of Paoli to be treated so!' He confesses his father has 'that Scots strength of sarcasm which is peculiar to a North Briton,' and that time was when it would have depressed him. But now he is firm, and, 'as my revered friend Mr Samuel Johnson used to say,' he feels the privileges of an independent human being! To add to the confusion of Lord Auchinleck his son had flung himself with all his enthusiasm into the famous Douglas Trial, the cause that figures so much to the confusion, it is to be feared, of the general reader. Of this some full account is necessary in order to explain that extraordinary trial,--perhaps the most protracted and famous that ever came before a court,--which, dragging its slow length along through a longer course than the Peloponnesian War, fills the shelves of legal libraries with eighteen portly volumes of papers and reports. In the case Boswell really held no actual brief, though were we to follow the impression he gives of his services we should infer he had been leading counsel for the plaintiff, Douglas. 'With a labour of which few are capable,' says Bozzy, many years after, 'he compressed the substance of the immense volumes of proofs and arguments into an octavo pamphlet,' to which its author believed 'we may ascribe a great share of the popularity on Mr Douglas's side.' Then he adds in a