Authors, Scottish -- 18th century -- Biography; Biographers -- Great Britain -- Biography; Boswell, James, 1740-1795
It was on the evening of Thursday, shortly after eight, that the tidings
reached Edinburgh by express. The city was at once illuminated, and next
morning Dundas on his way to the Parliament House was threatened by a
mob such as the town had not seen since the Porteous Riot. Two troops of
dragoons were drafted at once on the same day into the capital. As
usually told, the story, which is vouched for by Ramsay of Ochtertyre,
is that the mob of the night before had been headed by the excited
Boswell, and that the windows of his father's house were smashed. Had
such been the case, it must have been by an oversight on the part of the
mob, or some petulant freak of the son, for on this occasion both
Boswell and his father had for once been unanimous in their belief in
the legitimacy of Douglas. But there is no need for doubting Ramsay's
assertion that Lord Auchinleck had, with tears in his eyes, to implore
President Dundas to commit his son to the Tolbooth! Not only had Bozzy
taken the field in the November of 1767 with his _Essence of the Douglas
Cause_, 'which I regretted that Dr Johnson never took the trouble to
study,' even though 'the question interested nations,' and the pamphlet
had produced, as its writer flattered himself, considerable effect in
deciding the case, but he had ventured on a breach of professional
etiquette in publishing _Dorando, a Spanish Tale_. This brochure was
ordered by the Court of Session to be suppressed as contempt of court,
after it had run through three editions. No copy of this forlorn hope of
the book hunter has ever been found, though doubtless it lurks in some
library where its want of the writer's name upon the title page may have
kept it from making its reappearance. Though it bore no name, yet
Boswell, when writing to Temple over it, speaks of 'My publisher
Wilkie,' and he seems to have been afraid that the copy sent by him
should fall into the hands of strangers. In the _Gentleman's Magazine_
for July 1767, however, it is reviewed, but the value of the shilling
booklet does not seem to have impressed the critic. 'The Spanish Tale,'
he says, 'supposes the contests to be finally determined in favour of
_Don Ferdinand_ against the family of Ardivoso--but the real question is
still in dispute, having been removed by appeal to the House of Lords.
The pamphlet is zealously but feebly written: the author in some places
affects the sublime, and in some the pathetic; but these are the least
tolerable parts of his performance.' Thus airily does the reviewer
dismiss Bozzy's determined effort to rouse, as he imagined, the parental
and sympathetical feelings, and it is clear at least that, however much
its recovery would add to the stock of harmless pleasure among
professed Boswellians and collectors, its loss cannot be said to have
'eclipsed the gaiety of nations.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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