But had the son chosen to be quite candid here, we should see how just a cause the father had for his displeasure. In the spring of 1774, he had written to Johnson suggesting a run up to London, expressing the peculiar satisfaction which he felt in celebrating Easter at St Paul's, which to his fancy was like going up to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover. The doctor was wisely deaf to this subtle appeal. 'Edinburgh,' said he, 'is not yet exhausted,' and reminded him that his wife, having permitted him last year to ramble, had now a claim upon him at home, while to come to Iona or to Jerusalem could not be necessary, though useful. Next year, however, Boswell was in London, 'quite in my old humour,' as he tells Temple, arguing with him for concubinage and the plurality of the patriarchs, from all which we may see that the plea urged to Johnson for the visit was to be taken in a lax sense by Boswell, who made his chief excuse out of some business at the bar of the House over an election petition in Clackmannan. He waited on Temple in Devon and shocked his host by his inebriety, but 'under a solemn yew tree' he had vowed reformation. But his return to town, if it 'exalted him in piety' at St Paul's, seems to have led but to fresh dissipation. He hints at 'Asiatic multiplicity,' but this is only when he has taken too much claret. The good resolutions at Iona and the influence of the ruins had passed away, the trip is extended to two months, and he frets irritably over his old friend Henry Dundas's election as King's Advocate,--'to be sure he has strong parts, but he is a coarse unlettered dog.' Harry Dundas at least was never found philandering as we find Bozzy on this occasion, where the mixture of religion and flirtation is so confusing. 'After breakfasting with Paoli,' he writes before leaving for the north, 'and worshipping at St Paul's, I dined _tete-a-tete_ with my charming Mrs Stuart, of whom you have read in my Journal. We dined in all the elegance of two courses and a dessert, with dumb waiters, except when the second course and the dessert were served. We talked with unreserved freedom, as we had nothing to fear. We were _philosophical_, upon honour--not deep, but feeling, we were pious; we drank tea and bid each other adieu as finely as romance paints. She is my wife's dearest friend, so you see how beautiful our intimacy is.' But from Johnson's letter to Mrs Thrale we see looming ahead a crisis. 'He got two and forty guineas in fees while he was here. He has by _his wife's persuasion and mine_ taken down a present for his mother-in-law,'--an error, doubtless, for 'stepmother.' He had entered himself this time at the Temple, and Johnson was his bond. He left to be in time for practice before the General Assembly, finding 'something low and coarse in such employment, but guineas must be had'--a feeling quite different from that of Lord Cockburn who thought the aisle of St Giles