"My life is one of the most romantic that I believe either you or I really know of; and yet I am a very sensible, good sort of man. What is the meaning of this, Temple? You may depend upon it that very soon my follies will be at an end, and I shall turn out an admirable member of society. Now that I have given my mind the turn, I am totally emancipated from my charmer, as much as from the gardener's daughter who now puts on my fire and performs menial offices like any other wench; and yet just this time twelve month I was so madly in love as to think of marrying her." The frequency and solemnity of Boswell's resolutions to amend are extraordinary, though the fact that his correspondent was a curate suggests an explanation; in carrying them out he was perfectly normal. Boswell tells us that he "looks with horror on adultery," and the love-affairs with which his letters overflow appear, for the most part, to have been sufficiently innocent; for an "Italian angel," Zelide (whom he knew at Utrecht), Miss Bosville, and "La Belle Irlandaise" he cherished at different times a chaste flame; while Miss Blair, a neighbour and lady of fortune, very nearly caught him. But Boswell decided that he would not have a "Scots lass." "You cannot say how fine a woman I may marry; perhaps a Howard or some other of the noblest in the kingdom." "Rouse me, my friend!" he cries; "Kate has not fire enough; she does not know the value of her lover!" Nevertheless, he was to have a "Scots lass" after all, for in the autumn of 1769 he married Miss Margaret Montgomerie, "a true Montgomerie, whom I esteem, whom I love, after fifteen years, as on the day when she gave me her hand" ("Letter to the People of Scotland"). After his marriage Boswell's life continued agitated and desultory: he practised at the Scotch Bar, without much success, and was called to the English; almost every year he visited London, where he cultivated Johnson, enjoyed good company and fine, made the most of his social and literary importance, and revelled in the genuine and flattering friendship of Paoli, who seems to have made him free of his house: "I felt more dignity when I had several servants at my devotion, a large apartment, and the convenience and state of a coach." It was absurd of him, no doubt, to say, "Am I not fortunate in having something about me that interests most people at first sight in my favour?" but it seems to have been near the truth. "I am really the great man now. I have had David Hume in the forenoon, and Mr. Johnson in the afternoon." These great men were interested somehow, and so, one must suppose, was Miss Silverton: "There is a Miss Silverton in the Fly with me, an amiable creature, who has been in France. I can unite little fondnesses with perfect conjugal love." There was, too, "an agreeable young widow" who, also in a fly, "nursed me, and supported my lame foot on her knee."