Boswell's life in Edinburgh was not happy; he hated the rough society of Scotch lawyers, and quarrelled with his father, the Laird of Auchinleck, who seems to have been a tiresome, disagreeable old man. The Laird died in 1782, and seven years later Boswell lost his "valuable wife." His story becomes melancholy: money troubles and family perplexities beset him (he was left with five children); and it may be that what once made him odd, aggravated by his breaking health, now made him gloomy. After his wife's death he came to London for good. Already he had taken a house in Queen Anne Street, and here he worked hard at "The Life," comforted a little by his assurance that it would be a masterpiece: "I am absolutely certain that my mode of biography, which gives not only a _History_ of Johnson's _visible_ progress through the world, and of his publications, but a _view_ of his mind in his letters and conversations, is the most perfect that can be conceived, and will be more of a Life than any work that has ever yet appeared." With this bold but just prophecy we may leave him; he died in 1795. FOOTNOTE: [7] "Letters of James Boswell to the Rev. W. J. Temple." (Sidgwick and Jackson.) CARLYLE'S LOVES AND LOVE-LETTERS[8] I [Sidenote: _Athenaeum May and Oct. 1909_] Are people still interested in the Carlyles? Some are, we suppose. The older generation is interested in Carlyle, at any rate; though the younger, we believe, is not. For men and women under thirty the redoubtable sage has apparently no message; but for many of their fathers and mothers his least word still has a certain importance. Such reverent curiosity, though it may excuse some bad books and much futile research, will, we fear, hardly justify the volume before us--Mr. Archibald's we mean, which tells us little about Carlyle and that little by no means new. One chapter only can be manufactured out of his sufficiently indefinite relations with Miss Gordon; though ten more pages are filled out with a discussion of that wholly unimportant question "Who was Blumine?" The reasonable conjecture is, of course, that Carlyle's method resembled that of other writers; his heroine, no doubt, was the child of his own imagination, and when a model was needed he drew indiscriminately from the ladies with whom he was acquainted.