Johnson with candid complacency replied, 'Sir, I shall be glad to have a new sense given to me.'" "He had come down one morning to the breakfast-room, and been a considerable time by himself before any body appeared. When on a subsequent day he was twitted by Mrs. Thrale for being very late, which he generally was, he defended himself by alluding to the extraordinary morning, when he had been too early. 'Madam, I do not like to come down to vacuity." "Dr. Burney having remarked that Mr. Garrick was beginning to look old, he said, 'Why, Sir, you are not to wonder at that; no man's face has had more wear and tear.'" Not having heard from him for a longer time than I supposed he would be silent, I wrote to him Dec. 18, not in good spirits: "Sometimes I have been afraid that the cold which has gone over Europe this year like a sort of pestilence has seized you severely sometimes my imagination, which is upon occasions prolific of evil, has figured that you may have somehow taken offence at some part of my conduct." TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. "DEAR SIR, "Dec. 23, 1775. "Never dream of any offence. How should you offend me? I consider your friendship as a possession, which I intend to hold till you take it from me, and to lament if ever by my fault I should lose it. However, when such suspicions find their way into your mind, always give them vent; I shall make haste to disperse them; but hinder their first ingress if you can. Consider such thoughts as morbid. "Such illness as may excuse my omission to Lord Hailes I cannot honestly plead. I have been hindered, I know not how, by a succession of petty obstructions. I hope to mend immediately, and to send next post to his lordship. Mr. Thrale would have written to yổu if I had omitted; he sends his compliments, and wishes to see you. "You and your lady will now have no more wrangling about feudal inheritance. How does the young Laird of Auchinleck? I suppose Miss Veronica is grown a reader and discourser. I have just now got a cough, but it has never yet hindered me from sleeping; I have had quieter nights than are common with me. I cannot but rejoice that Joseph has had the wit to find the way back. He is a fine fellow, and one of the best travellers in the world. "Young Col brought me your letter. He is a very pleasing youth. I took him two days ago to the Mitre, and we dined together. I was as civil as I had the means of being. I have had a letter from Rasay, acknowledging, with great appearance of satisfaction, the insertion in the Edinburgh paper. I am very glad that it was done. "My compliments to Mrs. Boswell, who does not love me; and of all the rest, I need only send them to those that do; and I am afraid it will give you very little trouble to distribute them. I am, my dear, dear Sir, &c., "SAM. JOHNSON." : In 1776, Johnson wrote, so far as I can discover, nothing for the public but that his mind was still ardent, and fraught with generous wishes to attain to still higher degrees of literary excellence, is proved by his private notes of this year, which I shall insert in their proper place.* 1 Joseph Ritter, a Bohemian, who was in my service many years, and attended Dr. Johnson and me in our tour to the Hebrides. After having left me for some time, he had now returned to me. 2 It was about this time that Mrs. Thrale, who had just recovered from illness and confinement, went into his room on the morning of her birthday, and said to him, " Nobody sends me any verses now, because I am five and thirty years old; and Stella was fed with them till forty-six, I remember." Upon which he burst out suddenly, without the least previous hesitation, and without having entertained the smallest intention towards it half a minute before : "Oft in danger, yet alive, Life to stop at thirty-five, Time his hours should never drive O'er the bounds of thirty-five. High to soar, and deep to dive, Nature gives at thirty-five. Ladies, stock and tend your hive, "DEAR SIR, TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. "Jan. 10, 1776. "I have at last sent you all Lord Hailes's papers. While I was in France, I looked very often into Henault; but Lord Hailes, in my opinion, leaves him far and far behind. Why I did not despatch so short a perusal sooner, when I look back, I am utterly unable to discover; but human moments are stolen away by a thousand petty impediments which leave no trace behind them. I have been afflicted, through the whole Christmas, with the general disorder, of which the worst effect was a cough, which is now much mitigated, though the country, on which I look from a window at Streatham, is now covered with a deep snow. Mrs. Williams is very ill: every body else is as usual. "Among the papers I found a letter to you, which I think you had not opened; and a paper for 'The Chronicle,' which I suppose it not necessary now to insert. I return them both. I have, within these few days, had the honour of receiving Lord Hailes's first volume, for which I return my most respectful thanks. "I wish you, my dearest friend, and your haughty lady, (for I know she does not love me,) and the young ladies, and the young laird, all happiness. Teach the young gentleman, in spite of his mamma, to think and speak well of, Sir, your affectionate humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON." At this time was in agitation a matter of great consequence to me and my family, which I should not obtrude upon the world, were it not that the part which Dr. Johnson's friendship for me made him take in it was the occasion of an exertion of For howe'er we boast and strive, Life declines from thirty-five: He that ever hopes to thrive Must begin by thirty-five; And all who wisely wish to wive Must look on Thrale at thirty-five." "And now," said he, as I was writing them down, "you may see what it is to come for poetry to a dictionary-maker; you may observe that the rhymes run in alphabetical order exactly." And so they do. Dr. Johnson did indeed possess an almost Tuscan power of improvisation.-Piozzi, Anecdotes, pp. 163-4. his abilities, which it would be injustice to conceal. That what he wrote upon the subject may be understood, it is necessary to give a state of the question, which I shall do as briefly as I can. In the year 1504, the barony or manor of Auchinleck (pronounced Affleck) in Ayrshire, which belonged to a family of the same name with the lands, having fallen to the crown by forfeiture, James the Fourth, King of Scotland, granted it to Thomas Boswell, a branch of an ancient family in the county of Fife, styling him in the charter, “ dilecto familiari nostro; and assigning as the cause of the grant, "pro bono et fideli servitio nobis præstito." Thomas Boswell was slain in battle, fighting along with his sovereign, at the fatal field of Flodden, in 1513. From this very honourable founder of our family, the estate was transmitted, in a direct series of heirs-male, to David Boswell, my father's great-grand-uncle, who had no sons, but four daughters, who were all respectably married, the eldest to Lord Cathcart. David Boswell, being resolute in the military feudal principle of continuing the male succession, passed by his daughters, and settled the estate on his nephew by his next brother, who approved of the deed, and renounced any pretensions which he might possibly have, in preference to his son. But the estate having been burthened with large portions to the daughters, and other debts, it was necessary for the nephew to sell a considerable part of it, and what remained was still much encumbered. The frugality of the nephew preserved, and, in some degree, relieved the estate. His son, my grandfather, an eminent lawyer, not only re-purchased a great part of what had been sold, but acquired other lands; and my father, who was one of the judges of Scotland, and had added considerably to the estate, now signified his inclination to take the privilege allowed by our law,' to secure it to his family in perpetuity by an entail, 1 Acts of Parliament of Scotland, 1685, cap. 22. which, on account of his marriage articles, could not be done without my consent. In the plan of entailing the estate, I heartily concurred with him, though I was the first to be restrained by it; but we unhappily differed as to the series of heirs which should be established, or, in the language of our law, called to the succession. My father had declared a predilection for heirs-general, that is, males and females indiscriminately. He was willing, however, that all males descending from his grandfather should be preferred to females; but would not extend that privilege to males deriving their descent from a higher source. I, on the other hand, had a zealous partiality for heirs-male, however remote, which I maintained by arguments, which appeared to me to have considerable weight.' And in the particular case 1 As, first, the opinion of some distinguished naturalists, that our species is transmitted through males only, the female being all along no more than a nidus, or nurse, as Mother Earth is to plants of every sort; which notion seems to be confirmed by that text of Scripture, " He was yet in the loins of his FATHER when Melchisedeck met him,” (Heb. vii. 10); and consequently, that a man's grandson by a daughter, instead of being his surest descendant, as is vulgarly said, has, in reality, no connection whatever with his blood. And, secondly, independent of this theory (which, if true, should completely exclude heirs-general), that if the preference of a male to a female, without regard to primogeniture (as a son, though much younger, nay, even a grandson by a son, to a daughter), be once admitted, as it universally is, it must be equally reasonable and proper in the most remote degree of descent from an original proprietor of an estate as in the nearest because, however distant from the representative at the time, that remote heir-male, upon the failure of those nearer to the original proprietor than he is, becomes in fact the nearest male to him, and is, therefore, preferable as his representative, to a female descendant. A little extension of mind will enable us easily to perceive that a son's son, in continuation to whatever length of time, is preferable to a son's daughter, in the succession to an ancient inheritance; in which regard should be had to the representation of the original proprietor, and not to that of one of his descendants. I am aware of Blackstone's admirable demonstration of the reasonableness of the legal succession, upon the principle of there being the greatest probability that the nearest heir of the person who last dies proprietor of an estate is of the blood of the first purchaser. But supposing a pedigree to be carefully authenticated through all its branches, instead of mere |