Study the mother. Remember well what passes. Be a man of as much ease as possible. Thursday. Return to Glasgow. See High Church. and particularly the paintings, and put half a crown into the box at the door. Friday. Come back in the fly. N. B. You are to keep and exact account of your charges." The energy with which these short sentences succeed one another show how much Boswell was moved. And yet, he did not quite lose his head. "Study the mother," he says impressively, and "Keep an exact account of your charges."

Sad to relate, his suit did not prosper, and after a few days he again writes to his friend, wondering whether the lady is "coy and reserved" in order to make him more in love, or whether she is offended at the "Spanish stateliness" of his demeanor. He becomes greatly moved over his wretchedness. However, one cannot help doubting the real strength of such affection, when the last paragraph of the letter is reached. He concludes a passionate profession of love for Miss Blair, and then adds: "A letter from my signora at Siena, written with all the warmth of Italian affection. I am a strange man, but ever your most sincere friend, -James Boswell."

After a few weeks had gone by, he begins to write "Sultanish letters," as he terms them, to Miss Blair, and finally he determines to visit her. While there he informs us: "I am dressed in green and gold. I have my chaise, in which I sit alone like Mr. Gray, and Thomas rides by me in a claret-colored suit with a silver-laced hat. If she can still remain indifferent. she is not the woman I thought her."

When Miss Blair and her mother went up to Edinburgh, Boswell accompanied her, and we have an account of his love making there. "Next evening I was at the play with them: it was 'Othello.' I sat close behind her and at the most affecting scenes I pressed my had upon her waist: she was in tears and rather leaned to me. The jealous Moor described my very soul." The idea of Boswell torn by an Othello-like passion is certainly a striking one. The next day he popped the question, "after sqeezing and kissing her fine hand, while she looked at me with those beautiful black eyes," but, alas, he was refused. His disappointment was very bitter, and in the tumult of his soul, he wrote the following song to his mistress:

Although I be an honest laird,

In person rather strong and brawny,

For me the heiress never cared,

For she would have the Knight, Sir Sawney.

And when with ardent vows, I swore,

Loud as Sir Jonathan Trelawney,

The heiress showed me to the door,

And said she'd have the Knight, Sir Sawney.

She told me with a scornful look,

I was as ugly as a tawny,

For she a better fish could hook,

The rich and gallant Knight, Sir Sawney.

N. B. I can find no more rhymes to Sawney.

This certainly indicates despair or madness, but no! His wounded affections were soon healed, and shortly, he writes that: "I am indeed glad to be rid of her," and proceeds to renew a correspondence he had formerly held with a "charming Dutch woman." This affection, and still another, he quickly wearies of, and then he falls head over ears in love with a young girl whom he calls "la belle Irlandaise." "I am exceedingly lucky," he exclaims joyfully, "to have escaped the insensible Miss B. for now I have seen the finest creature that ever was formed, la belle Irlandaise. Figure to yourself a young lady just sixteen, formed like a Grecian nymph, with the sweetest countenance, full of sensibility, accomplished, with a Dublin education-her father with an estate of L1000 a year, and above L10,000 in ready money. From morning till night, I admire the charming Mary Anne. Upon my honor I was never so much in love; I never was before in a situation to which there was not some objection, but here every flower is united, and not a thorn to be found. This is the most agreeable passion I ever felt: sixteen, innocence and gaiety make me quite a Sicilian swain. I have given up my criminal intimacy with the Edinburg women; in short, Maria has me without a rival." This would seem like a most satisfactory condition of affairs, but the fickle heart of Boswell could never remain true to anyone. He hears Miss Blair is really in love with him after all, and straightway his heart goes out to her. But only for a week. On receiving a letter from Ireland, he tells us, "all the charms of sweet Mary Anne revived," and he became true to his old love once more. To cut a long story short, I would say, as sympathetically as possible, that he was finally jilted by "sweet Mary Anne."

Boswell at length married an Irish lady, for the sole reason, so far as I can discover, that she was willing to marry him; this was so unusual a chance that he appears to have embraced it eagerly. His marriage, however, did not radically change him, and we are not surprised to read, a year after, in a brief letter written on a journey, that: "There is a Miss Silverton in the fly with me, an amiable creature who has been in France. I can unite little fondnessess with conjugal love." Boswell must have been a unique sort of travelling companion, for we find again: "I got into the fly at Buckden, and had a very good journey. An agreeable young widow nursed me, and supported my lame foot on her knee. Am I not fortunate in having something about me that interests most people at first sight in my favor?" But whether this "something" was the lame foot or not, he leaves to our conjectures.

His letters grow less and less frequent after his marriage, and he seems to settle down with only an occasional bit of love-making. So his life drifts along until his wife dies. Then he is plunged into bitter grief-a grief so honest that we are forced to respect it, for grief, somehow, throws a mantle of dignity around even a fool. Yet his sorrows are much aggravated by various causes-among others a natural fear taking root in his mind that perhaps he would be condemned to Hell on his death. He speaks of "the want of absolute certainly of being happy after death, the sure prospect of which is frightful." And for a year he is the picture of woe and gloom.

But Boswell's heart could stand a good deal of trouble without breaking, and within two years after his wife's death, he writes that he is to meet a certain "young lady of about seven-and-twenty. Liely and gay, but of excellent principles, insomuch that she reads prayers every Sunday evening to the servants in her father's family. 'Let me see such a woman' cried I; and accordingly I am to see her. She has refused young and fine gentlemen. 'Bravo' cried I, 'we see then what her taste is'. Here then I am my flattering self." A few months later he writes, "you must know I have had several matrimonial schemes of late."

But here I must bring to an end this long account of Boswell's love affairs, for he is no longer the same man. We hear the same voice after this, but it is cracked, and the merry ring is gone. The words no longer amuse us; they grow pitiful. It seems unkind to laugh at the lonely old fellow as he flits about his former haunts, only to find new faces and unkind greetings on every hand. We have laughed at his follies; now, when the folly begins to lose its mirth in sadness, we had best avert our eyes.

In these quotations that I have made from his letters, I think Boswell's real self can be seen. He was fickle and impetuous: he was careless of others: he was vain beyond measure. But he was so open in his likes and dislikes, so frank in thought, and at times so generous, that we must see a certain amount of good in him after all. Boswell is a queer compound of openness, foolishness, and immorality. His whole life may be summed up in the single phrase he used when telling why he was a sceptic: "My scepticism," he wrote, "was not owing to thinking wrong but to not thinking at all."

ALANSON BIGELOW HOUGHTON.