of Corneille. Such, however, was the fidelity of Boswell, that, though universally believed to be the author, and consequently laughed at in the most unmerciful manner, he never divulged the name of the fair writer, nor was it known till she made the discovery herself.
After studying civil law for some time at Edinburgh, Boswell went for one winter to pursue the same study at Glasgow, where he, at the same time, attended the lectures of Dr Adam Smith on moral philosophy and rhetoric. Here he continued, as at Edinburgh, to adopt his companions chiefly from the class of English students attending the university; one of whom, Mr Francis Gentleman, on publishing an altered edition of Southern's tragedy of Oroonoko, inscribed it to Boswell, in a poetical epistle, which concludes thus, in the person of his Muse:
"But where, with honest pleasure, she can find,
Sense, taste, religion, and good nature joined,
There gladly will she raise her feeble voice,
Nor fear to tell that Boswell is her choice."
Inspired, by reading and conversation, with an almost enthusiastic notion of London life, Boswell paid his first visit to that metropolis in 1760, and his ardent expectations were net disappointed. The society, amusements, and general style of life which he found in the modern Babylon, and to which he was introduced by the poet Derrick, were suited exactly to his taste and temper. He had already given some specimens of a talent for writing occasional essays and poetical jeux d'esprit, in periodical works, and he therefore appeared before the wits of the metropolis as entitled to some degree of attention. He was chiefly indebted, however, for their friendship, to Alexander, Earl of Eglintoune, one of the most amiable and accomplished noblemen of his time, who, being of the same county, and from his earliest years acquainted with the family of Auchinleck, insisted that young Boswell should have an apartment in his house, and introduced him, as Boswell himself used to say, "into the circle of the great, the gay, and the ingenious." Lord Eglintoune carried his young friend along with him to Newmarket; an adventure which seems to have made a strong impression on Boswell's imagination, as he celebrated it in a poem called "the Cub at Newmarket," which was published by Dodsley, in 1762, in 4to. The cub was himself, as appears from the following extract:
"Lord Eglintoune, who loves, you know,
A little dash of whim or so,
By chance a curious cub had got,
On Scotia's mountains newly caught."
In such terms was Boswell content to speak of himself in print, even at this early period of life, and, what adds to the absurdity of the whole affair, he could not rest till he had read "the Cub at Newmarket" in manuscript to Edward Duke of York, and obtained permission from his royal highness to dedicate it to him. It was the wish of Lord Auchinleck that his son should apply himself to the law, a profession to which two generations of the family had now been devoted, and in which Lord Auchinleck thought that his own eminent situation would be of advantage to the success of a third. Boswell himself, though, in obedience to his father's desire, he had studied civil law at the colleges of Edinburgh and Glasgow, was exceedingly unwilling to consign himself to the studious life of a barrister at Edinburgh, where at this time the general tone of society was the very reverse of his own temperament, being (if we are to believe Provost Creech) characterized by a degree of puritanical reserve and decorum, not much removed from the rigid observances of the preceding century, while only a very small circle of men of wit and fashion an oasis in the dreary waste carried on a
