and many wondered that so sound a tory should not have obtained a seat at tho Lands of some great parliamentary proprietor. Perhaps this wonder may be explained by a passage in his last Letter to the People of Scotland. "Though ambitious," he says, "I am uncorrupted; and I envy not high situations which are attained by the want of public virtue in men born without it, or by the prostitution of public virtue in men born with it Though power, and wealth, and magnificence, may at first dazzle, and are, I think, most desirable, no wise man will, upon sober reflection, envy a situation which he feels he could not enjoy. My friend—my 'Mæcenas atavis edite regibus'—Lord Mountstuart, flattered me once very highly without intending it 'I would do any thing for you,' he said, 'but bring you into parliament, for I could not be sure but you would oppose me in something the very next day.' His lordship judged well. Though I should consider, with much attention, the opinion of such a friend before taking my resolution, most certainly I should oppose him in any measure which I was satisfied ought to be opposed. I cannot exist with pleasure, if I have not an honest independence of mind and of conduct; for, though no man loves good eating and drinking better than I do, I prefer the broiled blade-bone of mutton and humble port of 'downright Shippen,' to all the luxury of all the statesmen who play the political game all through."
He offered himself, however, as a candidate for Ayrshire, at the general election of 1790; but was defeated by the interest of the minister, which was exerted for a more pliant partizan. On this and all other proper occasions, he made no scruple to avow himself a Tory and a royalist; saying, however, in the words of his pamphlet just quoted, "I can drink, I can laugh, I can converse, in perfect good humour, with Whigs, with Republicans, with Dissenters, with Moravians, with Jews—they can do me no harm—my mind is made up—my principles are fixed—but I would vote with Tories, and pray with a Dean and Chapter."
If his success at the bar and in the political world was not very splendid, he consoled himself, so far as his own fancy was to be consoled, by the grateful task of preparing for the press his magnum opus—the Life of Dr Johnson. This work appeared in 1791, in two volumes, quarto, and was received with an avidity suitable to its entertaining and valuable character. Besides a most minute narrative of the literary and domestic life of Johnson, it contained notes of all the remarkable expressions which the sage had ever uttered in Mr Boswell's presence, besides some similar records from other hands, and an immense store of original letters. As decidedly the most faithful biographical portraiture in existence, and referring to one of the most illustrious names in literature, it is unquestionably the first book of its class; and not only so, but there is no other biographical work at all approaching to it in merit While this is the praise deserved by the work, it happens, rather uncommonly, that no similar degree of approbation can be extended to the writer. Though a great work, it is only so by accident, or rather through the persevering assiduity of the author in a course which no man fit to produce a designedly great work could have submitted to. It is only great, by a multiplication and agglomeration of little efforts. The preparation of a second edition of the life of Dr Johnson, was the last literary performance of Boswell, who died, May 19, 1795, at his house in Great Poland Street, London, in the 55th year of his age; having been previously ill for five weeks of a disorder which had commenced as an intermitting fever. He was buried at the family seat of Auchinleck.
The character of Boswell is so amply shadowed forth by the foregoing account of his life, that little more need be said about it That he was a good-natured social man, possessed of considerable powers of imagination and humour, and
