Perhaps the fundamental quality in Boswell’s character was his intense capacity for enjoyment.  He was, as Mr. Carlyle puts it, “gluttonously fond of whatever would yield him a little solacement, were it only of a stomachic character.”  His love of good living and good drink would have made him a hearty admirer of his countryman, Burns, had Burns been famous in Boswell’s youth.  Nobody could have joined with more thorough abandonment in the chorus to the poet’s liveliest songs in praise of love and wine.  He would have made an excellent fourth when “Willie brewed a peck of malt, and Rab and Allan came to see,” and the drinking contest for the Whistle commemorated in another lyric would have excited his keenest interest.  He was always delighted when he could get Johnson to discuss the ethics and statistics of drinking.  “I am myself,” he says, “a lover of wine, and therefore curious to hear whatever is remarkable concerning drinking.”  The remark is a propos to a story of Dr. Campbell drinking thirteen bottles of port at a sitting.  Lest this should seem incredible, he quotes Johnson’s dictum.  “Sir, if a man drinks very slowly and lets one glass evaporate before he takes another, I know not how long he may drink.”  Boswell’s faculty for making love was as great as his power of drinking.  His letters to Temple record with amusing frankness the vicissitudes of some of his courtships and the versatility of his passions.

Boswell’s tastes, however, were by no means limited to sensual or frivolous enjoyments.  His appreciation of the bottle was combined with an equally hearty sensibility to more intellectual pleasures.  He had not a spark of philosophic or poetic power, but within the ordinary range of such topics as can be discussed at a dinner-party, he had an abundant share of liveliness and intelligence.  His palate was as keen for good talk as for good wine.  He was an admirable recipient, if not an originator, of shrewd or humorous remarks upon life and manners.  What in regard to sensual enjoyment was mere gluttony, appeared in higher matters as an insatiable curiosity.  At times this faculty became intolerable to his neighbours.  “I will not be baited with what and why,” said poor Johnson, one day in desperation.  “Why is a cow’s tail long?  Why is a fox’s tail bushy?” “Sir,” said Johnson on another occasion, when Boswell was cross-examining a third person about him in his presence.  “You have but two subjects, yourself and me.  I am sick of both.”  Boswell, however, was not to be repelled by such a retort as this, or even by ruder rebuffs.  Once when discussing the means of getting a friend to leave London, Johnson said in revenge for a previous offence, “Nay, sir, we’ll send you to him.  If your presence doesn’t drive a man out of his house, nothing will.”  Boswell was “horribly shocked,” but he still stuck to his victim like a leech, and pried into the minutest details of his life and manners.  He observed with conscientious accuracy that though Johnson abstained