was the melancholy of a man who spends too much, drinks too much, falls in love too often, and is forced to live in the country in dependence upon a stern old parent, when he is longing for a jovial life in London taverns.  Still he was excusably vexed when Johnson refused to believe in the reality of his complaints, and showed scant sympathy to his noisy would-be fellow-sufferer.  Some of Boswell’s freaks were, in fact, very trying.  Once he gave up writing letters for a long time, to see whether Johnson would be induced to write first.  Johnson became anxious, though he half-guessed the truth, and in reference to Boswell’s confession gave his disciple a piece of his mind.  “Remember that all tricks are either knavish or childish, and that it is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend as upon the chastity of a wife.”

[Footnote 1:  The story is often told how Boswell appeared at the Stratford Jubilee with “Corsica Boswell” in large letters on his hat.  The account given apparently by himself is sufficiently amusing, but the statement is not quite fair.  Boswell not unnaturally appeared at a masquerade in the dress of a Corsican chief, and the inscription on his hat seems to have been “Viva la Liberta.”]

In other ways Boswell was more successful in aping his friend’s peculiarities.  When in company with Johnson, he became delightfully pious.  “My dear sir,” he exclaimed once with unrestrained fervour, “I would fain be a good man, and I am very good now.  I fear God and honour the king; I wish to do no ill and to be benevolent to all mankind.”  Boswell hopes, “for the felicity of human nature,” that many experience this mood; though Johnson judiciously suggested that he should not trust too much to impressions.  In some matters Boswell showed a touch of independence by outvying the Johnsonian prejudices.  He was a warm admirer of feudal principles, and especially held to the propriety of entailing property upon heirs male.  Johnson had great difficulty in persuading him to yield to his father’s wishes, in a settlement of the estate which contravened this theory.  But Boswell takes care to declare that his opinion was not shaken.  “Yet let me not be thought,” he adds, “harsh or unkind to daughters; for my notion is that they should be treated with great affection and tenderness, and always participate of the prosperity of the family.”  His estimate of female rights is indicated in another phrase.  When Mrs. Knowles, the Quaker, expressed a hope that the sexes would be equal in another world, Boswell replied, “That is too ambitious, madam. We might as well desire to be equal with the angels.”  Boswell, again, differed from Johnson—­who, in spite of his love of authority, had a righteous hatred for all recognized tyranny—­by advocating the slave-trade.  To abolish that trade would, he says, be robbery of the masters and cruelty to the African savages.  Nay, he declares, to abolish it would be