Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 July 1875 — Boswell's Love-Making. [ARTICLE]

Boswell's Love-Making.

An article in Temple Bar , on “The Follies of the Wise,” gives numerous anecdotes of the love-making and the match-making of people famous in literature. The following is a description of Boswell’s love-adventures: “Boswell’s love-making is singularly characteristic of the biographer of Johnson ; ‘ the coxcomb and bore, weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous,’ as Macaulay calls him. He was eighteen when he was in Holland, and there he fell in love with a pretty Dutch woman. Her name was Zelide, or he called her so. But he does not appear to have been certain that she returned his passion. .'Sir John Pringle,’ he says, ‘attended/ver as,a physician. He wrote to myj-'father, “She has too much vivacity, she talks of your son without either resentment or attachment.” ’ This was in 1767, and Boswell was then tenderly surveying a young Scotch lass; * just eighteen,’ he wrote; ‘ a genteel person, an agreeable face, of a good family, sensible, goodtempered, cheerful, pious,’ and, what was better than all in Boswell’s eyes, rich. Her name was Blair. Her behavior was rather cooler to him than Boswell either expected or relished; and, apprehensive that he should lose her, he petitioned his friend Temple, a clergyman, to help him to soften her obduracy. That Temple might not blunder, Boswell wrote down certain instructions, which the reverend gentleman was carefully to observe: “ ‘ Wednesday.—Breakfast at eight; set out at nine; Thomas will bring you to Adamtown a little after eleven. Send up your name. If possible, put up your horses there; they can have cut-grass. If not, Thomas will take them to Mountain, a place a mile off, and come back and wait at dinner. Give Miss Blair my letter. Salute her and her mother; ask to walk. See the place fully; think what improvements should be made. Talk of my mare, the purse, the chocolate. Tell you are my very old and intimate friend. Praise me for my good qualities—you know them; but talk also how odd, how inconstant, how impetuous, how much accustomed to women of intrigue. Ask, gravely, “Pray, don’t you think there is something of madness in that family?” Talk of my various travels, German princes, Voltaire and Rousseau. Talk of my father, my strong desire to have my own house. Observe her well. See how amiable! Judge if she would be happy with your friend. Think of me as the great man at Adamtown —quite classical, too. Study the mother. Remember well what passes. Stay tea. At six order horses and go to New Mills, two miles from London; but, if they press you to stay all night, do it. Be a man of as much ease as possible. Consider what a romantic expedition you are on. Take notes. Perhaps you no’w fix me for life.’ “ The whole history of love and courtship offers nothing more ludicrous than this document. Temple’s intercession was not without fruit. ‘At last I am here,’ writes Boswell from Miss Blair’s house; ‘at last lam here, and our meeting has been such as you paint in your last but one. I have been here but one night; she insisted on my staying another ;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.’ He went with her to the theater at Edinburgh to see ‘ Othello.’ ‘ I sat close behind the princess’ (as he called her) ‘ and, at the most affecting scenes, I pressed my hand upon her waist. She was in tears, and rather leaned to me.’ He then reports a conversation between them: “ ‘ I really have no particular liking for you,’ says Miss Blair. ' I like many people as well as you.’ “‘Do you, indeed?’ returns Boswell. ‘ Well. I cannot help it; I am obliged to you for telling me so in time. I am sorry for it.’ ‘“I like Jeannie Maxwell better than you.’ ‘“Verywell: but do you like no man better than me?’ -’“‘No.’ “‘ Is it possible that you may like me better than other men?” •“I don’t know what is possible.’ “ 1 You are very fond of Auchinleck’ (his father’s estate); ‘ that is one good circumstance.’ “‘ I confess I am. I wish I liked you as well as Auchinleck.’ „ “ Her candor would have put an end to most men’s hopes, and passions, too. But Boswell went on for two months provoking her sarcasms, until he saw the game was up. Yet three' days after he had formally resigned her, three days after he had told her that he was thrown upon the wide world, again, and that he didn’t know what would become of him, he wrote: ‘ThC heiress’ (meaning Miss Blair) ‘is a good Scots liss, but I must have an Englishwoman. My mind is now twice" as enlarged as it has been for some months. \ T on cannot say how fine a woman I may marry—perhaps a Howard, or some other of the noblest in the Kingdom.’ The Howard not immediately forthcoming, he renewed his correspondence with Zelide

and protested on his soul he must have her. But his father, the old Jndge Lord Auchinleck, objects; so he suggests a compromise. ‘ I know,’ writes he, ‘ you are determined to have me married. What would you think of the fine, healthy and amiable Miss Dick?... .She wants only a good fortune.’ He shows himself grateful to his father, not long afterward, for having objected to his union with Zelide, and congratulates himself on having escaped the ‘ insensible Miss 8.,’ for ‘ I have now seen the finest creature that ever was formed, la beUe Irlandaise. Figure to yourself, Temple, a young lady just sixteen, formed like a Grecian nymph, with the sweetest countenance, full of sensibility, accomplished, with a Dublin education, always half the year in the north of Ireland, her father a counselor-at law, with an estate of £I,OOO a year and above £IO,OOO in ready money.’ “ But neither England, nor Ireland, nor Holland was to have the honor ot supplying Boswell with a wife; for in 1700 he married a countrywoman, Miss Margaret Montgomerie, of whom Johnson said that ‘ she cannot rival him’ (Boswell),‘nor can he ever be ashamed of her.’ She belonged to a noble family, Eglington. Boswell had a servile admiration of her abilities and actually kept a record of her sayings, as Swift kept a record of Stella’s, which he labeled * Uxoriana.’ From this collection it does not appear that she had a great respect for him. Several of her ‘ cool, humbling remarks upon him,’ to use his own language, represent her as a little shrewish and him very ridiculous. Indeed, he cuts as poor a figure with his wife as he did with Johnson. One contemptuous remark of hers had the effect of provoking a good illustration from him; he was warm, talking of ‘ his own consequence and generosity,’when his wife said something which sent him into a violent fury: ‘I said: “If you throw cold water upon a plate of iron much heated it will crack to shivers.” ’ ”