1766. and mentioned my having made a vow as a security for good conduct. I wrote to him again, without being able to move his indolence; nor did I hear from Etat. 57. him till he had received a copy of my inaugural Exercise, or Thesis in Civil Law, which I published at my admission as an Advocate, as is the custom in Scotland. He then wrote to me as follows: To JAMES BOSWELL, Efq. "DEAR SIR, * *8 "THE reception of your Thesis put me in mind of my debt to you. Why did you I will punish you for it, by telling you that your Latin wants correction. In the beginning, Spei 1766. Etat. 57. altera, not to urge that it should be prima, is not grammatical: altera should be alteri. In the next line you feem to use genus abfolutely, for what we call family, that is, for illuftrious extraction, I doubt without authority. Homines nullius originis, for Nullis orti majoribus, or, Nullo loco nati, is, I am afraid, barbarous.-Ruddiman is dead. "I have now vexed you enough, and will try to please you. Your refolution to obey your father I fincerely approve; but do not accuftom yourself to enchain your volatility by vows: they will fometime leave a thorn in your mind, which you will, perhaps, never be able to extract or eject. Take this warning, it is of great importance. "The study of the law is what you very justly term it, copious and generous'; and in adding your name to its profeffors, you have done exactly what I always wifhed, when I wished you best. I hope that you will continue to purfue it vigorously and conftantly. You gain, at leaft, what is no fmall advantage, fecurity from thofe troublesome and wearifome difcontents, which are always obtruding themselves upon a mind vacant, unemployed, and undetermined. "You ought to think it no small inducement to diligence and perfeverance, that they will please your father. We all live upon the hope of pleasing fomebody; and the pleasure of pleasing ought to be greatest, and at last always will be greateft, when our endeavours are exerted in confequence of our duty. "Life is not long, and too much of it must not pafs in idle deliberation how it shall be spent; deliberation, which those who begin it by prudence, and continue it with fubtilty, muft, after long expence of thought, conclude by chance. To prefer one future mode of life to another, upon juft reafons, requires faculties which it has not pleafed our Creator to give us. If, therefore, the profeffion you have chofen has fome unexpected inconveniencies, confole yourself by reflecting that no profeffion is without them; and that all the importunities and perplexities of business are softness and luxury, compared with the inceffant cravings of vacancy, and the unfatisfactory expedients of idleness. Hæc funt quæ noftrâ potui te voce monere ; This alludes to the first fentence of the Promium of my Thefis. "JURISPRUDENTIÆ ftudio nullum uberius, nullum generofius: in legibus enim agitandis, populorum mores, variafque fortune rvices ex quibus leges oriuntur, contemplari fimul folemus.” "As to your Hiftory of Corfica, you have no materials which others have 1766. not, or may not have. You have, fomehow or other, warmed your imagi- Etat. 57. nation. I wish there were fome cure, like the lover's leap, for all heads of which fome fingle idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular poffeffion. Mind your own affairs, and leave the Corficans to theirs. I am, dear Sir, "Your moft humble fervant, "Having thus, I hope cleared myself of the charge brought against me, I prefume you will not be displeased if I escape the punishment which you have decreed for me unheard. If you have difcharged the arrows of criticism against an innocent man, you must rejoice to find they have miffed him, or have not been pointed so as to wound him. "To talk no longer in allegory, I am, with all deference, going to offer a few observations in defence of my Latin, which you have found fault with. "You think I should have used spei primæ, instead of fpei altera. Spes is, indeed, often used to express something on which we have a future dependence, as in Virg. Eclog. i. l. 14, for the lambs and the fheep. Yet it is alfo ufed to exprefs any thing on which we have a prefent dependence, and is well applied to a man of diftinguished influence, our fupport, our refuge, our præfidium, as Horace calls Mæcenas. So, neid xii. 1. 57, Queen Amata addreffes her fon-in-law Turnus: Spes tu nunc una;' and he was then no future hope, for fhe adds, The paffage omitted explained the tranfaction to which the preceding letter had alluded. 1766. Etat. 57. which might have been faid of my Lord Bute fome years ago. Now I confider the prefent Earl of Bute to be Excelfa familia de Bute fpes prima;' and Lord Mountftuart, as his eldest fon, to be 'fpes altera.' So in Æneid xii. 1. 168, after having mentioned Pater Æneas, who was the prefent fpes, the reigning fpes, as my German friends would fay, the fpes prima, the poet adds, my Et juxta Afcanius, magna fpes altera Roma.' "You think altera ungrammatical, and you tell me it should have been alteri. You must recollect, that in old times alter was declined regularly; and when the ancient fragments preferved in the Juris Civilis Fontes were written, it was certainly declined in the way that I use it. This, I should think, may protect a lawyer who writes altera in a differtation upon part of his own science. But as I could hardly venture to quote fragments of old law to fo claffical a man as Mr. Johnson, I have not made an accurate search into these remains, to find examples of what I am able to produce in poetical compofition. We find in Plaut. Rudens, act iii. fcene 4, < Nam buic alteræ patria quæ fit profecto nefcio." Plautus is, to be fure, an old comick writer: but in the days of Scipio and hoc ipfa in itinere alteræ • Dum narrat, forte audivi. "You doubt my having authority for using genus abfolutely, for what we call family, that is, for illuftrious extraction. Now I take genus in Latin, to have much the fame fignification with birth in English; both in their primary meaning expreffing fimply defcent, but both made to ftand xar' ionny, for noble descent. Genus is thus used in Hor. lib. ii. Sat. v. 1.8, "Et genus et virtus, nifi cum re, vilior alga eft.' And in lib. i. Epist. vi. 1. 37, Et genus et formam Regina pecunia donat.' And in the celebrated contest between Ajax and Ulyffes, Ovid's Metamorph. lib. xiii. 1. 140, • Nam genus et proavos, et quæ non fecimus ipfi, • Vix ea noftra voco, « Homines "Homines nullius originis, for nullis orti majoribus, or nullo loco nati, is, you are 1766. afraid, barbarous. Origo is used to fignify extraction, as in Virg. Æneid i. 1. 286, • Ille tamen noftrâ deducit origine nomen.' and as nullus is used for obfcure, is it not in the genius of the Latin language to write nullius originis, for obfcure extraction? "I have defended myself as well as I could. "Might I venture to differ from you with regard to the utility of vows? I am fenfible that it would be very dangerous to make vows rafhly, and without a due confideration. But I cannot help thinking that they may often be of great advantage to one of a variable judgement and irregular inclinations. I always remember a paffage in one of your letters to our Italian friend Baretti, where talking of the monaftick life, you say you do not wonder that ferious men should put themselves under the protection of a religious order, when they have found how unable they are to take care of themselves. For my own part, without affecting to be a Socrates, I am fure I have a more than ordinary struggle to maintain with the Evil Principle; and all the methods I can devise are little enough to keep me tolerably steady in the paths of rectitude. " I am ever, with the highest veneration, "Your affectionate humble fervant, JAMES BOSWELL." It appears from his diary, that he was this year at Mr. Thrale's, from before Midfummer till after Michaelmas, and that he afterwards passed a month at Oxford. He had then contracted a great intimacy with Mr. Chambers of that Univerfity, now Sir Robert Chambers, one of the Judges in India. He published nothing this year in his own name; but the noble Dedication* to the King, of Gwyn's "London and Westminster Improved," was written by him; and he furnished the Preface,† and several of the pieces, which compose a volume of Miscellanies by Mrs. Anna Williams, the blind lady who had an afylum in his house. Of thefe, there are his "Epitaph on Philips," "Translation of a Latin Epitaph on Sir Thomas Hanmer ;+" "Friendship, an Ode ;*” and, "The Ant,*" a paraphrafe from the Proverbs, of which I have a copy Ætat. 57. |