Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica

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Transcriber's note:

Inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies of spelling, punctuation,
hyphenation, capitalization, and use of diacriticals are preserved
as they appear in the original text.

BOSWELL'S

CORRESPONDENCE

WITH THE HONOURABLE

ANDREW ERSKINE

AND HIS

JOURNAL OF A TOUR TO CORSICA

(Reprinted from the Original Editions)

Edited

With a Preface, Introduction, and Notes

by

GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, D.C.L.

Author of "Dr. Johnson: His Friends and His Critics."

London:
Thos. De La Rue & Co.
1879

Printed by
Thomas De La Rue and Co., Bunhill Row,
London.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE i

LETTERS BETWEEN THE HONOURABLE ANDREW ERSKINE
AND JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. 3

INTRODUCTION TO THE JOURNAL OF A TOUR TO CORSICA 101

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 125

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION 135

THE JOURNAL OF A TOUR TO CORSICA 137

APPENDIX 239

BOSWELL AND ERSKINE'S LETTERS.

PREFACE.

Boswell did not bring out his "Life of Johnson" till he was past his
fiftieth year. His "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides" had appeared more
than five years earlier. While it is on these two books that his fame
rests, yet to the men of his generation he was chiefly known for his
work on Corsica and for his friendship with Paoli. His admiration for
Johnson he had certainly proclaimed far and wide. He had long been off,
in the words of his father, "wi' the land-louping scoundrel of a
Corsican, and had pinned himself to a dominie--an auld dominie who
keeped a schule and cau'd it an acaadamy." Nevertheless it was to
Corsica and its heroic chief that he owed the position that he
undoubtedly held among men of letters. He was Corsica Boswell and Paoli
Boswell long before he became famous as Johnson Boswell.

It has been shown elsewhere[1] what a spirited thing it was in this
young Scotchman to make his way into an island, the interior of which no
traveller from this country had ever before visited. The Mediterranean
still swarmed with Turkish corsairs, while Corsica itself was in a very
unsettled condition. It had been computed that, till Paoli took the rule
and held it with a firm hand, the state had lost no less than 800
subjects every year by assassination. Boswell, as he tells us in his
Journal, had been warned by an officer of rank in the British Navy, who
had visited several of the ports, of the risk he ran to his life in
going among these "barbarians." Moreover a state of hostility existed
between the Corsicans and the Republic of Genoa--which, the year before
Boswell's visit, had obtained the assistance of France. The interior of
the island was still held by Paoli, but many of the seaport towns were
garrisoned by the French and the Genoese. At the time of Boswell's visit
war was not being actively carried on, for the French commander had been
instructed merely to secure these points, and not to undertake offensive
operations against the natives. From the Journal that Boswell gives, we
see that when once he had landed he ran no risks; but it is not every
young man who, when out on his travels, leaves the safe and beaten round
to go into a country that is almost unknown, and to prove to others that
there also safety is to be found. With good reason did Johnson write to
him--"Come home and expect such welcome as is due to him whom a wise and
noble curiosity has led where perhaps no native of this country ever was
before." With scarcely less reason did Paoli say, "A man come from
Corsica will be like a man come from the Antipodes."

[Footnote 1: "Dr. Johnson: His Friends and His Critics." By George
Birkbeck Hill, D.C.L. Smith, Elder & Co.]

How strongly his journey and his narrative touched the hearts of people
at home may still be read in Mrs. Barbauld's fine lines on Corsica:--

"Such were the working thoughts which swelled the breast
Of generous Boswell; when with nobler aim
And views beyond the narrow beaten track
By trivial fancy trod, he turned his course
From polished Gallia's soft delicious vales,
From the grey reliques of imperial Rome,
From her long galleries of laureled stone,
Her chiseled heroes and her marble gods,
Whose dumb majestic pomp yet awes the world,
To animated forms of patriot zeal;
Warm in the living majesty of virtue;
Elate with fearless spirit; firm; resolved;
By fortune nor subdued; nor awed by power."[2]

[Footnote 2: "Mrs. Barbauld's Poems," vol. i., p. 2. It is certainly
strange that Boswell, so far as I know, nowhere quotes these lines. He
was not wont to let the world remain in ignorance of any compliment that
had been paid him. I fear that he was rather ashamed at finding himself
praised by a writer who was not only a woman, but also was the wife of
"a little presbyterian parson who kept an infant boarding school."]

Gray was moved greatly by the account given of Paoli. "He is a man," he
wrote, "born two thousand years after his time." Horace Walpole had
written to beg him to read the book. "What relates to Paoli," he said,
"will amuse you much." What merely amused Walpole "moved" Gray
"strangely." It moved others besides him. Subscriptions were raised for
the Corsicans, and money and arms were sent to them from this country.
Boswell writes to tell his friend Temple--"I have hopes that our
Government will interfere. In the meantime, by a private subscription in
Scotland, I am sending this week L700 worth of ordnance." Other
subscriptions were forwarded which Paoli, as is told in a letter from
him published in the "Gentleman's Magazine,"[3] "applied to the support
of the families of those patriots who, abhorring a foreign yoke, have
abandoned their houses and estates in that part of the country held by
the enemy, and have retired to join our army."

[Footnote 3: "Gentleman's Magazine," vol. xxxix., p. 214.]

Boswell's work met with a rapid sale. The copyright he sold to Dilly for
one hundred guineas. The publisher must have made no small gain by the
bargain, for a third edition was called for within a year. "My book,"
writes Boswell, "has amazing celebrity: Lord Lyttelton, Mr. Walpole,
Mrs. Macaulay, Mr. Garrick have all written me noble letters about it."
With his Lordship's letter he was so much delighted that in the third
edition he obtained leave to use it to "enrich" his book. Johnson
pronounced his Journal in a very high degree curious and delightful. It
is surprising that a work which thus delighted Johnson, moved Gray
strangely, and amused Horace Walpole, can now be met with only in old
libraries and on the shelves of a dealer in second-hand books. I doubt
whether a new edition has been published in the last hundred years. It
is still more surprising when we remember that it is the work of an
author who has written a book "that is likely to be read as long as the
English exists, either as a living or as a dead language." The
explanation of this, I take it, is to be found in the distinction that
Johnson draws between Boswell's Account of Corsica, which forms more
than two-thirds of the whole book, and the Journal of his Tour. His
history, he said, was like other histories. It was copied from books.
His Journal rose out of his own experience and observation. His history
was read, and perhaps read with eagerness, because at the time when it
appeared there was a strong interest felt in the Corsicans. In despair
of maintaining their independence, they had been willing to place
themselves and their island entirely under the protection of Great
Britain. The offer had been refused, but they still hoped for our
assistance. Not a few Englishmen felt with Lord Lyttelton when he
wrote--"I wish with you that our Government had shown more respect for
Corsican liberty, and I think it disgraces our nation that we do not
live in good friendship with a brave people engaged in the noblest of
all contests, a contest against tyranny." But in such a contest as this
Corsica was before long to play a different part. Scarcely four years
after Boswell from some distant hill "had a fine view of Ajaccio and its
environs," that town was rendered famous by the birth of Napoleon
Buonaparte.

With whatever skill Boswell's history had been compiled it could not
have lived. There were not, indeed, the materials out of which a history
that should last could have been formed. The whole island boasted of but
one printing press and one bookseller's shop. The feuds and wars of the
wild islanders might have lived in the songs of the poet, but were
little fit for the purposes of the historian. He who attempts to write
the history of such a people is almost forced to accept tradition for
fact, and to believe in their Arthurs and their Tells. The Corsicans
are, indeed, from time to time found in one or other of the great tracks
of European history. As Boswell says, their island had belonged to the
Phoenicians, the Etruscans, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Goths,
and the Saracens. It had been conquered by France, and had been made a
gift from that kingdom to the Pope. It had been given by the Pope to the
Pisans, and from them had passed to the Republic of Genoa. It had
undergone strange and rapid revolutions, but they were those common
revolutions that befall a wild race that lives in the midst of powerful
neighbours.

Boswell, unsurpassed though he is as a biographer, admirable as he is as
a writer of a Journal, yet had little of the stuff out of which an
historian is made. His compilation is a creditable performance for a
young man who had but lately returned home from his travels. It
certainly adds nothing to the reputation of the author of the "Life of
Johnson." But while it lies overwhelmed with deserved neglect, it ought
not to drag down with it the Journal of his Tour. That portion of the
work is lively, is interesting, and is brief. It can be read with
pleasure now, as it was read with pleasure when it first appeared. But,
besides this, it is interesting to us as the early work of a writer
whose mind has been a puzzle to men of letters. Even should we accept
Macaulay's judgment on Boswell, and despise him as he despises him, yet
it must surely be worth while to examine closely the early writings of
an author, who has, "in an important department of literature,
immeasurably surpassed such writers as Tacitus, Clarendon, Alfieri, and
his own idol Johnson."[4] This Journal is like the youthful sketch of
some great artist. It exhibits the merits which, later on,
distinguished, in so high a degree the mature writer.

[Footnote 4: "Macaulay's Essays," vol. i., p. 377.]

Together with the "Journal of a Tour to Corsica," I am reprinting a
volume of letters that passed between Boswell and his friend The
Honourable Andrew Erskine. Lively and amusing though they often are,
yet I should not have proposed to republish them did not they throw
almost as much light on Boswell's character as the Journal throws light
on his powers as a writer. In his account of Corsica, there is a passage
in which, while describing the historian Petrus Cyrnaeus, he at the same
time describes himself. "The fourth book of Petrus Cyrnaeus," he says,
"is entirely taken up with an account of his own wretched vagabond life,
full of strange, whimsical anecdotes. He begins it very gravely:
'Quoniam ad hunc locum perventum est, non alienum videtur de Petri qui
haec scripsit vita et moribus proponere.' 'Since we are come thus far it
will not be amiss to say something of the life and manners of Petrus,
who writeth this history.' He gives a very excellent character of
himself, and, I dare say, a very faithful one. But so minute is his
narration, that he takes care to inform posterity that he was very
irregular in his method of walking, and that he preferred sweet wine to
hard. In short, he was a man of considerable parts, with a great
simplicity and oddity of character."

To the simplicity and oddity of character that Boswell shared with this
learned historian, there was certainly added not a little impudence. It
was an impudence that was lively and amusing; but none the less was it
downright impudence. We are amazed at the audacity with which two young
men ventured to publish to the world the correspondence which had passed
between them when they were scarcely of age. In fact, the earlier
letters were written when Boswell was but twenty. Their justification
only increases their offence. "Curiosity," they say, "is the most
prevalent of all our passions; and the curiosity for reading letters, is
the most prevalent of all kinds of curiosity. Had any man in the three
kingdoms found the following letters, directed, sealed, and adorned with
postmarks,--provided he could have done it honestly--he would have read
every one of them." There is this, however, that makes us always look
with a certain indulgence on Boswell. He never plays the hypocrite. He
likes praise, he likes to be talked about, he likes to know great
people, and he no more cares to conceal his likings than Sancho Panza
cared to conceal his appetite. Three pullets and a couple of geese were
but so much scum, which Don Quixote's squire whipped off to stay his
stomach till dinner-time. By the time Boswell was six-and-twenty he
could boast that he had made the acquaintance of Adam Smith, Robertson,
Hume, Johnson, Goldsmith, Wilkes, Garrick, Horace Walpole, Voltaire,
Rousseau, and Paoli. He had twice at least received a letter from the
Earl of Chatham. But his appetite for knowing great men could never be
satisfied. These might stay his stomach for a while, but more would be
presently wanted. At the time when he published this volume of Letters
he seems to have had some foresight into his future life. "I am
thinking," he says, "of the intimacies which I shall form with the
learned and ingenious in every science, and of the many amusing literary
anecdotes which I shall pick up." When fame did come upon him by his
book on Corsica, no one could have relished it more. "I am really the
_great man_ now," he writes to his friend Temple. "I have had David Hume
in the forenoon, and Mr. Johnson in the afternoon of the same day
visiting me. Sir John Pringle, Dr. Franklin, and some more company dined
with me to-day; and Mr. Johnson and General Oglethorpe one day, Mr.
Garrick alone another, and David Hume and some more _literati_ another,
dine with me next week. I give admirable dinners and good claret; and
the moment I go abroad again, which will be in a day or two, I set up my
chariot. This is enjoying the fruit of my labours, and appearing like
the friend of Paoli.... David Hume came on purpose the other day to tell
me that the Duke of Bedford was very fond of my book, and had
recommended it to the Duchess."

In the preface to the third edition, he says,--"When I first ventured to
send my book into the world, I fairly owned an ardent desire for
literary fame. I have obtained my desire: and whatever clouds may
overcast my days, I can now walk here among the rocks and woods of my
ancestors, with an agreeable consciousness that I have done something
worthy." It was about this time that, writing to the great Earl of
Chatham, he said--"I can labour hard; I feel myself coming forward, and
I hope to be useful to my country. Could your Lordship find time to
honour me now and then with a letter? I have been told how favourably
your Lordship has spoken of me. To correspond with a Paoli and a
Chatham, is enough to keep a young man ever ardent in the pursuit of
virtuous fame."[5]

[Footnote 5: "Chatham Correspondence," vol. iii., p. 246.]

A few months before his account of Corsica was published, he had fixed
upon the date of its publication as the period when he should steadily
begin that pursuit of virtuous fame, which now was to be secured by
correspondence with a Paoli and a Chatham. "I am always for fixing some
period," he wrote, "for my perfection, as far as possible. Let it be
when my account of Corsica is published; I shall then have a character
which I must support." Unhappily the time for his perfection was again
and again put off. Johnson, in speaking of Derrick, said--"Derrick may
do very well, as long as he can outrun his character; but the moment his
character gets up with him, it is all over." With Boswell, just the
opposite was the case. He soon acquired a character--a character which
he was bound to support. But he could never get up with it. The friend
of Paoli, the friend of Johnson, was, unhappily, given to drink. The gay
spirits and lively health of youth supported him for a while; but, even
in these early days, he was too often troubled with that depression of
spirit which follows on a debauch. But, as time passed on, and the habit
grew stronger upon him, his health began to give way, and his
cheerfulness of mind to desert him. He lived but four years after the
publication of his great work.

In the preface to the second edition of the "Life of Johnson" he shows
his delight in his fame. "There are some men, I believe, who have, or
think they have, a very small share of vanity. Such may speak of their
literary fame in a decorous state of diffidence. But I confess that I am
so formed by nature and by habit, that to restrain the effusion of
delight on having obtained such fame, to me would be truly painful. Why,
then, should I suppress it? Why, 'out of the abundance of the heart,'
should I not speak?" This preface bears the date of July 1, 1793. Only
ten days earlier he had written to tell Temple how he had been drinking,
and had been robbed. "The robbery is only of a few shillings; but the
cut on my head and bruises on my arms were sad things, and confined me
to bed in pain, and fever, and helplessness, as a child, many days....
This shall be a crisis in my life: I trust I shall henceforth be a
sober, regular man. Indeed, my indulgence in wine has, of late years
especially, been excessive.... Your suggestion as to my being carried
off in a state of intoxication, is awful. I thank you for it, my dear
friend. It impressed me much, I assure you." It was too late in life to
form resolutions. A year later he was again "resolved anew to be upon
his guard." In the May of 1795, he died, after an illness of great
suffering. To him might be applied some of the lines which the great
poet who lived so near him wrote as his own epitaph:--

"He keenly felt the friendly glow,
And softer flame;
But thoughtless follies laid him low,
And stain'd his name."

Boswell had, indeed, but little of that "prudent, cautious,
self-control," which, as Burns tells us, "is wisdom's root." It is a sad
thought that at the very same time the two most famous writers that
Ayrshire can boast, men whose homes were but a few miles apart, were at
the same time drinking themselves to death. Burns outlived Boswell
little more than a year.

Boswell was fifty-four years old when he died. Greatly as he relished
wine, he relished fame still more. He had worked hard for fame, and he
had fairly earned it; but in its full flush his intemperance swept him
away. There can be little question that his first triumph in the field
of letters, his book on Corsica brought him far greater pleasure than
his "Life of Johnson," by which his name will live. Perhaps the happiest
day in his life was when, at the Shakespeare Jubilee, he entered the
amphitheatre in the dress of a Corsican chief. "On the front of his cap
was embroidered, in gold letters, "_Viva la Liberta_," and on the side
of it was a handsome blue feather and cockade, so that it had an elegant
as well as a warlike appearance." "So soon as he came into the room,"
says the account in the "London Magazine," written, no doubt, by
himself, "he drew universal attention." The applause that his "Life of
Johnson" brought him was, no doubt, far greater, but then, as I have
said, his health was breaking, and his fine spirits were impaired. He
who would know Boswell at his happiest--when he was, as Hume described
him, very good humoured, very agreeable, and very mad, must read his
volume of Letters, and the Journals of his Tours to Corsica and the
Hebrides.

LETTERS

BETWEEN

THE HONOURABLE

ANDREW ERSKINE,

AND

JAMES BOSWELL, Esq;

LONDON:
Printed by SAMUEL CHANDLER;
For W. FLEXNEY, near Gray's-Inn-Gate, Holborn.
MDCCLXIII.

ADVERTISEMENT.

Curiosity is the most prevalent of all our passions; and the curiosity
for reading letters, is the most prevalent of all kinds of curiosity.
Had any man in the three Kingdoms found the following letters, directed,
sealed, and adorned with postmarks,--provided he could have done it
honestly--he would have read every one of them; or, had they been
ushered into the world, from Mr. Flexney's shop, in that manner, they
would have been bought up with the greatest avidity. As they really once
had all the advantages of concealment, we hope their present more
conspicuous form will not tend to diminish their merit. They have made
ourselves laugh; we hope they will have the same effect upon other
people.

LETTERS.

[In a Memoir of James Boswell,[6] by the Rev. Charles Rogers,
a short account is given of the Hon. Andrew Erskine,
Boswell's correspondent. He was the youngest son of
Alexander, fifth Earl of Kellie. He served in the army for
some years. After his retirement he settled at Edinburgh.
"His habits were regular, but he indulged occasionally at
cards, and was partial to the game of whist. Having sustained
a serious loss at his favourite pastime, he became frantic,
and threw himself into the Forth and perished." Burns,
writing to his friend Thomson, October, 1793, says--"Your
last letter, my dear Thomson, was indeed laden with heavy
news. Alas, poor Erskine! The recollection that he was a
coadjutor in your publication has, till now, scared me from
writing to you, or turning my thoughts on composing for you."
"He was," adds Dr. Rogers, "of a tall, portly form, and to
the last wore gaiters and a flapped vest." By this last
description Dr. Rogers's readers may be pleasantly reminded
of an anecdote that is given for the first time, I believe,
in his book. "Dr. Johnson used to laugh at a passage in
Carte's 'Life of the Duke of Ormond,' where he gravely
observed that 'he was always in full dress when he went to
Court; too many being in the practice of going thither with
double lapells.'" As poor Erskine "wore to the last his
gaiters and a flapped vest," no doubt he had them on when he
drowned himself.--ED.]

[Footnote 6: "Boswelliana: The Commonplace Book of James Boswell." With
a Memoir and Annotations, by the Rev. Charles Rogers, LL.D. London:
Printed for the Grampian Club, 1874.]

* * * * *

LETTER I.

Auchinleck, Aug. 25, 1761.

Dear ERSKINE,--No ceremony, I beseech you. Give me your hand. How is my
honest Captain Andrew? How goes it with the elegant gentle Lady A----?
the lovely sighing Lady J----? and how, O how does that glorious
luminary Lady B---- do? You see I retain my usual volatility. The
Boswells, you know, came over from Normandy, with William the Conqueror,
and some of us possess the spirit of our ancestors the French. I do for
one. A pleasant spirit it is. _Vive la Bagatelle_, is the maxim. A light
heart may bid defiance to fortune. And yet, Erskine, I must tell you,
that I have been a little pensive of late, amorously pensive, and
disposed to read Shenstone's Pastoral on Absence, the tenderness and
simplicity of which I greatly admire. A man who is in love is like a man
who has got the tooth-ache, he feels most acute pain while nobody pities
him. In that situation am I at present: but well do I know that I will
not be long so. So much for inconstancy. As this is my first epistle to
you, it cannot in decency be a long one. Pray write to me soon. Your
letters, I prophecy, will entertain me not a little; and will besides be
extremely serviceable in many important respects. They will supply me
with oil to my lamps, grease to my wheels, and blacking to my shoes.
They will furnish me with strings to my fiddle, lashes to my whip,
lining to my breeches, and buttons to my coat. They will make charming
spurs, excellent knee buckles, and inimitable watch-keys. In short,
while they last I shall neither want breakfast, dinner, nor supper. I
shall keep a couple of horses, and I shall sleep upon a bed of down. I
shall be in France this year, and in Spain the next; with many other
particulars too tedious to mention. You may take me in a metaphorical
sense; but I would rather choose to be understood literally.

I am

Your most affectionate friend,

JAMES BOSWELL.

* * * * *

LETTER II.

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