32 Extracts from James Boswell* s Letters
��to my magnum opus. I am very unwilling to part with the property of it, and certainly would not, if I could but get credit for iooc/. for three or four years. Could you not assist me in that way, on the security of the book, and of an assign ment to one half of my rents, 7oo/. which, upon my honour, are always due, and would be forthcoming in case of my decease ? I will not sell, till I have your answer as to this.
On Tuesday we had a Club of eleven. Lords Lucan x (in the chair), Ossory, Macartney 2 , Eliot 3 , Bishop of Clonfert 4 , young Burke, myself, Courtenay, Windham, Sir Joshua, and Charles Fox, who takes to us exceedingly, and asked to have dinner a little later ; so it was to be at \ past five. Burke had made a great interest for his drum-major 5 , and, would you believe it ? had not Courtenay and I been there, he would have been chosen. Banks was quite indignant, but had company at home. Lord Ossory ventured to put up the Bishop of Peterborough, and I really hope he will get in. Courtenay and I will not be there, and probably not again till you come. It was poor work last week, the whelp 6 would not let us hear Fox .... I am strangely ill, and doubt if even you could dispel the demoniac
��son, Sir James Boswell. The popu lation of Auchinleck had risen, be tween 1834 and 1889, from 1,600 to nearly 7,000. This rapid increase was due to the coal mines which were opened about 1854, and at one time added ,5,000 a year to the Boswell rental.
1 Life, iv. 326.
2 ' Lord Macartney (wrote Boswell in the Advertisement to the second edition of the Life, i. 13) favoured me with his own copy of my book, with a number of notes, of which I have availed myself. On the first leaf I found in his Lordship's hand-writing, an inscription of such high commen dation, that even I, vain as I am, cannot prevail on myself to publish it.' I hope that this volume will find its way into a public library.
3 It was he of whom Johnson said,
��' I did not think a young Lord could have mentioned to me a book in the English history that was not known to me.' Life, iv. 333.
4 Richard Marlay, once Dean of Ferns and afterwards Bishop of Waterford. Life, iv. 73. On Jan. 27, 1782, he wrote to Lord Charle- mont : ' Our club black-balled lord Camden. This conduct should dis grace the society. The bishop of St. Asaph was once black-balled, but is now elected. The club must have some wretched members belonging to it, or the two greatest and most virtuous characters in the kingdom could not be treated with such dis respect.' Hist. MSS. Com., Twelfth Report, App. x. 396.
5 Dr. Lawrence.
6 Perhaps young Burke.
influence.
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