Grampian Club > Boswelliana

192 MEMOIR OF JAMES BOSWELL.
comicality which always reigned upon it." * He talked much
and with rapidity, but his observant faculty was not apparent
to those who only met him in society.
Boswell left two sons and three daughters ; James, the younger
son, entered Brazenose College, Oxford, of which he was elected
a fellow upon the Vinerian foundation. He was afterwards
called to the English Bar, and became a Commissioner of
Bankruptcy. An accomplished scholar and of industrious
habits, he was by Mr. Malone appointed his literary executor.
Under his care appeared Mr. Malone's enlarged edition of
Shakespeare, completed in 1821, in twenty-one octavo volumes.
In the first volume he defended, in an able and ingenious essay,
Mr. Malone's reputation from an attack made on his statements
and opinions by a writer of eminence. He inherited his father's
ho7ilwmmic and love of sociality. He died unmarried in the
Middle Temple, London, on the 24th February, 1822, aged forty-
three ; his remains were deposited in the Temple Church. By
his elder brother his death was lamented in these lines, —
" There is a pang when kindred spirits part,
And cold philosophy we must disown ;
There is a thrilling spot in every heart,
For pulses beat not from a heart of stone.
" Boswell, th' allotted earth has closed on thee,
Thy mild but generous warmth has passed away :
A finer spirit never death set free,
And now the friend we honour'd is but clay.
" His was the triumph of the heart and mind,
His was the lot which few are blessed to know :
More proved, more valued — fervent, yet so kind,
He never lost one friend, nor found one foe."
» Statement of Mr. William Macfarlane, of Edinburgh, to Kobert
Chambers. "Traditions of Edinburgh," 1869, 12mo., p. 74.