BIB_ID
379560
Accession number
MA 981.15
Creator
Boswell, James, 1740-1795.
Display Date
1767 Mar. 30.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan before 1906.
Description
1 item (6 p., with address) ; 23.6-31.1 cm
Notes
Addressed to "The Reverend / Mr. Temple."
Docketed.
Part of a large collection of letters from James Boswell to William Johnson Temple and related correspondence. Letters have been described in individual records; see MA 981 for details.
With seal.
Docketed.
Part of a large collection of letters from James Boswell to William Johnson Temple and related correspondence. Letters have been described in individual records; see MA 981 for details.
With seal.
Provenance
Major William Stone; purchased by Pierpont Morgan from the London dealer J. Pearson & Co. before 1906.
Summary
Calling Temple's last letter "like an Oration of Tully [Cicero] to [his] soul"; noting that he has broken things off with his mistress, and crediting his friend Johnston and his brother David with convincing him to do so; writing that "very soon [his] follies will be at an end, & [he] shall turn out an admirable Member of Society"; noting, "How strangely do we colour our own Vices. I startle when you talk of keeping another Man's Wife. Yet that was literally my scheme, though my imagination represented it just as being fond of a pretty lively black little Lady who to oblige me staid in Edinburgh & I very genteely paid her Expences"; mentioning various women he is considering as marriage prospects; commenting on his father's improvements to their estate in Auchinleck; adding that he is "seriously engaged in [his] Account of Corsica."
Catalog link
Department