Walking on Sunshine Wednesday

[evelyn_b]

What he meant by me being a great man I can understand. For really, to speak seriously, I think there is a blossom about me of something more distinguished than the generality of mankind. But I am much afraid that this blossom will never swell into fruit, but will be nipped and destroyed by many a blighting heat and chilling frost. Indeed, I sometimes indulge noble reveries of having a regiment, of getting into Parliament, making a figure, and becoming a man of consequence in the state. But these are checked by dispiriting reflections on my melancholy temper and imbecility of mind. Yet I may probably become sounder and stronger as I grow up. Heaven knows. I am resigned. I trust to Providence.

I'm still on break until next week, probably, but I found Boswell's London Journal (a Signet paperback covering the years 1762-63, when the Bozzinator was twenty-two) in a free library box and it's even more deightful than you might expect. Here, in January of 1763, Boz has not yet met his great friend Joz - he almost did when he first came to London, but Sheridan told him not to bother as Johnson had gotten too boring and surly in his middle age and hated Scottish people anyway and probably would just mutter witticisms at poor Boz and throw some oats at his head. This was partly true, but Sheridan also had a personal grudge. So Boz spent the rest of 1762 and almost half of 1763 not meeting Samuel Johnson, writing extensively in his diary, exhorting himself to virtue in a separate diary, eating too much beef in the interest of becoming a proper Englishman, catching the clap in spite of what he thinks is extreme caution, and enjoying highly improbable fantasies about what kind of greatness he might eventually attain.

Sadly, the book is in poor condition and has already lost 1/6 of its pages. Happily, we live in an age of abundance for the time being, and a better-condition Boz is not hard to find.