Boswell does not record that there was any further conversation
before the announcement of dinner. Perhaps the whole company had been
temporarily deafened. But I am not bothering about them. My heart goes
out to the poor dear clergyman exclusively.
I said a moment ago that he was young and shy; and I admit that I
slipped those epithets in without having justified them to you by due
process of induction. Your quick mind will have already supplied what
I omitted. A man with a high, thin voice, and without power to impress
any one with a sense of his importance, a man so null in effect that
even the retentive mind of Boswell did not retain his very name, would
assuredly not be a self-confident man. Even if he were not naturally
shy, social courage would soon have been sapped in him, and would in
time have been destroyed, by experience. That he had not yet given
himself up as a bad job, that he still had faint wild hopes, is proved
by the fact that he did snatch the opportunity for asking that
question. He must, accordingly, have been young. Was he the curate of
the neighbouring church? I think so. It would account for his having
been invited. I see him as he sits there listening to the great
Doctor's pronouncement on Atterbury and those others. He sits on the
edge of a chair in the background.
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