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Boswelliana: The Commonplace Book of James Boswell, with a Memoir and Annotations cover

Boswelliana: The Commonplace Book of James Boswell, with a Memoir and Annotations

Chapter 7: UXORIANA.
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About This Book

This collection gathers a notable writer's miscellaneous notes, aphorisms, extracts, and conversational memoranda recorded in a personal commonplace book, arranged with editorial memoir and annotations that contextualize entries. It ranges from pithy maxims and literary quotations to recollections of encounters, reflections on manners and public affairs, and drafts of occasional pieces. The editor supplies background, explanatory notes, and cross-references, while introductory remarks frame the compiler's character and habits. Overall it presents an intimate, fragmentary portrait assembled from jottings, dialogues, and marginalia that illuminate tastes, intellectual curiosities, and informal social observations.

UXORIANA.

“When I was warm, telling of my own consequence and generosity, my wife made some cool humbling remarks upon me. I flew into a violent passion; I said if you throw cold water on a plate of iron much heated it will burst into shivers.”

“She recommended reading the ‘Arabian Nights Entertainments’ to one in bad health and low spirits; ‘not,’ said she; ‘to be taken into the mind, but to keep out disturbing thoughts; let them be like a sentry, whom we do not admit into the chamber of a sick person, but place at the door to prevent noisy intruders.’”

“She disapproved of my inviting Mr. M——sh, a man of ability but of violent manners, to make one in a genteel party at our house one evening. ‘He is,’ said she, ‘like fire and water, useful, but not to be brought into company.’”

“Dr. Grant asked if Mr. Macadam of Craigengellan had but one daughter. I said he had properly speaking but one—one beautiful daughter, the other poor girl was very ugly. My wife said that it was hard that want of good looks should make her not be reckoned his daughter; she was more a daughter on that account, as being more likely to continue with him.”