IN this week in 1740, the lawyer and author James Boswell, companion and biographer of Samuel Johnson, was born in Edinburgh.

He was born on October 29 in that year, the eldest son of a strict Presbyterian lawyer who became a sheriff and then a judge. On reaching the bench Alexander Boswell took the title Lord Auchinleck, and indeed he was the 8th Laird of the estate of that name in Ayrshire.

Educated from the age of five at Mundell’s School in Edinburgh, which was noted for its progressive curriculum, Boswell became a shy and introverted boy who only blossomed educationally when he was given private tuition. He was also a sickly youth and at the age of 12 he was sent to the spa at Moffat to recuperate from a bout of scurvy.

He attended the Royal High School and Edinburgh University where his friends included Henry Dundas, later 1st Viscount Melville, and William Johnson Temple – the latter’s lifelong correspondence with his friend supplies a great deal of detail about Boswell. We know that Boswell suffered depression at Edinburgh and he may have begun to “comfort eat” as he gained weight and also took to drink.

Sent to Glasgow University to study philosophy under Adam Smith, Boswell encountered Roman Catholicism and wanted to enter Holy Orders. But he also encountered the theatre and actresses and the latter pursuits won out – he ran away to London and enjoyed the high life for some months, which cured him of any chance of entering the priesthood, though he also thought about becoming a soldier.

Nevertheless, his father was appalled at the thought of Boswell becoming a Catholic monk or priest and made him sign away his inheritance for an allowance of £100 per year – later increased to £200 when Boswell finally knuckled down to the law as a career. He tried and failed to become a barrister in London but had to return to Edinburgh where he graduated in law at Edinburgh University in 1762. Among his friends at this time were the philosopher David Hume and other leading lights of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Boswell had already contributed to volumes of poetry but was having no success until he found his true metier – biography. Visiting London in May, 1763, he met Samuel Johnson, the most famous literary figure of the day, and the two became friends immediately.

Boswell famously recalled his first conversation with Johnson, who was known to be no fan of Scotsmen: “Mr Johnson, I do indeed come from Scotland but I cannot help it.” To which Johnson replied: “That, sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.”

His books Boswell In Holland and Boswell On The Grand Tour tell us of his next three years studying law at Utrecht University and having affairs with women – he proposed marriage to the rich Dutch widow Catharina Elisabeth Geelvinck but she turned him down.

The Grand Tour took him to France, where he met Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau – he would later have an affair with the philosopher’s mistress – then to Rome and Corsica where he met one of his heroes, the independence campaigner and resistance leader Pasquale Paoli.

Back in Edinburgh he was called to the bar in 1766 and almost immediately became involved in the famous Douglas Cause about the legitimacy or otherwise of Archibald Douglas, later the 1st Baron Douglas. Boswell was on the winning side eventually, but fell out with his father who was a judge on the case.

Boswell’s fame, of course, rests on his biographical accounts of Samuel Johnson. The Journal Of A Tour To The Hebrides is often credited with being the first travelogue and showed Johnson and Boswell at their pithy best. The Life Of Samuel Johnson was not written till much later and finally brought Boswell the fame he thought he deserved. It remains one of the masterpieces of biography and is still in print to this day.

The personal life of Bozzy, as Johnson nicknamed him, was otherwise pretty disastrous. He was prone to bouts of severe depression and drank heavily for most of his life.

He married his cousin Margaret Montgomerie in 1769 but was frequently unfaithful to her, consorting with prostitutes so much that Boswell experts, working from his own accounts, have counted 17 incidences where he caught a sexually transmitted disease. He and Margaret had four sons, two of whom died in infancy, and three daughters who all survived him. His two admitted illegitimate children also died young.

His great friend Johnson died in 1784, some 11 years before Boswell himself. His account of his last meeting with a dying Johnson is very poignant: “He asked me whether I would not go with him to his house; I declined it, from an apprehension that my spirits would sink.

“We bade adieu to each other affectionately in the carriage. When he had got down upon the foot-pavement he called out, ‘Fare you well’ and, without looking back, sprung away with a kind of pathetick briskness, if I may use that expression, which seemed to indicate a struggle to conceal uneasiness, and impressed me with a foreboding of our long, long separation.”