A few months after the first meeting, Boswell went by his father's wish to Utrecht to study law. But before that the friendship was got on to a firm footing, and Boswell had had the pride and pleasure of hearing Johnson say, "There are few people whom I take so much to, as you." A still stronger proof of Johnson's feeling was that he insisted on going with Boswell to Harwich to see him out of England. This was the occasion on which he scarified the good Protestants who were with them in the coach by defending the Inquisition, and invited one of the ladies who said she never allowed her children to be idle to take his own education in hand; "'for I have been an idle fellow all my life.' 'I am sure, sir,' said she, 'you have not been idle.' 'Nay, madam, it is very true, and that gentleman there,' pointing to me, 'has been idle. He was idle at Edinburgh. His father sent him to Glasgow where he continued to be idle. He then came to London where he has been very idle; and now he is going to Utrecht where he will be as idle as ever.' I asked him privately how he could expose me { 76} so. 'Pooh, Pooh!' said he, 'they know nothing about you and will think of it no more.'" When he was not engaged in these alarums and excursions or in reproving Boswell for giving the coachman a shilling instead of the customary sixpence, he was occupied in reading Pomponius Mela _De Situ Orbis_. How complete the picture is and how vivid! It once more gives Boswell's method in miniature.
He seems to have stayed at Utrecht about a year, afterwards travelling in Germany, where he visited Wittenberg, and sat down to write to Johnson in the church where the Reformation was first preached, with his paper resting on the tomb of Melanchthon. It is noticeable that, though he had only known Johnson a year, he already hoped to be his biographer. "At this tomb, then, my ever dear and respected friend, I vow to thee an eternal attachment. It shall be my study to do what I can to render your life happy: and, if you die before me, I shall endeavour to do honour to your memory." He was also at this time in Italy and Switzerland, where he visited Voltaire and gratified him by quoting a remark of Johnson's that Frederick the Great's writings were the sort of stuff one might expect from "a footboy who had been Voltaire's amanuensis." Nor did this { 77} collector of celebrities omit to visit Rousseau, the rival lion of the day, between whom and Voltaire the orthodox Johnson thought it was "difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity." But as far as Boswell's records go, he never said such violent things of Voltaire as of Rousseau, whom he called "a rascal who ought to be hunted out of society and transported to work in the plantations." Boswell, however, was an admirer of the _Vicaire Savoyard_, and said what he could in defence of his host, in return for the hospitality he had enjoyed at Neuchatel, with the usual result, of course, that Johnson only became more outrageous.