Note 13: — Chapter III
Reading edition
About these he was as frank as he was about all the subjects which he discusses in his letters to Temple. We have detailed accounts (detailed enough, apparently, to offend, unfortunately for our purpose, the delicate ear of the first editor of the letters) which describe in several cases the precise nature of Boswell's love or passion or whatever be the appropriate expression. These accounts were intentionally complete. The eye of Boswell is fixed upon the thermometer of his affections to observe and indicate its rise and fall. Nothing could illustrate the man so well as the attitude which he here so nakedly revealed, typical entirely of Boswell because it is so completely self-centred. He lived for his own pleasure and says as much: 'That pleasure is not the aim but the end of our being, seems to be philosophically demonstrable. Therefore all the labour and all the serious business of life should first be considered as means to FIRST LOVE that end.'13 In love he was not less governed by this system than he was in every other phase of life.