Note 26: — Chapter VI

Boswell was very impressionable, by his own account, to good influences. He rose from reading a dialogue of Hume's 'happier and more disposed to follow virtue.'26 Relating how Mr. Edward Dilly repeated on his death-bed a passage from Young's 'Night Thoughts'—'Death, a subterraneous road to bliss,' or some such words—Boswell remarks: 'I am edified here.'27 The greatest triumph, one would suppose, of this nature was when, as he says, speaking of his 'moral fences,' 'Reason, that steady builder and overseer, has set them firm.'28 Boswell was excellent too at giving moral advice: 'It is certainly true philosophy to submit to the will of Heaven, and to fulfil the amiable duties of morality.'29 'Read Epictetus,'30 he writes to Temple; on another occasion, 'Read Johnson. Let a manly and firm philosophy brace your mind.'