This was an enjoyable easy read. And the story of the Journal's discovery, along with the efforts to bring it to publication, are every bit as interesting as the contents.
This, fleshing out my 18th Century reading, a contemporary of Laclos, Cassanova, Lord Chesterfield, familiar with the famous actors Garrick and Sheridan, Samuel Johnson, too many others to list but the degeneracy of an age frankly laid bare for all to read.
The 'plot' - as such, a young Scottish gentleman gains a tolerable allowance from his father and sets himself about London a proper gentleman of leisure. Arranging introductions and meeting all of the people of quality (and many of none) he fully sets out the descriptions of the pleasures and vicissitudes of youth.
Some highlights, as nobody ever follows my recommendations anyways (and - while enjoyable I wouldn't describe it as 'essential')
Samuel Johnson's take on Melancholy - "Melancholy people" said he, "are apt to fly to intemperance, which gives a momentary relief but sinks the soul much lower in misery." & "Mr. Johnson said today that a woman's preaching was like a dog's walking upon his hinder legs. It was not done well, but you were surprised to find it done at all."
This familiarity stood him on good stead, as he was later to write "The Biography of Samuel Johnson".
Thursday, 7 April 1763 - "I breakfasted with Temple. This day was afterwards passed in dissipation which has left no traces on my brain."
Friday, 15 April 1763 - "Temple and I dined at Clifton's. I remember nothing more." This Temple proving a bad acquaintance. The footnotes ironically point out that at this point he would be considered abstinent, or temperate, given the spirit of the age.
Thursday, 19 May 1763 - "We had a good dinner and plenty of wine. I resolved to be merry while I could, and soon see whether the foul fiend of the genitals had prevailed."
His attending the Tower of London to visit the prisoners, then later attending their execution, which throws him into a dreadful state of mind. Or his six weeks spent in convalescing from the Clap (gonorrhea) - his third such dose already as a young man, then immediately off to pleasure himself with the ladies of the town, embodying perfectly the memory of youth.
Wednesday, 13 of April 1763 "...I should have mentioned last night that I met with a monstrous big whore in the Strand, whom I had a great curiosity to lubricate, as the saying is. I went into a tavern with her where she displayed to me all the parts of her enormous carcass, but I found that her avarice was as large as her ass, for she would by no means take what I offered her. I therefore pulled the bell, and discharged the reckoning, to her no small surprise and mortification..." and then continues to complain of the waiters who enable and profit by these little enterprises...
Conversations, some dull, others more sparkling, he strikes you as a man of no great depth or substance (but at this age he was still young), filled with ambition, detailed notes describing his transgressions (of surprisingly vanilla tastes), the High debauch (wherein he treats the ladies to chambers and wine), vs the Low debauch, wherein his pleasure is seized in the alleys or streets, in his notes resolving no more of the Low Debauches, and then within the week subsequently indulging yet again;
Tuesday 10 May 1763 "...At the bottom of the Haymarket I picked up a strong, jolly young damsel, and taking her under the arm I conducted her to Westminster Bridge, and then in armour complete did I engage her upon this noble edifice. The whim of doing it there with the Thames rolling below us amused me much. Yet after the brutish appetite was sated, I could not but despise myself for being so closely united with such a low wretch."
I'll need to find the rest of Boswell's journals, and read his "Biography of Samuel Johnson", whom he held in great esteem, and from the quotes given and the reviews of others was well deserved.