he firmly holds Cheapside to be the sole mart of stockings. It would fill up two-thirds of a quarto volume to enumerate the various extravagant exclamations into which he breaks out. He declares that for his own part, he will never go to church except to St. Paul's, nor to a lady's private lodgings, except in the neighbourhood of Soho-square.

I beg it of you, my friend, be very attentive to him ; observe his appearance and behaviour with the greatest accuracy, so that between us we may be able to have a pretty just notion of this wonderful affair, and may faithfully draw up his case to be read before the Royal Society, and transmitted to posterity in these curious annals the Philosophical Transactions.

I have sent you the second volume, which Donaldson begs leave to present you with, in consideration of your being one of those who bear the brunt of the day. He has also done me the same honour. No plain shop copy; no, no, elegantly bound and gilt.

Adieu, yours sincerely,

JAMES BOSWELL.

LETTER XXII.

Morpeth, March 2, 1762.

Oh, BOSWELL! if you found yourself in the middle of the Firth of Forth, and the sea fast up-springing through every leak, after the skipper had remonstrated, in the most warm manner, against proceeding to cross the water;

or if, like me, you found yourself in the midst of a sentence, without knowing how to end it, you could not feel more pain than I do at this instant: in short, I have had a very excellent letter of yours in my left waistcoat-pocket this fortnight; is that letter answered? you say: Oh! let the reply to this question be buried in the bottom of the Red Sea, where I hope no future army will ever disturb it; or let it be inserted in the third volume of Donaldson's Collection, where it will never be found, as the book will never be opened. What would I not do to gain your pardon? I would even swear that black was white; that's to say, I would praise the fairness of your complexion.

By that smile which irradiates your countenance, like a gleam of the moon through the black clouds of the south; by the melting of that pomatum which gives your hair a gloss, like the first beaming of a new suit of regimentals on an assembly night, when twenty fiddlers sweat; by the grandeur of your pinchbeck buckles; by the solemnity of your small nose; by the blue expended in washing your shirts; by the rotundity of your Bath great-coat; by the well-polished key of your portmanteau; by the tag of your shoe; by the tongue of your buckle; by your tailor's bill; by the last kiss of Miss C—; by the first guinea Cyou ever had in your possession; and chiefly by all the nonsense you have just read, let the kneeling Captain find favour in your eyes, and then, my Ode to Goodnature shall be inscribed to you, while your Ode to Ingratitude (which, I suppose, is finished) shall be burnt.

A

I was, as you imagine, very much surprised to see here; I noted him, according to your direction,

with a critical eye; like a gentleman in a line which you may remember I made on the Castle-hill, he seemed to have taken the Tower of London for his bride; every feature and every limb was changed wonderfully; his nose resembled Westminster-Bridge; his cheeks were like Bloomsbury-Square; his high forehead like ConstitutionHill; his chin like China-Row; his tongue and his teeth looked like Almack's in Pall-Mall; his lips like the Shakespeare's Head; his fists like Hockley-in-the-Hole; his ears like the Opera-House; his eyes like a harlequin entertainment; his stomach was like Craven-Street; his chest like the trunk-maker's in the corner of St. Paul'sChurch-yard; the calf of his leg like Leadenhall-market ; his pulse like the Green-market in Covent-Garden; his neck like Tyburn; and his gait like Newgate; his navel like Fleet-street; and his lungs and his bladder were like Blowbladder-street: everything about him seemed metamorphosed; he had moulded his hat into the form of the Mansion-House; some guineas which he had, looked like the 'Change; but it would be tedious to relate every particular; however, I must not let his conversation be forgot, though it was much of a piece with that you so humorously relate: he swore to me he never saw a rag fit for a gentleman to wear, but in Rag-fair; he said there was no scolding but at Billingsgate; and he avowed there were no bad poets but in Grub-street; I could not stand that, I bid him call to remembrance an acquaintance of his who lived in the Parliament-Close, and also a relation of his who formerly resided in Campbell's Land; he smiled, and confessed these were really very bad poets,

but that he was not convinced for all that; upon this, to put the matter out of all dispute, I offered to lend him the first and second volumes of Donaldson's Collection. At that very moment the hostler informed him the chaise was ready, and he still remains ignorant where the worst poets in the world are. Tell me how our second volume is received; I was much pleased with N-'s lines; how did he get them inserted? I intend writing a criticism upon the volume, and upon your writings in particular, so tremble.

Dear Boswell, farewell,

Yours most affectionately,

ANDREW ERSKINE.

P.S.-I hope you'll write to me soon.

LETTER XXIII.

Edinburgh, March 9, 1762.

Dear ERSKINE,-Can a man walk up the Cowgate after a heavy rain without dirtying his shoes? I might have said the soles of his shoes :-and, indeed, to put the matter beyond dispute, I would yet have you to understand me so; for although nothing is so common as to use a part for the whole; yet if you should be out of humour with a bad dinner, a bad lodging, an ill-dressed shirt, or an illprinted book, you might be disposed to cavil, and object, that in critical precision of language, (supposing a man to walk slow) he could not be said to have dirtied his shoes,

no more than a boarding-school girl, who has cut her finger in paring an apple, could be said to have mangled her carcase.

But to proceed; can a man make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land from the Island of Great Britain, without the aid of navigation? Can a man walk in the Mall at noon, carrying his breeches upon an enormous long pole, without being laughed at? Can a man of acknowledged ignorance and stupidity, write a tragedy superior to Hamlet? or a genteel comedy superior to the Careless Husband?* I need not wait for an answer. No word but no, will do: it is self-evident. No more, my friend, can he who is lost in dissipation, write a letter. I am at present so circumstanced; accept this short line in answer to your last, and write very soon to

Your affectionate Friend,

JAMES BOSWELL

LETTER XXIV.

New-Tarbat, April 15, 1762.

Dear BOSWELL,-The sun which rose on Wednesday last, with his first beams beheld you set out for Auchinleck, but he did not see me arrive in Edinburgh; however, he was good-natured enough to lend a little light to the moon, by the help of which, about twelve at night I landed at Peter Ramsay's: the thoughts of seeing you

* By Colley Cibber. "Who upon earth has written such perfect comedies (as Molière)? for the Careless Husband' is but one."Horace Walpole, Aug. 29, 1785.—Ed.