Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica Part 6

I am still in the way I was, when I wrote you last, in a public-house, and pestered with noise: I have not above six ideas at present, and none of them fit for a letter. Dear Boswell, farewell! pray for my recovery from this lethargy of spirits and sense which has seized me.

Yours, &c.

ANDREW ERSKINE.

LETTER XXI.

Edinburgh, Feb. 16, 1762.

Dear ERSKINE,--To see your brother ---- at Morpeth, will, I dare say, surprise you as much as it did me, to find him here. In short, nothing will serve him but a sight of the British capital, although he is already much better acquainted with it than either you or I.

What has at present instigated him I own I am puzzled to discover: but I solemnly and merrily declare, that I never yet saw anybody so excessively enamoured of London. The effects of this violent pa.s.sion are deeply impressed upon every feature in his countenance, his nose not excepted, which is absolutely most surprising. His body is tossed and shaken like one afflicted with the hot fit of an ague, or the severest paroxysms of convulsion. Then as to his mind, it is altogether distempered. He is perpetually declaiming on the magnificence, the liberty, and the pleasure, which reigns in the imperial British metropolis. He swears, that in that glorious place alone we can enjoy life. He says, there is no breathing beyond St. James's; and he affirms, that the air of that delicious spot is celestial. He says, there is no wit except at the Bedford; no military genius but at George's; no wine but at the Star and Garter; no turbot except at the Tilt-Yard. He a.s.serts, that there are no clothes made beyond the liberties of Westminster; and 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 a.s.sembly night, when twenty fiddlers sweat; by the grandeur of your pinchbeck buckles; by the solemnity of your small nose; by the blue expended in was.h.i.+ng your s.h.i.+rts; 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 you 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 Ingrat.i.tude (which, I suppose, is finished) shall be burnt.

I was, as you imagine, very much surprised to see A---- 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 Const.i.tution-Hill; 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's-Church-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 s.h.i.+rt, or an ill-printed 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?[40] 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 circ.u.mstanced; accept this short line in answer to your last, and write very soon to

Your affectionate Friend,

JAMES BOSWELL.

[Footnote 40: By Colley Cibber. "Who upon earth has written such perfect comedies (as Moliere)? for the 'Careless Husband' is but one."--Horace Walpole, Aug. 29, 1785.--ED.]

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 next day kept up my spirits, during a stage of seventeen miles. William he snored; I called upon you, after being refreshed with soft slumbers, in which my guardian genius did not inform me of your absence: but oh! when the maid told me you was gone, what were my emotions! she beholding me affected in a most supreme degree, tried to administer comfort to me, and plainly told me, that you would be very sorry you had missed me, this delivered in an elegant manner, soothed me prodigiously.

I began writing this at Graham's in Glasgow, but was interrupted by a jowl of Salmon; every thing there reminded me of you. I was in the same room you and I were in, you seemed placed before me, your face beamed a black ray upon me.

I am now at New-Tarbat, once more returned to the scenes of calm retirement, and placid meditation, as Mr. Samuel Johnson says in the Idler.[41] We all wish to have you here, and we all agree in thinking that there is nothing to hinder you to come.

[Footnote 41: "I am now, as I could wish every man of wisdom and virtue to be, in the regions of calm content and placid meditation."--"The Idler," No. 71.--ED.]

I must beg your pardon seriously for not writing to you, but I was really in such bad spirits, and such ill temper, at that cursed place Morpeth, that it was impossible; but I a.s.sure you I will make up terribly. I am recruiting again; I believe our regiment won't go abroad this summer. I was glad to see by the London newspapers, that Mr. Robert Dodsley had at last published your Cub: Mr. H---- showed me a very severe Epigram that somebody in London had written upon it. You know it is natural to take a lick at a Cub. Pray come to us. I cannot all at once come into the way of letter-writing again, so I must conclude,

Dear Boswell,

Your affectionate friend,

ANDREW ERSKINE.

LETTER XXV.

Auchinleck, April 22, 1762.

Dear ERSKINE,--This is a strange world that we live in. Things turn out in a very odd manner. Every day produces something more wonderful than another. Earthquakes, murders, conflagrations, inundations, jubilees, operas, marriages, and pestilence, unite to make mortal men gape and stare. But your last letter and mine being wrote on the same day, astonishes me still more than all these things put together.

This is the most unaccountable rhodomontade that I ever uttered. I am really dull at present, and my affectation to be clever, is exceedingly awkward. My manner resembles that of a footman who has got an ensign's commission, or a kept mistress who is made a wife.

I have not at any time been more insipid, more muddy, and more standing-water like than I am just now. The country is my aversion. It renders me quite torpid. Were you here just now, you would behold your vivacious friend a most stupid exhibition. It is very surprising that the country should affect me so; whether it be that the scenes to be met with there, fall infinitely short of my ideas of pastoral simplicity; or that I have acquired so strong a relish for the variety and hurry of a town life, as to languish in the stillness of retirement; or that the atmosphere is too moist and heavy, I shall not determine.

I have now pretty good hopes of getting soon into the guards, that gay scene of life of which I have been so long and so violently enamoured.

Surely this will cause you to rejoice.

I have lately had the pleasure and the pride of receiving a most brilliant epistle from Lady B----. It excels Captain Andrew's letters by many degrees. I have picked as many diamonds out of it, as to make me a complete set of buckles; I have turned so much of it into brocade waistcoats, and so much into a very rich suit of embroidered horse-furniture. I know how unequal I am to the task of answering it; nevertheless present her Ladys.h.i.+p with the inclosed. It may amuse her a little. It is better to have two s.h.i.+llings in the pound, than nothing at all.