I wonder what you will all think of this proposal of mine for delivering myself in Folio. Ten days make a period, as I use to say. They bear some proportion to the whole of life. Write instantly.
LETTER XI.[28]
New-Tarbat, Dec. 13, 1761.
Dear Boswell,—An Ode to Tragedy by a gentleman of Scotland, and dedicated to you! had there been only one spark of curiosity in my whole composition, this would have raised it to a flame equal to the general conflagration. May G-d d—n me, as Lord Peter says,[29] if the edge of my appetite to know what it can be about, is not as keen as the best razor ever used by a member of the Soaping-Club. Go to Donaldson, demand from him two of my franks, and send it me even before the first post: write me, O write me! what sort of man this author is, where he was born, how he was brought up, and with what sort of diet he has been principally fed; tell me his genealogy, like Mr. M——; how many miles he has travelled in post-chaises, like Colonel R——; tell me what he eats, like a cook; what he drinks, like a wine-merchant; what shoes he wears, like a shoe-maker; in what manner his mother was delivered of him, like a man-midwife; and how his room is furnished, like an upholsterer; but if you happen to find it difficult to utter all this in terms befitting Mr. M——, Colonel R——, a cook, a wine-merchant, a shoemaker, a man-midwife, and an upholsterer, Oh! tell it me all in your own manner, and in your own incomparable style.
Your scheme, Boswell, has met with—but the thoughts of this Ode-writing gentleman of Scotland again come across me,—I must now ask, like the Spectator,[30] is he fat or lean, tall or short, does he use spectacles? what is the length of his walking-stick? has he a landed estate? has he a good coal-work?—Lord! Lord! what a melancholy thing it is to live twenty miles from a post-town! why am I not in Edinburgh? why am I not chained to Donaldson's shop?
I received both your letters yesterday, for we send to the Post-house but once a week: I need not tell you how I liked them; were I to acquaint you with that, you would consecrate the pen with which they were written, and deify the inkhorn: I think the outside of one of them was adorned with the greatest quantity of good sealing-wax I ever saw, and my brother A—— and Lady A——, both of whom have a notable comprehension of these sort of things, agree with me in this my opinion.
Your Ode to Gluttony[31] is altogether excellent; the descriptions are so lively, that mistaking the paper on which they were written, for a piece of bread and butter spread with marmalade, I fairly swallowed the whole composition, and I find my stomach increased three-fold since that time; I declare it to be the most admirable whet in the world, superior to a solan goose, or white wine and bitters; it ought to be hung up in every cook's shop in the three kingdoms, engraved on pillars in all market places, and pasted in all rooms in all taverns.
You seem to doubt in your first letter, if ever Captain Erskine was better entertained by the great Donaldson, than you was lately; banish that opinion, tell it not in Gath; nor publish it in Askalon; repeat it not in John's Coffee-house, neither whisper it in the Abbey of Holyrood-House; no, I shall never forget the fowls and oyster sauce which bedecked the board: fat were the fowls, and the oysters of the true pandour or croat kind; then the apple pie with raisins, and the mutton with cauliflower, can never be erased from my remembrance; I may forget my native country, my dear brothers and sisters, my poetry, my art of making love, and even you, O Boswell! but these things I can never forget; the impression is too deep, too well imprinted ever to be effaced; I may turn Turk or Hottentot, I may be hanged for stealing a bag to adorn my hair, I may ravish all sorts of virgins, young and old, I may court the fattest Wapping landlady, but these things I can never forget; I may be sick and in prison, I may be deaf, dumb, and may lose my memory, but these things I can never forget.