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LETTER XXXIV.

New-Tarbat, June 14, 1762.

AND are YOU gloomy! oh James Boswell! has your flow of spirits
evaporated, and left nothing but the black dregs of melancholy behind?
has the smile of cheerfulness left your countenance? and is the laugh of
gaiety no more? oh woeful condition! oh wretched friend! but in this
situation you are dear to me; for lately my disposition was exactly
similar to yours. No conversation pleased me; no books could fix my
attention; I could write no letters, and I despised my own poems. Tell
me how you was affected; could you speak any? could you fix your
thoughts upon anything but the dreary way you was in? and would not the
sight of me have made you very miserable? I have lately had the
epidemical distemper; I don't mean poverty, but that cold which they
call the influenza, and which made its first appearance in London;[52]
whether it came to Scotland in the wagon, or travelled with a companion
in a post-chaise, is quite uncertain.

[Footnote 52: "The time is wonderfully sickly; nothing but sore-throats,
colds, and fevers." Horace Walpole, in a letter to George Montagu, April
29, 1762.--ED.]

Derrick's versifications are infamously bad; what think you of the
Reviewers commending such an execrable performance? I have a fancy to
write an ironical criticism upon it, and praise all the worst lines,
which you shall send to Derrick, as the real sentiments of a gentleman
of your acquaintance on reading his work. For want of something else to
entertain you, I begin my criticism immediately.--To versify poetical
prose has been found a very difficult task. Dr. Young and Mr. Langhorne,
in their paraphrases upon the Bible (which Lord Bolingbroke tells us, is
an excellent book) have succeeded but indifferently: I therefore took up
Mr. Samuel Derrick's versifications from Fingal, with little expectation
of being entertained; but let no man judge of a book till at least he
reads the title page; for lo! Mr. Samuel Derrick has adorned his with a
very apt and uncommon quotation, from a good old poet called Virgil. I
am much pleased with the candour so conspicuous in the short
advertisement to the public, in which Mr. Derrick seems very willing to
run snacks in reputation with Mr. MacPherson, which will greatly rejoice
that gentleman, who cannot justly boast of so extensive a fame as Mr.
Samuel Derrick. The dedication is very elegant, though, I am apt to
think, the author has neither praise