herefore they beg, borrow,
and steal from them, without the smallest mercy or hesitation. In some
things, however, they are quite original; their margins and prices are
larger than any ever known before; and they advertise their pieces much
oftener in the newspapers than any of their predecessors. You compliment
me highly on my elegies, and tell me that I have even dared to be
original now and then; and you ask me very seriously, how I come to be
so well acquainted with the tender passion of love.--Ah, Sir, how
deceitful are appearances! under a forbidding aspect and uncouth form, I
conceal the soul of an Oroondates, a soul that thrills with the most
sensible emotions at the sight of beauty. Love easily finds access where
the mind is naturally inclined to melancholy; we foster the pleasing
delusion, it grows up with our frame, and becomes a part of our being;
long have I laboured under the influence of that passion; long vented my
grief in unavailing sighs. Besides, your thin meagre man is always the
most violent lover; a thousand delusions enter his paper-skull, which
the man of guts never dreams of. In vain does Cupid shoot his arrows at
the plump existence, who is entrenched in a solid wall of fat: they are
buried like shrimps in melted butter; as eggs are preserved by
mutton-tallow, from rottenness and putrefaction, so he, by his grease,
is preserved from love. Pleased with his pipe, he sits and smokes in
his elbow-chair; totally unknown to him is the ardent passion that
actuates the sentimental soul: alas! unhappy man! he never indulged in
the pleasing reverie which inspires the spindle-shanked lover, as he
strays through nodding forest by gliding stream; if he marries, he
chooses a companion fat as himself; they lie together, and most musical
is their snore, they melt like two pounds of butter in one plate in a
sunshiny-day.

Pray, Boswell, remember me kindly to honest Johnston. Let me know if his
trees are growing well, at his paternal estate of Grange; if he is as
fond of Melvil's Memoirs[55] as he used to be; and if he continues to
stretch himself in the sun upon the mountains near Edinburgh.

I ever am,

Yours most affectionately,

ANDREW ERSKINE.

[Footnote 55: Sir James Melville. Born 1535, died 1607. His "Memoirs"
were published in 1683.--ED.]

* * * * *

LETTER XXXVII.

Kelly, July 6, 1762.

Dear BOSWELL,--Nothing happened during my journey; I arrived in Aberdeen