I plunge my knife into the beef,
Which, when a cow--as is the mode--
Was _lifted_ by a Highland thief.
Ah! spare him, spare him, circuit Lords!
Ah hang him not in hempen cords;
Ah save him in his morn of youth
From the damp-breathing, dark[23] tolbooth,
Lest when condemn'd and hung in clanking chains,
His body moulder down white-bleached with winter rains!

[Footnote 23: Tolbooth Prison.]

But let not me intermeddle with your province; to parody the ode to
midnight, could only be thought of and executed by the mirth-moving,
humour-hunting, raillery-raising James Boswell. You must send me the
rest of your Gluttony by the return of the post, even though it should
prove the night of the Beard-soaping Club. Did you ever suspect me of
believing your marriage? No, I always said from the beginning, there was
nothing in it; I can bring twenty witnesses to prove it, who shall be
nameless; indeed if you had been married, I don't know but the same
gentlemen might have been prevailed upon to vouch for me that I
frequently declared my firm persuasion of it; these kind of witnesses
have multiplied greatly of late years, to the eternal credit of many a
person's surprising sagacity; but if you want to see this subject
pursued and treated with accuracy, peruse Doctor Woodward's Treatise of
Fossils, particularly his remarks upon the touchstone.

I am glad to hear you are returned to town, and once more near that seat
of learning and genius Mr. Alexander Donaldson's shop. You tell me you
are promoted to be his corrector of the press; I wish you also had the
office of correcting his children, which they very much want; the eldest
son, when I was there, never failed to play at taw all the time, and my
queue used frequently to be pulled about; you know, upon account of its
length it is very liable to these sort of attacks; I am thinking to cut
it off, for I never yet met with a child that could keep his hands from
it: and here I can't forbear telling you, that if ever you marry and
have children, our acquaintance ceases from that moment, unless you
breed them up after the manner of the great Scriblerus, and unless they
be suckled with soft verse, and weaned with criticism.

Write me when the volume will be published, and what sort of figure you
think it will make, particularly how James Boswell and Andrew Erskine
will appear; I know you will mix your opinion with