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?

[Footnote 30: "I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with
pleasure, till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair
man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with
other particulars of the like nature that conduce very much to the right
understanding of an author."--"The Spectator," No. 1.--ED.]

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.

[Footnote 31: He refers to the continuation of this Ode, which I have
omitted in the present Edition.--ED.]

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