et him soap his own beard. Or you have felt the
most delicate pangs of afflicted sensibility, and uttered tender tales
of woe in softly plaintive numbers.

The savage bard returns no humorous line,
No Tragic Ode now sooths my soul to rest;
In vain I fly to Lady B----'s wine,
Nor can a hearty supper make me blest.

Or you have burned, raged, and fried like the thrice-amorous swain in
the renowned English translation of Voi Amante, and perhaps thundered
forth all the Anathemas which Tristram Shandy has borrowed from the
church of Rome, and transferred to poor Obadiah.

By this time, the storm is blown over. This merry letter has made you
grin, and show every expression of laughter. You are now in very good
humour, and are in all human probability saying to yourself, My good
friend Boswell, is a most excellent correspondent. It is true he is
indolent, and _dissipated_, as the celebrated Parson Brown,[36] of
Carlisle says, and he frequently is a little negligent: but when he does
write, ye Gods! how he does write! in short, to sing him his own
inimitable song, "There is no better fellow alive."

I remain

Yours sincerely,

JAMES BOSWELL.

[Footnote 36: Dr. John Brown, the author of "An Estimate of the Manners
and Principles of the Times."--ED.]

* * * * *

LETTER XVII.

New-Tarbat, Jan. 20, 1762.

Dear BOSWELL,--It is a kind of maxim, or rule in life, never to begin a
thing without having an eye towards the conclusion; certainly this rule
was never better observed than in your last letter, in which indeed I am
apt to think you kept the conclusion rather too much in view, or perhaps
you forgot the beginning altogether, which is not unfrequently the case
with you; but you do these things with so little compunction, that I
shall very soon cease to forgive you, and answer you in the same manner.
It is to be feared, that the dissolution of our correspondence will
immediately follow, or dwindle into half a page of your text hand, which
I always looked upon as a detestable invention: if all this that I dread
happens, we shall then cease to be reckoned men of LETTERS.

I find it recorded in the history of the eastern Roman Empire, that it
was the custom whenever the inhabitants of Constantinople mutinied for
want of bread, to whip all the bakers through the city, which always
appeased the populace; in like manner, Boswell, I having dreamt a few
nights ago, that