Ross, though irregular habits, as we are told, may have interfered with his advancement, was evidently a man of some talents and some enthusiasm, and eventually he succeeded in starting a theatre in Edinburgh. He had some respect, it would appear, for Boswell's talents; for on the occasion of his first performance in the capital of Scotland, he requested Boswell to write a prologue which the actor himself was to recite. Boswell can hardly have seen much of Ross in later years, but the friendship between them was preserved, and Boswell was chief mourner at the actor's funeral in 1790. One other friend of Boswell's in these early years must be mentioned here. Actors may have had particular qualities which made them attractive to him, but Boswell in any case had always a sympathy with misfortune which was mere good-nature; he had at the same time an interest in the shady walks of life, in human nature exhibited under stress of adverse circumstances, and in an added poignancy to the performance of intellect when spurred by poverty. These feelings may account for his friendship with Mr. Derrick the poet. Derrick, like Love and Gentleman and Ross, was somewhat of a failure. He had been apprenticed to a linendraper, and deserted the concerns of trade to seek his fortune as an actor; when Boswell met him as a man of thirty-six he aspired to be a poet. His verses must have been remarkably poor; Boswell refers to some of them as 'infamously bad.' Dr. Johnson, who knew him slightly, 'reproved his muse and condemned his levity.' But he was a writer, and that meant a great deal to Boswell; the mark of his profession was a sign of grace. The Doctor was probably right when he said: 'It is to his being a writer that he owes anything he has. Sir, had not Derrick been a writer, he would have been sweeping the crosses in the streets, and asking halfpence from everybody that passed.' Derrick no doubt was a gay companion, and Boswell evidently liked him, though not excessively. He was of some importance, too, in the youth of Boswell, for he was his first tutor in the ways of London, and these were not entirely good ways. * * * * *