“My fondness for the Guards must appear very strange to you, who have a rooted antipathy at the glare of scarlet. But I must inform you that there is a city called London, for which I have as violent an affection as the most romantic lover ever had for his mistress. There a man may indeed soap his own beard, and enjoy whatever is to be had in this transitory state of things. Every agreeable whim may be fully indulged without censure. I hope, however, you will not impute my living in England to the same cause for which Hamlet was advised to go there, because the people were all as mad as himself.”[16] Paternal remonstrances having proved unavailing, Boswell was permitted to return to the metropolis. From Parliament Place, Edinburgh, writing to Erskine on the 10th November, he informs him that “on Monday next he is to set out for London.” On the 20th November he writes from London, “If I can get into the Guards, it will please me much; if not, I can’t help it.” Boswell brought from Scotland a recommendation to Charles, Duke of Queensberry, the patron of Gay, but that nobleman took no part in his concerns. He again sought the field of authorship. He and Erskine had corresponded on a variety of topics, and he fancied that their letters might attract attention. The letters were printed in an octavo volume,[17] Boswell remarking in the preface, that he and his correspondent “have made themselves laugh, and hope they will have the same effect upon other people.” Erskine and Boswell were afterwards associated in writing “Critical Strictures” on Mallet’s tragedy of “Elvira,” acted at Drury Lane in the winter of 1762-3. In 1764, Erskine published a drama entitled “She’s not Him, and He’s not Her; a Farce in Two Acts, as it is performed in the Theatre in the Canongate.” In 1773 he issued “Town Eclogues,” a poem of twenty-two quarto pages, intended “to expose the false taste for florid description which prevails in modern poetry.”