To Lord Chatham Boswell replied in characteristic fashion:— “_Auchinleck, April 8th, 1767._ “I have communicated to General Paoli the contents of your lordship’s letter, and I am persuaded he will think as I do.... Your lordship applauds my ‘generous warmth for so striking a character as the able chief.’ Indeed, my lord, I have the happiness of being able to contemplate with supreme delight those distinguished spirits by which God is sometimes pleased to honour humanity, and as I have no personal favour to ask of your lordship, I will tell you, with the confidence of one who does not fear to be thought a flatterer, that your character, my lord, has filled many of my best hours with that noble admiration which a disinterested soul can enjoy in the bower of philosophy.” After informing his correspondent that he is about to publish an account of Corsica, he proceeds:— “As for myself, to please a worthy and respected father, one of our Scots judges, I studied law, and am now fairly entered to the bar. I begin to like it; I can labour hard, I feel myself coming forward, and I hope to be useful to my country. Could your lordship find time to honour me now and then with a letter? “I have been told how favourably your lordship has spoken of me. To correspond with a Paoli and with a Chatham is enough to keep a young man ever ardent in the pursuit of virtuous fame.” The cool egotism which prompted Boswell, an undistinguished youth, to beg an occasional letter from an illustrious and veteran statesman is without a parallel in biography. At Edinburgh, notwithstanding his obvious eccentricity, he enjoyed a kind of literary _status_. As a patron of histrionic art he led a considerable section of the Edinburgh youth; and we have already related, that at the request of Ross, the player, he composed the prologue spoken at the opening of the Edinburgh theatre in December, 1767. By an act of indiscretion he nearly crushed the institution he had helped to rear. He brought on the Edinburgh stage a comedy entitled “The Coquettes,” to oblige Lady Houston, by whom it was composed. On the third performance it was condemned as a bad translation of one of Corneille’s worst plays. Lady Houston was sister of Lord Cathcart, one of Boswell’s friends, and creditably enough he was content to bear the censure of producing the piece rather than expose the foolish gentlewoman who had placed it in his hands.