and then--the first of his many portraits drawn by himself, and prophetic of the lover of hospitable boards and good cheer as we know him in his works--he describes the writer as 'Not of the iron race Which sometimes Caledonia grace; Though he to combat should advance, Plumpness shone in his countenance; And belly prominent declared That he for beef and pudding cared; He had a large and ponderous head, That seemed to be composed of lead; From which hung down such stiff, lank hair, As might the crows in autumn scare.' At this time it is likely took place the escapade with which he must have convulsed the gravity of the Edinburgh _literati_ invited to meet Johnson on their return from the Hebrides. 'I told, when Dr Hugh Blair was sitting with me in the pit of Drury Lane, in a wild freak of youthful extravagance I entertained the audience _prodigiously_ by imitating the lowing of a cow. I was so successful in this boyish frolic that the universal cry of the galleries was "_encore the cow_." In the pride of my heart I attempted imitations of other animals, but with very inferior effect.' Blair's advice was, says Scott, 'Stick to the coo, man,' in his peculiar burr, but we can imagine how this unforeseen reminiscence must have confused the divine. After an ineffectual effort to enter himself at the Inner Temple, the 'cub' had to return in April 1761 to Edinburgh. Old Edinburgh was nothing if not convivial. Writing to Temple and confessing that his London life had 'not been entirely as it ought to be,' he appeals to him for pity in his present surroundings. Imagine 'a young fellow,' he cries, 'whose happiness was always centred in London, hauled away to the town of Edinburgh, obliged to conform to every Scottish custom, or be laughed at--"Will ye hae some jeel? Oh fie, oh fie!"--his flighty imagination quite cramped, and be obliged to study _Corpus Juris Civilis_ and live in his father's strict family; is there any wonder, sir, that the unlucky dog should be somewhat fretful? Yoke a Newmarket courser to a dung cart, and I'll lay my life on't he'll either caper or kick most confoundedly, or be as stupid and restive as an old battered post-horse.' Among the many clubs of the time Boswell instituted a jovial society called the _Soaping Club_ which met weekly in a tavern. The motto of the members was 'Every man soap his own beard,' a rather recondite witticism which their founder declares equivalent to the reigning phrase of 'Every man in his humour.' It may be suggested here that in this company of feeble Bacchanalians Boswell had copied the Rabelaisian _fay ce que vous voudras_ of the Franciscans of Medmenham Abbey with Sandwich, Wilkes, and others. At any rate, as their self-constituted laureate, he produced the following extraordinary song, which can be paralleled for inanity only by the stave he sang before Pitt in the Guildhall of London, as a means of attracting the