Grampian Club > Boswelliana

138 MEMOIR OF JAMES BOSWELL.
grotesque scenes and attitudes, founded on descriptions in his
book. They were placed in the shop windows and hawked
about the streets, while the laughter rousing Peter Pindar*
addressed Boswell in a " Poetical and Congratulatory Epistle,"
mercilessly castigating him in sarcastic and crushing rhymes.
Here is a specimen : —
" At length, ambitious Thane, thy rage
To give one spark to Fame's bespangled page
Is amply gratified. A thousand eyes
Survey thy book with rapture and surprize !
Loud of thy tour, a thousand tongues have spoken,
And wonder'd that thy bones were never broken.
!N"ay, though thy Johnson ne'er had bless'd tlnne eyes,
Paoli's deeds had rais'd thee to the skies ;
Yes ! his broad wing had rais'd thee (no bad luck)
A tomtit twitt'ring on an eagle's back."
Equally pungent was the savage Pindar in a subsequent poem,
entitled " Bozzy and Piozzi." He wrote : —
" For thee, James Boswell, may the hand of Fate
Arrest thy goose-quill and confine thy prate !
Thine egotism the world disgusted hears —
Then load with vanities no more our ears.
Like some lone puppy, yelping all night long,
•That tires the very echoes with his tongue.
Yet, should it lie beyond the pow'rs of Fate
To stop thy pen, and still thy darling prate ;
To live in solitude, oh ! be thy luck
A chattering magpie on the Isle of Muck."
Than the shafts of ridicule, Boswell experienced even more
substantial discomfort. Eespecting Sir Alexander Macdonald,
* The pseudonym of Dr. John Wolcott, the eminent satirist.