ance 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
notice of the Premier with a view to Parliament. The song is
characteristically Boswellian.

'Boswell of Soapers the King
On Tuesdays at Tom's does appear,
And when he does talk or does sing,
To him ne'er a one can come near.
For he talks with such ease and such grace,
That all charm'd to attention we sit,
And he sings wit