Poz. Why, foolish Sir, nothing.

Boz. And yet surely, you would not have been content that so much wit and wisdom should have perished for want of one to record them.

Poz. Pray, Sir, when were the nuptials, or the victory, of an Emperor forgotten, because they were not blazoned by the marrow-bone and cleaver ?

Boz. Why, Sir, when I was married, I remember I was not without some sort of pride and pleasure in this rude, yet honest noise.

Poz. Why, Sir, when a Boswell marries, a butcher may serve to make the rejoicing. But, Sir, your account is false: you were married in Scotland; and where there is no corn to feed an ox, there is no ox to furnish a marrow-bone, and consequently there needs no cleaver to quarter his joints. Your wedding, therefore was celebrated, if celebrated it was at all, by other music than that of the marrow-bone and cleaver.

Boz. I feel myself much mortified, Sir, at finding you so dissatisfied with my well-meant endeavours to celebrate your name. Had I died first, I should have

rejoiced

rejoiced to know that my life would be written by you. May I hope that, in that case, you would have undertaken it?

Poz. No, Sir, I could have told nothing. In the penury of matter, I must have registered your dinners. Besides, Sir, your life was my life: you existed but in me. It would have been the substance telling the history of the shadow. It would have been as if a Queen should become the biographer of the page who holds her train. Sir, you might as rationally have expected of James Poro, who walked about the world with a torpid head growing from his side, to go to work upon the "life and opinions" of the excrescence.

Boz. And yet, Sir, unless I had been thought of some little consequence, I should hardly have been admitted in your company, as I frequently was, into the houses of great and learned persons: I was often at Streatham;-at Sir Josh. Reynolds's.

Poz. Sir, you have been answered already. When the substance is let in, there is no being denied to the shadow. Sir, if it be a great man's whim that he will

not

not scrape his boots at the door, his friends, rather than want his conversation, will suffer him to drag his dirt into the parlour.

Box. But, Sir, I have sometimes gone without you into respectable company.

Poz. Why, Sir, did you never caress a friends' favourite cur, in order to be able to tell that friend that you bad caressed him ?—

Boż. But I have been sometimes received where I have not been known to be of your acquaintance.

Poz. Why then, Sir, I must leave you to such comfort as you can find in those cases wherein a cur has been caressed for his own sake.

Boz. (aside.) There is no escaping him!-Sir, I have not been myself since I lost you.

Poz. Why, Sir, if you expect condolence upon that score, I am afraid I must think twice before I offer it. I am not very easily able to see how you should be a loser by transmigration.

Boz. I consoled myself for some time by writing your life.

Poz. Why then, Sir, you preserved your

identity

identity longer than you are willing to suppose :-you were quite yourself during that employment.-and what is your story after the publication?

Boz. Sir, I-II, Sir?

Poz. Why, Sir, the question is, in truth, scarcely worth repetition; for I enquired what befel you, after the life was given to the public.

Box. Sir, I-I-I can't say but-though to be sure-not that

Poz. How is all this, Sir? What disjointed hesitations, what uncategorical tortuosities are these?

Boz. Why, Sir, it was not very long after the life was published that I died. Poz. Well, Sir, and, if I may hazard a new question without exciting new perturbation, of what did you die?

Bez. [in the utmost confusion.] Why, Sir, I-I-you-you-I hardly—you know we are all mortal ;-some die of consumptions, some of fevers, some of

Poz. [in his most tremendous tone.] Sir, am I to be told, at this time, that when a man dies, he owes his death to something?Once more, Sir, of what did you die? Box. Dear Sir, you are so Iof

what

what did I die? Why, Sir; I died of― of-of-of mahogany.

Poz. [after an awful pause.] Of what, Sir?

Box. Of mahogany, Sir.

Poz. [after a still longer pause.] Why, Sir, I believe I begin to comprehend this coy reluctance in revealing the history of your demise.-You died of mahogany i. e. as I incline to interpret it, you fell by a chair or table hurled at you by some new victim to your biographical mania.

Boz. No, Sir, indeed.

Poz. Why then, Sir, let us have no more of this oracular ambiguity. Let us, for once, invert our situations: be you the teacher, and let me be the scholar. According to what mode or meaning did you find mahogany mortal?

Box. From its intoxicating effects on those who drink it.

Poz. How, Sir! again stealing behind the mask.

Boz. Indeed, Sir, I did not intend.Poz. Why then, Sir, tamper no longer with my impatience; but inform me, forthwith, how long wood has been pot

able