But Would Fabio Pose For The Cover?

Oh man. While justly lionized for his defining work, the famous Life of Johnson, some of Boswell's earlier writing was strictly third-rate romance novel stuff. A first-person account of his tryst with an actress, written in a letter to a university chum:

I came softly into the room, and in a sweet delirium slipped into bed and was immediately clasped in her snowy arms and pressed to her milk-white busom. ... In a moment I felt myself animated with the strongest powers of love, and, from my dearest creature's kindness, had a most luscious feast. Proud of my godlike vigor, I soon resumed the noble game. ... Sobriety had preserved me from effeminacy and weakness, and my bounding blood beat quickly and high alarms. A more voluptuous night I never enjoyed. Five times was I fairly lost in supreme rapture. Louisa was madly fond of me; she declared I was a prodigy, and asked me if this was not extraordinary in human nature.

It seems our young Bozzie was rather full of himself, hm? Of course, it sounds like by the morning, Louise was a little full of him as well. *rimshot*

But wait, there's more. After coming down with (yet another) case of the clap after this little tryst, his breakup letter with dear Louise was just as remarkable. Here's just a taste:

I have been very bad, but I scorn to upbraid you. I think it below me. If you are not rendered callous by a long course of disguised wickedness, I should think the consideration of your deceit and baseness, your corruption of both body and mind, would be a very severe punishment. Call not that a misfortune which is a consequence of your own unworthiness.

Damn. Just... damn.

Both quotes are from Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1763 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950).