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 Rh his own character. He was, he flattered himself, a citizen of the world; one who in his travels never felt himself from home. In that impudent Correspondence which he and his friend Andrew Erskine published when they were still almost lads, he thus describes himself:

We have a later description of him again by his own hand, as he was at the time of his tour with Johnson.

Johnson celebrated his good humour and perpetual cheerfulness, his acuteness, his gaiety of conversation, and civility of manners. "He was," he said, "the best travelling companion in the world." According to Burke, "his good nature was so natural to him that he had no merit in possessing it. A man might as well assume to himself merit in possessing an excellent constitution." Reynolds loved him so well that "he left him £200 in his will, to be expended, if he thought proper, in the purchase of a picture at the sale of his paintings, to be kept for his sake." In a memoir of him in the Scots Magazine he is described as "a most pleasant companion, affectionate and friendly; but, particularly in his latter days, he betrayed a vanity which seemed to predominate." Tytler