Turnspitiad_, a canine contest of which Mallet is the hero:

If dogg'rel rhimes have aught to do with dog,
If kitchen smoak resembles fog,
If changing sides from Hardwick to Lord B--t
Can with a turnspit's turning humour suit,
If to write verse immeasurably low,
Which Malloch's verse does so compleatly show,
Deserve the preference--Malloch, take the wheel,
Nor quit it till you bring as _gude a Chiel_![5]

And the decision to damn _Elvira_ was made in advance of the
performance, as we have seen.

Having failed, in spite of shrill-sounding catcalls, to persuade the
audience at Drury Lane to damn the play, our trio went to supper at the
house of Erskine's sister, Lady Betty Macfarlane, in Leicester Street, and
there found themselves so fertile in sallies of humour, wit, and satire on
Mallet and his play that they determined to meet again and throw their
sallies into order. Accordingly, they dined at Lady Betty's next day (20
January). After dinner Erskine produced a draft of their observations
thrown into pamphlet size, they all three corrected it, Boswell copied it
out, and they drove immediately in Lady Betty's coach to the shop of
William Flexney, Churchill's publisher, and persuaded him to undertake the
publication. Next day Boswell repented of the scurrility of what they had
written and got Dempster to go with him to retrieve the copy. Erskine at
first was sulky, but finally consented to help revise it again. It went
back to Flexney in a day or two, and was published on 27 January.[6]

_Elvira_ was essentially a translation or adaptation of Lamotte-Houdar's