In the evening came a company of literati invited for me: Dr. Jeffries, Dr. Gilbert Stuart, a Mr. Leeson, and Kenrick, now Dr. Kenrick, who once wrote an 18d. pamphlet against me, but principally against Mr. Johnson, though it was entitled ''A Letter to James Boswell, Esq.'' Kenrick was quite a different man from what I expected to see. His ''Epistles, Philosophical and Moral'' promised seriousness or rather profound gravity; and many of his other writings promised acrimony to a high degree. But I found him a bluff, hearty little man, full of spirits and cheerfulness. He said devotion was not natural; that is to say, the devotion of the heart; that fear made people use ceremonies but did not inspire true devotion. He said he had a pronouncing dictionary almost ready, by which he hoped to fix a standard, as the varieties of pronunciation among people in genteel life were very few. He said he taught a man from Aberdeen to speak good English in six weeks. He said his great difficulty was to get him to speak at all. He told him, "Sir, you don't speak at all. You sing."〔Wimsatt, William K.; Pottle, Frederick A., eds. ''Boswell for the Defence, 1769-1774'' McGraw-Hill, 1959. pp. 92-93. In a footnote to this entry, Wimsatt and Pottle describe Kenrick as 'no doubt the greatest scoundrel among the writers of his age.'〕