Some literary accounts of sexual experience may or may not be true. It is not a field where men are apt to be modest. Boswell gives us a nice account in his "London Journal". In one encounter, which took place with Louisa on 12 January 1763, he was "fairly lost in supreme rapture" no less than five times, and the worthy Louisa declared him a prodigy. Atkins suggests that "Boswell was probably truthful."

Debate about frequency of orgasm often centres on six or seven times as remarkable. In literature there are many examples around such figures - in Teleny, "As true votaries of the Grecian god, we poured out seven copious libations to Priapus." In Catullus, a bigger figure is mentioned

. . . and bid some servant bar the door;
and don't rush out to call or shop,
but nicely wait for what I'll bring,
and then - nine hugs without a stop!

And Ovid, though growing old, managed it nine times with Corinna - but he is not at all satisfied. In de Sade's Juliette, Minsky never goes to bed without first discharging ten times ("It is a fact that the inordinate amount of human flesh I eat contributes greatly to the augmentation and thickening of my seminal fluid"). Such men are weaklings compared with the performers of Arab and Japanese legend. In the "Arabian Nights" one man manages to make love forty times in one night; Japanese sexual athletes are similarly insatiable. And there is a pleasant little joke I cannot resist including - An English sailor got into an argument with a Chinese sailor in Shanghai, each boasting how many times he could do it. They decided to put the matter to the test. Each took a girl to bed. The Englishman performed once, then again, and finally - with difficulty for he had drunk too much - a third time. He marked each one on the wall with an upright stroke. In the morning the exhausted Chinese crawled into his room. He looked at the Englishman's tally and exclaimed - "One hundred and eleven ! Beaten by one, by God!"