The subject now dropped, though (perhaps reverting to it) he added soon after, "What I have said ought to prepare you for stranger things than this-in fact, whether in political, or private friendships, you must look to be drawn on, or drawn off, like a pair of gloves, as convenience, humour, or change of views may dictate."

Here Mr. Manners ceased; and, I know not why, but this last part of our conversation made me more serious, or, perhaps I might say, uneasy, than any other I had had with him: for, if such a man, with so much mind, cultivation, good breeding, as well as good birth-instructed in all the usages and conventions of men, independent, and even rich withal-if such a man could, as he said, be dropped, and that for nothing, by one of his oldest friends, what was I to expect, or how escape ? Far better, I thought, to recur to my original destination, the church, and a fellowship, or at worst a village curacy; and so I told my adviser.

"No;" said he. "Unless you feel an almost apostolical zeal and dedication of yourself to this arduous (for it is an arduous) career-unless you have really that call, which the Articles require, and to which all pretend, though so few feel it-the church shall have none of you. You shall not be one of those

'Who, for their bellies' sake,

Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold.'

"With sincere conviction, and real holiness of

purpose, there is no character so holy as a Christian churchman; his very presence inspires veneration, and with it, gladness. Be one of these, and welcome; but if you are, nothing worldly must come near you. Thrones, palaces, and purple, must not be in your thoughts. I would rather you were a clerk, at a hundred a-year, or, what is worse, get your bread as one of those pauvres miserables in this country, the men of letters, than that you should be a trading clergyman."

"Amen," said I; "but as to men of letters, whom you designate under the cruel appellation you have used, how can the dwellers in the flowery regions of literature be miserable? You might as well call the denizens of your beautiful forest here by the same epithet."

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My good cousin," replied he, smiling, "you have, I see, a great deal more to learn than you are aware of, and friend Fothergill, after all, has taught you more of books than the technicalities of the professions of men. Perhaps, in the quiet walks of his college, with all the independence of academical learning, he was under a happy ignorance of the cruel fate of those who are used (and used hardly) as mere instruments or tools of literature. I suppose it never occurred to him to talk to you of the happiness of a bookseller's hack ?"

"As I never thought of being one,” said I,“ he had no occasion. But what is there so terrible in it?”

"Ask the word itself,” replied he, “for what implies more misery? To be worked to death; to be imperiously treated by one probably one's inferior in all endowments of mind and education; to be lorded over, and allow one's self to be so, from the consciousness that our employer has a better dinner than we have, or that, without him, we should have no dinner at all! Is not this enough to break the spirit of the proudest heart? and would not a potato in a garret, with liberty to move, speak, and look as we listed, be a kingdom to it? When first I heard that villanous word pronounced, all this rushed into my mind."

"And when and how was this?"

"In the back-shop of a very eminent man, who by skill and capital had achieved what they always will in this great country, and who, in a worldly view, might fairly enough felicitate himself on his superiority to those who were in his pay. But not the less did it shock me when applied, as it was, to a gentleman of first-rate education, who had spent his all in qualifying himself for a learned profession, in which, not from want of proficiency, but the accidents which attend all professions, he had failed. But thus it is in the lottery of the world. One man shall be taken from flogging the derrière of a noble or plebeian schoolboy one day, and placed in the House of Lords the next; while another, with equal, perhaps superior learning,

6

shall drag on a wearied existence, passing rich on forty pounds a year.' So here, a gentleman who from his attainments and industry was qualified, if fortune had so pleased, to be a Lord Chancellor, was reduced (because fortune did not so please) to submit to be called a bookseller's hack.

"What can the admirer of learning and genius do, when he thinks of the plate of victuals sent from Cave's table to Johnson, impransus (as he signed himself)—what but weep? O! believe me, I have been more than once ready to do so when I have seen a starveling author alongside of a fat bookseller, and compared their respective intellects with their respective persons."

"Your account," said I, " of these children of the Muses makes one not in love with them. And yet I have sometimes thought there must be that in the creative fancy of an author, to say nothing of his pleasure if he succeeds, that must make the occupation very agreeable."

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Agreed, provided you make it a recreation, not a business; provided you voluntarily follow it as a mental exercise, not be forced to it to pay a milkscore. The wanderer of Parnassus ought, as you have hinted, to be as free as the denizen of the forest. He should roam at large, or lay his careless limbs under whatever tree he likes. Compel him to be always climbing, or drive him into the path in which he is to tread, his pleasure and his powers

are gone. In plainer language, the man whose food is forced upon him, nauseates and rejects it, whatever its flavour. No; court the Muse, but seek not to marry her; or it may fare with you as it has with many a married couple:-' when poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window.'

It is astonishing what an impression all this made upon me, and how well afterwards in the world I came to remember it.