melancholy garret, and those fancies die within him. It is but an accident now, that the good Vicar shall be born; that the Gentleman in Black shall dispense his charities; that Croaker shall grieve; Tony Lumpkin laugh; or the

sweet soft echo of the Deserted Village come

always back upon the heart, in charity, and

kindness, and sympathy

For,

Despair is in the garret;

and the poet, overmastered by distress, seeks

only the means of flight and exile. With a

day-dream to his old Irish playfellow, a sigh for the 'heavy scoundrels' who disregard him, and a wail for the age to which genius is a mark of mockery; he turns to that first avowed piece, which, being also his last, is to prove that 'blockheads are not men of wit, and yet that 'men of wit are actually blockheads.'

R

A proposition which men of wit have laboured at from early times; have proved in theory and worked out in practice. How many base men,' shrieked one of them in Elizabeth's day, who felt that his wit had but made him. the greater blockhead; how many base men that want 'those parts I have, do enjoy content at will, and have 'wealth at command! I call to mind a cobbler, that is 'worth five hundred pounds; an hostler, that has built a 'goodly inn; a carman in a leather pilche, that has 'whipt a thousand pounds out of his horse's tail: and I 'ask if I have more than these. Am I not better born? ' am I not better brought up? yea, and better favoured ! And yet am I for ever to sit up late, and rise early, and 'contend with the cold, and converse with scarcity, and 'be a beggar? How am I crossed, or whence is this 'curse, that a scrivener should be better paid than a 'scholar!' Poor Nash! he had not even Goldsmith's fortitude, and his doleful outcry for money was a lamentable exhibition, out of which no good could come. the feeling in the miserable man's heart, struck at the root of a secret discontent which not the strongest men can resist altogether; and which Goldsmith did not affect to repress, when he found himself, as he says, 'starving in those streets where Butler and Otway starved 'before him.'

But

The words are in a letter, written the day after that to Bryanton, bearing the same date of Temple Exchange Coffee House, and sent to Mrs. Lauder; the Jane Contarine

of his happy old Kilmore time. Mr. Mills afterward begged this letter of the Lauders, and from the friend to whom he gave it, Lord Carleton's nephew, it was copied for Bishop Percy by Edmond Malone. As in those already given, the style, with its simple air of authorship, is eminently good and happy. The assumption of a kind of sturdy independence, the playful admission of wellknown faults, and the incidental slight confession of sorrows; have graceful relation to the person addressed, and the terms on which they stood of old. His uncle was now in a hopeless state of living death, from which, in a few months, the grave released him; and to this the letter affectingly refers.

If should ask," you it began, why, in an interval of so many years, you never heard from me, permit me, Madam, to ask the same question. I have the best excuse in recrimination. I wrote to Kilmore from Leyden in Holland, from Louvain in Flanders, and Rouen in France, but received no answer. To what could I attribute this silence but to displeasure or forgetfulness? Whether I was right in my conjecture I do not pretend to determine; but this I must ingenuously own, that I have a thousand times in my turn endeavoured to forget them, whom I could not but look upon as forgetting me. I have attempted to blot their names from my memory, and, I confess it, spent whole days in efforts to tear their image from my heart. Could I have succeeded, you had not now been troubled with this renewal of a discontinued correspondence; but, as every effort the restless make to procure sleep serves but to keep them waking, all my attempts contributed to impress what I would forget deeper on my imagination. But this subject I would willingly turn from, and

yet, for the soul of me,' I can't till I have said all. I was, Madam, when I discontinued writing to Kilmore, in such circumstances, that all my endeavours to continue your regards might be attributed to wrong motives. My letters might be looked upon as the petitions of a beggar, and not the offerings of a friend; while all my professions, instead of being considered as the result of disinterested esteem, might be ascribed to venal insincerity. I believe, indeed, you had too much generosity to place them in such a light, but I could not bear even the shadow of such a suspicion. The most delicate friendships are always most sensible of the slightest invasion, and the strongest jealousy is ever attendant on the warmest regard. I could not.. I own I could not. . continue a correspondence in which every acknowledgment for past favours might be considered as an indirect request for future ones; and where it might be thought I gave my heart from a motive of gratitude alone, when I was conscious of having bestowed it on much more disinterested principles. It is true, this conduct might have been simple enough; but yourself must confess it was in character. Those who know me at all, know that I have always been actuated by different principles from the rest of mankind; and while none regarded the interest of his friend more, no man on earth regarded his own less. I have often affected bluntness to avoid the imputation of flattery; have frequently seemed to overlook those merits too obvious to escape notice, and pretended disregard to those instances of good nature and good sense, which I could not fail tacitly to applaud; and all this lest I should be ranked among the grinning tribe, who say 'very true' to all that is said; who fill a vacant chair at a tea-table; whose narrow souls never moved in a wider circle than the circumference of a guinea; and who had rather be reckoning the money in your pocket than the virtue of your breast. All this, I say, I have done, and a thousand other very silly, though very disinterested, things in my time; and for all which no soul cares a farthing about me.

God's curse, Madam ! is it to be wondered that he should once in his life forget you, who has been all his life forgetting himself? However, it is probable you may one of these days see me turned into a perfect hunks, and as dark and intricate as a mouse-hole. I have already given my landlady orders for an entire reform in the state of my finances. I declaim against hot suppers, drink less sugar in my tea, and check my grate with brick-bats. Instead of hanging my room with pictures, I intend to adorn it with maxims of frugality. Those will make pretty furniture enough, and won't be a bit too expensive; for I will draw them all out with my own hands, and my landlady's daughter shall frame them with the parings of my black waistcoat. Each maxim is to be inscribed on a sheet of clean paper, and wrote with my best pen; of which the following will serve as a specimen. Look sharp: Mind the main chance: Money is money now: If you have a thousand pounds you can put your hands by your sides, and say you are worth a thousand pounds every day of the year: Take a farthing from a hundred and it will be a hundred no longer. Thus, which way soever I turn my eyes, they are sure to meet one of those friendly monitors; and as we are told of an actor who hung his room round with looking-glass to correct the defects of his person, my apartment shall be furnished in a peculiar manner, to correct the errors of my mind. Faith! Madam, I heartily wish to be rich, if it were only for this reason, to say without a blush how much I esteem you. But, alas! I have many a fatigue to encounter before that happy time comes, when your poor old simple friend may again give a loose to the luxuriance of his nature; sitting by Kilmore fire-side, recount the various adventures of a hard-fought life; laugh over the follies of the day; join his flute to your harpsichord; and forget that ever he starved in those streets where Butler and Otway starved before him. And now I mention those great names... .my Uncle! he is no more that soul of fire as when once I knew him. Newton and Swift grew dim with