the present, when my days are spent in reading the Journals, and my nights in dreaming of them. An employment not very agreeable to a head, that has long been habituated to the luxury of chusing its subject, and has been as little employed upon business, as if it had grown upon the shoulders of a much wealthier gentleman. But the numscull pays for it now, and will not presently forget the discipline it has undergone lately. If I succeed in this doubtful piece of promotion, I shall have at least this satisfaction to reflect upon, that the volumes I write will be treasured up with the utmost care for ages, and will last as long as the English constitution. A duration which ought to satisfy the vanity of any author, who has a spark of love for his country. Oh my good Cousin! if I was to open my heart to you, I could shew you strange sights; nothing I flatter myself that would shock you, but a great deal that would make you wonder. I am of a very singular temper, and very unlike all the men that I have ever conversed with. Certainly I am not an absolute fool; but I have more weaknesses than the greatest of all the fools I can recollect at present. In short, if I was as fit for the next world, as I am unfit for this, and God forbid I should speak it in vanity, I would not change conditions with any saint in Christendom. My destination is settled at last, and I have obtained a furlough. Margate is the word, and what do you think will ensue Cousin? I know what you expect, but ever since I was born I have been good at disappointing the most natural expectations. Many years ago, Cousin, there was a possibility that I might prove a very different thing from what I am at present. My character is now fixt, and rivetted fast upon me, and between friends, is not a very splendid one, or likely to be guilty of much fascination. Adieu, my dear Cousin! So much as I love you, I wonder how the Deuce it has happend I was never in love with you. Thank Heaven that I never was, for at this time I have had a pleasure in writing to you, which in that case I should have forfeited. Let me hear from you, or I shall reap but half the reward that is due to my noble indifference. Yours ever, and evermore, W. C. It was hoped from the change of his station that his personal appearance in Parliament might not be required, but a parliamentary dispute made it necessary for him to appear at the Bar of the House of Lords, to entitle himself publicly to the office, Speaking of this important incident in a sketch, which he once formed himself, of passages in his early life, he expresses, what he endured at the time, in these remarkable words: 66 They, whose spirits are "formed like mine, to whom a public exhibition of "themselves is mortal poison, may have some idea " of the horrors of my situation-others can have none," His terrors on this occasion arose to such an astonishing height, that they utterly overwhelmed his reason for although he had endeavoured to prepare himself for his public duty, by attending closely at the office for several months, to examine the parliamentary journals, his application was rendered useless by that excess of diffidence, which made him conceive, that, whatever knowledge he might previously acquire, it would all forsake him at the bar of the house. This distressing apprehension encreased to such a degree, as the time for his appearance approached, that when the day, so anxiously dreaded, arrived, he was unable to make the experiment. The C VOL. 1. very friends, who called on him for the purpose of attending him to the House of Lords, acquiesced in the cruel necessity of his relinquishing the prospect of a station so severely formidable to a frame of such singular sensibility. The conflict between the wishes of just affectionate ambition, and the terrors of diffidence, so entirely overwhelmed his health and faculties, that after two learned and benevolent divines (Mr. John Cowper, his brother, and the celebrated Mr. Martin Madan, his first cousin (had vainly endeavoured to establish a lasting tranquillity in his mind, by friendly and religious conversation, it was found necessary to remove him to St. Alban's, where he resided a considerable time, under the care of that eminent physician, Dr. Cotton, a scholar, and a poet, who added to many accomplishments, a peculiar sweetness of manners, in very advanced life, when I had the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with him. The misfortune of mental derangement is a topic of such awful delicacy, that I consider it as the duty of a biographer rather to sink, in tender silence, than to proclaim, with circumstantial, and offensive, temerity, the minute particulars of a calamity, to which all human beings are exposed, and perhaps in pro portion as they have received from nature those delightful, but dangerous, gifts, a heart of exquisite tenderness, and a mind of creative energy. This is a sight for pity to peruse, "Till she resembles, faintly, what she views; Pierc'd with the woes, that she laments in vain. This, of all maladies, that man infest, Claims most compassion, and receives the least. 'Tis not, as heads that never ache suppose, The screws revers'd (a task, which, if He please, |
