OLIYER GOLDSMITHS LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK ir.
175S " °f nes* moritli send over two hundred and fifty books, which, are all
— " that I fancy can be •well sold among you, and I would have you make
J.Lt. 30,
" some distinction in the persons who have subscribed. The money
" which will amount to sixty pounds, may be left with Mr. Bradley, as
" soon as possible. I am not certain but I shall quickly have occasion
" for it. I have met with no disappointment with respect to my East
" India voyage ; nor are my resolutions altered; though, at the same
" time, I must confess it gives me some pain to think I am almost
" beginning the world at the age of thirty-one. Though I never had a
" day's sickness since I saw you, yet I am not that strong and active
" man you once knew me. You searcery can conceive how much eight
'•' years of disappointment, anguish, and study, have worn me down. If
K I remember right, you are seven or eight years older than me, yet I
" dare venture to say, that if a stranger saw us both, he would pay me
" the honours of seniority. Imagine to yourself a pale melancholy
" visage, with two great wrinkles between the eye-brows, with an eye
u disgustingly severe, and a big wig; and you may have a perfect
" picture of my present appearance. On the other hand, I conceive you.
" as perfectly sleek and healthy, passing many a happy day among
" your own children, or those who knew you a child. Since I knew
" what it was to be a man, this is a pleasure I have not known. I
" have passed my days among a parcel of cool designing beings, and
" have contracted all their suspicious manner in my own behaviour.*
" I should actually be as unfit for the society of my friends at home, as I
" detest that which I am obliged to partake of here. I can now neither
" partake of the pleasure of a revel, nor contribute to raise its jollity.
" I can neither laugh nor drink, have contracted a hesitating disagree-
" able manner of speaking, and a visage that looks ill-nature itself; in
" short, I have thought myself into a settled melancholy, and an utter
" disgust of all that life brings with it—"Whence this romantic turn,
" that all our family are possessed with ? "Whence this love for every
" place and every country but that in which we reside ? for every
" occupation biit our own 1 this desire of fortune, and yet this eagerness
" to dissipate ? I perceive, my dear sir, that I am at intervals for
" indulging this splenetic manner, and following my own taste, regard-
" less of yours.
" The reasons you have given me for breeding up your son as a
* "This," observes the Percy Memoir writer, in a note, "is all gratis dictum,
'' for there never was a character so unsuspicious and so unguarded as the
" writer's." 54.