that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Yet, though blinded by folly and weighed down by distress, still his filial affections were alive, and, although he could not afford his parents any permanent support, he seemed anxious to promote the education of their family; which the following extracts from his letters will sufficiently prove:
"I hope by living more pious and carefully, by managing my income frugally, and appropriating a part of it to the service of you and my sisters, and by living with you in future at least a third part of the year, to reconcile your affections more entirely to me, and give you more comfort than I have yet done. Oh forget and forgive my follies; look on me as a son who will anxiously strive to comfort and please you, and, after all your misfortunes, to render the evening of your days as happy as possible." And again,—"We will endeavour," says he, "to settle our dear Grace comfortably in life, and to educate our dear little Betty and Mary aright." He brought his eldest brother, John, to Edinburgh, to study at the university, with the view of his entering the church; he was a youth of promising abilities, but of weak constitution, and sank into an early grave in 1790. As the other children increased in years, faithful to his promise, he brought his favourite sister, Mary, to live with him in Edinburgh to complete her education. His irregularities, and consequent embarrassments, made her situation in town any thing but an enviable one. Her mortifications, however, in this life were not of long duration, as she died at his lodgings in 1798. To a mind of his quick sensibility this was a dreadful shock. Almost frantic with grief at the loss he experienced, he gave himself up to the wildest despair: every unkind action or word he made use of towards her rushed to his distracted memory, until life itself was almost insupportable. Neither the sympathy of friends, nor the consolations of religion, could mitigate his woes. At the same time his means of subsistence became every day more precarious; his literary labours were ceasing to pay, so that, added to his other misfortunes, starvation and a jail were hourly staring him in the face. Shunning as much as possible all his former companions, he might now be seen wandering about the suburbs of the city, with wasted cheek and sunken eye, a miserable victim of want and care. By degrees, however, he was recalled to a better state of mind, when, finding his views not likely to succeed any longer in Scotland, he was induced to go to London in 1799. For the first few years of his residence there, it appears he found good employment, and his application to study being very great, his profits and prospects were alike cheering. In a letter written to his father about the time we are speaking of, he says—
"My whole income, earned by full sixteen hours a-day of close application to reading, writing, observation, and study, is but very little more than three hundred pounds a-year. But this is sufficient to my wants, and is earned in a manner which I know to be the most useful and honourable—that is, by teaching beneficial truths, and discountenancing vice and folly more effectually and more extensively than I could in any other way. This I am here always sure to earn, while I can give the necessary application; and if I were able to execute more literary labour I might readily obtain more money."
He for a time pursued his literary vocations with an unwearied industry, and there was scarcely a publication then in London of any note but contained some of his fugitive writings. He realized in consequence a good income, but, unfortunately, for no great length of time. His former bad habits returned, and while money continued to flow in, he indulged in the wildest extravagance. Wishing to be thought an independent man of fortune, he would carry his folly so far as at times to keep a pair of horses, with a groom in livery. All this time his pen was laid aside; and until warned of his fate by the appearance
