recorded: 'lest the same,' the attack on Fordyce, 'should be to Mr. Clive's prejudice, we think it not improper to assure you that he is generally esteemed a very quiet person and no ways guilty of disturbances.' It is to be inferred from this account that, far from deserving the character popularly assigned to him, Clive, in the third year of his residence in India, was regarded by his superiors as a very quiet member of society.
Still, neither the climate nor the profession suited him. 'I have not enjoyed,' he wrote to one of his cousins, 'a happy day since I left my native country.' In other letters he showed how he repented bitterly of having chosen a career so uncongenial. Gradually, however, he realized the folly of kicking against the pricks. He associated more freely with his colleagues, and when the Governor, Mr. Morse, sympathizing with the young man eating out his heart from ennui, opened to him the door of his considerable library, he found some relief to his sufferings. These, at last, had reached their term. Before Clive had exhausted all the books thus placed at his disposal, events occurred which speedily opened to him the career for which he had panted.
