till we may suppose it to
have lightened them up occasionally, in those hours of leisure when he
was allowed to unbend himself in the society of a wife, with whom he
seems always to have lived happily, and of an only daughter, who was
growing up to share with her his caresses, and to whom both looked as
the future support of their age.

[Greek:
Tautae, gegaetha, kapilaethomai kakon'
Haed anti pollon esti moi parapsychae,
Aeolis, tithaenae, baktron, haegemon hodou]

In her, rejoicing, I forgot mine ills.
I have lost much; but she remains, my comfort,
My city and my nurse, my staff and guide.

He had bemoaned his distresses as an author; but was now to feel
calamity of a different kind. This only daughter was taken from him by
death, in her fifteenth year. Henceforward he was, with some short
intervals, a prey to querulousness and disease. Soon after this loss (in
June, 1763,) being resolved to try what change of climate would do for
him, he set out with his disconsolate partner on a journey through
France and Italy. On quitting his own country, he describes himself
"traduced by malice, persecuted by faction, abandoned by false patrons,
and overwhelmed by the sense of a private calamity, which it was not in
the power of fortune to repair." The account which he published of this
expedition on his return, shews that he did not derive from it the
relief which he had expected. The spleen with which he contemplated
every object that presented itself to him, was ridiculed by Sterne, who
gave him the name of Smelfungus. With this abatement, the narration has
much to interest and amuse, and conveys some information by which a
traveller might perhaps still profit. When he brings before us the
driver pointing to the gibbeted criminal whom he had himself betrayed,
and unconsciously discovering his own infamy to Smollett, we might
suppose ourselves to be reading a highly wrought incident in one of his
own fictions. His prognostics of the approaching Revolution in France
are so remarkable, that I am tempted to transcribe them. "The King of
France, in order to give strength and stability to his administration,
ought to have sense to adopt a sage plan of economy, and vigour of mind
sufficient to execute it in all its parts with the most rigorous
exactness. He ought to have courage enough to find fault, and even to
punish the delinquents, of what quality soever they may be; and the
first act of reformation ought to be