s, this imitation
only proves the assertion of Dr. Johnson, that many men, women, and
_children_, could write such poetry as Ossian's.'

"I am _thin_ and in exercise. During the spring or summer I trust we
shall meet. I hear Lord Ruthyn leaves Newstead in April. As soon as he
quits it for ever, I wish much you would take a ride over, survey the
mansion, and give me your candid opinion on the most advisable mode of
proceeding with regard to the _house_. _Entre nous_, I am cursedly
dipped; my debts, _every_ thing inclusive, will be nine or ten
thousand before I am twenty-one. But I have reason to think my
property will turn out better than general expectation may conceive.
Of Newstead I have little hope or care; but Hanson, my agent,
intimated my Lancashire property was worth three Newsteads. I believe
we have it hollow; though the defendants are protracting the
surrender, if possible, till after my majority, for the purpose of
forming some arrangement with me, thinking I shall probably prefer a
sum in hand to a reversion. Newstead I may _sell_;--perhaps I will
not,--though of that more anon. I will come down in May or June.

"Yours most truly," &c.

The sort of life which he led at this period between the dissipations
of London and of Cambridge, without a home to welcome, or even the
roof of a single relative to receive him, was but little calculated to
render him satisfied either with himself or the world. Unrestricted as
he was by deference to any will but his own,[91] even the pleasures
to which he was naturally most inclined prematurely palled upon him,
for want of those best zests of all enjoyment, rarity and restraint. I
have already quoted, from one of his note-books, a passage descriptive
of his feelings on first going to Cambridge, in which he says that
"one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of his life was to feel
that he was no longer a boy."--"From that moment (he adds) I began to
grow old in my own esteem, and in my esteem age is not estimable. I
took my gradations in the vices with great promptitude, but they were
not to my taste; for my early passions, though violent in the extreme,
were concentrated, and hated division or spreading abroad. I could
have left or lost the whole world with, or for, that which I loved;
but, though my temperament was naturally burning, I could not share in
the common-place libertinism of the place and time without disgust.
And yet this very disgust, and my heart throw