een my father's death and my settlement in London. 2. In a
free conversation with books and men, it would be endless to enumerate
the names and characters of all who are introduced to our acquaintance;
but in this general acquaintance we may select the degrees of friendship
and esteem, according to the wise maxim, Multum legere potius quam
multa. I reviewed, again and again, the immortal works of the French and
English, the Latin and Italian classics. My Greek studies (though less
assiduous than I designed) maintained and extended my knowledge of that
incomparable idiom. Homer and Xenophon were still my favourite authors;
and I had almost prepared for the press an Essay on the Cyropoedia,
which, in my own judgment, is not unhappily laboured. After a certain
age, the new publications of merit are the sole food of the many; and
the must austere student will be often tempted to break the line, for
the sake of indulging his own curiosity, and of providing the topics of
fashionable currency. A more respectable motive maybe assigned for the
third perusal of Blackstone's Commentaries, and a copious and critical
abstract of that English work was my first serious production in my
native language. 3. My literary leisure was much less complete and
independent than it might appear to the eye of a stranger. In the hurry
of London I was destitute of books; in the solitude of Hampshire I was
not master of my time. My quiet was gradually disturbed by our domestic
anxiety, and I should be ashamed of my unfeeling philosophy, had I
found much time or taste for study in the last fatal summer (1770) of my
father's decay and dissolution.

The disembodying of the militia at the close of the war (1763) had
restored the Major (a new Cincinnatus) to a life of agriculture. His
labours were useful, his pleasures innocent, his wishes moderate; and
my father seemed to enjoy the state of happiness which is celebrated by
poets and philosophers, as the most agreeable to nature, and the least
accessible to fortune.

Beatus ille, qui procul negotiis
(Ut prisca gens mortalium)
Paterna rura bubus exercet suis,
Solutus omni foenore.
HOR. Epod. ii.

Like the first mortals, blest is he,
From debts, and usury, and business free,
With his own team who ploughs the soil,
Which grateful once confessed his father's toil.
FRANCIS.

But the last indisp