nd I have received sixpence in an evening. To one who had
long lived in the absolute want of money, such a resource seemed like a
Peruvian mine. I furnished myself by degrees with paper, &c. and what
was of more importance, with books of geometry, and of the higher
branches of algebra, which I cautiously concealed. Poetry, even at this
time, was no amusement of mine: it was subservient to other purposes;
and I only had recourse to it, when I wanted money for my mathematical
pursuits.

But the clouds were gathering fast. My master's anger was raised to a
terrible pitch by my indifference to his concerns, and still more by the
reports which were brought to him of my presumptuous attempts at
versification. I was required to give up my papers, and when I refused,
my garret was searched, my little hoard of books discovered, and
removed, and all future repetitions prohibited in the strictest manner.

This was a very severe stroke, and I felt it most sensibly; it was
followed by another severer still; a stroke which crushed the hopes I
had so long and so fondly cherished, and resigned me at once to despair.
Mr. Hugh Smerdon, on whose succession I had calculated, died, and was
succeeded by a person not much older than myself, and certainly not so
well qualified for the situation.

I look back to that part of my life, which immediately followed this
event, with little satisfaction; it was a period of gloom, and savage
unsociability: by degrees I sunk into a kind of corporeal torpor; or, if
roused into activity by the spirit of youth, wasted the exertion in
splenetic and vexatious tricks, which alienated the few acquaintances
compassion had yet left. So I crept on in silent discontent; unfriended
and unpitied; indignant at the present, careless of the future, an
object at once of apprehension and dislike.

From this state of abjectness I was raised by a young woman of my own
class. She was a neighbour; and whenever I took my solitary walk with my
Wolfius, in my pocket, she usually came to the door, and by a smile or a
short question put in the friendliest manner, endeavoured to solicit my
attention. My heart had been long shut to kindness, but the sentiment
was not dead in me: it revived at the first encouraging word: and the
gratitude I felt for it, was the first pleasing sensation I had ventured
to entertain for many dreary months.

Together with gratitude, hope, and other passions still more enlivening,
took place of that