s hand to his mouth. The audience thinking it was purposely
done in character, were astonished at the natural way in which the boy
acted it, and gave him loud marks of approbation--"I dare say,"
continued H. "I looked devilish odd at the time, for the house laughed
incontinently." "Ay, ay," gravely replied a young Irishman who was
present, "I dare say it was your _game eye_ they laughed at." Down fell
the muscles of poor H's face--he changed colour, and was for sometime
before he could rally his spirit or recover his pleasantry.[F]

His time, however, was not lost or misapplied. He had an inexhaustible
thirst for knowledge, and therefore read, with ardour and industry,
every book he could lay his hands upon; and he has told this writer,
that if reading had been painful to him, his ambition was so ascendant,
and his determination to rise in the world so unalterable, that he would
not have read less. Strong indeed must have been the internal impulse
which made a boy of his age and spirits, his own voluntary task-master,
which induced him to lay the pleasures natural to his age at the feet of
a laudable purpose, and to devote to useful labour a portion of his
time, greater than the most diligent college book-worms devote to their
studies. He has declared to this writer that in summer time he rarely
gave more than five hours out of the four and twenty to sleep. The rest
was devoted to reading, refreshment by food, attendance on the stage,
and the practice of music. These constituted the whole of his
amusements; except that, when at Bath, he went out sporting--not to
shoot, but to see others shooting. One of the players who was a
sportsman, was a favourite of some of the _great_ men in the
neighbourhood, and often went out shooting with them. On these occasions
H. accompanied him, carried his hawking-bag, powder magazine, shot, &c.
and helped to mark the birds when they sprung. Thus was generated the
passion for dogs and shooting to which he was afterwards so warmly
addicted, and which indeed was, in the end, the cause of his death.

The worthy prompter supplied him with books, a benefit he derived from
the following circumstance. In Bristol there is a lane or street
occupied by venders of second-hand articles of various kinds. Thither he
one day repaired to buy, if possible, a pair of cheap silk
stockings:--poor John, like many others in the world, was most vain of
that part of him which was least handsome. As he sauntered