ntempt, and penury and woe;
Be't so; whilst that foul fiend, the spleen,
And moping melancholy spare me, all the rest
I'll bear, as should a man; 'twill do me good,
And teach me what no better fortune could,
Humility, and sympathy with others' ills.
--------------Ye destinies,
I love you much; ye flatter not my pride.
Your mien, 'tis true, is wrinkled, hard, and sour;
Your words are harsh and stern; and sterner still
Your purposes to me. Yet I forgive
Whatever you have done, or mean to do.
Beneath some baleful planet born, I've found,
In all this world, no friend with fostering hand
To lead me on to science, which I love
Beyond all else the world could give; yet still
Your rigour I forgive; ye are not yet my foes;
My own untutor'd will's my only curse.
We grasp asphaltic apples; blooming poison!
We love what we should hate; how kind, ye Fates,
To thwart our wishes! O you're kind to scourge!
And flay us to the bone to make us feel!--

Thus deeply he enters into his own feelings, and abjures his errors,
as he paints the utter desolation of the soul while falling into the
grave opening at his feet.

The town was once amused almost every morning by a series of humorous
or burlesque poems by a writer under the assumed name of _Matthew
Bramble_--he was at that very moment one of the most moving spectacles
of human melancholy I have ever witnessed.

It was one evening I saw a tall, famished, melancholy man enter a
bookseller's shop, his hat flapped over his eyes, and his whole
frame evidently feeble from exhaustion and utter misery. The
bookseller inquired how he proceeded in his new tragedy. "Do not talk
to me about my tragedy! Do not talk to me about my tragedy! I have
indeed more tragedy than I can bear at home!" was the reply, and
the voice faltered as he spoke. This man was Matthew Bramble, or
rather--M'DONALD, the author of the tragedy of Vimonda, at that moment
the writer of comic poetry--his tragedy was indeed a domestic one,
in which he himself was the greatest actor amid his disconsolate
family; he shortly afterwards perished. M'Donald had walked from
Scotland with no other fortune than the novel of "The Independent"
in one pocket, and the tragedy of "Vimonda" in the other. Yet he
lived some time in all the bloom and flush of poetical confidence.
Vimonda was even performed several nights, but not with the
success the romantic poet, among his native rocks, had concei