ing of both, which obscured his faculties and
sickened his lofty spirit.

"Had some of those who were pleased to call themselves my friends been
at any pains to deserve the character, and told me ingenuously what I
had to expect in _the capacity of an author, when I first professed
myself of that venerable fraternity_, I should in all probability have
spared myself the _incredible labour and chagrin I have since
undergone_."

As a relief from literary labour, Smollett once went to revisit his
family, and to embrace the mother he loved; but such was the
irritation of his mind and the infirmity of his health, exhausted by
the hard labours of authorship, that he never passed a more weary
summer, nor ever found himself so incapable of indulging the warmest
emotions of his heart. On his return, in a letter, he gave this
melancholy narrative of himself:--"Between friends, I am now convinced
that _my brain was in some measure affected_; for I had a kind of
_Coma Vigil_ upon me from April to November, without intermission. In
consideration of this circumstance, I know you will forgive all my
peevishness and discontent; tell Mrs. Moore that with regard to me,
she has as yet seen nothing but the wrong side of the tapestry." Thus
it happens in the life of authors, that they whose comic genius
diffuses cheerfulness, create a pleasure which they cannot themselves
participate.

The _Coma Vigil_ may be described by a verse of Shakspeare:--

Still-waking sleep! that is not what it is!

Of praise and censure, says Smollett, in a letter to Dr. Moore,
"Indeed I am sick of both, and wish to God my circumstances would
allow me to consign my pen to oblivion." A wish, as fervently repeated
by many "Authors by Profession," who are not so fully entitled as was
Smollett to write when he chose, or to have lived in quiet for what he
had written. An author's life is therefore too often deprived of all
social comfort whether he be the writer for a minister, or a
bookseller--but their case requires to be stated.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] It has been lately disclosed that HOME, the author of "Douglas,"
was pensioned by Lord Bute to answer all the papers and
pamphlets of the Government, and to be a vigilant defender of
the measures of Government.

[5] I have elsewhere portrayed the personal characters of the
hireling chiefs of these paper wars: the versatile and
unprincipled Marchmont Needham, the C