sisting of "An Essay on Learning," I find
this curious and interesting passage entirely relating to the poet
himself:--

"I remember nothing farther in life than that I made verses; I chose
Guy Earl of Warwick for my first hero, and killed Colborne the giant
before I was big enough for Westminster School. But I had two
accidents in youth which hindered me from being quite possessed with
the Muse. I was bred in a college where prose was more in fashion
than verse,--and, as soon as I had taken my first degree, I was sent
the King's Secretary to the Hague; there I had enough to do in
studying French and Dutch, and altering my Terentian and Virgilian
style into that of Articles and Conventions; so that _poetry, which by
the bent of my mind might have become the business of my life, was, by
the happiness of my education, only the amusement of it_; and in this,
too, having the prospect of some little fortune to be made, and
friendships to be cultivated with the great men, I did not launch much
into _satire_, which, however agreeable for the present to the writers
and encouragers of it, does in time do neither of them good;
considering the uncertainty of fortune, and the various changes of
Ministry, and that every man, as he resents, may punish in his turn of
greatness and power."

Such is the wholesome counsel of the Solomon of Bards to an aspirant,
who, in his ardour for poetical honours, becomes careless of their
consequences, if he can but possess them.

I have now to bring forward one of those unhappy men of rhyme, who,
after many painful struggles, and a long querulous life, have died
amid the ravings of their immortality--one of those miserable bards of
mediocrity whom no beadle-critic could ever whip out of the poetical
parish.

There is a case in Mr. Haslam's "Observations on Insanity," who
assures us that the patient he describes was insane, which will appear
strange to those who have watched more poets than lunatics!

"This patient, when admitted, was very noisy, and importunately
talkative--reciting passages from the Greek and Roman poets, or
talking of his own literary importance. He became so troublesome to
the other madmen, who were sufficiently occupied with their own
speculations, that they avoided and excluded him from the common room;
so that he was at last reduced to the mortifying situation of being
the sole auditor of his own compositions. He conceived himself very
nearly related to Anacreon, and p