e late opposition, jealous of the rights
of the people, and alarmed by the long-continued triumph of the Court,
it was natural to ask him what could induce him to employ his poetry in
praise of that man who was, in his opinion, an enemy to liberty, and an
oppressor of his country? He alleged that he was then dependent upon the
Lord Tyrconnel, who was an implicit follower of the ministry: and that,
being enjoined by him, not without menaces, to write in praise of the
leader, he had not resolution sufficient to sacrifice the pleasure of
affluence to that of integrity.

On this, and on many other occasions, he was ready to lament the misery
of living at the tables of other men, which was his fate from the
beginning to the end of his life; for I know not whether he ever had,
for three months together, a settled habitation, in which he could claim
a right of residence.

To this unhappy state it is just to impute much of the inconsistency of
his conduct, for though a readiness to comply with the inclinations
of others was no part of his natural character, yet he was sometimes
obliged to relax his obstinacy, and submit his own judgment, and even
his virtue, to the government of those by whom he was supported. So that
if his miseries were sometimes the consequences of his faults, he ought
not yet to be wholly excluded from compassion, because his faults were
very often the effects of his misfortunes.

In this gay period of his life, while he was surrounded by affluence and
pleasure, he published "The Wanderer," a moral poem, of which the design
is comprised in these lines:--

"I fly all public care, all venal strife,
To try the still, compared with active, life;
To prove, by these, the sons of men may owe
The fruits of bliss to bursting clouds of woe;
That ev'n calamity, by thought refined,
Inspirits and adorns the thinking mind."

And more distinctly in the following passage:--

"By woe, the soul to daring action swells;
By woe, in plaintless patience it excels:
From patience prudent, clear experience springs,
And traces knowledge through the course of things.
Thence hope is formed, thence fortitude, success,
Renown--whate'er men covet and caress."

This performance was always considered by himself as his masterpiece;
and Mr. Pope, when he asked his opinion of it, told him that he read
it once over, and was not displeased with it; that it gave him