in public places. He now began
to find every man from home at whose house he called; and was therefore
no longer able to procure the necessaries of life, but wandered about
the town, slighted and neglected, in quest of a dinner, which he did not
always obtain.

To complete his misery, he was pursued by the officers for small debts
which he had contracted; and was therefore obliged to withdraw from
the small number of friends from whom he had still reason to hope for
favours. His custom was to lie in bed the greatest part of the day, and
to get out in the dark with the utmost privacy, and, after having paid
his visit, return again before morning to his lodging, which was in the
garret of an obscure inn. Being thus excluded on one hand, and confined
on the other, he suffered the utmost extremities of poverty, and often
fasted so long that he was seized with faintness, and had lost his
appetite, not being able to bear the smell of meat till the action of
his stomach was restored by a cordial. In this distress, he received a
remittance of five pounds from London, with which he provided himself
a decent coat, and determined to go to London, but unhappily spent his
money at a favourite tavern. Thus was he again confined to Bristol,
where he was every day hunted by bailiffs. In this exigence he once
more found a friend, who sheltered him in his house, though at the usual
inconveniences with which his company was attended; for he could neither
be persuaded to go to bed in the night nor to rise in the day.

It is observable, that in these various scenes of misery he was always
disengaged and cheerful: he at some times pursued his studies, and at
others continued or enlarged his epistolary correspondence; nor was
he ever so far dejected as to endeavour to procure an increase of his
allowance by any other methods than accusations and reproaches.

He had now no longer any hopes of assistance from his friends at
Bristol, who as merchants, and by consequence sufficiently studious
of profit, cannot be supposed to have looked with much compassion upon
negligence and extravagance, or to think any excellence equivalent to
a fault of such consequence as neglect of economy. It is natural to
imagine, that many of those who would have relieved his real wants, were
discouraged from the exertion of their benevolence by observation of the
use which was made of their favours, and conviction that relief would be
only momentary, and that the sam