and the ease of writing, till the morning was spent, and my servant announced dinner. I I arose, satisfied with having thought much, and laid in store for writing much on subjects proper for your paper. dined, if you will allow me the expression, in company with those thoughts, and drank half a bottle of wine after dinner to our better acquaintance. When my man took away, I returned to my study, sat down at my writing table, folded my paper into proper margins, wrote the word Mirror a-top, and filling my pen again, drew up the curtain, and prepared to delineate the scene before me. But I found things not quite in the situation I had left them; the groupes were more confused, the figures less striking, the colours less vivid, than I had seen them before dinner. I continued, however, to look on them-I know not how long; for I was waked from my very sound nap, at half an hour past six, by Peter asking me, if I chose to drink coffee. I was ashamed and vexed at the situa- tion in which he found me. first dish rather out of humour with myself; but, during the second, I began to account for it from natural causes; and, before the third was finished, had resolved that study was improper after repletion, and concluded the evening with the adventures of one of the three Callendars, out of the Arabian Nights Entertain ments. For all this arrear, I drew, resolutely, on to-morrow, and after breakfast prepared myself accordingly. I had actually gone so far as to write three introductory sentences, all of which I burnt, and was just blacking the letter T for the beginning of a fourth, when Peter opened the door, and announced a gentleman, an old acquaintance, whom I had not seen for a considerable time. After he had sat with me for more than an hour, he rose to go away; I pulled out my watch, and I will fairly own I was not sorry to find it within a few minutes of one: so I gave up the morning for lost, and invited myself to accompany my friend in some visits he proposed making. Our tour concluded in a dinner at a tavern, whence we repaired to the play, and did not part till midnight. I went to bed without much self-reproach, by considering, that intercourse with the world fits a man for reforming it. I need not go through every day of the subsequent month, during which I remained in town, though there seldom passed one that did not remind me of what I owed to your friendship. It is enough to tell you, that, during the first fortnight, I always found some apology for delaying the execution of my purpose; and, during the last, contented myself with the prospect of the leisure I should soon enjoy in the country, to which I was invited, by a relation, to spend some time with him previous to his coming to town for the winter. I arrived at his house about the middle of December. I looked on his fields, his walks, and his woods, which the extreme mildness of the season had still left in the garb of Thomson's philosophic melancholy, as scenes full of inspiration, in which Genius might try her wings, and Wisdom meditate without interruption. But I am obliged to own, that, though I have walked there many a time; though my fancy was warmed with the scene, and shot out into a thousand excursions over the regions of romance, of melancholy, of sentiment, of humour, of criticism, and of science, she returned, like the first messenger of Noah, without having found a resting-place; and I have, at last, strolled back to the house, where I sat listless in my chamber, with the irksome consciousness of some unper formed resolution, from which I was glad to be relieved by a summons to billiards, or a call to dinner. Thus have I returned to town, as unprofitable in the moments of solitude and retirement, as in those of business or society. Do not smile at the word business; what would be idleness to you, is to me very serious employment; besides, you know very well, that to be idle, is often to be least at leisure. I am now almost hardy enough to lay aside altogether my resolution of writing in your paper; but I find that resolution a sort of bond against me, till you are good enough to cancel it, by saying, you do not expect me to write. I have made a more than ordinary effort to give you this sincere account of my attempts to assist you. I have at least the consolation of thinking, that you will not need my assistance. Believe me, with all my failings, Most sincerely and affectionately yours, |