No More Learning

The contraband trade was at that time very successful, and it
sometimes happened to me to fall in with those who carried it on.
Scenes of swaggering riot and roaring dissipation were, till this
time, new to me; but I was no enemy to social life. Here, though I
learnt to fill my glass, and to mix without fear in a drunken
squabble, yet I went on with a high hand with my geometry, till the
sun entered Virgo, a month which is always a carnival in my bosom,
when a charming fillette, who lived next door to the school, overset
my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the spheres of my
studies. I, however, struggled on with my sines and co-sines for a few
days more; but stepping into the garden one charming noon to take the
sun's altitude, there I met my angel,

"Like Proserpine gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower--"[176]

It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The
remaining week I stayed I did nothing but craze the faculties of my
soul about her, or steal out to meet her; and the two last nights of
my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this
modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless.

I returned home very considerably improved. My reading was enlarged
with the very important addition of Thomson's and Shenstone's works; I
had seen human nature in a new phasis; and I engaged several of my
school-fellows to keep up a literary correspondence with me. This
improved me in composition. I had met with a collection of letters by
the wits of Queen Anne's reign, and I pored over them most devoutly. I
kept copies of any of my own letters that pleased me, and a comparison
between them and the composition of most of my correspondents
flattered my vanity. I carried this whim so far, that though I hid not
three-farthings' worth of business in the world, yet almost every post
brought me as many letters as if I had been a broad plodding son of
the day-book and ledger.

My life flowed on much in the same course till my twenty-third year.
_Vive l'amour, et vive la bagatelle_, were my sole principles of
action. The addition of two more authors to my library gave me great
pleasure; Sterne and Mackenzie--Tristram Shandy and the Man of Feeling
were my bosom favourites. Poesy was still a darling walk for my mind,
but it was only indulged in according to the humour of the hour.
I had
usually half a dozen or more pieces on hand; I took up one or other,
as it suited the momentary tone of the mind, and dismissed the work as
it bordered on fatigue. My passions, when once lighted up, raged like
so many devils, till they got vent in rhyme; and then the conning over
my verses, like a spell, soothed all into quiet! None of the rhymes of
those days are in print, except "Winter, a dirge," the eldest of my
printed pieces; "The Death of poor Maillie," "John Barleycorn," and
songs first, second, and third. Song second was the ebullition of that
passion which ended the forementioned school-business.

My twenty-third year was to me an important aera. Partly through whim,
and partly that I wished to set about doing something in life, I
joined a flax-dresser in a neighboring town (Irvine) to learn his
trade. This was an unlucky affair. My * * * and to finish the whole,
as we were giving a welcome carousal to the new year, the shop took
fire and burnt to ashes, and I was left, like a true poet, not worth a
sixpence.

I was obliged to give up this scheme; the clouds of misfortune were
gathering thick round my father's head; and, what was worst of all, he
was visibly far gone in a consumption; and to crown my distresses, a
_belle fille_, whom I adored, and who had pledged her soul to meet me
in the field of matrimony, jilted me, with peculiar circumstances of
mortification. The finishing evil that brought up the rear of this
infernal file, was my constitutional melancholy being increased to
such a degree, that for three months I was in a state of mind scarcely
to be envied by the hopeless wretches who have got their
mittimus--depart from me, ye cursed!

From this adventure I learned something of a town life; but the
principal thing which gave my mind a turn, was a friendship I formed
with a young fellow, a very noble character, but a hapless son of
misfortune. He was the son of a simple mechanic; but a great man in
the neighbourhood taking him under his patronage, gave him a genteel
education, with a view of bettering his situation in life. The patron
dying just as he was ready to launch out into the world, the poor
fellow in despair went to sea; where, after a variety of good and
ill-fortune, a little before I was acquainted with him he had been set
on shore by an American privateer, on the wild coast of Connaught,
stripped of everything. I cannot quit this poor fellow's story without
adding, that he is at this time master of a large West-Indiaman
belonging to the Thames.

His mind was fraught with independence, magnanimity, and every manly
virtue. I loved and admired him to a degree of enthusiasm, and of
course strove to imitate him.