must endeavour to recover what I have lost.' He immediately set about a course of more severe application than ever, allowing himself rarely more than two or three hours of sleep during the night, and often never going to bed at all. This excessive application, after some time, brought on an alarming illness, from which his friends thought that he never entirely recovered. But at last, through the influence of Mr. Simeon, of King's College, Cambridge, to whom he had been recommended, a sizarship was procured for him at St. John's. His mother, who had for some years kept a boarding-school, and his elder yet opened of his desire of going to the University being gratified; while the desire itself was every day growing stronger. The reading of some religious works about this time had made a great impression upon him, and his feelings had become ardently devotional. He determined to give up his life to the preaching of Christianity. His friends exerted themselves in vain to shake his resolution; he had made up his mind, if he could not obtain admission at Oxford or Cambridge, to join some dissenting communion, and to endeavour to find the means of pursuing his studies at an academy, or at one of the Scottish Universities. But we must refer to Southey's interest-brother engaged each to allow ing narrative for a detail of the alternating hopes and disappointments by which both his mind and frame were racked, before he at last secured the object of his fond ambition. At one time he had given up all hopes of ever being able to escape from his present profession; and the view which he took of the line of conduct which it became him to pursue in these circumstances, is in the highest degree creditable to his sense of propriety and duty. 'All my hopes,' says he, in a letter to his mother, 'of getting to the University are now blasted. In preparing myself for it, I have lost time in my profession. I have much ground to get up; and as I am determined not to be a mediocre attorney, I him fifteen or twenty pounds yearly; and Mr. Simeon generously undertook to afford him thirty pounds more, with the aid of a friend, who is stated to have been Mr. Wilberforce, a name made venerable by a life spent in doing good. Accordingly, in October 1804, he quitted his employers at Nottingham, who had most kindly agreed to give him up the remainder of his time, although his services were every day becoming more valuable to them. He did not, however, immediately proceed to Cambridge, but, by Mr. Simeon's advice, placed himself for the first year in the house of the Rev. Mr. Grainger, of Winteringham, in Lincolnshire. While residing with this gentleman, he applied himself to classical learning ately after this he went to with an ardour to which every- London, with the view of benething gave way, devoting often fiting his health by a temporary fourteen hours a day to hard relaxation from study. But he study; and though his unre- did not make much progress mitting toils soon laid him in recovering his strength duronce more on a sick bed, con- ing this short excursion. Still, valescence came only to send when he returned to Camhim back to his books with as bridge, his application much zeal as ever. When he tinued unabated. It is menwent to Cambridge, to use tioned as an instance of the Southey's words, 'the seeds of manner in which he used to death were in him, and the | turn every moment to account place to which he had so long-in his own phrase, to coin looked on with hope, served time-that he committed to unhappily as a hothouse to ripen them.' memory a whole tragedy of Euripides during his walks. At the end of this term he was again pronounced first man, and also one of the three best theme-writers. By exhibitions, too, which were procured for him, he was now enabled to live without the assistance of his friends. At the end of the term, a tutor in mathematics for the long vacation was provided for him by his college; but this unfortunately only induced him to continue his studies at a time when relaxation was become absolutely necessary to preserve his life. Finding himself very ill, he again proceeded to London; where, however, as before, he got no better. He returned to the University worn out both in body and in mind, and, after a short attack of delirium, died on Sunday the 19th of October 1806. The exertions of this extraordinary young man at the University were such as might have been expected from his previous career. A scholarship having become vacant during his first term, he was advised to offer himself as a competitor for it; but after having studied for this purpose with his usual immoderate application till within a fortnight of the close of the term, he found himself so ill that he was obliged to decline coming forward. To add to his misfortune, he had now the general college examination before him; and, although far from well, he was urged, if it was at all possible, to persevere in preparing himself for this occasion. He followed this counsel, and, having by the aid of strong medicines been enabled to hold out during the six days of the examination, he A monument has been erectwas at its close declared the ed to the memory of Kirke first man of his year. Immedi- | White, in the Church of All Saints, Cambridge, at the expense of Mr. Boott, a native of the United States of America. This gentleman, on visiting Cambridge, was disappointed in finding no tablet recording the talents and virtues of the young poet, and he resolved to do what England had left undone. This circumstance is highly creditable to the American character, and is one amongst many evidences of the triumph of right feelings over those mutual jealousies which have too often separated nations sharing the same blood and speaking the same language. We shall conclude this chapter by the mention of one or two other individuals, from the list of the cultivators of elegant literature, whose rise to eminence had been in like manner impeded for a time by an untoward fortune. Dr. HAWKESWORTH, one of the most popular writers of the last century, and whose periodical work, The Adventurer, entitles him to a place among English essayists, was originally a watchmaker, and afterwards became clerk to a writing stationer, in which situation it was that he commenced his career as an author, by some communications which he sent to the Gentleman's Magazine. From this beginning he made his way, by the persevering exertion of his talents, both to distinction and to considerable wealth. Hawkesworth must have been indebted for his literary acquirements almost entirely to himself. Together with his name may be quoted that of his much more distinguished contemporary, OLIVER GOLDSMITH, who was, however, more regularly educated. Goldsmith was one of nine children of a very poorly endowed clergyman of the Church of Ireland, in which country he was born in the year 1728. Of academical instruction he had his full share, for he attended successively the Universities of Dublin, Edinburgh, and Leyden. At the two last-mentioned places he studied medicine, which he had chosen as his profession, after having been originally intended for trade, and then successively for the church and the law. His eccentric, imprudent, and reckless habits, however, which had been constantly involving him in one difficulty or other from his boyhood, acquired strength with his years; and he had not been long at Leyden when he found himself reduced by his thoughtlessness and extravagance to a state of destitution, as bad as that which a short time before had forced him to take flight from Edinburgh. On this he left the University, and set out to travel over the Continent, possessed of nothing in the world but the clothes he wore and his flute. It was on the latter he depended for his support, his practice being, when, after walking all day, he arrived at a village in the evening, to assemble the inhabitants around him to dance to his music, in return for which they generally gave him lodgings for the night and wherewithal to procure him food for the next day. In this manner he walked over a great part of Flanders, the south of France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. At last he arrived in London, with, it is said, only a few pence in his pocket. In this emergency he was fortunate enough to meet with his countryman and college acquaintance, Dr. Sleigh, who had been one of Barry's first patrons when he came up to Dublin; and by the aid of this gentleman he obtained the situation of assistant teacher in a school at Peckham. Soon afterwards he offered his services to an apothecary in the metropolis, and with him he lived for some time. It was while in this situation that he first turned his thoughts to literary labour as a means of support. He began by writing for the Monthly Review and the Public Ledger, to which last he contributed the series of essays, in the form of letters from a Chinese residing in England to his friends in China, which were afterwards collected and published under the title of the Citizen of the World. He had been employed in this manner for several years, gaining only a scanty and precarious livelihood, when, in 1765, he published his celebrated poem The Traveller. This immediately brought him into notice, and placed him among the first writers of the day. He had now better employment, and as much as he could undertake ; but, his improvidence continuing as great as before, his difficulties were not much diminished. The very year following that in which The Traveller appeared, Dr. Johnson found him unable to leave his lodgings in consequence of a debt he had contracted, and to pay which his kind friend disposed of the manuscript of his Vicar of Wakefield. That exquisitely beautiful tale accordingly appeared in 1766; and soon after was published his History of England, in a series of letters from a nobleman to his son, which immediately excited great attention and became extremely popular. From this time till his death, Goldsmith gave to the world a succession of works which prove that, with all his faults, a want of industry cannot be laid to his charge. comedy of the Good-Natured Man, a History of Rome, and another History of England, in four volumes, the poem of the Deserted Village, the comedy of She Stoops to Conquer, a History of Greece, and his four volumes entitled A History of Animated Nature, besides abridgments of his different historical works, and numerous minor pieces in prose and verse, all proceeded from his pen between the years 1768 and 1774, in the latter of which he died at the early age of forty-six. Nor are even those of the works we have His |