[228]: Chamber's edition, t. I, p. 93.
[229]: In the first place, let my pupil, as he tenders his own peace, keep up a regular warm intercourse with the Deity.... You may perhaps think it an extravagant fancy; but it is a sentiment that strikes home to my very soul: though sceptical in some points of our current belief, yet I think I have every evidence for the reality of a life beyond the stinted bourne of our present existence.... O thou great unknown Power, thou Almighty God!
[230]: My passions, when once lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they got vent in rhyme.
[231]: Voyez Tam O'Shanter, Address to the Devil, The Jolly Beggars, A man is a man, Green grow the rushes, etc.
[232]: «O Clarinda, shall we not meet in a state, some yet unknown state of being, where the lavish hand of plenty shall minister to the highest wish of benevolence, and where the chill north-wind of prudence shall never blow over the flowery fields of enjoyment?»
O Life, how pleasant is thy morning,
Young Fancy's rays the hills adorning,
Cold-pausing Caution's lesson spurning! etc.
(Ép. à James Smith.)
[234]: I might write you on farming, on building, on marketing. But my poor distracted mind is so torn, so jaded, so racked and bedeviled with the task of the superlatively damned obligation to make one guinea do the business of three, that I detest, abhor, and swoon at the very word business.
[235]: My worst enemy is moi-même.... There are just two creatures I would envy: a horse in his wild state traversing the forests of Asia, or an oyster on some of the desert shores of Europe. The one has not a wish without enjoyment, the other has neither wish nor fear.