kinswoman Mrs. Ballance also lived.

The other letters to his mother and sisters betray the same
intoxication. At the Chapter Coffee-house, he meets with a gentleman
"who would have introduced him as a companion to the young duke of
Northumberland in his intended general tour, had he not been unluckily
incapacitated for that office by his ignorance of any tongue but his
own. His present profession obliges him to frequent places of the best
resort. He employs his money in fitting himself fashionably, and getting
into good company; this last article always brings him in good interest.
He has engaged to live with a gentleman, the brother of a lord (a Scotch
one indeed) who is going to advance pretty deeply into the bookselling
branches, and is to have lodging and boarding, genteel and elegant,
gratis, besides no inconsiderable premium. He is introduced to Beckford,
the Lord Mayor, to whom he had addressed an Essay, and who received him
with all the politeness a citizen could assume, and warmly invited him
to come again. He might have a recommendation to Sir George Colebrook,
an East India Director, as qualified for an office no ways despicable;
but he shall not take a step to the sea while he can continue on land.
If money flowed as fast upon him as honours, he would give his sister a
portion of L5000." The kind-hearted boy did indeed find means out of the
little profits arising from his writings, to send her, his mother, and
his grandmother, several trifling presents. In July he removed to
lodgings at Mrs. Angel's, a sack-maker in Brook Street, Holborn. He
assigned no reason for quitting those he had occupied in Shoreditch; but
Sir Herbert Croft supposes, not without probability, that it was in
order to be nearer to the places of public entertainment, to which his
employment as a writer for ephemeral publications, obliged him to
resort. On the 20th of July, he acquaints his sister that he is engaged
in writing an Oratorio, which when finished would purchase her a gown,
and that she might depend on seeing him before the first of January,
1771. "Almost all the next Town and Country Magazine," he tells her, "is
his." He boasts that "he has an universal acquaintance; that his company
is courted every where; and could he humble himself to go behind a
compter, he could have had twenty places, but that he must be among the
great: state matters suit him better than commercial." Besides his
communications to the above mentioned mis