ntries where a slender income would be sufficient,
and where I would not be under the necessity of making a degrading use
of my faculties. I was born a racehorse; and after near forty years of
successful racing, I am now drawing the waggon--nay, to be the teacher
of French to my copyists, and the critic of English to my
translators!-to write sophistry about criticism, which I always
considered a sort of literary quackery, and to put together paltry
articles for works which I never read. Indeed, if I have not undergone
the doom of almost all individuals whose situation becomes suddenly
opposed to their feelings and habits, and if I am not yet a lunatic, I
must thank the mechanical strength of my nerves. My nerves, however,
will not withstand the threatenings of shame which I have always
contemplated with terror. Time and fortune have taught me to meet all
other evils with fortitude; but I grow every day more and more a coward
at the idea of the approach of a stigma on my character; and as now I
must live and die in England, and get the greater part of my subsistence
from my labour, I ought to reconcile, if not labour with literary
reputation, at least labour and life with a spotless name."

He then goes on to state that his debts amount to L600 or thereabouts,
including a sum of L20 which he owed to Mr. Murray himself. Then he must
have the money necessary for his subsistence, and he "finds he cannot
live on less than L400 per annum."

"My apartments," he continues, "decently furnished, encompass me with an
atmosphere of ease and respectability; and I enjoy the illusion of not
having fallen into the lowest circumstances.

I always declare that I will die like a gentleman, on a decent bed,
surrounded by casts (as I cannot buy the marbles) of the Venuses, of the
Apollos, and of the Graces, and the busts of great men; nay, even among
flowers, and, if possible, with some graceful innocent girl playing an
old pianoforte in an adjoining room. And thus dies the hero of my novel.
Far from courting the sympathy of mankind, I would rather be forgotten
by posterity than give it the gratification of ejaculating preposterous
sighs because I died like Camoens and Tasso on the bed of an hospital.
And since I must be buried in your country, I am happy in having insured
for me the possession during the remains of my life of a cottage built
after my plan, surrounded by flowering shrubs, almost within the
tumpikes of the town, and yet as