it
would be impossible for me to ascertain the respective shares of the
two associates. A long and intimate communication of ideas had cast
our sentiments and style in the same mould. In our social labours we
composed and corrected by turns; and the praise which I might honestly
bestow, would fall perhaps on some article or passage most properly my
own. A second volume (for the year 1768) was published of these
Memoirs. I will presume to say, that their merit was superior to their
reputation; but it is not less true, that they were productive of more
reputation than emolument. They introduced my friend to the protection,
and myself to the acquaintance, of the Earl of Chesterfield, whose age
and infirmities secluded him from the world; and of Mr. David Hume, who
was under-secretary to the office in which Deyverdun was more humbly
employed. The former accepted a dedication,(April 12, 1769,) and
reserved the author for the future education of his successor: the
latter enriched the Journal with a reply to Mr. Walpole's Historical
Doubts, which he afterwards shaped into the form of a note. The
materials of the third volume were almost completed, when I recommended
Deyverdun as governor to Sir Richard Worsley, a youth, the son of my old
Lieutenant-colonel, who was lately deceased. They set forwards on their
travels; nor did they return to England till some time after my father's
death.

My next publication was an accidental sally of love and resentment; of
my reverence for modest genius, and my aversion for insolent pedantry.
The sixth book of the AEneid is the most pleasing and perfect
composition of Latin poetry. The descent of AEneas and the Sibyl to
the infernal regions, to the world of spirits, expands an awful and
boundless prospect, from the nocturnal gloom of the Cumaean grot,

Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram,

to the meridian brightness of the Elysian fields;

Largior hic campos aether et lumine vestit
Purpureo---

from the dreams of simple Nature, to the dreams, alas! of Egyptian
theology, and the philosophy of the Greeks. But the final dismission of
the hero through the ivory gate, whence

Falsa ad coelum mittunt insomnia manes,

seems to dissolve the whole enchantment, and leaves the reader in
a state of cold and anxious scepticism. This most lame and impotent
conclusion has been variously imputed to the taste or irreligion of
Virgil; but, according to the m