the business which I had
chosen.

My eagerness to distinguish myself in publick, and my impatience of the
narrow scheme of life to which my indigence confined me, did not suffer
me to continue long in the town where I was born. I went away as from a
place of confinement, with a resolution to return no more, till I should
be able to dazzle with my splendour those who now looked upon me with
contempt, to reward those who had paid honours to my dawning merit, and
to shew all who had suffered me to glide by them unknown and neglected,
how much they mistook their interest in omitting to propitiate a genius
like mine.

Such were my intentions when I sallied forth into the unknown world, in
quest of riches and honours, which I expected to procure in a very short
time; for what could withhold them from industry and knowledge? He that
indulges hope will always be disappointed. Reputation I very soon
obtained; but as merit is much more cheaply acknowledged than rewarded,
I did not find myself yet enriched in proportion to my celebrity.

I had, however, in time, surmounted the obstacles by which envy and
competition obstruct the first attempts of a new claimant, and saw my
opponents and censurers tacitly confessing their despair of success, by
courting my friendship and yielding to my influence. They who once
pursued me, were now satisfied to escape from me; and they who had
before thought me presumptuous in hoping to overtake them, had now their
utmost wish, if they were permitted, at no great distance, quietly to
follow me.

My wants were not madly multiplied as my acquisitions increased, and the
time came, at length, when I thought myself enabled to gratify all
reasonable desires, and when, therefore, I resolved to enjoy that plenty
and serenity which I had been hitherto labouring to procure, to enjoy
them while I was yet neither crushed by age into infirmity, nor so
habituated to a particular manner of life as to be unqualified for new
studies or entertainments.

I now quitted my profession, and, to set myself at once free from all
importunities to resume it, changed my residence, and devoted the
remaining part of my time to quiet and amusement. Amidst innumerable
projects of pleasure, which restless idleness incited me to form, and of
which most, when they came to the moment of execution, were rejected for
others of no longer continuance, some accident revived in my imagination
the pleasing ideas of my native place. It