house of his guardian. With the
characteristic caprice and impetuosity of youth, Cadurcis rapidly
and ardently imbibed all these doctrines, captivated alike by their
boldness and their novelty. Hitherto the child of prejudice, he
flattered himself that he was now the creature of reason, and,
determined to take nothing for granted, he soon learned to question
everything that was received. A friend introduced him to the writings
of Herbert, that very Herbert whom he had been taught to look upon
with so much terror and odium. Their perusal operated a complete
revolution of his mind; and, in little more than a year from his
flight from Cherbury, he had become an enthusiastic votary of the
great master, for his violent abuse of whom he had been banished from
those happy bowers. The courage, the boldness, the eloquence, the
imagination, the strange and romantic career of Herbert, carried the
spirit of Cadurcis captive. The sympathetic companions studied his
works and smiled with scorn at the prejudice of which their great
model had been the victim, and of which they had been so long the
dupes. As for Cadurcis, he resolved to emulate him, and he commenced
his noble rivalship by a systematic neglect of all the duties and
the studies of his college life. His irregular habits procured him
constant reprimands in which he gloried; he revenged himself on the
authorities by writing epigrams, and by keeping a bear, which he
declared should stand for a fellowship. At length, having wilfully
outraged the most important regulations, he was expelled; and he
made his expulsion the subject of a satire equally personal and
philosophic, and which obtained applause for the great talent which it
displayed, even from those who lamented its want of judgment and the
misconduct of its writer. Flushed with success, Cadurcis at length
found, to his astonishment, that Nature had intended him for a poet.
He repaired to London, where he was received with open arms by the
Whigs, whose party he immediately embraced, and where he published a
poem, in which he painted his own character as the hero, and of which,
in spite of all the exaggeration and extravagance of youth, the genius
was undeniable. Society sympathised with a young and a noble poet;
his poem was read by all parties with enthusiasm; Cadurcis became the
fashion. To use his own expression, 'One morning he awoke, and found
himself famous.' Young, singularly handsome, with every gift of nature
an