were on the different
sides of this question.

Furnished then in this manner, I began my work. But no person can tell the
severe trial, which the writing of it proved to me. I had expected pleasure
from the invention of the arguments, from the arrangement of them, from the
putting of them together, and from the thought in the interim that I was
engaged in an innocent contest for literary honour. But all my pleasure was
damped by the facts which were now continually before me. It was but one
gloomy subject from morning to night. In the day-time I was uneasy. In the
night I had little rest. I sometimes never closed my eye-lids for grief. It
became now not so much a trial for academical reputation, as for the
production of a work, which might be useful to injured Africa. And keeping
this idea in my mind ever after the perusal of Benezet, I always slept with
a candle in my room, that I might rise out of bed and put down such
thoughts as might occur to me in the night, if I judged them valuable,
conceiving that no arguments of any moment should be lost in so great a
cause. Having at length finished this painful task I sent my Essay to the
vice-chancellor, and soon afterwards found myself honoured as before with
the first prize.

As it is usual to read these essays publicly in the senate-house soon after
the prize is adjudged, I was called to Cambridge for this purpose. I went
and performed my office. On returning however to London, the subject of it
almost wholly engrossed my thoughts. I became at times very seriously
affected while upon the road. I stopped my horse occasionally, and
dismounted and walked. I frequently tried to persuade myself in these
intervals that the contents of my Essay could not be true. The more however
I reflected upon them, or rather upon the authorities on which they were
founded, the more I gave them credit. Coming in sight of Wades Mill in
Hertfordshire, I sat down disconsolate on the turf by the roadside and held
my horse. Here a thought came into my mind, that if the contents of the
Essay were true, it was time some person should see these calamities to
their end. Agitated in this manner I reached home. This was in the summer
of 1785.

In the course of the autumn of the same year I experienced similar
impressions. I walked frequently into the woods, that I might think on the
subject in solitude, and find relief to my mind there. But there the
question still recurred, "Are these things true?"