employed himself about, as to prevent him calling on many of
his friends so frequently as he used to do. Soon after this he
engaged with Mr. Manby, a bookseller on Ludgate Hill, to furnish
him with some Lives for the Biographia Britannica, which Manby was
then publishing. He showed me some of the lives in embryo; but I
do not recollect that any of them came to perfection. To raise a
present subsistence he set about writing his odes; and, having a
general invitation to my house, he frequently passed whole days
there, which he employed in writing them, and as frequently
burning what he had written, after reading them to me: many of
them, which pleased me, I struggled to preserve, but without
effect; for, pretending he would alter them, he got them from me,
and thrust them into the fire. He was an acceptable companion
every where; and, among the gentlemen who loved him for a genius,
I may reckon the Doctors Armstrong, Barrowby, and Hill, Messrs.
Quin, Garrick, and Foote, who frequently took his opinion on their
pieces before they were seen by the public. He was particularly
noticed by the geniuses who frequented the Bedford and Slaughter's
Coffee Houses. From his knowledge of Garrick he had the liberty of
the scenes and green-room, where he made diverting observations on
the vanity and false consequence of that class of people; and his
manner of relating them to his particular friends was extremely
entertaining. In this manner he lived, with and upon his friends,
until the death of Colonel Martyn, who left what fortune he died
possessed of unto him and his two sisters. I fear I cannot be
certain as to dates, but believe he left the university in the
year 43. Some circumstances I recollect, make me almost certain he
was in London that year; but I will not be so certain of the time
he died, which I did not hear of till long after it happened. When
his health and faculties began to decline, he went to France, and
after to Bath, in hope his health might be restored, but without
success. I never saw him after his sister removed him from
M'Donald's madhouse at Chelsea to Chichester, where he soon sunk
into a deplorable state of idiotism, which, when I was told,
shocked me exceedingly; and, even now, the remembrance of a man
for whom I had a particular friendship, and in whose company I
have passed so many pleasant happy hours, gives me a severe shock.
Sin