a drunken
squabble, yet I went on with a high hand with my geometry, till the
sun entered Virgo, a month which is always a carnival in my bosom,
when a charming fillette, who lived next door to the school, overset
my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the spheres of my
studies. I, however, struggled on with my sines and co-sines for a few
days more; but stepping into the garden one charming noon to take the
sun's altitude, there I met my angel,

"Like Proserpine gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower--"[176]

It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The
remaining week I stayed I did nothing but craze the faculties of my
soul about her, or steal out to meet her; and the two last nights of
my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this
modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless.

I returned home very considerably improved. My reading was enlarged
with the very important addition of Thomson's and Shenstone's works; I
had seen human nature in a new phasis; and I engaged several of my
school-fellows to keep up a literary correspondence with me. This
improved me in composition. I had met with a collection of letters by
the wits of Queen Anne's reign, and I pored over them most devoutly. I
kept copies of any of my own letters that pleased me, and a comparison
between them and the composition of most of my correspondents
flattered my vanity. I carried this whim so far, that though I hid not
three-farthings' worth of business in the world, yet almost every post
brought me as many letters as if I had been a broad plodding son of
the day-book and ledger.

My life flowed on much in the same course till my twenty-third year.
_Vive l'amour, et vive la bagatelle_, were my sole principles of
action. The addition of two more authors to my library gave me great
pleasure; Sterne and Mackenzie--Tristram Shandy and the Man of Feeling
were my bosom favourites. Poesy was still a darling walk for my mind,
but it was only indulged in according to the humour of the hour. I had
usually half a dozen or more pieces on hand; I took up one or other,
as it suited the momentary tone of the mind, and dismissed the work as
it bordered on fatigue. My passions, when once lighted up, raged like
so many devils, till they got vent in rhyme; and then the conning over
my verses, like a spell, soothed all into quiet! None of the rhymes of
those days are in print, except "Winter, a dir