e he was to go to Swansea by water.

At Bristol he found an embargo laid upon the shipping, so that he could
not immediately obtain a passage; and being therefore obliged to stay
there some time, he with his usual felicity ingratiated himself
with many of the principal inhabitants, was invited to their houses,
distinguished at their public feasts, and treated with a regard that
gratified his vanity, and therefore easily engaged his affection.

He began very early after his retirement to complain of the conduct
of his friends in London, and irritated many of them so much by his
letters, that they withdrew, however honourably, their contributions;
and it is believed that little more was paid him than the twenty
pounds a year, which were allowed him by the gentleman who proposed the
subscription.

After some stay at Bristol he retired to Swansea, the place originally
proposed for his residence, where he lived about a year, very much
dissatisfied with the diminution of his salary; but contracted, as in
other places, acquaintance with those who were most distinguished in
that country, among whom he has celebrated Mr. Powel and Mrs. Jones,
by some verses which he inserted in The Gentleman's Magazine. Here
he completed his tragedy, of which two acts were wanting when he left
London; and was desirous of coming to town, to bring it upon the stage.
This design was very warmly opposed; and he was advised, by his chief
benefactor, to put it into the hands of Mr. Thomson and Mr. Mallet, that
it might be fitted for the stage, and to allow his friends to receive
the profits, out of which an annual pension should be paid him.

This proposal he rejected with the utmost contempt. He was by no means
convinced that the judgment of those to whom he was required to submit
was superior to his own. He was now determined, as he expressed it, to
be "no longer kept in leading-strings," and had no elevated idea of
"his bounty, who proposed to pension him out of the profits of his own
labours."

He attempted in Wales to promote a subscription for his works, and
had once hopes of success; but in a short time afterwards formed a
resolution of leaving that part of the country, to which he thought it
not reasonable to be confined for the gratification of those who, having
promised him a liberal income, had no sooner banished him to a remote
corner than they reduced his allowance to a salary scarcely equal to the
necessities of life. His resentment