For seven years he seems to have neither read nor written anything. At length a long period of "enforced leisure," occasioned by an accident which made work with the awl impossible, compelled him to betake himself to reading, and thus his mind was roused from its torpor. An English translation of a volume of Spanish novels fell in his way, and its perusal suggested the subject for the drama _Alva_, which, as we have said, he published in 1821. His other works are named above. None of these seem to have brought him much profit, neither were his attempts at "business for himself," once as a master-shoemaker and again as a huckster, at all successful. On several occasions he was assisted by grants from the Literary Fund, and was thankful for the kindly aid afforded him by his friends the teetotalers. In spite of all his hard work as a shoemaker, and his many little literary adventures (perhaps because of _them_), he was in his old age a very poor man. Mr. Doxsey says in 1851, "John O'Neill and his aged partner dwell in a miserable garret in St. Giles's." In his poor earthly estate he had one comfort, at all events--he did not "suffer as an evil-doer," and he could feel pretty sure that he had done not a little by his graphic pen and rude eloquence to turn many a sinner from a life of misery and shame. His death occurred on the 3d of February, 1858. JOHN YOUNGER, SHOEMAKER, FLY-FISHER, AND POET. In 1860 a charming little book on "River Angling for Salmon and Trout"[155] was added to our extensive angling literature by a devout follower of Isaac Walton. The preface showed that it was the work of a Lowland Scotchman, who was accustomed to divide his time between the two "gentle" occupations of shoemaking and fishing, and that this man, _John Younger_, had an enthusiasm for other things besides making fishing-boots and fishing-rods and lines, and the sport of the river-side. He was a zealous and, we had almost said, a desperate politician. He made corn-law rhymes, which came into the hands and drew forth praise from the pen of Ebenezer Elliott, who sent the best copy of his works as a present to the poetical shoemaker. In 1834 Younger tried the public with a volume of verse under the quaint title, "Thoughts as they Rise."[156] But the public, like the shy fish of some of his own Scottish rivers, would not "rise" to his bait, for the work fell uncommonly flat. He was much more successful with his "River Angling," which appeared first in 1840, and again, with a sketch of his life, in 1860. In 1847 John Younger won the second prize for an essay on "The Temporal Advantages of the Sabbath to the Working-Classes," and it was a proud day for him and his neighbors at St. Boswell's when he set off to go up to London to receive his reward of £15 at the hands of Lord Shaftesbury in the big meeting at Exeter Hall. Younger, who was all his life a brother of the craft, was born at Longnewton, in the parish of Ancrum, 5th July, 1785.