for such he was, at least in this instance, has long since been called to the settlement of his last awful account. May he there receive the same unqualified forgiveness for all errors, which he has long since had from me on this account. The mischief, however, was but temporary, and the advantage was great and permanent. Left in a great measure to myself, I avoided many provocations to expence and dissipation, many scenes of youthful thoughtlessness and folly, and compelled, as it were, to fly for refuge to my books, my mind was soothed, enlightened, and improved. I had at length the triumph, and a grateful one it was, to see my acquaintance solicited by those who had disdainfully rejected it, and the tables were so far turned, that the notice was obviously considered as a favour on my part, which would once on their’s, have been deemed the extreme of condescension. Here let me indulge an emotion, pardonable, I hope, of self-complacency. They who from long observation and experience are best qualified to judge of the scope and extent of my talents, (if I may be said to have any) have invariably affirmed that my excellence was satire; that if I had exercised myself in this unlovely branch of writing, I should have obtained reputation. If I really had this quality within me, it was kept where it ought to be—in a napkin. I never gave way to it but in the circumstance above detailed, and in a very few other instances. One was to expose the imbecility of an otherwise truly amiable man. He had considerable talents, some learning, an exquisite taste for music, and most agreeable powers of conversation; but he permitted himself to be hen-pecked by a crabbed old landlady, with whom he boarded, and made himself ridiculous, by the obsequiousness with which he submitted to her caprices. I introduced them in an Amœbæan Eclogue, in which their characters, peculiarities, and foibles, were so strongly and happily delineated, that every hearer was impressed with the truth of the resemblance, and delighted with the vivacity of the composition. The other essay was far more important, was studied with care, artfully contrived, and elaborately finished. A man who was my senior in years, and superior in station, had treated me ill, had provoked my resentment, not by one solitary act of oppression, but by numerous marks of enmity and persecution. He had some strong and striking peculiarities and foibles; he had made himself obnoxious in various places of residence, by his insolence of temper, by engaging in personal animosities and squabbles, and by various demonstrations of an arbitrary and tyrannical disposition. To this person I addressed a letter from his Satanic Majesty, thanking him for the services he had rendered the diabolical empire, as exemplified in various overt acts at different places, which I circumstantially detailed and described.