Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

poem continued to come by every post. In the mean time, Mrs. T***, having on his account lost her friends and business, was often in distresses, and used to send for me, and borrow what money I could spare to help to alleviate them. I I grew fond of her company, and being at that time under no religious restraint, and taking advantage of my

Nay, who dare shine, if not in virtue's cause?
That sole proprietor of just applause.

"Ye restless men! who pant for letter'd praise,
With whom would you consult to gain the bays?
With those great authors whose fam'd works read?
"Tis well; go, then, consult the laurell'd shade,

you

What answer will the laurell'd shade return?
Hear it and tremble; he commands you burn
The noblest works, his envy'd genius writ,
That boasts of naught more excellent than wit.
If this be true, as 'tis a truth most dread,
Wo to the page which has not that to plead !
Fontaine and Chaucer dying, wish'd unwrote
The sprightliest efforts of their wanton thought:
Sidney and Waller, brightest sons of fame,
Condemn'd the charm of ages to the flame."

"Thus ends your courted fame-does lucre then,
The sacred thirst of gold, betray your pen?
In prose 'tis blameable, in verse 'tis worse,
Provokes the Muse, extorts Apollo's curse;
His sacred influence never should be sold;
'Tis arrant simony to sing for gold;
"Tis immortality should fire your mind:
Scorn a less paymaster than all mankind.”

YOUNG, Vol. III. Epist. II. p. 70.

importance to her, I attempted to take some liberties with her, (another erratum) which she repulsed, with a proper degree of resentment. She wrote to Ralph and acquainted him with my conduct; this occasioned a breach between us; and when he returned to London, he let me know he considered all the obligations he had been under to me as annulled: from which I concluded I was never to expect his repaying the money I had lent him, or that I had advanced for him. This however was of little consequence, as he was totally unable; and by the loss of his friendship, I found myself relieved from a heavy burden. I now began to think of getting a little before-hand, and expecting better employment, I left Palmer's to work at Watts's, (near Lincoln's Inn Fields) a still greater printing-house. Here I continued all the rest of my stay in London.

At my first admission into the printing-house I took to working at press, imagining I felt a want of the bodily exercise I had been used to in America, where press-work is mixed with the composing. I drank only water; the other workmen, near 50 in number, were great drinkers of beer. On occasion I carried up and down stairs a large form of types in each hand, when others carried but one in both hands; they wondered to see from this and several instances, that the Water-American, as they called me, was stronger than themselves who drank strong beer! We had an ale

house boy, who attended always in the house to supply the workmen. My companion at the press drank every day a pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner; a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon about 6 o'clock, and another when he had done his day's work. I thought it a detestable custom; but it was necessary, he supposed, to drink strong beer that he might be strong to labor. I endeavored to convince him that the bodily strength afforded by beer, could only be in proportion to the grain or flour of the barley dissolved in the water of which it was made; that there was more flour in a pennyworth of bread, and therefore if he could eat that with a pint of water, it would give him more strength than a quart of beer. He drank on however, and had four or five shillings to pay out of his wages every Saturday night for that vile liquor; an expence I was free from. And thus these poor devils keep themselves always under.

Watts, after some weeks, desiring to have me in the composing-room, I left the pressmen; a new bien venu for drink, (being 5s.) was demanded of me by the compositors. I thought it an imposition, as I had paid one to the pressmen;, the master thought so too, and forbad my paying it. I stood out two or three weeks, was accordingly considered as an excommunicate, and had so many little pieces of private malice practised on

me, by mixing my sorts, transposing and breaking my matter, &c. &c. if ever I stept out of the room; and all ascribed to the chapel ghost, which they said ever haunted those not regularly admitted; that notwithstanding the master's protection, I found myself obliged to comply and pay the money; convinced of the folly of being on ill terms with those one is to live with continually. I was now on a fair footing with them, and soon acquired considerable influence. I proposed some reasonable alterations in their chapel' laws, and carried them against all opposition. From my example, a great many of them left their muddling breakfast of beer, bread, and cheese, finding they could with me be supplied from a neighboring house, with a large porringer of hot water-gruel, sprinkled with pepper, crumbled with bread, and a bit of butter in it, for the price of a pint of beer; viz. three-halfpence. This was a more comfortable as well as a cheaper breakfast, and kept their heads clearer. Those who continued sotting with their beer all day, were often, by not paying, out of credit at the alehouse, and used to make interest with me to get beer; their light, as they phrased it, being out. I watched the pay-table on Saturday night, and collected what I stood engaged for them, having to pay sometimes near

' A printing-house is always called a chapel, by the work

men.

thirty shillings a week on their accounts. This, and my being esteemed a pretty good riggite, that is a jocular verbal satirist, supported my consequence in the society. My constant attendance, (I never making a St. Monday) recommended me to the master; and my uncommon quickness at composing occasioned my being put upon work of dispatch, which was generally better paid. So I went on now very agreably.

[ocr errors]

My lodgings in Little Britain being too remote, I found another in Duke Street, opposite to the Romish Chapel. It was up three pair of stairs backwards, at an Italian warehouse. A widow lady kept the house; she had a daughter, and a maid servant, and a journeyman who attended the warehouse, but lodged abroad. After sending to inquire my character at the house where I last lodged, she agreed to take me in at the same rate, 38. 6d. per week; cheaper, as she said, from the protection she expected in having a man to lodge in the house. She was a widow, an elderly woman; had been bred a Protestant, being a clergyman's daughter, but was converted to the Catholic religion by her husband, whose memory she much revered; had lived much among people of distinction, and knew a thousand anecdotes of them as far back as the time of Charles the Second. She was lame in her knees with the gout, and therefore seldom stirred out of her room; so sometimes wanted company; and hers was so

« AnteriorContinuar »