150 ADVICE TO CONTRIBUTORS. 



painful reality. For days and weeks, with a curiosity incident to youth, 

 I sauntered about, led on by the beauty and variety of its streets, 

 squares, and public ])uiluings. In the crowd of fashionable equipages, 

 through which as a street spectator I moved during the day, I forgot 

 the misery of my own condition : but at evening, when returning from 

 those scenes, the loneliness of my situation was most appalling. The 

 living panorama of faces which was constantly before my eyes during 

 the day, afibrded ample facilities for disposing of all the useless 

 time which I had on my hands, and which, with the exception of the 

 intervals usually set apart for dress and meals, composed the entire day. 

 As night closed in upon me, my thoughts, which were abroad all day, 

 now centered ujion myself, and I fancied that I alone was the special 

 object of Divine wrath, and whilst all others were laughing over the 

 occurrences of the day, or forgetting them in the tumult of dissipation, 

 I was doomed to my own painful reflections in my little back room — I 

 forget how many pair of stairs up — in the vicinity of that terra incognita 

 north of the New Road. I bad often all but come to the silly resolu- 

 tion of ending this state of things, even with a " bare bodkin" — a resolu- 

 tion which, I fear, nineteen-twentieths of the young men who embark 

 upon the dangerous sea of a London speculating life, without some 

 friendly direction, often think of. Thanks to the kindness of a good- 

 natured old man, with whom I lodged, I was left as little to my own 

 reflections as the pressing calls of a large family would admit. It did 

 not require much ingenuity to discover, that the occupier of a small back 

 bedroom was not overburdened with cash. From an impression of this 

 kind, this good old man repeatedly pressed on me many little attentions^ 

 He allowed me the use of his little stock of books, which, though not 

 very recherche, still had some curiosities among them. There was a 

 collection of stray magazines here, which first fixed my attention. The 

 ephemeral nature of monthly periodicals, with perhaps an innate con- 

 viction that there was nothing in me which could fairly lay claim to 

 greater longevity, directed all my eflbrts to this particular department. 



Though I had yet figured in no other character than as an occasional 

 contributor to a weekly newspaper, I had the vanity, like all young con- 

 tributors, to suppose that I could infuse a degree of point and humour 

 into any subject. My first essay was a love tale. I brought to its 

 composition such qualities as I thought must succeed. I was young, 

 which of itself is alone suflTicient to people the imagination with all 

 manner of fairies and fancies, and somewhat also of the disposition 

 of the sentimental tourist, that a man who had not a sort of aflfec- 

 tion for the whole sex, could never love one as he ought ; so you may 

 judge, that there was no parsimony of praise or perfumery. My periods 

 were long, straggling collections of rambling, romantic expressions, 

 stuck full of poetic effusions, which had about them manifest traces of 

 having more than once served the office of some extravagant German 

 romance-maker. In all the interviews which I eflected between my lovers, 

 I endeavoured as much as possible to make them deviate from the com- 

 mon ordinary mode which simple, unaffected nature invariably pursues. 

 Nature, in my tale, had little to do ; to adhere to her unerring rules 

 would argue a poverty of genius, which I was desirous to avoid. It 

 may be easily imagined, that my tale was returned, with a note expres- 



