MEMOIR OF 1)1! WK1GHT. J) 



a letter addressed to his father, on the eve of his de- 

 parture from Edinburgh, in which he enumerates, with 

 scrupulous minuteness, the various periods of his resi- 

 dence in his uncle's family, and combats, with great 

 earnestness, the impression on his father's mind that 

 his uncle would decline any farther remuneration. He 

 quotes an observation which had fallen from his aunt, 

 soon after his going to Edinburgh in 1756 ; " just as 

 if she had been getting great board wages and 'pren- 

 tice-fee for him," which he says he had never been able 

 to forget. This, indeed, is the only feeling of bitter- 

 ness which can be traced through all his early corres- 

 pondence ; " and I am resolved," he says, " if God 

 spare me in life and health, that they shall have it." 



He embarked at Leith on board a tender, with a 

 convoy of merchantmen, in company with seven other 

 students of medicine, who were proceeding, like him, 

 to push their way in the world. On their arrival at the 

 mouth of the Thames, they were put ashore on the 

 coast of Essex, and appear to have felt some of those 

 difficulties and extortions which the youthful and inex- 

 perienced are so liable to encounter on their first visit 

 to the metropolis. Mr Wright, on parting with his 

 fellow adventurers, proceeded to the house of an elder 

 brother, the son of his father by a former marriage, and 

 appears to have met with a kind and cordial reception. 

 His passage had been tedious and comfortless ; and, al- 

 lowing himself to be infected with the fears of some of 

 his companions, as to the success of their enterprize, 

 he seems to have reached his destination under the in- 

 fluence of a feeling of dejection, which was evidently 



