LETTERS. 197 



As you well know I am a carping critical little (fog, 

 you will not be surprised at my observing that there is 

 one figure in your last that savours rather of the ludi- 

 crous, when you talk of a " butterfly hopping from, book 

 to book." 



As to the something that I am to find out that is a per- 

 petual bar to your progress in knowledge, &c., I am in- 

 clined to think, Doctor, it is merely conceit. You fancy 

 that you cannot write a letter — you dread its idea ; you 

 conceive that a work of four volumes would require the 

 labours of a life to read through ; you persuade yourself 

 that you cannot retain what you read, and in de- 

 spair do not attempt to conquer these visionary impedi- 

 ments. Confidence, Neville, in one's own abilities, is a 

 sure forerunner (in similar circumstances with the pre- 

 sent) of success. As an illustration of this, I beg leave 

 to adduce the example of Pope, who had so high a sense, 

 in his youth or rather in his infancy, of his own capa- 

 city, that there was nothing of which, when once set 

 about it, he did not think himself capable; and, as Dr 

 Johnson has observed, the natural consequence of this 

 minute perception of his own powers, was his arriving 

 at as high a pitch of perfection as it was possible for a 

 man, with his few natural endowments, to attain. 

 * =ff * * 



When you wish to read Johnson's Lives of the Poets, 

 send for them : I have lately purchased them. I have 

 now a large library. My mother allows me ten pounds 

 per annum for clothes. I always dress in a respectable, 

 and even in a genteel manner, yet I can make much 

 less than this sum sufifice. My father generally gives 

 me one coat in a year, and I make two serve. I then 

 receive one guinea per annum for keeping my mother's 

 books ; one guinea per annum pocket money ; and by 

 other means I gain, perhaps, two guineas more per an- 

 num : so that I have been able to buy pretty many ; and 

 when you come home, you will find me in my study, 

 surrounded with books and papers. I am a perfect gar- 

 reteer : great part of my library however consists of 

 professional books. Have you read Burke on the 



