230 HENRY KIEKE WSlTE*S REMAIN'S. 



I am provided with £30 per annum ; and while thingt 

 go on so prosperously as they do now, I can command £20 

 or £30 more from my friends, and this, in all probability, 

 until I take my degree. The friends to whom I allude 

 are my mother and brother. 



My mother has, for these five years past, kept a 

 boarding school in Nottingham ; and, so long as her 

 school continues in its present state, she can supply me 

 with £15 or £20 per annum, without inconvenience ; but 

 should she die (and her health is, I fear, but infirm), that 

 resource will altogether fail. Still, I think, my prospect ia 

 so good as to preclude any anxiety on my part ; and per- 

 haps my income will be more than adequate to my Avants, 

 as I shall be a Sizar of St John's, where the College 

 emoluments are more than commonly large. 



In this situation of my atFairs you will perhaps agree 

 with me in thinking, that a subscription for a volume of 

 poems will not be necessary ; and, certainly, that measure 

 is one which will be better avoided, if it may be. I have 

 lately looked over what poems I have by me in manuscript, 

 and find them more numerous than I expected ; but 

 many of them would perhaps be styled mopish, and maw- 

 kish, and even muanthropic, in the language of the 

 world ; though from the latter sentiment, I am sure I 

 can say, no one is more opposite than I am. These 

 poems, therefore, will never see the light, as, from a 

 teacher of that word which gives all strength to the 

 feeble, more fortitude and Christian philosophy may, 

 with justice, be expected than they display. The re- 

 mainder of my verses would not possess any great in- 

 terest : mere description is often mere nonsense : and I 

 have acquired a strange habit, whenever I do point out 

 a train of moral sentiments from the contemplation of a 

 picture, to give it a gloomy and querulous cast, when 

 there is nothing in the occasion but what ought to in- 

 spire joy and gratitude. I have one poem,* however, 

 of some length, which I shall preserve ; and I have 

 another of considerable magnitude in design, "but of 

 which only a part is written, which I am fairly at a loss I* 



* Time, page 29, is probably the poem alluded to. i 



