2l6 



CHAPTER VIII. 



Harsh poverty ! 



That moth, which frets the sacred robe of wit, 

 Thousands of noble spirits blunts, that else 

 Had spun rich threads of fancy from the brain : 

 But they are souls too much sublimed to thrive. 



WILLIAM CHAMBERLAYNE. 



IN the before-going Journals which have been set forth 

 so fully, and perhaps even wearisomely, a very good 

 means of gauging both the general course of life, and 

 to some extent the character of their author is afforded. 

 The reader must remember that he had never received 

 any education except as a stripling at the Gravesend 

 Free School, and all he afterwards acquired had come 

 by his own unaided powers of observation. But these 

 powers had enabled him to amass no inconsiderable 

 knowledge upon many subjects with which the public 

 mind was not then so conversant as at present; indeed it 

 would be an act of injustice to estimate his attainments 

 according to the lights and advantages of this day, 

 when the diffusion of books and other means of 

 popular instruction brings knowledge almost to every 

 threshold. He was looked up to by many of the 

 poorer of his townsfolk much as Goldsmith writes of 

 the Schoolmaster : 



