AT GREENWICH liii 



in his life, for sorry surroundings, unsuitable society, and work 

 that leaned to the mechanical. ' Sunday/ says he, ' I generally 

 visit some friends in town and seem to swim in clearer water, 

 but the dirty green seems all the dirtier when I get back. 

 Luckily I am fond of my profession, or I could not stand this 

 life.' It is a question in my mind, if he could have long con- 

 tinued to stand it without loss. ' We are not here to be happy, 

 but to be good,' quoth the young philosopher ; but no man had 

 a keener appetite for happiness than Fleeming Jenkin. There 

 is a time of life besides when, apart from circumstances, few 

 men are agreeable to their neighbours and still fewer to them- 

 selves ; and it was at this stage that Fleeming had arrived, later 

 than common and even worse provided. The letter from which 

 I have quoted is the last of his correspondence with Frank Scott, 

 and his last confidential letter to one of his own sex. ' If you 

 consider it rightly,' he wrote long after, ' you will find the want 

 of correspondence no such strange want in men's friendships. 

 There is, believe me, something noble in the metal which 

 does not rust though not burnished by daily use.' It is well 

 said ; but the last letter to Frank Scott is scarcely of a noble 

 metal. It is plain the writer has outgrown his old self, yet 

 not made acquaintance with the new. This letter from a busy 

 youth of three and twenty, breathes of seventeen : the sickening 

 alternations of conceit and shame, the expense of hope in 

 vacuo, the lack of friends, the longing after love ; the whole 

 world of egoism under which youth stands groaning, a voluntary 

 Atlas. 



With Fleeming this disease was .never seemingly severe. 

 The very day before this (to me) distasteful letter, he had 

 written to Miss Bell of Manchester in a sweeter strain ; I do 

 not quote the one, I quote the other ; fair things are the best. 

 4 1 keep my own little lodgings,' he writes, ' but come up every 

 night to see mamma ' (who was then on a visit to London) ' if 

 not kept too late at the works ; and have singing lessons 

 once more, and sing " Donne I' amor e e scaltro pargoletto " ; and 

 think and talk about you ; and listen to mamma's projects de 

 Stowting. Everything turns to gold at her touch, she's a fairy 



