304 WILD SPORTS OF THE WEST. 



and in advance,' devoted to my accomplishments. 

 Never had man more profound contempt for trade and 

 traders than he at whose feet I was indoctrinated. He 

 turned his nose up at the weahhiest grocer in the ward ; 

 and was barely civil to a tobacconist who had a villa at 

 Pentonville, and was, moreover, first favourite for an 

 aldermanic gown. Such delinquency could not be over- 

 looked, and for his heretical opinions touching commerce 

 he was eventually ejected from Tooley Street But, 

 alas ! the mischief was done — ^the seed was already 

 sown — ^and, as after-experience proved, none of it had 

 fallen upon the way-side. 



" * In brevity I shall emulate the noble Roman,' quoth 

 Jack Falstaff ; and so shall I, so far as the autobiography 

 of my youth is concerned. I abominated business — ^was an 

 admirer of the Corsair and Lallah Rookh — ^was generally 

 given to inflammatory poetry — ^wrote fugitive pieces, 

 and vainly endeavoured to get them a corner in the 

 periodicals — quarrelled with my parents — was supported 

 in my rebellion by a romantic aunt — ^and when my 

 disinheritance was actually in legal train, was saved 

 by my parents quitting this world of care, which they 

 did within one short month, by the agency of a typhus 

 fever and two physicians. 



" Thus was I thrown upon the world at two-and- 

 twenty, with thirty thousand pounds. Need I say 

 that I abjured business instanter, and that the honoured 

 name of Dawkins disappeared from the list of dry- 

 salters ? For some years, none led a more peaceful 

 and literary Hfe ; and though this may appear a solecism, 

 nevertheless it is positively true. The rejection of 

 my early fugitives had chilled the metrical outbreakings 

 of my imagination. I had almost Cowper's sensibility 



