io MY LIFE 



paratively easy, I leave the answer to my young reader's ingen- 

 uity : — 



" A Riddle. 



" Doctor, Doctor, tell me can you cure 

 Or say what 'tis I ail? I'm feverish sure! 

 Sometimes I'm very hot, and sometimes warm, 

 Sometimes again I'm cool, yet feel no harm. 

 Part bird, part beast, and vegetable part, 

 Cut, slash'd, and wounded, yet I feel no smart 

 I have a skin, which though but thin and slender, 

 Yet proves to me a powerful defender. 

 When stript of that, so desperate is my case, 

 I'm oft devoured in half an hour's space." 



One more enigma in my father's writing is interesting 

 because founded on a custom common in my youth, but which 

 has now wholly passed away. 



" Kitty, a fair but frozen maid, 



Kindled a flame I still deplore, 

 The hood-wink'd Boy was called in aid 



So fatal to my suit before. 

 Tell me, ye fair, this urchin's name 



Who still mankind annoys; 

 Cupid and he are not the same, 

 Though each can raise or quench a flame, 



And both are hood-wink'd boys." 



My sister told me (and from what followed it was pretty 

 certainly the case) that while he remained a bachelor my 

 father lived up to his income or very nearly so ; and from what 

 we know of his after life did not imply any extravangance or 

 luxurious habits, but simply that he enjoyed himself in London 

 and the country, living at the best inns or boarding-houses, 

 and taking part in the amusements of the period, as a fairly 

 well-to-do, middle-class gentleman. 



After the marriage in 1807 he lived in Marylebone, and his 

 ordinary household expenses, of course, increased ; and as by 

 1810 he had two children and the prospects of a large family, 

 he appears to have felt the necessity of increasing his income. 



