259
receive from his publishers were amply sufficient to
maintain him in a respectable manner, if managed
with prudence and discretion; but his unfortunate
peculiarity of temper, and extravagant desire of sup-
porting a style of living which nothing but a liberal
and certain income would admit of, frequently re-
duced him to distress, and finally to the jail.    He
might have long remained in confinement but that
some worthy friends interceded; and, on their sug-
gestion, he engaged himself to write a History of
Scotland, for which Messrs. Morrisons of Perth were
to pay him at the rate of three guineas a sheet; his
creditors, at the same time, agreeing to release him
for fifteen shillings in the pound, to be secured on
two-thirds of the copyright.   Before this arrangement
was fully concluded, melancholy to relate, nearly the
whole of the first volume of the History of Scotland
was written in jail.    It appeared in 1793, and one
volume of the work was published every year suc-
cessively,   until   the   whole   six  were   completed.
During that period he went on a tour through the
western parts of Scotland, and from notes taken on
the road he compiled a work in two volumes octavo,
called A Journey through the Western Parts of Scot-
land.    He also gave to the world, A Topographical
Account of Scotland, A New and Complete System of
Universal Geography, A Memoir of Robert Burns,
besides many contributions to magazines and other
periodical! works.    He was also engaged by Sir John
Sinclair to superintend the publication of his Statis-
tical Account of Scotland.    By this time he had ac-
quired great facility in the use of his pen, and being
extremely vain of the versatility of his genius, he
flattered himself there was no range in literature,
however high, that was not within the scope of his
powers.    Impressed with these ideas, he made an
attempt at dramatic composition, and having some
influence with the manager of the theatre, he con-
trived to get introduced on the stage an after-piece,
written, as he says, in great haste, called St. Kilda
in Edinburgh; or, News from  Camperdmvn;—but
as if to verify the adage, "Things done in a haste are
never done well," so it turned out with St. Kilda.
Being devoid of everything like interest, and violat-
ing in many parts the common rules of decency, it
was justly condemned before it reached the second
act.
Our author's vanity must have on this occasion re-
ceived a deep wound, being present in the house at
the time;—overwhelmed with disappointment, he
flew to his lodgings and confined himself to bed for
several days. Still blinded by vanity in the midst
of his mental sufferings, he imputed the failure of his
play to the machinations of his enemies. He there-
fore determined on ''shaming the fools" by print-
ing it. It is needless to say, it neither sold nor was
talked of. The most amusing part of this affair was
the mode in which he persisted in forcing his pro-
duction on the public. We shall present our readers
with an extract from his highly inflated preface. It
commences with a quotation from Sterne's Tristram
Shandy. "The learned Bishop Hall tells us in one
of his decades, at the end of his Divine Meditations,
that it is an abominable thing for a man to commend
himself, and verily I think so; and yet, on the other
hand, when a thing is executed in a masterly kind of
fashion, which thing is not likely to be found out, I
think it is fully as abominable that a man should lose
the honour of it. This is exactly my situation." In
the following he quotes Swift:—"When a true genius
appears in the world, you may know him by this
sign—that the dunces are all in confederacy against
him." Yet, though blinded by folly and weighed
down by distress, still his filial affections were alive,
and, although he could not afford his parents any
permanent support, he seemed anxious to promote
the education of their family; which the following
extracts from his letters will sufficiently prove:—
"I hope by living more pious and carefully, by
managing my income frugally, and appropriating a
part of it to the service of you and my sisters, and by
living with you in future at least a third part of the
year, to reconcile your affections more entirely to me,
and give you more comfort than I have yet done.
Oh forget and forgive my follies; look on me as a
son who will anxiously strive to comfort and please
you, and, after all your misfortunes, to render the
evening of your days as happy as possible." And
again—"We will endeavour," says he, "to settle
our dear Grace comfortably in life, and to educate
our dear little Betty and Mary aright." He brought
his eldest brother, John, to Edinburgh, to study at
the university, with the view of his entering the
church; he was a youth of promising abilities, but of
weak constitution, and sank into an early grave in
1790. As the other children increased in years,
faithful to his promise, he brought his favourite sister,
Mary, to live with him in Edinburgh to complete her
education. His irregularities, and consequent em-
barrassments, made her situation in town anything
but an enviable one. Her mortifications, however,
in this life were not of long duration, as she died at
his lodgings in 1798. To a mind of his quick sensi-
bility this was a dreadful shock. Almost frantic
with grief at the loss he experienced, he gave him-
self up to the wildest despair: every unkind action
or word he made use of towards her rushed to his
distracted memory, until life itself was almost insup-
portable. Neither the sympathy of friends, nor the
consolations of religion, could mitigate his woes.
At the same time his means of subsistence became
every day more precarious; his literary labours were
ceasing to pay, so that, added to his other misfor-
tunes, starvation and a jail were hourly staring him
in the face. Shunning as much as possible all his
former companions, he might now be seen wander-
ing about the suburbs of the city, with wasted cheek
and sunken eye, a miserable victim of want and care.
By degrees, however, he was recalled to a better
state of mind, when, finding his views not likely to
succeed any longer in Scotland, he was induced to
go to London in 1799. For the first few years of
his residence there, it appears he found good employ-
ment, and his application to study being very great,
his profits and prospects were alike cheering. In a
letter written to his father about the time we are
speaking of, he says—
"My whole income, earned by full sixteen hours
a day of close application to reading, writing, ob-
servation, and study, is but very little more than three
hundred pounds a year. But this is sufficient to my
wants, and is earned in a manner which I know to
be the most useful and honourable—that is, by teach-
ing beneficial truths, and discountenancing vice and
folly more effectually and more extensively than I
could in any other way. This I am here always sure
to earn while I can give the necessary application;
and if I were able to execute more literary labour I
might readily obtain more money."
He for a time pursued his literary vocations with
an unwearied industry, and there was scarcely a pub-
lication then in London of any note but contained
some of his fugitive writings. He realized in con-
sequence a good income, but unfortunately for no
great length of time. His former bad habits returned,
and while money continued to flow in, he indulged
in the wildest extravagance. Wishing to be thought
an independent man of fortune, he would carry his