however, and alarming seizures, continued to increase both in intensity and frequency, until at length, on the 13th of August, at the age of eighty-one, a calm and peaceful death closed his earthly trials. He died at Chelsea Hospital, under the roof of his fatherin-law, Sir George Anson, then the LieutenantGovernor, whose friendship had contributed so much to the social happiness of his waning years. His intellect to the very last remained unclouded, as was shown no less by the sprightliness that adorned his conversation, than by the retentiveness of his memory, and that readiness of recollection with which he brought forth its stored-up treasures in the papers that follow. Lastly, the earnest simplicity of his religious fervour was evinced to the very close of his life, in the prayers composed by him on completing his seventy-seventh and seventy-eighth birthdays, and by many other such devotional exercises. NOTICE. THE reader, about to peruse the last productions of an old favourite, is earnestly requested to bear in mind, that the following papers were completed only just before the death of their lamented author, and were consequently deprived of the benefit of his own final revision. THE DAY-DREAMER; OR, A SERIES OF PAPERS ON MEN, MANNERS, AND THINGS, "Why do you publish? There are no rewards Of fame or profit when the world grows weary. I ask, in turn, Why do you play at cards? Why drink? Why read? To make some hour less dreary. It occupies me to turn back regards On what I've seen or ponder'd, sad or cheery; And what I write I cast upon the stream, To swim or sink ;-I've had, at least, my dream." Don Juan, xiv. 11. "I have chosen those subjects wherein I take human life to be most concerned, and which are of most common use, or most necessary knowledge; and wherein, though I may not be able to inform men more than they know, yet I may, perhaps, give them the occasion to consider more than they do."-SIR WM. TEMPLE: Of Health and Long Life. I was always a day-dreamer. Some of my friends dignify me with the designation of a Contemplative Man; but I never realised that character. I never, like the cherub in Milton, "Soar'd on golden wing, Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne." Yet, from my earliest youth, (by which, I mean, my absolute boyhood,) I could, and can still, doze away the minutes at my window, with no other occupation than watching the clouds. Nay, when it is not damp, (for, as my man John says, I be mortal subject to the rheumatizes,) I am still fond of basking in the sun on the grass. I did so as a child, and was often found, as was said of Orlando, "like a dropt acorn under an oak." It has been held, I know not with what truth, that to love solitude and a reverie, is a mark of genius. If so, I am, and was from my early days, one of the greatest geniuses in the world. For I was frequently discovered, lost in thought (though to have told what the thought was would have been difficult), on a tombstone in the churchyard, or riding across the boughs of a yew tree which overhung it. There I was, always alone; for though boys are fond of climbing, they do not like it, as I did, for the sake of a daydream without interruption. This dreaming, however, sometimes cost me a flogging; for my first school was on the borders of a forest, and its concealments were so inviting to my humour, that I not unfrequently played truant in order to enjoy the meditation they prompted. Here, though I could hardly construe him, I was delighted to think myself Horace: "Sicut meus est mos, Nescio quid meditans nugarum, et totus in illis."* * According to my custom, meditating, wholly absorbed, on I know not what trifles. |