this world of vanity. I am now bent on a higher errand than that of the attainment of poetical fame; poetry, in future, will be my relaxation, not my employment.—Adieu to literary ambition! 'You do not aspire to be prime minister,' said Mr. Robinson; 'you covet a far higher character —to be the humblest among those who minister to their Maker.'"

To the arguments of his friends on the impolicy of quitting a profession to which he had given so much of his time, and on the obstacles to the attainment of his wishes, he was impenetrable. His employers generously offered to cancel his articles as soon as he could show that his resources were likely to support him at the University. Friends arose as they became necessary, and more than one or two persons exerted themselves to promote his views; but his principal reliance was on the sale of a little volume of Poems, which, at the suggestion of Mr. Capel Lofft, he prepared for the press.

The history of an author's first book is always interesting, and Kirke White's was attended with unusual incidents. A novice in literature often imagines that it is important his work should be dedicated to some person of rank; and the Countess of Derby was applied to, who declined, on the ground that she never accepted a compliment of that nature. He then addressed the Duchess of Devonshire; and a letter, with the manuscript, was left at her house. The difficulty of obtaining access to her Grace proved so great, that more than one letter to his brother was written on the subject, in which he indignantly says, "I am cured of patronage hunting; as for begging patronage, I am tired to the soul of it, and shall give it up." Permission to inscribe the book to the Duchess was at length granted: the book came out in 1803; and a copy was transmitted to her, of which, however, no notice whatever was taken.

On the publication of the volume, a copy was sent to each Review, with a letter deprecatory of the severity of criticism, an act as ill judged as it was useless, since all that a young writer could properly say was to be found in the preface, in which he stated that his inducement to publish was, "the facilitation through its means of those studies which, from his earliest infancy, have been the principal objects of his ambition, and the increase of the capacity to pursue these inclinations, which may one day place him in an honourable station in the scale of society."

His feelings received a severe wound from the notice of his Poems in the Monthly Review, the writer of which, not satisfied with saying that the production did not "justify any 

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