Accommodations of others. Many troublesome and expensive offices I have undertaken to do good to Men, and ever social and free have I been in my demeanour, easy and smooth in my address; and therefore, I trust that, whenever I am removed from this horizon, it will be from a dark and cloudy state, to that of joy, light, and full Revelation. This felicitates my every day, let what will happen from without. This supports me under every Affliction, and enables me to mentain a habit of satisfaction and joy in the general course of my Life.

The things of my Childhood are not worth setting down, and therefore I commence my Life from the first month of the

seventeenth year of my Age, when I was sent to the University, and entred a pensioner, tho' I had a larger yearly allowance than any fellow-commoner of my College. I was resolved to read there, and determined to improve my natural faculties to the utmost of my power. Nature, I was sensible, had bestowed no genius on me. This and understanding are only the privilege of extraordinary persons; who receive from Heaven the happy conjunction of qualities, that they may execute great and noble designs, and acquire the highest pitch of excellence in the profession they turn to; if they will take the pains to perfect the united qualities by art, and carefully avoid running into caprice and paradox; the Rocks on which many a Genius has split. But then I had a tolerable share of natural understanding, and from my infancy was teachable, and always attentive to the directions of good sense. This I knew might rise with some labour, to a half merit, tho' it could never gain immortality upon any account: and this was enough for me. I wanted only to acquire such degrees of perfections as lay within the small sphere nature had chalked out for me.

To this purpose I devoted my college-life to books, and for five years that I resided in the University, conversed so much with the dead that I had very little intercourse with the living. So totally had letters

engaged my mind, that I was but little affected towards most other things. Walking and Musick were my favorite recreations, and almost the only ones I delighted in. I had hardly a thought at that time of the foolish choises and pursuits of men; those fatal choices and pursuits, which are owing to false judgments, and to a habit of acting precipitantly, without examining the fancies and appetites; and therefore, very rarely went into the pleasures and diversions which men of fortune in