Printed by Robert Armstrong. SOLD BY A. CONSTABLE & CO. AND PETER HILL, J. DUNCAN, GLASGOW. 1815. an innate principle which controls all his motions. He cannot display his talents, nor compete with rivals, nor seize advantages that are within his reach. He regrets his own backwardness, and envies the impudent, and verges to discontent. Pained and mortified at slight improprieties of speech and behaviour into which he has fallen, he declines invitations, and would rather be alone. Like Rousseau, he imagines the felicities of a solitary savage, and sympathises with Cowper the poet, who envied a poor woman in rags, whom he saw from his window, while dressing for a visit, because she had not to dress and to dine in company. Through bashfulness his projects of love, and ambition, and A fame, and of shining in company have failed. He listens to the syren song of solitude. 66 66 Thou shalt gain Immunity from all the various ills 66 He wanders in thick woods, or by the side of a river, or on the sea shore, indulging reverie; and lies whole days in bed, brooding over what Bacon calls idols of the den, “ For "every one of us has his peculiar den or cavern, which refracts and corrupts the 'light of nature, according to our respective "tempers." The shades darken, and he begins to despond: when conscious of a fault, he views it in the worst light, despises himself, and suffers anguish: that anguish recurs afterward by the slightest association, and sometimes without any, in consequence of having once made a deep impression. Deep impressions of this kind are stored in the mind, they mutually increase each other, and at last fill up the measure of wretchedness. He has nothing to do but to weep, his sor * Progress of Melancholy by Professor Richardson. |