Not contented with occupation under which an ordinary man would have
sunk, he undertook, on the 29th of May, 1762, to publish the Briton, a
weekly paper, in defence of the Earl of Bute, on that day appointed
first commissioner of the treasury; and continued it till the 12th of
February in the ensuing year, about two months before the retirement of
that nobleman from office. By his patron he complained that he was not
properly supported; and he incurred the hostility of Wilkes, who had
before been his staunch friend, but who espoused the party in opposition
to the Minister, by an attack, the malignance of which no provocation
could have justified.

In 1763, his name was prefixed, in conjunction with that of Francklin,
the Greek professor at Cambridge, and translator of Sophocles and
Lucian, to a version of the works of Voltaire, in twenty-seven volumes.
To this he contributed, according to his own account, a small part,
including all the notes historical and critical. To the Modern Universal
History, which was published about the same time, he also acknowledged
himself to be a contributor, though of no very large portion.

His life had hitherto been subjected to the toil and anxiety of one
doomed to earn a precarious subsistence by his pen. Though designed by
nature for the light and pleasant task of painting the humours and
follies of men, he had been compelled to undergo the work of a literary
drudge. Though formed to enjoy the endearments of friendship, his
criticisms had made those who were before indifferent to him his
enemies; and his polities, those whom he had loved, the objects of his
hatred. The smile, which the presence of his mother for a moment
recalled, had almost deserted his features. Still we may suppose it to
have lightened them up occasionally, in those hours of leisure when he