called a clever fellow, even though it should never reach my ears--a
poor Negro driver--or perhaps a victim to that inhospitable clime, and
gone to the world of spirits! I can truly say that, poor and unknown
as I then was, I had pretty nearly as high an idea of myself and of my
works as I have at this moment, when the public has decided in their
favour. It ever was my opinion that the mistakes and blunders, both in
a rational and religious point of view, of which we see thousands daily
guilty, are owing to their ignorance of themselves. To know myself had
been all along my constant study. I weighed myself alone; I balanced
myself with others. I watched every means of information, to see how
much ground I occupied as a man and as a poet; I studied assiduously
Nature's design in my formation--where the lights and shades in my
character were intended. I was pretty confident my poems would meet
with some applause; but at the worst, the roar of the Atlantic would
deafen the voice of censure, and the novelty of West Indian scenes make
me forget neglect. I threw off six hundred copies, of which I had got
subscriptions for about three hundred and fifty. My vanity was highly
gratified by the reception I met with from the public; and besides I
pocketed, all expenses deducted, nearly twenty pounds. This sum came
very seasonably, as I was thinking of indenting myself for want of
money to procure my passage. As soon as I was master of nine guineas,
the price of wafting me to the torrid zone, I took a steerage passage
in the first ship that was to sail from the Clyde, for

Hungry ruin had me in the wind.


I had been for some days skulking from covert to covert, under all the
terrors of a jail; as some ill-advised people had uncoupled the
merciless pack of the law at my heels. I had taken the last farewell