beauties of nature, which forms a leading trait in the Poetic
character: and on this occasion he gave full reins to those
reveries of the imagination, of the delight of which a Poet only
is sensible. His lines on Wilford Church Yard show the melancholy
tone of his mind; and those Verses, as well as his "Ode to
Disappointment," of which no praise would be too extravagant,
appear to have been written, on learning from his mother, before
he left Wilford, that the efforts made to place him at Cambridge
had failed. It was evidently to this circumstance, which for the
time blighted his aspirations, that he alluded, when he says he
was,

"From Hope's summit hurl'd."

His remark to his mother on this occasion evinced, nevertheless,
great energy of mind. His complaints were confined to verse, for
the disappointment had no other effect upon his conduct than to
induce him to apply to his studies with unprecedented vigour,
that, since he was to revert to the law as a profession, he might
not be, as he observed, "a _mediocre_ attorney." He read regularly
from five in the morning until some time after midnight, and
occasionally passed whole nights without lying down; and the
entreaties, even when accompanied by the tears of his mother,
that he would not thus destroy his health, did not induce him to
relax his zeal.

Symptoms of consumption, the disease to which he ultimately became
a victim, and which he designates, in one of his many allusions to
it, as