the most anxious solicitude for their welfare, offering his advice
on spiritual affairs with impressive earnestness, and indicating,
in every letter of his voluminous correspondence, the greatest
consideration for their feelings and happiness. For the last six
years he deemed himself marked out for the service of his Maker,
not like the member of a convent, whose duties consist only in
prayer, but in the exercise of that philanthropy and practical
benevolence which ought to adorn every parish priest. To qualify
himself properly for the holy office, he subjected his mind to the
severest discipline; and his letters display a rational piety, and
an enlightened view of religious obligations, that confer much
greater honour upon his name, than his Poetical pieces, whether as
proofs of talent, or of the qualities of his heart.

Such was Henry Kirke White as he appeared to others; but there are
minuter traits of character which no observer can catch, and which
the possessor must himself delineate. Though early impressed with
melancholy, it was not of a misanthropic nature; and while despair
and disappointment were preying on his heart, he was all sweetness
and docility to others. A consciousness of the possession of
abilities, and of being capable of better things than those which
he seemed destined to perform, gives to some of his productions the
appearance of discontent, and of having overrated his pretensions.
He was, like many youthful Poets, too fond of complaining of
fortune, of supposing himself neglected, and of comparing his
humble lot with those situations for which he believed himself
qualified; but these were the lucubrations of his earliest years,
before he found friends to foster his talents. So far, indeed,
from having reason to lament the indifference of others to his
merits, his life affords one of the most striking examples in the