How insignificant do all the joys,
The gaudes, and honours of the world appear!
How vain ambition!--Why has my wakeful lamp
Out watch'd the slow-paced night?--Why on the page,
The schoolman's labour'd page, have I employ'd
The hours devoted by the world to rest,
And needful to recruit exhausted nature?
Say, can the voice of narrow Fame repay
The loss of health? or can the hope of glory
Lend a new throb unto my languid heart,
Cool, even now, my feverish aching brow,
Relume the fires of this deep sunken eye,
Or paint new colours on this pallid cheek?"

What a picture of mental suffering does the following passage
present, and how impressive does it become when the fate of the
author is remembered:

"These feverish dews that on my temples hang,
This quivering lip, these eyes of dying flame;
These, the dread signs of many a secret pang--
These are the meed of him who pants for Fame!"

Like so many other ardent students, the night was his favourite
time for reading; and, dangerous as the habit is to health, what
student will not agree in his descriptions of the pleasures that
attend it?

"The night's my own, they cannot steal my night!
When evening lights her folding star on high,