I began life unluckily by being the wag and bright fellow at school;
and I had the farther misfortune of becoming the great genius of my
native village.
My father was a country attorney, and intended that I
should succeed him in business; but I had too much genius to study, and
he was too fond of my genius to force it into the traces. So I fell
into bad company and took to bad habits. Do not mistake me. I mean that
I fell into the company of village literati and village blues, and took
to writing village poetry.
It was quite the fashion in the village to be literary. We had a little
knot of choice spirits who assembled frequently together, formed
ourselves into a Literary, Scientific, and Philosophical Society, and
fancied ourselves the most learned philos in existence. Every one had a
great character assigned him, suggested by some casual habit or
affectation. One heavy fellow drank an enormous quantity of tea; rolled
in his armchair, talked sententiously, pronounced dogmatically, and was
considered a second Dr. Johnson; another, who happened to be a curate,
uttered coarse jokes, wrote doggerel rhymes, and was the Swift of our
association. Thus we had also our Popes and Goldsmiths and Addisons,
and a blue-stocking lady, whose drawing-room we frequented, who
corresponded about nothing with all the world, and wrote letters with
the stiffness and formality of a printed book, was cried up as another
Mrs. Montagu.
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