daughter.  In her short visit to Lausanne, the wit, the beauty, the erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme of universal applause.  The report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity; I saw and loved.  At Crassy and Lausanne I indulged my dream of felicity, but on my return to England I discovered that my father would not hear of this alliance.  After a painful struggle I yielded.  I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son; my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life.

III.—­To England and Authorship

In the spring of the year 1758 my father signified his permission that I should immediately return home.  The whole term of my absence from England was four years ten months and fifteen days.  The only person in England whom I was impatient to see was my Aunt Porten, the affectionate guardian of my tender years.  It was not without some awe and apprehension that I approached my father; but he received me as a man and a friend.  All constraint was banished at our first interview, and afterwards we continued on the same terms of easy and equal politeness.

Of the next two years, I passed about nine months in London, and the rest in the country.  My progress in the English world was in general left to my own efforts, and those efforts were languid and slow.  But my love of knowledge was inflamed and gratified by the command of books, and from the slender beginning in my father’s study I have gradually formed a numerous and select library, the foundation of my works, and the best comfort of my life both at home and abroad.  In this place I may allow myself to observe that I have never bought a book from a motive of ostentation, and that every volume before it was deposited on the shelf was either read or sufficiently examined.

The design of my first work, the “Essay on the Study of Literature,” was suggested by a refinement of vanity—­the desire of justifying and praising the object of a favourite pursuit.  I was ambitious of proving that all the faculties of the mind may be exercised and displayed by the study of ancient literature.

My father fondly believed that the proof of some literary talents might introduce me to public notice.  The work was printed and published under the title “Essai sur l’Etude de la Litterature.”  It is not surprising that a work of which the style and sentiments were so totally foreign should have been more successful abroad than at home.  I was delighted by the warm commendations and flattering predictions of the journals of France and Holland.  In England it was received with cold indifference, little read, and speedily forgotten.  A small impression was slowly dispersed.

IV.—­Soldiering and Travel