Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/160

451 seem from his writings of this period, he reflected with inexpressible heart-bitterness, on the high hopes from which he had fallen ; on the errors of moral conduct into which he had been hurried, by the ardour, and, in some measure, by the very generosity of his nature; on the disgrace and wretchedness into which he saw himself rapidly sinking; on the sorrow with which his misconduct oppressed the heart of his Jane; on the want and destitute misery in which it seemed probable that he must leave her and her infants; nor, amidst these agonizing reflections, did he fail to look, with indignation half invidious, half contemptuous, on those, who, with moral habits not more excellent than his, with powers of intellect far interior, yet basked in the sunshine of fortune, and were loaded with the wealth and honours of the world, while his follies could not obtain pardon, nor his wants an honourable supply. His wit became, from this time, more gloomily sarcastic; and his conversation and writings began to assume something of a tone of misanthropical malignity, by which they had not been before, in any eminent degree, distinguished. But, with all these failings, he was still that exalted mind which had raised itself above the depression of its original condition; with all the energy of the lion, pawing to set free his hinder limbs from the incumbent earth, he still appeared not less the archangel ruined.

What more remains there for me to relate? In Dumfries his dissipation became still more deeply habitual;4 he was here more exposed than in the country to be solicited to share the riot of the dissolute and the idle; foolish young men, such as writers' apprentices, young surgeons, merchants' clerks, and his brother excisemen, flocked eagerly about him, and from time to time pressed him to drink with them, that they might enjoy his wicked wit. His friend