If thus untimely fell he who, of all the literary associates of Dr. Burney, had attained the most prosperous lot, who shall marvel that untimely should be the fate of the most unfortunate of his Parnassian friends, Christopher Smart? who, high in literary genius, though in that alone, had a short time previously, through turns of fortune, and concurrences of events, wholly different in their course from those which had undermined the vital powers of Dr. Hawkesworth, paid as prematurely the solemn debt relentlessly claimed by that dread accomptant-general, Death!—of all alike the awful creditor!—and paid it as helplessly the victim of substantial, as Dr. Hawkesworth was that of shadowy, disappointment.
With failure at the root of every undertaking, and abortion for the fruit of every hope, Kit Smart finished his suffering existence in the King’s Bench
[Pg 280]
prison; where he owed to a small subscription, of which Dr. Burney was at the head, a miserable little pittance beyond the prison allowance; and where he consumed away the blighted remnant of his days, under the alternate pressure of partial aberration of intellect, and bacchanalian forgetfulness of misfortune.
His learning and talents, which frequently, in his youth, had been crowned with classical laurels at the University of Cambridge, had seemed to prognosticate a............