He now obtained a recommendation to be private tutor to the children of a nobleman.  This nobleman was celebrated for the politeness of his manners and the elegance of his taste.  It was his boast and his ambition to be considered as the patron of men of letters.  With his prospect therefore in this connection, Mr. Godfrey was perfectly satisfied.  “I shall no longer,” said he, “be the slave of ignorance, and the victim of insensibility.  My talents perhaps point me a step higher than to the business of forming the minds of youth.  But, at least, the youth under my care are destined to fill the most conspicuous stations in future life.  If propitious fortune might have raised me to the character of a statesman; depressed by adversity, I may yet have the honour of moulding the mind, and infusing generosity into the heart, of a future statesman.  I have heard the second son of my patron celebrated for the early promises of capacity.  To unfold the springing germs of genius, to direct them in the path of general happiness, is an employment by no means unworthy of a philosopher.”

In this situation Mr. Godfrey however once more looked for pleasure, and found disappointment.  The nobleman had more the affectation of a patron, than any real enthusiasm in the cause of literature.  The abilities of Mr. Godfrey were universally acknowledged.  And so long as the novelty remained, he was caressed, honoured, and distinguished.  In a short time however, he was completely forgotten by the patron, in the hurry of dissipation, and the pursuits of an unbounded ambition.  His eldest care was universally confessed stupid and impracticable.  And in the younger he found nothing but the prating forwardness of a boy who had been flattered, without sentiment, and without meaning.  Her ladyship treated Mr. Godfrey with superciliousness, as an intruder at her lord’s table.  The servants caught the example, and showed him a distinction of neglect, which the exquisiteness of his sensibility would not permit him to despise.

Mortified, irritated, depressed, he now quitted his task half finished and threw himself upon the world.  “The present age,” said he, “is not an age in which talents are overlooked, and genius depressed.”  He had heard much of the affluence of writers, a Churchil, a Smollet, and a Goldsmith, who had depended upon that only for their support.  He saw the celebrated Dr. Johnson caressed by all parties, and acknowledged to be second to no man, whatever were his rank, however conspicuous his station.  Full of these ideas, he soon completed a production, fraught with the fire and originality of genius, pointed in its remarks, and elegant in its style.  He had now to experience vexations, of which he had before entertained no idea.  He carried his work from bookseller to bookseller, and was every where refused.  His performance was not seasoned to the times, he was a person that nobody knew, and he had no man of rank, by his importunities and eloquence, to force him into