'"Proud of his adamants with which he shines
And glisters wide, as als of wondrous Bath."'
I did not recollect the lines, but discovered on inquiry that they
were Spenser's, an author, I regret to say, whom I had not read. I
was astonished that a person with a mechanical occupation who sat in
a window from morning to night dissecting time-pieces should be
acquainted with poetry, and I begged him to tell me something of his
life. He was the son of a bookseller in Bristol who had been
apprenticed to the celebrated Mr. Bernard Lintot. The father failed
in business, and soon afterwards died leaving a widow and six
children. My friend was then about fourteen years old. He had been
well educated, but his mother was compelled to accept the offer of a
neighbour who took compassion on her, and he was brought up to the
watchmaking trade in Bath. He had to work long hours and endure
many hardships which it might be supposed would tend to repress the
sallies of the most lively imagination, but some men are so
constituted that adverse circumstances do but stimulate a search for
compensation.
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