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  ...of literature prevailed over the duty of taking up a serious profession. His father, who had set his heart on having a son in the rank of a barrister, was first suspicious, then extremely indignant, and at last he withdrew his son's allowance, or else reduced it so low that the recipient could not possibly live upon it. This catastrophe took place some time in 1755,--a year of note in the history of literature, as the date of the publication of Johnson's _Dictionary_. It was upon Literature, the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions.   that Burke, like so many hundreds of smaller men before and since, now threw himself for a livelihood.
[Footnote 1: _American Taxation_.]
Of the details of the struggle we know very little. Burke was not fond in after life of talking about his earlier days, not because he had any false shame about the straits and hard shifts of youthful neediness, but because he was endowed with a certain inborn stateliness of nature, which made him unwilling to waste thoughts on the less dignified...   Morley, John

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