These letters, though their rather laboured and incorrect style indicates the writer to have then had little practice in epistolary correspondence, show, however, the more essential qualities of excellent principles and an affectionate heart. His spirits seem already tinged by that melancholy which occasionally attended him through life. It is a curious, and not uninstructive sight, to observe the man who, in a few years, was to raise himself by his commanding talents and heroic daring, to an acknowledged pre-eminence above all his countrymen in the East, for several months after his first touching on the shores of that country, the scene of his future glory, acknowledging that he knew not one family in it, and shrinking with a sensitive diffidence from the exertion of introducing himself. Though affectionate, he was wayward and reserved. From this time till 1746, when Madras was taken, there are no accounts of him, except some anecdotes, tending to prove that he was very ill suited to the condition of life in which he was placed. His impatience of control, and wayward and impracticable firmness, never forsook him. On one occasion it appears that his conduct to the secretary under whom the writers were placed on their first arrival, was so inconsistent with the rules of official discipline, that the governor, to whom it was reported, commanded him to ask that gentleman's pardon. With this order he complied rather ungraciously; but the secretary immediately after, before his irritation had time to subside, having invited him to dinner,--"No, Sir," replied Clive, "the governor did not command me to _dine_ with you."[23] He is stated to have hazarded, on more than one occasion, the loss of the service by acts of wildness: and a story was long current that, either in a fit of despair, or of low spirits, to which he was subject from his earliest years, he made, at this period, an attempt upon his own life. A companion, coming into his room in Writers' Buildings, was requested to take up a pistol and fire it out of the window: he did so. Clive, who was sitting in a very gloomy mood, sprang up, and exclaimed--"Well, I am reserved for something! That pistol," said he to his astonished friend, "I have twice snapped at my own head." This is not unlikely to be true, nor is its probability contradicted, by his never having spoken of it to any of his family after his return to England. But, while he properly threw a veil over the more violent ebullitions of his youth, he was fond of recurring to every act of early kindness which had been shown to him; and amongst these, he considered as one of the most important, his admission, soon after his arrival in India, into an excellent library belonging to the Governor of Madras. He now devoted much of his leisure to study, and there can be little doubt that it was at this time he laid the foundation of that knowledge, which was so soon to surprise and benefit his country.