The Sun.
London, England, 1823-06-06 00:00:00

LITERARY' FUND.

It was known to many of the. Gentlemen who
attended at the late ,Anniversary Dinner of the
Literary Fund Society, that the Report of the
Registrars, which was read by Mr. BRITTGN, was
not the composition which had been prepared for
the occasion; but was a production hastily put
together to supply the place of the original Re-
port, which had been withdrawn. On inquiring
into the cause of this substitution, we have
• •
discovered that some expressions in the ori-
ginal document being regarded by the Managing
•
Committee as rather too strong, and as likely
from their nature to offend the political sensibi-
lities of a few of the Society's expected guests,
the writer of the paper was requested to alter the
objectionable passages in question, or to assent to
their omission, when it was read to the assembly.
The writer not conceding to either of these re-
quests, his production was returned to him by the
Committee. Having obtained the Report as it came
from the pen of its Author, and, not concurring
with the judgment of the Committee, we shall
here give it in its integrity to our readers ; and,
by this act, we. conceive that we shall promote
the cause of an excellent and most beneficial In-
stitution.
The REPORT of the REGISTRARS intended for the AN.
NIVERSARY of the LITERARY FUND SOCIETY
on May 21, 1823.
At our last comatemorative Festival the Registrars thought it
proper to makes Report of the proceedings of our Society dur-
ing the antecedent year to the Friends who united with us in
the celebration : and that Report, as it was circulated through
the Community, was not destitute of effect. It awakened the
general mind to the useful beneficence of our agency : it brought
closely to the bosom what before, perhaps, had only played
round the head ; it showed the incidental cruelty of Fortune in
her dispensations to literary men ; and it exhibited some of this
superior class, who, fallen from the high walk of affluence,
where they mingled with the great, had been approached by
our Society in their distress, and had thus been assured that
they still possessed friends who could appreciate their merits,
and who would pour healing into their wounds. That year,
indeed, to which the Report in question bore reference, was ra-
ther peculiarly saddened with the calamities of the literary ; and
it is not without pleasure that we now prepare you fbr a Report
of a somewhat less agitating nature. In the subjects of our
present notice, we have none of the more affecting vicissitudes of,
fortune to display to you ; or, if we have any of these stronger
demands on your sensibility, they are the produce of a foreign
land, where, far beyond the limits of our realm, but yet within
the long reach of our beneficence, they are still to be found
amid the troubled elements which are now conflicting in the po.
litical atmosphere of Europe. It must not, however, be sup-
posed, that clueing the period within our imetediate contempla-
tion, our own Britain has been unvisited by the distress of the
intellectual and the literary; by the wretchedness of many of
her superior offspring, who, grasping at fair Fame through the
press, have closed theirechilled arms on the deformity of Want.
'Since we were last assembled in this place, the claims upon us
have been numerous ; end, pondering them with that deliberate
judgment, which is exacted from us by our consciousness of
high responsibility, we have awarded to their justice as large a
proportion of our intrusted funds as has ever borne witness,
within the same compass of time, to the fidelity of our steward.
ship. But the cases, which have come under our cognizance
in the present year,. are more considerable, perhaps, in this ag.
gregate than in their individual magnitude ; and our largesses
have flowed, as they have been wanted, rather in many rivue
lets to support the growth of the plain, than in those
fuller streams which are required to reinfuse life into the
blighted trunks of the forest. It has been said,.indeed, that the
more lowly vegetation of literature and the press is unworthy
of our, care; and may even, without disadvantage to the com-
mon weal, be destroyed in its embryo, or be permitted, as it
springs up, to perish beneath the severity of the blast. But the
result of communicated intellect is great and beneficial beyond
the nice accuracy of calculation. The literature of a nation is
formed by the intercourse and traffic of its minds. It is a joint
stock supported by unequal contributions ; and there is not,
probably, a writer, whose pages can struggle into the world,
who may not, in-some &glee, be regarded as a subscriber to
the general fund. This observation, however, is made without
any especial reference to our beneficiaries in the year which is
aft completed ; for most of these have been men of note in
the literary republic, and some ofthem have been distinguished
by their genius. The Author who first opened to us the view
of a great empire in that continent which is unvisited by Win-
ter, has been assisted by us in his distress ; and our timely aid
has enabled him to extend his investigation into that interesting
portion of the earth,
the recesses of which, defended equally by
the desolation of nature anti the barbarism of man, have hi-
therto resisted the penetration of our science. The Veteran of
Literature, who has illustrated the globe, who has unfolded
the antiquities and has displayed the transactions of nations, has,
,in indigence and age, been refreshed with our comfort. The
Youth, with whom the Muse hell dalliance as he was tending
, his master's sheepillumined spispirit,fold, has experienced'ur necessary liberality;
and to another
who, nurtured alike in poverty,
has aspired with success--yes! with not doubtful success, to
teringn
ibneenee
sliicvecni .
the same etherial intercourse, we have extended the same fos-
In
al
rfoelloposiwriegd tit pgessdesussorr,
hbaseyodnrdoptih)eedgrainvbe
instances our respect for literary merit has
n
the orphan. On all these cases, however, though we might
o;t1 na nt
yd ownhtehne hwei dh oaswbaene dn
dwell on them with honour to ourselves, and be assured of the
association of your interest, we deem it 'to be necessary only to
glance. But for the cases wbich we shall now bold out to you
in more specific delineation, we will solicit your more particu-
lar regard. The cases, indeed, themselves need only to be
shown to obtain admission to your, hearts. A man of high
birth, and the head of an ancient house, has devoted his acute
and investigating mind solely to the prosecution of science ;
and his powers have prevailed in the pursuit. The discoveries
effected by his scientific research, with its direction altogether
to utility, have been in many instances beneficial to the com-
munity, and in many have been the sources of wealth to indivi-
duals. To himself alone they have been unprofitable: for with
a superior disdain, or (If you please) a culpable disregard of the
goods of fortune, he has scattered around him the produce of
his intellect with a lavish and wild hand. If we may use the
consecrated words of an Apostle," though poor, he has made
many rich," and though in the immediate neighbourhood of
wealth, (for his family is wealthy,) he has been doomed to suf-
fer, through a long series of laborious years, the severities of
want. In his advanced age, he found an estimable woman, in
poverty, it is true, like himself, but of an unspotted character
and of a high though untitled family,
to participate the cala-
mity of his fortunes; and with her virtues and prudence, assist-
ed by a small pension which she obtained from the benevolence
of the Crown, she threw a gleam of light over the dark decline
of his day. She was soon, however, torn from him by death ;
and, with an infant whom she bequeathed to him, he was not only
abandoned to destitution and distress (for the pension was extin-
guished with her life), but was doomed to lie on the torture of
the mind, and to feel, with poor Lear, .that thanklessness
of children is sharper than the tooth of a serpent. To this
man, thus favoured by nature, and thus persecuted by fortune,
we have been happy to offer some little alleviation of his nor.
rows 5 and to prevent him from breathing his last under the op.
pressive sensation of the ingratitude of his species.
The cases to which we have hitherto advertedeire more im-
mediately our own, as they are of our compatriots, the natives
of our natal soil. But the cases which we are now to produce
to you are of alien birth, and belong to a mighty people, who,
deriving their strong lod from a log ancestry of renown, and
feeling the Celtiberianb, othe Roman, nend the (loth, in blended
animation at their hearts,. are, at this moment, arrayed to con-
tend, or, to speak more accurately, are at this moment in ac..
tual conflict for their dearest properties, with the legions of
confederated despotism. Our beneficiaries, in short, are Spa-
niards—of a people geographically
disjoined from us ; but, at
this solicitous and eventful crisis closely grappled to our bo.
sours by an identity of cause, by a kindred valour, by that en-
thusiastic yet intelligent and steady attachment to liberty,
which has placed us and our Atlantic progeny at the head of
the nations. Not dishonouring that celebrated land from which
they sprang, the two literary worthies whom we are contem-
plating, and whom, from the similarity of their fortunes, we
shall link together in our Report, have distinguished them.
selves by an exhibition of mind superiorly splendid ; one as a
;elves
writer, and one as a philosophic historian. The dra-
mas, of the first of these remarkable men have not been nu-
merous, but by his countrymen,
who are the.best qualified to
determine on their merits they are adjudged to be with the
foremost in the-foremost Class of excellence, and are regarded
as raising the Spanieh stage into competition with the stage of
France, even when the stage of France was upheld to the ad.
miration of all Europe by the genius of Illohere. The intro.
duction of this great name, for the illustration of our subjixt,
will immediately suggest that our Spanish dramatist wears,the
sock and not the buskin and follows in the train of Menander.
and of Terence. His delineation of character is exquisitely
fine i anti he merits the rare praise of never descending to but'.

foonery, or of seeking aid from the excitement of the corrupt
passions. By an accomplished judge, who has witnessed the
representation of his pieces, we have been assured, that he has
thrown agitating laughter through the whole extended theatre,
without once touching the most sensitive cheek' with a blush.
The Historian of his country and her institutions filled, at one
time, a place of high dignity in the hierarchy of bis church :
but the energy of his genius, bursting the fetters then mposed
by the Inquisition on the intellect of his countrymen,brolce out
on every side in power, and seized at once on all the strong
holds of priestly domination.i He dissipated the darkness
which for centuries had covered the Inquisition; and he dis-
closed to the public eye the full deformity of that horrid tri-
bunal, on which sate the pretended assessor of the Holy God,
with eyes hard with pride, hearts swelling with cruelty, and
hands thick with blood. Ile durst even to invade the sanctuary
of the Vatican, and to expose the worldly policy which worked
in pollution under the consecrated shadow of the triple crown.
When-the overwhelming power of France, in its first rush, had
placed the brother of Napoleon on the throne of Spain, our two
illustrious authors were invited into its service by the sagacity of
the new Government; and, conceiving at once that the cause of
their country was hapless, and that their sphere of usefulness
would be enlarged by their accession to office, they accepted of the
'stations which were offered to them. To these stations, however,
they carried their Spanish hearts; and many a Spaniard were
they fortunately enabled to save from the revenge or the jea.
lousy of the alien usurpation. But their submission to the
French sceptre, bow justifiable or even praise-worthy so-
ever might have been its motives, was fatal to their fortunes.—
By their rightful Sovereign, as might be expected, they were
branded as traitors ; and, the sentence of the Monarch being
affirmed by the stern patriotism of the Cortes, they were de-
spoiled of their entire property, and were driven, with their
grey hairs, to linger out their day.s in beggary and exile. France
was their place of refuge ; and, in that country, as they were li
contending with distress, our beneficence most happily found
them.. To one it gave temporary subsistence ' • and to theother,
when, in subserviency to Papal vengeance, lie had been ordered,
by the ruling powers, into second exile, it supplied the sole
means of flight to his regenerated Spain—to his own dear
land; which our bounty, indeed, enabled him to reach, but
which his destiny did not permit him to enjoy ; for there, in.
duced by the toils of his hazardous and impeded travel, Death
speedily overtook him, and terminated for ever the malignity
of his fate.

These, Sirs, are some of the most prominent and striking
Cases which have demanded our assistance since we last met
you at our annual commemoration. Within this period, the
whole number of the cases, to the claims of which we have as-
sented, has been more than fifty ; and each of them has not
been without its peculiar interest. But at a meeting of this
nature we are limited by our time to a selection from our stores
of woe ; and in obedience to a controulling principle, as you all
know, of our conduct, we can intimate only, and not broadly
disclose, the subject of our relief. We can., in fact, point only
to a shadow, to ascertain to you that there is a substance, from
which, under the incidence of light, the shadow is projected.—
, We wish, Sirs, that we could do more. We wish that we
could at once read to you the simple but areeting records of our
minute-book. We wish, above all things, that we could sum-
mon our beneficiaries personally before you ' • that, as your gaze
was held by the interesting grow e, we could bid you mark the
deep brow of thought over-shadowed by affliction : the ardent
eye of genius with its fires half quenched : the cheek of youth
faded by disappointment : the old age of nature anticipated by
sorrow,.or made more hoary by the fallacies of hope : the lip
just rising to solicit, but withheld by a consciousness of supe-
riority, and a pride not to be condemned. Such a spectacle—
and such a spectacle would be presented to yousif our benefi-
ciaries could be submitted to your view--such a spectacle would
plead for us with power. In its silence would be eloquence be-
yond the attainment of our weak tongues :—eloquence which
would excite every generous feeling in the heart :—eloquence
which would set passion on the side of patriotism and justice :
eloquence which would draw you more closely to that enlight-
ened band? which had imparted comfort to those votaries, or
rather victims, of literature who were then fastened upon our
sight; and had told them, that they had not benefited or
adorned the world of man to be thrown altogether from its re-
gard. But such an appeal to your sensibilities is Trot permitted
to us, and we must be contented with making an unimpassioned
reference to your understandings and
,judgments. We rely on
toour
reproach
p ownroa di bosoms
yourselves t o determine,for the
fulfilment
the testimony of our consciences for the good which we have
effected or intended to effect. We feel that we have been faith-
ful to our duties ; and we must remit you to the sentence a
whetheroyrodulea nreegtolt of applaud
yours.t)r
C. S.