Morning journal and courier., 1889-04-03
POETS AND POVERTY.
A Healthy Change fin she Profession of
 H.feaYaeUre.


 Literature.
 Throughout the 18th century, and for 6 considerable portion of the present one, the pursuit of imaginative literature was popu- larly supposed to be the highway to the workhouse and the shortest cut to the jail, says the London Standard. An extensive and :mpst gratifying change seems to have come oyer the old state of things in this re- specss since we learn from the report that in 1ssScthe literary fund was only asked to un- loose it's purse strings in favor of three nov- elists, one dramatist and one poet Who the three writers of fiction could have been may well be pondered over in not unpleasant perplsxity. Three-volume novels at the present day absolutely swarm, yet possible
 E fol poets
 their indulgence on the score of the heartless managerial refusal to put their tragedy of "Boadicea, Qeen of the Icensi," into rehesrs- al; or even to read their newest verson of "Fair Rosamund, :" "Jane Shore," or "Mary Queen of Soots" It is nevertheless incon- trovertible that dramatic authors are very much better paid at present than was the case 30, or 20, or even 10 years ago; and that it is quite possible for a dramatist who is also @ keen man of business, and whose plays have the luck to take the town, to make large fortune. 'Sir," said the man. ager of a transpontine theatre of young au. thor who was anxious to know what ecale of remuneration he adopted for dramatic pro- ductions, 'we have given as much as E5 for @ good farce.n Absurd as the anecdote may appear to the plavwrights of the actual era, it was not at all inconsistent with bygone playhouse tradition. The metropolitan threatres of the past frequently maintained "stock author,n n whose salary ranged pe- tween three and five pounds week, who worked precisely as clerk works, only that he wrote plays instead of balancing ledgers, and who had no kind of literary property in the dramas which he produced. His weekly stipend was his sole guerdon. To be sure, most of his plays were translations from the French. He had no American long life passed in the composition of hum dreds of pieces he might find himself as dis tresssd as that prolific Moncrieff, the author of ''Tem and Jerry," who in his old age was fain to accept an asylum in the Charter house; or as the equally prolific veteran au- thor of ''Boxand Cox" who is still living, and for whose benefit testimonial sub is the lass type of the recipient of the char ity of the literary fund to whom it is expedi- ent to call attention. All students of that wonderful human comedy depicted by Will liam Hogarth are familiar with the plate of "The Distressed Poet" The poor bard is distressed with 6 vengeance; wrapped in 6 ragged dressing gown, he is seribbling 8 poem on "Riches." scribbling 1t in a wretched garret, almost devoid of furniture. with his baby wailing faom pallet covered with rags, and his pretty, pale faced wife alarming his neither garments, while hard faced Welshwoman is dunning for milk score. There is not an iota of exaggeration in the picture. Johnson, Savage, Thompson, Goldsmith had all been poets as distressed, leading the retchedest of lives, and futu- ating between the garret, the cheap cook shop and the sponging house, and with no literary fund to help them in their dire misery. What has become of the distressed poets nowadayss They cannot all be wearers of coronets, country squires, or art decora- tors, or Lombard street bankers, or members of the stock exchange. There is plenty of poetry, good, bad, and indifferent. about, but of the composers thereof there was only one last syear who was so distressed as to seek the kindly help of the royal literary fund.