The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-07-12
From the Washington Pos

\0 olden times at all events, to be
 writer and to be al very poor man were practically synonymous terms. What school boy has not been thrilled when for'the first time he read the jingle which averred that seven cities claimed Homer dead through which alive he begged his daily bread? It matters not that this piece of information was ascer- tained in later years to rest on no solid foundation the impression had been made on the susceptible youthful mind, and thenceforward the picture of the blind bard wandering up and down de- pendent on the cold comfort of charity was constant quantity which refused to be eliminated
 Then there was the sad story of that other genius of the epic muse who. borne aloft upon the seraph wings of ecstasy. passed the flaming bounds of space and time but, unable to endure the sapphire blaze from the living throne, closed his eyes in endless night. The melancholy vision of Milton in his blind old age, saved with difficulty from the persecution of the sons of Belial flown with insolence and wine, singing in his retirement things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme, and then selling the copyright of Paradise Lost" for E5 down and certain small contingencies, casts gloom over the otherwise too gladsome early years of the merry monarchs reign.
 Beside the woes of these two outstand- ing figures of the poetic world the mis- fortunes of other authors pale their in- affa RxAo I,,4 enough and sad enough to maintain un- impaired the preconoeived idea. The cases of Greene and Otway, of Johnson and Goldsmith and of Chatterton, that marvellous boy that died before his prime, occur readily to the mind. Shakespeare is, of course. the grand exception-the exception, however. that to most people proves the rule.
 In English literature it is only when the eighteenth century is reached that the young student is censured by finding that his favorites begin to attain to the full measure of the rewards to which they are entitled. Pope, who to a faculty of lisping in numbers and of stringing to- gether whole hundreds of smooth-fiowing heroic couplets joined a keen commercial It, ing who Is found to have made colossal worldly success of his profession. Re- membering the different values of money then and now, the mind reels before the contemplation of the fact that from his translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey alone Pope netted something like 99,000
 From Pope's time onward literature be- came more and more recognized as profession, and It's earnings were fairly regular There were then, of course, as there are now and as there always will be, unfortunate literateurs, but the propor- tion of financial failures in the business of writing is no greater than it is in any other walk of life. If the young student is shocked by the case of Homer and Milton, he is cheered by the money suc- cess achieved by such writers as Robert son, Scott. Macaulay, Dickens and Jules Verne. That 920,O00 check in particular which Macaulay received one morning through the mall in payment for one in- tallment of his history of England never fails to fire the imagination.
 In our day the literary man who has good wares to market is sure of purchas- CTS and of prompt pay. His income is as steady and as certain as that of the lawyer, for example, or of the physician Scott and Wordsworth had other means of support besides the pen; but nowadays thousands of writers cheerfully devote themselves to the pursuit of the literary profession alone, knowing that bread and butter and jam, not to speak of suburban villas, yachts, houseboats and automo- biles await them in profusion on the road. There Is condition, of course the same condition that prevails in other callings-that good and honest work be done; that faithful service be rendered. The plums of the profession, here as elsewhere, are only for the few; not every one can command the problematic shilling or dollar per word that popular opinion has assigned to a Kipling or Roosevelt. But every writer of work which pleases the public Is sure of good livelihood. and if he is of a thrifty turn of mind, of at least a modest competence to retire on
 In proof of this theory we have tha