Year: 1878

think of the author of Venice Preserved


choking himself over the food, from which
he had been SO long deprived, in the fierce


greed of hunger; of the ill-starred Savage
crouching for warmth before the lurid ash
es of glass furnace; of the great Oriental
list, the translator of the Koran, pursuing
his studies amid the severest privations; OF
old Sam Johnson, hidden behind the screen


in the publishers dining-room, because his
coat was too ragged to admit him to the
table of his host; of Steele, Goldsmith,


Smollett, Fielding, Crabbe, Chatterton, and


the hundred and one others of the pen, who


knew often what actual want was, what
misery was, what pain left to itself was and


what followed from the grasp of the Sher-
ifs officer! There rise before us visions
hale, sad faces who have had to part with
their manuscripts, their poems, their sat-
Tres, their tragedies, their essays and nov
els, for tenth or twentieth of the sum
our nineteenth-century scribe gives for one
of his horses. Did not Milton sell his inn
comparable epic for the price of a new sad


die !? Can you buy stanhope at good
makers for what Goldsmith sold his Vicar
of Wakefield? Did not Dryden engage
himself to write 10000 verses for less than
the price of an opera box for the season?
Was not Evelina parted with by Miss Bur-
ney at the price Of froek-coat And
pray what did the men of letters under the
first three Georges make out of literature ?
But perhaps the saddest of all reflections is
how Jared it with the men, then as now, who
find no publisher to take their wares, whose
tastes and peculiarities of character unfit
ted them for the ordinary occupations of
life, who read and wrote in the hope of one
day receiving their reward and having their
niche in the Temple of Fame, only to find
their ends in the Jail, the hospital, or the
terrible exit Of the suicide? AS write
there stands out against the background of
the past the lean, haggara form of one I
knew, who busted himself with subjects
that appealed to the few, who degenerated
into publishers hack; then even that call
ing failed him. for others could be found to
do the work cheaper; who was poor unto
misery, yet neither his garb nor conversa-
ton revealed his sorrows, for the pride of
manhood made him keep his poverty to
himself, till anxiety and suffering bade him
one day brave the terrors of the unknown,
and put an end to the life whose burden
was greater than he could bear, by his own
hand. Poor soul! Had one but known
how severe was the measure the Fates had
dealt out to him, he needed not have been
fearful again Of distress or privation; glad
ly subscriptions would have been raised for
him; but ne kept us all in ignorance of his
affairs, and whilst we mourn his reserve,
we cannot but respect the pride and pluck
that dictated it. How many suffering
hearts have thus passed to rest, conscious
of tho 4rAr.iI1a uznrkinn within tham. their
brains stored with the intellectual accumu-
lations of ages, yet rudely ignored by the
times In which their lot was cast, whilst the
empty ana the frivolous were the idols of
the hour The author of Cato was right
to command success was not always to de-
serve it. Life is but lottery, and it Is
quite often that prize is drawn by tiuke
as by desert.