poetical, has no chance of making an independence-like Cogia Hassan Alhabbal, the rope-maker, gifted only with a lump of lead. Look into any palm, and if it contain the lines of poetry, the owner's fortune may be foretold at once-viz., a hill very hard to climb, and no prospect in life from the top. It is not always even a Mutton Hill, Garlic Hill, or Cornhill (remember Otway), for meat, vegetable, or bread. Let the would-be Crosus then take up a Bank pen, and address himself to the Old Lady in Threadneedle Street, but not to the Muse: she may give him some "pinch-back," and pinch-front too, but little of the precious metals. Authorship has been pronounced, by a judge on the bench, as but a hand-to-mouth business; and I believe few have ever set up in it as anything else: in fact, did not Crabbe, though a reverend, throw a series of summersets, at least mentally, on the receipt of a liberal sum from a liberal publisher, as if he had just won the capital prize in the grand lottery? Need it be wondered at, then, if men who embrace literature more for love than for lucre, should grasp the adventitious coins somewhat loosely; nay, purposely scatter abroad, like Boaz, a liberal portion of their harvest for those gleaners, with whom they have, perhaps, had a hand-and-glove acquaintance-Poverty and Want? If there be the lively sympathy of the brain with the stomach that physiologists have averred, it is more than likely that there is a similar responsive sensibility between the head and the heart; it would be inconsistent, therefore it would be unnatural, if the same fingers that help to trace the woes of human life were but as so many feelers of the polypus Avarice, grasping everything within reach, and retaining it when got. We, know, on the contrary, that the hand of the author of the "Village Poor House was " open as day to melting charity;" so was the house of Johnson munificent in proportion to his means; and as for Goldsmith, he gave more like a rich citizen of the world than one who had not always his own freedom.

But graver charges than improvidence have been brought against the literary character-want of principle, and offences against morality and religion. It might be answered, pleading guilty, that in that case authors have only topped the parts

allotted to them in the great drama of life—that they have simply acted like vagabonds by law, and scamps by repute, "who have no character to lose, or property to protect;" but I prefer asserting, which I do fearlessly, that literary men, as a body, will bear comparison in point of conduct with any other class. It must not be forgotten that they are subjected to an ordeal quite peculiar, and scarcely milder than the Inquisition. The lives of literary men are proverbially barren of incident, and consequently, the most trivial particulars, the most private affairs, are unceremoniously worked up, to furnish matter for their bald biographies. Accordingly, as soon as an author is defunct, his character is submitted to a sort of Egyptian postmortem trial; or rather, a moral inquest, with Paul Pry for the coroner, and a Judge of Assize, a Commissioner of Bankrupts, a Jew broker, a Methodist parson, a dramatic licenser, a dancingmaster, a master of the ceremonies, a rat-catcher, a bone collector, a parish clerk, a schoolmaster, and a reviewer, for a jury. It is the province of these personages to rummage, ransack, scrape together, rake up, ferret out, sniff, detect, analyze, and appraise, all particulars of the birth, parentage, and education, life, character and behavior, breeding, accomplishments, opinions, and literary performances, of the departed. Secret drawers are searched, private and confidential letters published, manuscripts, intended for the fire, are set up in type, tavern bills and washing bills are compared with their receipts, copies of writs re-copied, inventories taken of effects, wardrobe ticked off by the tailor's account, by-gone toys of youth-billets-doux, snuff-boxes, canes-exhibited, discarded hobby-horses are trotted out,―perhaps even a dissecting surgeon is called in to draw up a minute report of the state of the corpse and its viscera: in short, nothing is spared that can make an item for the clerk to insert in his memoir. Outrageous as it may seem, this is scarcely an exaggeration-for example: who will dare to say that we do not know, at this very hour, more of Goldsmith's affairs than he ever did himself? It is rather wonderful, than otherwise, that the literary character should shine out as it does after such a severe scrutiny. Moreover, it remains yet to be proved that the follies and failings attributed to men of learning and genius are

any more their private property than their copyrights after they have expired. There are certain well-educated ignorant people who contend that a little learning is a dangerous thing-for the poor; and as authors are poor, as a class, these horn-book monopolists may feel bound, in consistency, to see that the common errors of humanity are set down in the bill to letters. It is, of course, the black and white schoolmaster's dogs in a manger that bark and growl at the slips and backslidings of literary men ; but to decant such cant, and see through it clearly, it is only necessary to remember that a fellow will commit half the sins in the Decalogue, and all the crimes in the Calendar-forgery excepted-without ever having composed even a valentine in verse, or the description of a lost gelding in prose. Finally, if the misdeeds of authors are to be pleaded in excuse of the negJect of literature and literary men, it would be natural to expect to see these practical slights and snubbings falling heaviest on those who have made themselves most obnoxious to rebuke. But the contrary is the case. I will not invidiously point out examples, but let the reader search the record, and he will find, that the lines which have fallen in pleasant places have belonged to men distinguished for anything rather than morality or piety. The idea, then, of merit having anything to do with the medals, must be abandoned, or we must be prepared to admit a very extraordinary result. It is notorious, that a foreign bird, for a night's warbling, will obtain as much as a native bard-not a second-rate one either-can realize in a whole year: an actor will be paid a sum per night equal to the annual stipend of many a curate; and the twelvemonth's income of an opera-dancer will exceed the revenue of a dignitary of the church. But will any one be bold enough to say, except satirically, that these disproportionate emoluments are due to the superior morality and piety of the concert-room, the opera, and the theatre? They are, in a great measure, the acknowledgments of physical gifts--a well tuned larynx-a well-turned figure, or light fantastic toes, not at all discountenanced in their vocation for being associated with light fantastic behavior. Saving, then, an imputed infirmity of temper—and has it not peculiar trials?the only well-grounded failing the world has to resent, as a characteristic of literary

men, is their poverty, whether the necessary result of their position, or of a wilful neglect of their present interests, and improvidence for the future. But what is an author's future, as regards his worldly prosperity? The law, as if judging him incapable of having heirs, absolutely prevents his creating a property, in copyrights, that might be valuable to his descendants. It declares, that the interest of the literary man and literature are not identical, and commends him to the composition of catch-penny works-things of the day and hour; or, so to speak, encourages him to discount his fame. Should he, letting the present shift for itself, and contemning personal privations, devote himself, heart and soul, to some great work or series of works, he may live to see his right and temporal interest in his books pass away from himself to strangers, and his children deprived of what, as well as his fame, is their just inheritance. At the best he must forego the superintendance of the publication and any foretaste of his success, and like Cumberland, when he contemplated a legacy "for the eventual use and advantage of a beloved daughter," defer the printing of his MSS. till after his decease. As for the present tense of his prosperity, I have shown that his possession is as open to inroad as any estate on the Border Land in days of yore; such is the legal providence that watches over his imputed improvidence ! The law, which takes upon itself to guard the interest of lunatics, idiots, minors, and other parties incapable of managing their own affairs, not merely neglects to commonly protect, but connives at the dilapidation of the property of a class popularly supposed to have a touch of that same incompetence. It is, perhaps, rather the indifference of a generous spirit, which remembers to forget its own profit; but even in that case, if the author, like the girl in the fairy tale, drops diamonds and pearls from his lips, without stooping to pick up any for himself, the world he enriches is bound to see that he does not suffer from such a noble disinterestedness. Suppose even that he be a man wide awake to the value of money, the power it confers, the luxuries it may purchase, the consideration it commands-that he is anxious to make the utmost of his literary industry-and literary labor is as worthy of its hire as any other-there is no just prinPART II.

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ciple on which he can be denied the same protection as any other trader. It may happen, also, that his "poverty, and not his will," consents to such a course. In this imperfect world there is nothing without its earthly alloy; and, whilst the mind of the poet is married to a body, he must perform the divine service of the muses without banishing his dinner-service to the roof of the house, as in that Brazilian cathedral, which, for want of lead, is tiled with plates and dishes from the Staffordshire potteries. He cannot dwell even in the temple of Parnassus, but must lodge sometimes in an humbler abode, like the old Scotch songsters,

With bread and cheese for its door-cheeks,
And pancakes the rigging o't.

Moreover, as authors-Protestant ones, at least--are not vowed to celibacy, however devoted to poverty, fasting and mortification, there may chance to exist other little corporealities, sprouts, off-sets, or suckers, which the nature of the law, as well as the law of nature, refers for sustenance to the parent trunk. Should our bards, jealous of these evidences of their mortality, offer to make a present of them to the parish, under the plea of the mens divinior, would not the overseer, or may be the Poor Law Commissioners, shut the workhouse wicket in their faces, and tell them that "the mens divinior must provide for the men's wives and children?" Pure fame is a glorious draught enough, and the striving for it is a noble ambition; but, alas! few can afford to drink it neat. Across the loftiest visions of the poet earthly faces will flit; and even whilst he is gazing on Castaly little familiar voices will murmur in his ear, inquiring if there are no fishes that can be eaten to be caught in its waters! It has happened, according to some inscrutable dispensation, that the mantle of inspiration has commonly descended on shoulders clad in cloth of the humblest texture. Our poets have been Scotch ploughmen, farmers' boys, Northamptonshire peasants, shoe-makers, old servants, milk-women, basket-makers, steelworkers, charity-boys, and the like. Pope's protégé, Dodsley, was a footman, and wrote "The Muse in Livery "—you may trace a hint of the double vocation in his "Economy of Human