Fortune has rarely condescended to be the companion of genius: others
find a hundred by-roads to her palace; there is but one open, and that a
very indifferent one, for men of letters. Were we to erect an asylum for
venerable genius, as we do for the brave and the helpless part of our
citizens, it might be inscribed, "An Hospital for Incurables!" When even
Fame will not protect the man of genius from Famine, Charity ought. Nor
should such an act be considered as a debt incurred by the helpless
member, but a just tribute we pay in his person to Genius itself. Even
in these enlightened times, many have lived in obscurity, while their
reputation was widely spread, and have perished in poverty, while their
works were enriching the booksellers.
Of the heroes of modern literature the accounts are as copious as they
are sorrowful.
Xylander sold his notes on Dion Cassius for a dinner. He tells us that
at the age of eighteen he studied to acquire glory, but at twenty-five
he studied to get bread.
Cervantes, the immortal genius of Spain, is supposed to have wanted
food; Camöens, the solitary pride of Portugal, deprived of the
necessaries of life, perished in an hospital at Lisbon. This fact has
been accidentally preserved in an entry in a copy of the first edition
of the Lusiad, in the possession of Lord Holland. It is a note, written
by a friar who must have been a witness of the dying scene of the poet,
and probably received the volume which now preserves the sad memorial,
and which recalled it to his mind, from the hands of the unhappy
poet:--"What a lamentable thing to see so great a genius so ill
rewarded! I saw him die in an hospital in Lisbon, without having a sheet
or shroud, _una sauana_, to cover him, after having triumphed in the
East Indies, and sailed 5500 leagues! What good advice for those who
weary themselves night and day in study without profit!" Camöens, when
some fidalgo complained that he had not performed his promise in writing
some verses for him, replied, "When I wrote verses I was young, had
sufficient food, was a lover, and beloved by many friends and by the
ladies; then I felt poetical ardour: now I have no spirits, no peace of
mind. See there my Javanese, who asks me for two pieces to purchase
firing, and I have them not to give him." The Portuguese, after his
death, bestowed on the man of genius they had starved, the appellation
of Great![18] Vondel, the Dutch Shakspeare, after composing a number of
popular tragedies, lived in great poverty, and died at ninety years of
age; then he had his coffin carried by fourteen poets, who without his
genius probably partook of his wretchedness.
The great Tasso was reduced to such a dilemma that he was obliged to
borrow a crown for a week's subsistence. He alludes to his distress
when, entreating his cat to assist him, during the night, with the
lustre of her eyes--"_Non avendo candele per iscrivere i suoi versi_!"
having no candle to see to write his verses.
When the liberality of Alphonso enabled Ariosto to build a small house,
it seems that it was but ill furnished. When told that such a building
was not fit for one who had raised so many fine palaces in his writings,
he answered, that the structure of _words_ and that of _stones_ was not
the same thing. _"Che pervi le pietre, e porvi le parole, non è il
medesimo!"_ At Ferrari this house is still shown, "Parva sed apta" he
calls it, but exults that it was paid for with his own money. This was
in a moment of good humour, which he did not always enjoy; for in his
Satires he bitterly complains of the bondage of dependence and poverty.
Little thought the poet that the _commune_ would order this small house
to be purchased with their own funds, that it might be dedicated to his
immortal memory.
Cardinal Bentivoglio, the ornament of Italy and of literature,
languished, in his old age, in the most distressful poverty; and having
sold his palace to satisfy his creditors, left nothing behind him but
his reputation. The learned Pomponius Lætus lived in such a state of
poverty, that his friend Platina, who wrote the lives of the popes, and
also a book of cookery, introduces him into the cookery book by a
facetious observation, that "If Pomponius Lætus should be robbed of a
couple of eggs, he would not have wherewithal to purchase two other
eggs." The history of Aldrovandus is noble and pathetic; having expended
a large fortune in forming his collections of natural history, and
employing the first artists in Europe, he was suffered to die in the
hospital of that city, to whose fame he had eminently contributed.
Du Ryer, a celebrated French poet, was constrained to write with
rapidity, and to live in the cottage of an obscure village. His
bookseller bought his heroic verses for one hundred sols the hundred
lines, and the smaller ones for fifty sols. What an interesting picture
has a contemporary given of a visit to this poor and ingenious author!
"On a fine summer day we went to him, at some distance from town. He
received us with joy, talked to us of his numerous projects, and showed
us several of his works. But what more interested us was, that, though
dreading to expose to us his poverty, he contrived to offer some
refreshments. We seated ourselves under a wide oak, the table-cloth was
spread on the grass, his wife brought us some milk, with fresh water and
brown bread, and he picked a basket of cherries. He welcomed us with
gaiety, but we could not take leave of this amiable man, now grown old,
without tears, to see him so ill treated by fortune, and to have nothing
left but literary honour!"
Vaugelas, the most polished writer of the French language, who devoted
thirty years to his translation of Quintus Curtius, (a circumstance
which modern translators can have no conception of), died possessed of
nothing valuable but his precious manuscripts. This ingenious scholar
left his corpse to the surgeons, for the benefit of his creditors!
Louis the Fourteenth honoured Racine and Boileau with a private monthly
audience. One day the king asked what there was new in the literary
world. Racine answered, that he had seen a melancholy spectacle in the
house of Corneille, whom he found dying, deprived even of a little
broth! The king preserved a profound silence; and sent the dying poet a
sum of money.
Dryden, for less than three hundred pounds, sold Tonson ten thousand
verses, as may be seen by the agreement.
Purchas, who in the reign of our first James, had spent his life in
compiling his _Relation of the World_, when he gave it to the public,
for the reward of his labours was thrown into prison, at the suit of his
printer. Yet this was the book which, he informs Charles I. in his
dedication, his father read every night with great profit and
satisfaction.
The Marquis of Worcester, in a petition to parliament, in the reign of
Charles II., offered to publish the hundred processes and machines,
enumerated in his very curious "Centenary of Inventions," on condition
that money should be granted to extricate him from the _difficulties in
which he had involved himself by the prosecution of useful discoveries_.
The petition does not appear to have been attended to! Many of these
admirable inventions were lost. The _steam-engine_ and the _telegraph_,
may be traced among them.
It appears by the Harleian MS. 7524, that Rushworth, the author of the
"Historical Collections," passed the last years of his life in gaol,
where indeed he died. After the Restoration, when he presented to the
king several of the privy council's books, which he had preserved from
ruin, he received for his only reward the _thanks of his majesty_.
Rymer, the collector of the Foedera, must have been sadly reduced, by
the following letter, I found addressed by Peter le Neve, Norroy, to the
Earl of Oxford.
"I am desired by Mr. Rymer, historiographer, to lay before your lordship
the circumstances of his affairs. He was forced some years back to part
with all his choice printed books to subsist himself: and now, he says,
he must be forced, for subsistence, to sell all his MS. collections to
the best bidder, without your lordship will be pleased to buy them for
the queen's library. They are fifty volumes in folio, of public affairs,
which he hath collected, but not printed. The price he asks is five
hundred pounds."
Simon Ockley, a learned student in Oriental literature, addresses a
letter to the same earl, in which he paints his distresses in glowing
colours. After having devoted his life to Asiatic researches, then very
uncommon, he had the mortification of dating his preface to his great
work from Cambridge Castle, where he was confined for debt; and, with an
air of triumph, feels a martyr's enthusiasm in the cause for which he
perishes.
He published his first volume of the History of the Saracens in 1708;
and, ardently pursuing his oriental studies, published his second, ten
years afterwards, without any patronage. Alluding to the encouragement
necessary to bestow on youth, to remove the obstacles to such studies,
he observes, that "young men will hardly come in on the prospect of
finding leisure, in a prison, to transcribe those papers for the press,
which they have collected with indefatigable labour, and oftentimes at
the expense of their rest, and all the other conveniences of life, for
the service of the public. No! though I were to assure them, from my own
experience, that _I have enjoyed more true liberty, more happy leisure,
and more solid repose, in six months_ HERE, than in thrice the same
number of years before. _Evil is the condition of that historian who
undertakes to write the lives of others, before he knows how to live
himself._--Not that I speak thus as if I thought I had any just cause to
be angry with the world--I did always in my judgment give the
possession of _wisdom_ the preference to that of _riches_!"
Spenser, the child of Fancy, languished out his life in misery, "Lord
Burleigh," says Granger, "who it is said prevented the queen giving him
a hundred pounds, seems to have thought the lowest clerk in his office a
more deserving person." Mr. Malone attempts to show that Spenser had a
small pension, but the poet's querulous verses must not be forgotten--
"Full little knowest thou, that hast not try'd,
What Hell it is, in suing long to bide."
To lose good days--to waste long nights--and, as he feelingly exclaims,
"To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To speed, to give, to want, to be undone!"
How affecting is the death of Sydenham, who had devoted his life to a
laborious version of Plato! He died in a sponging-house, and it was his
death which appears to have given rise to the Literary Fund "for the
relief of distressed authors."[19]
Who will pursue important labours when they read these anecdotes? Dr.
Edmund Castell spent a great part of his life in compiling his _Lexicon
Heptaglotton_, on which he bestowed incredible pains, and expended on it
no less than 12,000_l._, broke his constitution, and exhausted his
fortune. At length it was printed, but the copies remained _unsold_ on
his hands. He exhibits a curious picture of literary labour in his
preface. "As for myself, I have been unceasingly occupied for such a
number of years in this mass," _Molendino_ he calls them, "that that
day seemed, as it were, a holiday in which I have not laboured so much
as sixteen or eighteen hours in these enlarging lexicons and Polyglot
Bibles."
Le Sage resided in a little cottage while he supplied the world with
their most agreeable novels, and appears to have derived the sources of
his existence in his old age from the filial exertions of an excellent
son, who was an actor of some genius. I wish, however, that every man of
letters could apply to himself the epitaph of this delightful writer:--
_"Sous ce tombeau git LE SAGE, abattu Par le ciseau de la Parque
importune; S'il ne fut pas ami de la fortune, Il fut toujours ami de la
vertu."_
Many years after this article had been written, I published "Calamities
of Authors," confining myself to those of our own country; the catalogue
is incomplete, but far too numerous.