Generally, good, useful work, whether of the hand or head, is
either ill-paid, or not paid at all. I don’t say it should be
so, but it always is so. People, as a rule, only pay for being
amused or being cheated, not for being served. Five thousand
a year to your talker, and a shilling a day to your fighter,
digger, and thinker, is the rule. None of the best head work in
art, literature, or science is ever paid for. How much do you
think Homer got for his “Iliad?” or Dante for his “Paradise?”
Only bitter bread and salt, and going up and down other people’s
stairs. In science, the man who discovered the telescope, and
first saw heaven, was paid with a dungeon; the man who invented
the microscope, and first saw earth, died of starvation, driven
from his home. Baruch, the scribe, did not get a penny a line
for writing Jeremiah’s second roll for him, I fancy; and St.
Stephen did not get bishop’s pay for that long sermon of his
to the Pharisees; nothing but stones. For, indeed, that is the
world-father’s proper payment.--JOHN RUSKIN.
(1506)