No. LIX. Tuesday, May 29, 1753. -Si Pieriá Quadrans tibi nullus in Arcâ If not a foufe in thy lank purfe appear, Juv. THE indigence of authors, and particularly of poets, has long been the object of lamentation and ridicule, of compaffion and contempt. It has been observed, that not one favourite of the Mufes has ever been able to build a houfe fince the days of Amphion, whofe art it would be fortunate for them if they poffeffed; and that the greatest punishment that can poffibly be inflicted on them, is to oblige them to fup in their own lodgings. Molles Molles ubi reddunt ovà columbæ. Boileau introduces Damon, whofe wrltings entertained and inftructed the city and the court, as having past the summer without a shirt, and the winter without a cloke; and refolving at laft to forfake Paris. ou la vertu n'a plus ni Feu ni Lieu ; Where fhiv'ring worth no longer finds a home; and to find out a retreat in some distant grotto, D'où jamais ni l' Huifier, ni le Sergent n' approche ; Safe, where no critics damn, nor duns moleft. POPE. "The rich Comedian," fays Bruyere, "lolling in "his guilt chariot, befpatters the face of Corneille "walking afoot:" and Juvenal remarks, that his cotemporary bards generally qualified themselves bytheir diet, to make excellent buftos; that they were compelled fometimes to hire lodgings at a baker's, in order to warm themselves for nothing; and that it was the common fate of the fraternity, Pallere, & vinum toto nefcire Decembri. -To pine, Look pale, and all December tafte no wine. DRYDEN. Virgil himself is strongly fufpected to have lain in the ftreets, or on fome Roman bulk, when he fpeaks fo feelingly of a rainy and tempeftuous night in his wellknown epigram. "There "There ought to be an hospital founded for decayed "wits," faid a lively Frenchman," and it might be "called an hofpital of incurables." Few perhaps wander among the laurels of Parnaffus, but who have reafon ardently to wifh and to exclaim with Æneas, but without the hero's good fortune, Si nunc fe nobis ille aureus arbore ramus. Oftendat nemore in tanto! O! in this ample grove could I behold PITT The patronage of Lelius and Scipio did not enable Terence to rent a house. Taffo, in a humourous fonnet addreffed to his favourite cat, earnestly intreats her to lend him the light of her eyes during his midnight studies, not being himself able to purchase a can-dle to write by. Dante the Homer of Italy, and Camoens of Portugal, were both banished and imprisoned.. Cervantes, perhaps the most original genius the world ever beheld, perished by want in the streets of Madrid, as did our own Spenfer at Dublin. And a writer, little inferior to the Spaniard in the exquifiteness of his humour and raillery, I mean Erasmus, after the tedious wanderings of many years, from city to city, and from patron to patron, praised and promifed, and deceived by all, obtained no fettlement but with his printer. "At laft, "fays he,in one of his epiftles," I should have "been advanced to a cardinalfhip, if there had not. "been a decree in my way, by which those are feclu"ded from this honour, whofe income amounts not to "three thousand ducats." I remember I remember to have read a satire in Latin profe, întitled, A Poet hath bought a house." The poet having purchased a house, the matter was immediately laid before the parliament of poets, affembled on that important occafion, as a thing unheard of, as a very bad precedent, and of most pernicious confequence; and accordingly, a very fevere fentence was pronounced against the buyer. When the members came to give their votes, it appeared there was not a fingle person in the affembly, who through the favour of powerful patrons, or their own happy genius, was worth fo much as to be proprietor of a house, either by inheritance or purchase: all of them neglecting their private fortunes, confeffed and boafted, that they lived in lodgings.. The poet was, therefore, ordered to fell his house immediately, to buy wine with the money for their enter tainment, in order to make some expiation for his enor mous crime, and to teach him to live unfettled and without care like a true poet. Such are the riddiculouss and fuch the pitiable stòries related, to expose the poverty of poets in different ages and nations; but which, I am inclined to think,. are rather the boundless exaggerations of fatire and fancy, than the fober refult of experience, and the determination of truth and judgment: for the general po-. fition may be contradicted by numerous examples; and it may, perhaps, appear, on reflection and examination, that the art is not chargeable with the faults and failings of its peculiar profeffors ;. that it has no peculiar tendency to make men either rakes or spendthrifts, and that those who are indigent poets would have been indigent merchants and mechanics.. The The neglect of economy, in which great geniuses are supposed to have indulged themselves, has unfortunately given so much authority and justification to carelefnefs and extravagance, that many a minute rhimer has fallen into diffipation and drunkenness, because Butler and Otway lived and died in an alehouse. As a certain blockhead wore his gown on one shoulder to mimic the negligence of Sir Thomas More, fo these fervile imitators follow their masters in all that dif graced them; contract immoderate debts, because Dryden died infolvent; and neglect to change their linen, becaufe Smith was a floven. "If I should happen to "look pale" fays Horace, "all the hackney-writers "in Rome would immediately drink cummin to gain "the fame complection." And I myself am acquainted with a witling who uses a glass, only because Pope was near fighted. I can easily conceive, that a mind occupied and overwhelmed with the weight and immenfity of its own. conceptions, glancing with aftonishing rapidity from heaven to earth and from earth to heaven, cannot willingly fubmit to the dull drudgery of examining the justnefs and accuracy of a butcher's bill. To defcend from. the widest and moft comprehenfive views of nature, and weigh out hops for a brewing, must be invincibly disgusting to a true genius: to be able to build imaginary palaces of the most exquifite architecture, but yet not to pay a carpenter's bill, is a cutting mortification and difgrace: to be ruined by pursuing the precepts of Virgilian agriculture, and by plowing claffically, without attending to the wholesome monitions of low British farmers, is a circumstance that agravates the failure of a crop, to a man who wishes to have lived in the Agustan |