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Barthelemy was seized with death while reading his favourite Horace.

Sir Godfrey Kneller's vanity was displayed in his last moments. Pope, who visited him two days before he died, says, he never saw a scene of so much vanity in his life; he was sitting up in his bed, contemplating the plan he was making for his own monument.

Wycherly, when dying, had his young wife brought to his bed-side, and having taken her hand in a very solemn manner, said, he had but one request to make of her, and that was, that she would never marry an old man again. There is every reason to believe, though it is not stated in the account, that so reasonable a request could not be denied at such a moment.

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Bolingbroke," says Spence, "in his last illness, desired to be brought to the table where we were sitting at dinner; his appearance was such that we all thought him dying, and Mrs. Arbuthnot involuntarily exclaimed, 'This is quite an Egyptian feast.'" On another authority he is represented as being overcome by teriors and excessive passion in his last moments, and, after one of his fits of choler, being overheard by Sir Harry Mildmay complaining to himself, and saying, "What will my poor soul undergo for all these things?"

Keats, a little before he died, when his friend asked him how he did, replied in a low voice, "Better, my friend. I feel the daisies growing over me."

In D'Israeli's admirable work on "Men of Genius," from which some of the preceding accounts are taken, many others are to be found, tending to illustrate more forcibly, perhaps, than any of those instances we have given, the soothing, and if the word may be allowed, the benign influence of literary habits on the tranquillity of the individual in his latest moments,

CHAPTER XIV.

THE IMPROVIDENCE OF LITERARY MEN.

If the misfortunes of men of genius were unconnected with their infirmities, any notice of them, however brief, would be irrelevant to the subject of these pages. In literature itself, there surely is nothing to favour improvidence, or to unfit men for the active duties of life; but in the habits which literary men contract from excessive application to their pursuits, there is a great deal to disqualify the studious man for those petty details of economy and prudence, which are essential to the attainment of worldly prosperity. "It is incongruous," says Burns, "'tis absurd to suppose that the man, whose mind glows with sentiments lighted up at the sacred flame of poetry -a man whose heart distends with benevolence to all the human race, who soars above this little scene of things, can condescend to mind the paltry concerns about which the terræ-filial race fret, and fume, and vex themselves." Poor Burns had evidently his own improvidence in view when he made this observation, but he must have been the most simple-minded of bards if he expected to disarm the censure of the world by it. Its charity may sometimes extend to the eccentricities of genius, but seldom to the poverty that springs from its improvidence. The greatest explosion of periodical morality that we remember to have occurred for some years, took place in most of the newspapers of the day, not many months ago, on the occasion of the appearance of the life of a celebrated

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bard, in which the biographer had unfortunately spoken of the poetic temperament as one ill-calculated to favour the cultivation of the social and domestic ties. Many men of genius have unquestionably been every thing that men should be in all the relations of private life; therefore, with those outrageous moralists, there was no reason why all men of genius should not be patterns of excellence to all good citizens, husbands, fathers, and economical managers of private affairs. No reason can be given why they should not be such. We only know, that such the majority of them unfortunately are not; and, indeed, in the varied distribution of nature's gifts, when we generally find the absence of one excellence atoned for by the possession of another, it would be in vain to expect a combination of all such advantages in the same individual. Nature cannot afford to be so profusely lavish even to her favourites. It is somewhat singular, that those instances of pre-eminent genius, accompanied by well-regulated conduct and domestic virtues, which are adduced in opposition to the notion that the temperament of genius exerts an unfavourable influence on the habits of private life, are of persons who never took upon them the ties of husbands or of fathers. And had they done so, who knows what their conduct might have been in these relations? Newton, Galileo, Michael Angelo, Locke, Hume, Pope, never married; neither did Bacon, Voltaire, and many other illustrious men, who either distrusted their own fitness for the married state, or were afraid to stake their tranquillity on the hazard of the matrimonial die.

Whatever doubt there may be, whether the man who lives sibi et musis in his study, and not in society, who communes with former ages, and not with the events

which are passing around him, is eminently qualified for the duties and offices of married life, it cannot be denied that his habits, and the tendency of his pursuits, are illcalculated to make him a provident or a thrifty man.

In all ages and in all countries, poverty has been the patrimony of the muses. Johnson, Goldsmith, Fielding, and Butler, commenced their literary career in garrets, from which, no doubt, they had as unimpeded a prospect of the workhouse as the summits of Parnassus are said to afford. Even Addison wrote his Campaign in a garret in the Haymarket. Camoens died in an alms-house, and fifteen years afterwards had a splendid monument erected to his memory. It was with the poor man of genius in that day as the present: "And they who loathed his life, might gild his grave." Chatterton lies buried in Shoe-lane workhouse, and Otway expired in a pothouse. The Adventurer goes so far as to state, that not a favourite of the Muses, since the days of Amphion, was ever able to build a house. Poor Scott, however, did more than build one, and the example is certainly not encouraging to authors.

But perhaps there is not another instance, even in this land of wealth, of an author by profession dwelling in a habitation of his own erection.

Burton ascribes the heedlessness of literary men, of their own affairs, and consequently their poverty, to the unhappy influence of the Muses' destiny. "When Jupiter's daughters," he says, "were all married to the gods, the Muses alone were left solitary, probably because they had no portions. Helicon was forsaken of all suitors, and Calliope only continued to be a maid, because she had no dower." Petronius, he narrates, knew a scholar by the meanness of his apparel. "There came," saith he,

"by chance into my company, a fellow not very spruce to look on, whom I could perceive, by that note alone, to be a scholar, whom commonly all rich men hate. I asked him what he was? and he answered-a poet. I demanded, why he was ragged? he told me this kind of learning never made any man rich."

"All which our ordinary students," says Burton, "right well perceiving in the Universities, how unprofitable are these poetical and philosophical pursuits of theirs, apply themselves, in all haste, to more commodious and lucrative professions. They are no longer heedful of knowledge he who can tell his money, hath arithmetic enough: he is a true geometrician, who can measure a good fortune to himself: a perfect astrologer, who can cast the rise and fall of others, and turn their errant motions to his own advantage: the best optician, who can reflect the beams of a great man's favour, and cause them to shine upon himself."

Eneas Sylvius says he knew many scholars in his time "excellent, well-learned men, but so rude, so silly, that they had no common civility, nor knew how to manage either their own affairs, or those of the public."

"They are generally looked down upon," continues Burton, "on account of their carriage, because they cannot ride a horse, which every clown can manage; salute and court a gentlewoman; carve properly at table; cringe and make congees, which every common swasher can do." They cannot truly vaunt much of their accomplishments in this way; they belong to that race, of one of whom Pliny gave the description-"He is yet a scholar; than which kind of men there is nothing so simple, so sincere, and none better."

But the miseries of Grub-street are no longer known:

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