the lie of calumny, which tradition often conveys beyond the possibility of refutation. Sometimes reproached as wanting in affection, when they displeased their fathers by making an obscure name celebrated: the family of DESCARTES lamented, as a blot in their escutcheon, that Descartes, who was born a gentleman, should become a philosopher; and this elevated genius was refused the satisfaction of embracing an unforgiving parent, while his dwarfish brother, with a mind diminutive as his person, ridiculed his philosophic relative, and turned to advantage his philosophic disposition. The daughter of ADDISON was educated with a perfect contempt of authors, and blushed to bear a name more illustrious than that of all the Warwicks, on her alliance to whom she prided herself. The children of MILTON, far from solacing the age of their blind parent, became impatient for his death, embittered his last hours with scorn and disaffection, and combined to cheat and rob him. Milton having enriched our national poetry by two immortal epics, with patient grief blessed the single female who did not entirely

abandon him, and the obscure fanatic who was pleased with his poems because they were religious. What felicities! what laurels! And now we have recently learnt, that the daughter of Madame DE SEVIGNÉ lived on ill terms with her mother, of whose enchanting genius she appears to have been insensible! the unquestionable documents are two letters hitherto cautiously secreted. The daughter was in the house of her mother, when an extraordinary letter was addressed to her from the chamber of Madame de Sevigné, after a sleepless night: in this she describes with her peculiar felicity, the ill treatment she received from the daughter she idolised; a kindling effusion of maternal reproach, and tenderness, and genius*. Some have been deemed disagreeable companions, because they felt the weariness of dulness, or the impertinence of intrusion; described as bad husbands when united to women, who without a kindred feeling had the mean art to prey upon their infirmities; or as bad fathers,

*Lettres inédites de Madame de Sevigné, p. 201 and

203.

because their offspring have not always reflected the moral beauty of their own page. But the magnet loses nothing of its virtue, when, even the particles about it, incapable themselves of being attracted, are not acted on by its occult property.

VOL. II.

CHAPTER XVII.

POVERTY, A RELATIVE QUALITY-OF THE POVERTY OF LITERARY MEN IN WHAT DEGREE DESIRABLE

POVERTY-TASK-WORK-OF

GRA

-EXTREME
TUITOUS WORKS-A PROJECT TO PROVIDE AGAINST
THE WORST STATE OF POVERTY AMONG LITERARY
MEN.

POVERTY is a state not so fatal to genius, as it is usually conceived to be; we shall find that it has been sometimes voluntarily chosen; and that to connect too closely great fortune with great genius, is one of those powerful but unhappy alliances where the one party must necessarily act contrary to the interest of the other.

Poverty is a relative quality, like cold and heat, which are but the increase or the diminution in our own sensations; the positive idea must arise from comparison. There is a state of poverty reserved even for the wealthy man, the instant that he comes in hateful contact with the enormous capi

talist. But there is a poverty neither vulgar nor terrifying, asking no favours and on no terms receiving any; a poverty which annihilates its ideal evils, and, becoming even a source of pride, will confer independence, that first step to genius.

Among the continental nations, to accumulate wealth in the spirit of a capitalist, does not seem to form the prime object of domestic life; the traffic of money is with them left to the traffickers, their merchants, and their financiers: in our country the commercial character has so closely interwoven and identified itself with the national one, and its particular views have so terminated all our pursuits, that every rank is alike influenced by its spirit, and things are valued by a marketprice, which naturally admit of no such appraisement. In a country where "The Wealth of Nations" has been fixed as the first principle of their political existence, wealth has raised an aristocracy more noble than nobility, more celebrated than genius, more popular than patriotism; but however it be at times of a generous nature, it restricts honour within its own narrow pale. It is