The greatest debtor connected with science was John Hunter, who expended
all his available means--and they were wholly earned by himself--in
accumulating the splendid collection now known as the Hunterian Museum.
All that he could collect in fees went to purchase new objects for
preparation and dissection, or upon carpenters' and bricklayers' work
for the erection of his gallery. Though his family were left in
straitened circumstances at his death, the sale of the collection to the
nation for ВЈ15,000 enabled all his debts to be paid, and at the same
time left an enduring monument to his fame.

Great artists have nearly all struggled into celebrity through poverty,
and some have never entirely emerged from it. This, however, has been
mainly because of their improvidence. Jan Steen was always in distress,
arising principally from the habit he had acquired of drinking his own
beer; for he was first a brewer, and afterwards a tavern-keeper. He
drank and painted alternately, sometimes transferring the drinking
scenes of which he had been a witness to the canvas, even while himself
in a state of intoxication. He died in debt, after which his pictures
rose in value, until now they are worth their weight in gold.

Notwithstanding the large income of Vandyck, his style of living was so
splendid and costly as to involve him in heavy debt. To repair his
fortunes, he studied alchemy for a time, in the hope of discovering the
philosopher's stone. But towards the end of his life he was enabled to
retrieve his position, and to leave a comfortable competency to his
widow. Rembrandt, on the other hand, involved himself in debt through
his love of art. He was an insatiable collector of drawings, armour, and
articles of _vertu_, and thus became involved in such difficulties that
he was declared a bankrupt. His property remained under legal control
for thirteen years, until his death.

The great Italian artists were for the most part temperate and moderate
men, and lived within their means. Haydon, in his Autobiography, says,
"Rafaelle, Michael Angelo, Zeuxis, Apelles, Rubens, Reynolds, Titian,
were rich and happy. Why? Because with their genius they combined
practical prudence." Haydon himself was an instance of the contrary
practice. His life was a prolonged struggle with difficulty and debt. He
was no sooner free from one obligation, than he was involved in another.
His "Mock Election" was painted in the King's Bench prison, while he lay
there for debt. There is a strange entry in his Journal: "I borrowed ВЈ10
to-day of my butterman, Webb, an old pupil of mine, recommended to me by
Sir George Beaumont twenty-four years ago, but who wisely, after drawing
hands, set up _a butter shop_, and was enabled to send his old master
ВЈ10 in his necessity." Haydon's Autobiography is full of his contests
with lawyers and sheriffs' officers. Creditors dogged and dunned him at
every step. "Lazarus's head," he writes, "was painted just after an
arrest; Eucles was finished from a man in possession; the beautiful face
in Xenophon in the afternoon, after a morning spent in begging mercy of
lawyers; and Cassandra's head was finished in agony not to be described,
and her hand completed after a broker's man in possession, in an
execution put in for taxes."[1]

[Footnote 1: Haydon--_Autobiography_, vol. ii., p. 400.]

Cowper used to say that he never knew a poet who was not thriftless; and
he included himself. Notwithstanding his quiet, retired life, he was
constantly outrunning the constable. "By the help of good management,"
he once wrote, "and a clear notion of economical matters, I contrived in
three months to spend the income of a twelvemonth." But though the
number of thriftless poets may be great, it must not be forgotten that
Shakespeare, who stands at the head of the list, was a prudent man. He
economized his means, and left his family in comfort. His contemporaries
were, however, for the most part indebted men. Ben Jonson was often
embarrassed, and always poor, borrowing twenty shillings at a time from
Henslowe; though he rarely denied himself another jolly night at the
"Mermaid." Massinger was often so reduced in circumstances as not to be
able to pay his score at the same tavern.

Greene, Peele, and Marlowe lived lives of dissipation, and died in
poverty. Marlowe was killed in a drunken brawl. When Greene was on his
deathbed, dying of the disease which his excesses had caused, he was
haunted by the debt of ten pounds which he owed to the shoemaker who had
lodged him. He then warned his friend Peele to amend his ways; but
Peele, like him, died in distress and debt, one of the last letters he
wrote being an imploring letter to Burleigh asking for relief,--"Long
sickness," said he, "having so enfeebled me as maketh bashfulness almost
impudency." Spenser died forsaken, and in want. Ben Jonson says of him
that "he died for lack of bread in King Street, and refused twenty broad
pieces sent to him by my lord of Essex," adding, "he was sorrie he had
no time to spend them."

Of later poets and literary men, Milton died in obscurity, though not in
debt. Lovelace died in a cellar. Butler, the author of "Hudibras," died
of starvation in Rose Alley, the same place in which Dryden was beaten
by hired ruffians. Otway was hunted by bailiffs to his last hiding-place
on Tower Hill. His last act was to beg a shilling of a gentleman, who
gave him a guinea; and buying a loaf to appease his hunger, he choked at
the first mouthful. Wycherley lay seven years in gaol for debt, but
lived to die in his bed at nearly eighty. Fielding's extravagance and
dissipation in early life involved him in difficulties which he never
entirely shook off, and his death was embittered by the poverty in which
he left his widow and child in a foreign land.

Savage had a pension of fifty pounds a year, which he usually spent in a
few days. It was then fashionable to wear scarlet cloaks trimmed with
gold lace; and Johnson one day met him, just after he had got his
pension, with one of these cloaks upon his back, while, at the same
time, his naked toes were sticking through his shoes. After living a
life of recklessness and dissipation, he died in prison, where he had
lain six months for debt. In concluding his "Life of Savage," Johnson
says: "This relation will not be wholly without its use, if those who,
in confidence of superior capacities or attainments, disregard the
common maxims of life, shall be reminded that nothing will supply the
want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity, long continued,
will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible."

Sterne died poor, if he did not die insolvent. At his death, a
subscription was got up for the support of his wife and daughter.
Churchill was imprisoned for debt, occasioned by his dissoluteness and
extravagance,--Cowper characterizing him as "spendthrift alike of money
and of wit." Chatterton, reduced to a state of starvation and despair,
poisoned himself in his eighteenth year. Sir Richard Steele was rarely
out of debt. In many respects he resembled Sheridan in temperament and
character. He was full of speculation, and was always on the point of
some grand stroke of luck, which was to make his fortune. He was
perpetually haunted by duns and bailiffs; yet he did not stint himself
of luxuries so long as he obtained credit. When appointed to the office
of Commissioner of Stamps, with a moderate income, he set up a carriage
with two and sometimes four horses; and he maintained two houses, one in
London, the other at Hampton. His means being altogether inadequate to
this style of living, he soon became drowned in greater debt than
before. He was repeatedly impounded by lawyers, and locked up in
sponging-houses. Executions were put into his houses; his furniture was
sold off; his wife wanted the commonest necessaries of life; and still
the pleasure-loving Steele maintained his equanimity and good temper.
Something great was always on the point of turning up in his favour. One
of his grandest schemes was that for bringing fish alive to the London
market; "and then," said he to his wife, "you will be better provided
for than any lady in England." But the good turn never came to Sir
Richard; and he died out at elbows on his wife's little property in
Wales.

Goldsmith was another of the happy-go-lucky debtors. He swam in debt. He
was no sooner out of it, than he was plunged into it again, deeper than
before. The first money he earned as a tutor--it was all the money he
had--was spent in buying a horse. His relations raised ВЈ50, and sent him
to the Temple to study law, but he got no farther than Dublin, where he
spent or gambled away all the money. Then he went to Edinburgh to study
medicine, and was forced to fly from it, having become surety for a
friend. He started on the tour of Europe without any money in his
pocket--with nothing but his flute; and he begged and played, until he
came back to England, as poor as he went. He himself used afterwards to
say that there was hardly a kingdom in Europe in which he was not a
debtor.[1]

[Footnote 1: FORSTER--_Life of Goldsmith_, ed. 1863, p. 41.]

Even when Goldsmith began to earn money freely, he was still in debt. He
gave away with one hand what he earned with the other. He was dunned for
his milk-score, arrested for rent, threatened by lawyers, but never
learnt the wisdom of economy. In the same month in which the second
edition of his "Vicar of Wakefield" was published, his bill of fifteen
guineas, drawn on Newbery, was returned dishonoured. When he was
figuring at Boswell's dinner in Old Bond Street in the "ratteen suit
lined with satin, and bloom-coloured silk breeches," the clothes
belonged to his tailor, and remained unpaid till his death.

Prosperity increased his difficulties rather than diminished them; the
more money he had, the more thoughtless and lavish was his expenditure.
He could refuse no indulgence, either to himself or others. He would
borrow a guinea and give it to a beggar. He would give the clothes off
his back, and the blankets off his bed. He could refuse nobody. To meet
his thoughtless expenditure, he raised money by promising to write books
which he never began. He was perpetually discounting to-morrow, and
mortgaging an estate already overburthened. Thus he died, as he had
begun, poor, embarrassed, and in debt. At his death he owed over two
thousand pounds: "Was ever poet," says Johnson, "so trusted before?"

The case of Goldsmith and others has been cited as instances of the
harsh treatment of genius by the world, and in proof of the social
disabilities of literary men and artists. It has been held that society
should be more indulgent to its men of genius, and that Government
should do something more for them than it now does. But nothing that
society or Government could do for men of genius would be likely to
prove of any service to them, unless they will do what other and less
gifted men do,--exhibit self-respect and practise ordinary economy. We
may pity poor Goldsmith, but we cannot fail to see that he was
throughout his own enemy. His gains were large, amounting to about
ВЈ8,000 in fourteen years; representing a much larger sum of money at the
present day. For his "History of the Earth and Animated Nature" he
received ВЈ850,--and the book was, at best, but a clever compilation.
Johnson said of him that "if he can tell a horse from a cow, that is the
extent of his knowledge of zoology." The representation of his
"Good-natured Man" produced him ВЈ500. And so on with his other works. He
was as successful as Johnson was; but then he had not Johnson's
sobriety, self-restraint, and self-respect.

Yet Goldsmith, in his thoughtful moments, knew the right path, though he
had not the courage to pursue it. In a letter to his brother Henry
respecting the career of his son, Goldsmith wrote: "Teach, my dear sir,
to your son, thrift and economy. Let his poor wandering uncle's example
be placed before his eyes. I had learned from books to be disinterested
and generous before I was taught from experience the necessity of being
prudent. I had contracted the habits and notions of a philosopher, while
I was exposing myself to the insidious approaches of cunning; and often
by being, even with my narrow finances, charitable to excess, I forgot
the rules of justice, and placed myself in the very situation of the
wretch who thanked me for my bounty."

Byron had scarcely reached manhood when he became involved in debt.
Writing to Mr. Becher, in his twentieth year, he said, "_Entre nous_, I
am cursedly dipped; my debts, everything inclusive, will be nine or ten
thousand before I am twenty-one." On his coming of age, the festivities
at Newstead were celebrated by means supplied by money-lenders at
enormously usurious rates of interest. His difficulties did not
diminish, but only increased with time. It is said that his mother's
death was occasioned by a fit of rage, brought on by reading the
upholsterer's bills.[1] When the first canto of "Childe Harold" was
published, Byron presented the copyright to Mr. Dallas, declaring that
he would never receive money for his writings,--a resolution which he
afterwards wisely abandoned. But his earnings by literature at that time
could not have lightened the heavy load of debt under which he
staggered. Newstead was sold, and still the load accumulated. Then he
married, probably in the expectation that his wife's fortune would
release him; but her money was locked up, and the step, instead of
relieving him, brought only an accession of misery. Every one knows the
sad result of the union; which was aggravated by the increasing assaults
of duns and sheriffs' officers.

[Footnote 1: MOORE--_Life of Byron_, ed. 1860. p. 127.]

Byron was almost driven to sell the copyright of his books, but he was
prevented from doing so by his publisher, who pressed upon him a sum of
money to meet his temporary wants. During the first year of his
marriage, his house was nine times in the possession of bailiffs, his
door was almost daily beset by duns, and he was only saved from gaol by
the privileges of his rank. All this, to a sensitive nature such as his,
must have been gall and bitterness; while his wife's separation from
him, which shortly followed, could not fail to push him almost to the
point of frenzy. Although he had declined to receive money for his first
poems, Byron altered his views, and even learnt to drive a pretty hard
bargain with his publisher.[1] But Moore does not, in his biography of
the poet, inform us whether he ever got rid, except by death, of his
grievous turmoil of debt.

[Footnote 1: "You offer 1,500 guineas for the new Canto [the fourth of
'Childe Harold']: I won't take it. I ask two thousand five hundred
guineas for it, which you will either give or not as you think
proper.... If Mr. Eustace was to have two thousand for a poem on
Education; if Mr. Moore is to have three thousand for Lalla; if Mr.
Campbell is to have three thousand for his prose or poetry.--I don't
mean to disparage these gentlemen or their labours.--but I ask the
aforesaid price for mine."--_Lord Byron to Mr. Murray_, Sept. 4th,
1817.]

There is the greatest difference in the manner in which men bear the
burden of debt. Some feel it to be no burden at all; others bear it very
lightly; whilst others look upon creditors in the light of persecutors,
and themselves in the light of martyrs. But where the moral sense is a
little more keen,--where men use the goods of others, without rendering
the due equivalent of money--where they wear unpaid clothes, eat unpaid
meat, drink unpaid wines, and entertain guests at the expense of the
butcher, grocer, wine-merchant, and greengrocer,--they must necessarily
feel that their conduct is of the essence, not only of shabbiness, but
of dishonesty, and the burden must then bear very heavily indeed.

Of light-hearted debtors, the proportion is considerable. Thus
Theophilus Cibber, when drowned in debt, begged the loan of a guinea,
and spent it on a dish of ortolans. Thus Foote when his mother wrote to
him--"Dear Sam, I am in prison for debt--come and help your loving
mother,"--replied, "Dear Mother, so am I, which prevents his duty being
paid to his loving mother by her affectionate son." Steele and Sheridan
both bore the load lightly. When entertaining company, they put the
bailiffs who were in possession in livery, and made them wait at table,
passing them off as servants. Nothing disturbed Steele's equanimity; and
when driven from London by debt, he carried his generosity into the
country, giving prizes to the lads and lasses assembled at rural games
and country dances. Sheridan also made very light of his debts, and had
many a good joke over them. Some one asked him how it was that the O'
was not prefixed to his name, when he replied that he was sure no family
had a better right to it, "for in truth, we _owe_ everybody." And when a
creditor once apologized for the soiled and tattered state of a bill,
which had been much worn by being so often presented, Sheridan advised
him "as a friend, to take it home and write it _upon parchment_."

Very different was it in the case of poor Burns, who was almost driven
distracted because he owed a debt of ВЈ7 4_s_. for a volunteer's uniform,
which he could not pay. He sent to his friend Thomson, the publisher of
his songs, imploring the loan of ВЈ5, promising full value in
"song-genius."[1] His last poem was a "love song," in part payment of
the loan, which he composed only a few days before his death.

[Footnote 1: "After all my boasted independence," he said, "curst
necessity compels me to implore you for five pounds. A cruel scoundrel
of a haberdasher, to whom I owe an account, taking it into his head that
I am dying, has commenced a process, and will infallibly put me in jail.
Do, for God's sake, send me that sum, and by return of post. Forgive me
this earnestness; but the horrors of a jail have made me half
distracted. I do not ask all this gratuitously: for upon returning
health I promise and engage to furnish you with five pounds' worth of
the neatest song-genius you have seen."--_Burns to Thomson_. 12th July,
1796. Burns died on the 21st of the same month.]

Sydney Smith had a severe struggle with poverty in the early part of his
life. He had a poor living, a wide parish, and a large family. His
daughter says that his debts occasioned him many sleepless nights, and
that she has seen him in an evening, when bill after bill has poured in
(carefully examining them, and gradually paying them off), quite
overcome by the feeling of the debt hanging over him, cover his face
with his hands, and exclaim, "Ah! I see I shall end my old age in a
gaol."[1] But he bore up bravely under the burden, labouring onward with
a cheerful heart, eking out his slender means by writing articles for
the _Edinburgh_, until at length promotion reached him, and he reaped
the reward of his perseverance, his industry, and his independence.

[Footnote 1: LADY HOLLAND--_Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith_, vol. i, p.
206.]

De Foe's life was a long battle with difficulty and debt. He was
constantly involved in broils, mostly of his own stirring up. He was a
fierce pamphleteer from his youth up; and was never for a moment at
rest, He was by turns a soldier with the Duke of Monmouth, a pantile
maker, a projector, a poet, a political agent, a novelist, an essayist,
a historian. He was familiar with the pillory, and spent much of his
time in gaol. When reproached by one of his adversaries with
mercenariness, he piteously declared how he had, "in the pursuit of
peace, brought himself into innumerable broils;" how he had been "sued
for other men's debts, and stripped naked by public opinion, of what
should have enabled him to pay his own;" how, "with a numerous family,
and with no helps but his own industry, he had forced his way, with
undiscouraged diligence, through a sea of debt and misfortune," and "in
gaols, in retreats, and in all manner of extremities, supported himself
without the assistance of friends and relations." Surely, there never
was such a life of struggle and of difficulty as that of the
indefatigable De Foe. Yet all his literary labours, and they were
enormous, did not suffice to keep him clear of debt, for it is believed
that he died insolvent.[2]

[Footnote 2: George Chalmers--_Life of De Foe,_ p. 92.]

Southey was, in his own line, almost as laborious a writer as De Foe;
though his was the closet life of the student, and not the aggressive
life of the polemic. Though he knew debt, it never became his master;
and from an early period in his career, he determined not to contract a
debt that he was not able to discharge. He was not only enabled to do
this, but to help his friends liberally--maintaining for a time the
families of his brothers-in-law, Coleridge and Lovell--by simply not
allowing himself any indulgences beyond his actual means, though these
were often very straitened. The burthen he carried would have borne down
a man less brave and resolute; but he worked, and studied, and wrote,
and earned money enough for all his own wants, as well as the wants of
those who had become dependent upon him. He held on his noble way
without a murmur or complaint. He not only liberally helped his
relatives, but his old schoolfellows, in distress. He took Coleridge's
wife and family to live with him, at a time when Coleridge had abandoned
himself to opium-drinking. To meet the numerous claims upon him, Southey
merely imposed upon himself so much extra labour. He was always ready
with good advice to young men who sought his help. Thus he encouraged
Kirke White, Herbert Knowles, and Dusantoy, all of whom died young and
full of promise. He not only helped them with advice and encouragement,
but with money; and his timely assistance rescued the sister of
Chatterton from absolute want. And thus he worked on nobly and
unselfishly to the last--finding happiness and joy in the pursuit of
letters--"not so learned as poor, not so poor as proud, not so proud as
happy." These were his own words.

The most touching story in Sir Walter Scott's life, is the manner in
which he conducted himself after the failure of the publishing house of
Constable and Co., with which he had become deeply involved. He had
built Abbotsford, become a laird, was sheriff of his county, and thought
himself a rich man; when suddenly the Constable firm broke down, and he
found himself indebted to the world more than a hundred thousand pounds.
"It is very hard," he said, when the untoward news reached him, "thus to
lose all the labour of a lifetime, and to be made a poor man at last.
But if God grant me health and strength for a few years longer, I have
no doubt that I shall redeem it all." Everybody thought him a ruined
man, and he almost felt himself to be so. But his courage never gave
way. When his creditors proposed to him a composition, his sense of
honour forbade his listening to them. "No, gentlemen," he replied; "Time
and I against any two." Though the debts had been contracted by others,
he had made himself legally responsible for them; and, strong in his
principle of integrity, he determined, if he could, to pay them off to
the last farthing. And he set himself to do it: but it cost him his
life.

He parted with his town house and furniture, delivered over his personal
effects to be held in trust for his creditors, and bound himself to
discharge a certain amount of his liabilities annually. This he did by
undertaking new literary works, some of them of great magnitude, the
execution of which, though they enabled him to discharge a large portion
of his debt, added but little to his reputation. One of his first tasks
was his "Life of Napoleon Buonaparte," in nine volumes, which he wrote,
in the midst of pain, sorrow, and ruin, in about thirteen
months,--receiving for it about fourteen thousand pounds. Even though
struck by paralysis, he went on writing until in about four years he had
discharged about two-thirds of the debt for which he was
responsible,--an achievement probably unparalleled in the history of
letters.

The sacrifices and efforts which he made during the last few years of
his life, even while paralyzed and scarcely able to hold his pen,
exhibit Scott in a truly heroic light. He bore up with unconquerable
spirit to the last. When his doctor expostulated with him against his
excessive brain-work, he replied, "If I were to be idle, I should go
mad: in comparison to this, death is no risk to shrink from." Shortly
before his last fatal attack, when sitting dozing in his chair on the
grass in front of the house at Abbotsford, he suddenly roused himself,
threw off the plaids which covered him, and exclaimed, "This is sad
idleness. Take me to my own room, and fetch the keys of my desk." They
wheeled him into his study, and put pens and paper before him. But he
could not grasp the pen; he could not write; and the tears rolled down
his cheeks. His spirit was not conquered, but his bodily powers were
exhausted and shattered; and when at length he died, he fell
asleep--like a child.

Scott felt, what every sensitive nature must feel, that poverty is a
much lighter burden to bear than debt. There is nothing ignominious
about poverty. It may even serve as a healthy stimulus to great spirits.
"Under gold mountains and thrones," said Jean Paul, "lie buried many
spiritual giants." Richter even held that poverty was to be welcomed, so
that it came not too late in life. And doubtless Scott's burden was all
the heavier to bear, because it came upon him in his declining years.

Shakespeare was originally a poor man: "It is a question," says Carlyle,
"whether, had not want, discomfort, and distress warrants been busy at
Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare had not lived killing calves or combing
wool! "To Milton's and Dryden's narrow means we probably owe the best
part of their works.

Johnson was a very poor man, and a very brave one. He never knew what
wealth was. His mind was always greater than his fortune; and it is the
mind that makes the man rich or poor, happy or miserable. Johnson's
gruff and bluff exterior covered a manly and noble nature. He had early
known poverty and debt, and wished himself clear of both. When at
college, his feet appeared through his shoes, but he was too poor to buy
new ones. His head was full of learning, but his pockets were empty. How
he struggled through distress and difficulty during his first years in
London the reader can learn from his "Life." He bedded and boarded for
fourpence-halfpenny a day, and when too poor to pay for a bed, he
wandered with Savage whole nights in the streets.[1] He struggled on
manfully, never whining at his lot, but trying to make the best of it.

[Footnote 1: "He said a man might live in a garret at eighteen-pence a
week; few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did, it was
easy to say, 'Sir, I am to be found at such a place.' By spending
threepence in a coffee house, he might be for some hours every day in
very good company; he might dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread and
milk for a penny, and do without supper. On _clean-shirt day_ he went
abroad and paid visits." BOSWELL--_Life of Johnson_.]

These early sorrows and struggles of Johnson left their scars upon his
nature; but they also enlarged and enriched his experience, as well as
widened his range of human sympathy. Even when in his greatest distress
he had room in his heart for others whose necessities were greater than
his own; and he was never wanting in his help to those who needed it, or
were poorer than himself.

From his sad experience, no one could speak with greater authority on
the subject of debt than Johnson. "Do not accustom yourself," he wrote
to Boswell, "to consider debt only an inconvenience; you will find it a
calamity. Let it be your first care not to be in any man's debt.
Whatever you have, spend less. Frugality is not only the basis of quiet,
but of beneficence." To Simpson, the barrister, he wrote, "Small debts
are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely
be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon, of loud noise,
but little danger. You must therefore be enabled to discharge petty
debts, that you may have leisure, with security to struggle with the
rest." "Sir," said he to the patient and receptive Boswell, "get as much
peace of mind as you can, and keep within your income, and you won't go
far wrong."

Men who live by their wits, their talents, or their genius, have,
somehow or other, acquired the character of being improvident. Charles
Nodier, writing about a distinguished genius, said of him--"In the life
of intelligence and art, he was an angel; in the common practical life
of every day, he was a child." The same might be said of many great
writers and artists. The greatest of them have been so devoted--heart
and soul--to their special work, that they have not cared to think how
the efforts of their genius might be converted into pounds, shillings,
and pence. Had they placed the money consideration first, probably the
world would not have inherited the products of their genius. Milton
would not have laboured for so many years at his "Paradise Lost," merely
for the sake of the five pounds for which he sold the first edition to
the publisher. Nor would Schiller have gone on toiling for twenty years
up to the topmost pinnacles of thought, merely for the sake of the bare
means of living which he earned by his work.

At the same time, men of genius should not disregard the common rules of
arithmetic. If they spend more than they earn, they will run into debt.
Nor will complaining of the harshness of the world keep them out of it.
They have to stand or fall on their merits as men, and if they are not
provident they will suffer the same consequences as others. Thackeray,
in painting the character of Captain Shandon, in his "Pendennis," gave
considerable offence to the literary profession; yet he only spoke the
truth. "If a lawyer," said he, "or a soldier, or a parson, outruns his
income, and does not pay his bills, he must go to gaol; and an author
must go too."

Literary men are not neglected because they are literary men. But they
have no right to expect that society will overlook their social offences
because they are literary men. It is necessary for the world's sake, as
well as for their own sake, that literary men and artists should take
care to "provide against the evil day" like other people. "Imagination
and art," says Madame de StaГ«l, "have need to look after their own
comfort and happiness in this world." The world ought to help them
generously; all good men ought to help them; but what is better than
all, they ought to help themselves.




CHAPTER XIV.

RICHES AND CHARITY.


 "Who--who--who's here
 I, Robert of Doncaster.
 That I spent, that I had;
 That I gave, that I have;
 That I left, that I lost."
        _Epitaph_, A.D. 1579.

"If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey
And death unloads thee."--_Shakespeare_.

"II est bon d'ГЄtre charitable,
 Mais envers qui? C'est lГ  le point."--_La Fontaine_.

"There are many idlers to whom a penny begged is sweeter than a shilling
earned."--_Douglas Jerrold_.

"He stole a pig, and in God's name gave the trotters to the
poor."--_From the Spanish._


Man must be thrifty in order to be generous. Thrift does not end with
itself, but extends its benefits to others. It founds hospitals, endows
charities, establishes colleges, and extends educational influences.
Benevolence springs from the best qualities of the mind and heart. Its
divine spirit elevates the benefactors of the world--the Howards,
Clarksons, and Naviers--to the highest pedestals of moral genius and of
national worship.

The same feeling pervades our common humanity. The poorest man, the
daily worker, the obscurest individual, shares the gift and the blessing
of doing good--a blessing that imparts no less delight to him who gives
than to him who receives.

"Man is dear to man; the poorest poor
Long for some moments, in a weary life,
When they can know and feel that they have been
Themselves the fathers and the dealers-out
Of some small blessings; have been kind to such
As needed kindness, for this single cause,
That we have all of us one human heart."

The duty of helping the helpless is one that speaks trumpet-tongued; but
especially to those who profess love to God and goodwill to men. It is a
duty that belongs to men as individuals, and as members of the social
body. As individuals, because we are enjoined to help the widow and the
fatherless in their affliction; and as members of the social body,
because society claims of every man that he shall be a helper in the
cause of progress and of social well-being.

It is not necessary that men should be rich, to be helpful to others.
John Pounds was not a rich man; yet by his influence Ragged Schools were
established. He was temperate, and saved enough from his earnings to buy
food for his pupils. He attracted them by his kindness, sometimes by a
"hot potato;" he taught them, and sent them out into the world,
fortified by his good example, to work in it, and do their duty towards
it. Nor was Robert Raikes, the founder of Sunday and other schools, a
rich man; neither was Thomas Wright, the prison philanthropist. Nor were
St. Vincent de Paul and Father Mathew--the promoters of education and
temperance. Nor were the great men of science--Newton, Watt, and
Faraday; nor the great missionaries--Xavier, Martyn, Carey, and
Livingstone.

A fine instance of gentleness and generosity is recorded in Walton's
memoir of Dr. Donne. When the latter, long straitened in his means, had
entered upon the Deanery of St. Paul's, and was thereby provided with an
income more than sufficient for all his wants, he felt that those means
had been entrusted to him, for good uses, and to employ for human help
and to the glory of the Giver thereof. At the foot of a private account,
"to which God and His angels only were witnesses with him," Dr. Donne
computed first his revenue, then what was given to the poor and other
pious uses, and lastly, what rested for him and his; and having done
that, he then blessed each year's poor remainder with a thankful prayer.


Dr. Donne did most of his good in secret, letting not his right hand
know what his left hand did. He redeemed many poor from prison; helped
many a poor scholar; and employed a trusty servant or a discreet friend
to distribute his bounty where it was most needed. A friend whom he had
known in days of affluence, having by a too liberal heart and
carelessness become decayed in his estate and reduced to poverty, Donne
sent him a hundred pounds. But the decayed gentleman returned it with
thanks, saying that he wanted it not;--for, says Walton, in narrating
the event, "as there be some spirits so generous as to labour to conceal
and endure a sad poverty, rather than expose themselves to those blushes
that attend the confession of it, so there be others to whom nature and
grace have afforded such sweet and compassionate souls as to pity and
prevent the distresses of mankind; which I have mentioned because of Dr.
Donne's reply, whose answer was, 'I know you want not what will sustain
nature, for a little will do that; but my desire is that you, who in the
days of your plenty have cheered and raised the hearts of so many of
your dejected friends, would now receive this from me, and use it as a
cordial for the cheering of your own;'"--and upon these terms it was
received.

The truth is, that we very much exaggerate the power of riches. Immense
subscriptions are got up for the purpose of reforming men from their
sinful courses, and turning them from evil to good. And yet
subscriptions will not do it. It is character that can do the work;
money never can. Great changes in society can never be effected through
riches. To turn men from intemperance, improvidence, and irreligion, and
to induce them to seek their happiness in the pursuit of proper and
noble objects, requires earnest purpose, honest self-devotion, and hard
work. Money may help in many respects; but money by itself can do
nothing. The apostle Paul planted the knowledge of the Christian
religion over half the Roman empire; yet he supported himself by
tent-making, and not by collecting subscriptions. Men of anxious,
earnest, honest hearts, are far more wanted than rich men--willing to
give money in charity.

Nothing is so much over-estimated as the power of money. All the people
who are looking out for front seats in "society," think it the one thing
needful. They may be purse-liberal, but they are also purse-proud. The
hypocritical professions of some people, with a view to elicit the good
opinion of others, in the teeth of their daily life and practice, is
nothing short of disgusting. "Oh, Geordie, jingling Geordie," said King
James, in the novel, "it was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the
guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing on the turpitude of
incontinence!"

Some people have an idolatrous worship of money. The Israelites had
their golden Calf; the Greeks had their golden Jupiter. Old Bounderby
valued the man who was worth a "hundred thousand pounds." Others do the
same. The lowest human nature loves money, possessions, value. "What is
he worth?" "What is his income?" are the usual questions. If you say,
"There is a thoroughly good, benevolent, virtuous man!" nobody will
notice him. But if you say, "There is a man worth a million of money,"
he will be stared at till out of sight. A crowd of people used to
collect at Hyde Park Corner to see a rich man pass. "Here comes old
Crockie!" and the crowd would separate to allow him to pass, amidst
whispers of admiration. It was old Crockford, who made a large fortune
by keeping a gambling-house.

"The very sound of millions," says Mrs. Gore,[1] "tickles the ear of an
Englishman! He loves it so much, indeed, that it all but reconciles him
to the National Debt; and when applied to private proprietorship, it
secures deference for lowness of mind, birth, habits, and pursuits....
Ambition and money-love, if they tend to ennoble a country, reduce to
insignificance the human particles of which the nation is composed. In
their pursuit of riches, the English are gradually losing sight of
higher characteristics; ... our pursuit of railway bubbles and every
other frantic speculation of the hour, affords sufficient evidence of
the craving after capital superseding every better aspiration, whether
for this world or the next."

[Footnote 1: Introduction to "Men of Capital."]

The love of gold threatens to drive everything before it. The pursuit of
money has become the settled custom of the country. Many are so absorbed
by it, that every other kind of well-being is either lost sight of, or
altogether undervalued. And then the lovers of money think to recover
their moral tone by bestowing charity! Mountains of gold weigh heavily
upon the heart and soul. The man who can withstand the weight of riches,
and still be diligent, industrious, and strong in mind and heart, must
be made of strong stuff. For, people who are rich, are almost invariably
disposed to be idle, luxurious, and self-indulgent.

"If money," said the Rev. Mr. Griffiths, Rector of Merthyr, "did not
make men forget men, one-half of the evil that is in the world would
never occur. If masters drew nearer to the men, and men were permitted
to draw nearer their masters, we should not be passing through this
fiery ordeal. Let them do something to win the men out of the
public-houses; let them spare more of their enormous gains to build
places of amusement and recreation for the people; let them provide
better houses to live in, better conveniences for decency, better
streets; and if all these things are done we shall have neither
lock-outs nor strikes. We hear with pomp and triumph of the millions and
millions that have been dug out of this old Welsh land of ours, but we
hear nothing--and we see, indeed, less--of the public buildings, the
people's parks, the public libraries and public institutions, and other
civilizing agencies. Fifteen months ago, when we were in the highest
tide of prosperity, I said all this, and no notice was taken of it. Why
should any notice be taken of a preaching parson or a Christian minister
of any kind, when sovereigns fly about like snowflakes in winter, or may
be gathered like blackberries in summer?"[1]

[Footnote 1: Sermon preached at Merthyr during the South Wales strike.]

Men go on toiling and moiling, eager to be richer; desperately
struggling, as if against poverty, at the same time that they are
surrounded with abundance. They scrape and scrape, add shilling to
shilling, and sometimes do shabby things in order to make a little more
profit; though they may have accumulated far more than they can actually
enjoy. And still they go on, worrying themselves incessantly in the
endeavour to grasp at an additional increase of superfluity. Perhaps
such men have not enjoyed the advantages of education in early life.
They have no literary pleasures to fall back upon; they have no taste
for books; sometimes they can scarcely write their own names. They have
nothing to think of but money,--and of what will make money. They have
no faith, but in riches! They keep their children under restriction and
bring them up with a servile education.

At length, an accumulation of money comes into the children's hands.
They have before been restricted in their expenditure; now they become
lavish. They have been educated in no better tastes. They spend
extravagantly. They will not be drudges in business as their father was.
They will be "gentlemen," and spend their money "like gentlemen." And
very soon the money takes wings and flies away. Many are the instances
in which families have been raised to wealth in the first generation,
launched into ruinous expense in the second, and disappeared in the
third,--being again reduced to poverty. Hence the Lancashire proverb,
"Twice clogs, once boots." The first man wore clogs, and accumulated a
"a power o' money;" his rich son spent it; and the third generation took
up the clogs again. A candidate for parliamentary honours, when speaking
from the hustings, was asked if he had plenty brass. "Plenty brass?"
said he; "ay, I've lots o' brass!--I stink o' brass!"

The same social transformations are known in Scotland. The proverb there
is, "The grandsire digs, the father bigs, the son thigs,"[1]--that is,
the grandfather worked hard and made a fortune, the father built a fine
house, and the son, "an unthrifty son of Linne," when land and goods
were gone and spent, took to thieving. Merchants are sometimes princes
to-day and beggars to-morrow; and so long as the genius for speculation
is exercised by a mercantile family, the talent which gave them landed
property may eventually deprive them of it.

[Footnote 1: _Dublin University Magazine_.]

To be happy in old age--at a time when men should leave for ever the
toil, anxiety, and worry of money-making--they must, during youth and
middle life, have kept their minds healthily active. They must
familiarize themselves with knowledge, and take an interest in all that
has been done, and is doing, to make the world wiser and better from age
to age. There is enough leisure in most men's lives to enable them to
interest themselves in biography and history. They may also acquire
considerable knowledge of science, or of some ennobling pursuit
different from that by which money is made. Mere amusement will not do.
No man can grow happy upon amusement. The mere man of pleasure is a
miserable creature,--especially in old age. The mere drudge in business
is little better. Whereas the study of literature, philosophy, and
science is full of tranquil pleasure, down to the end of life. If the
rich old man has no enjoyment apart from money-making, his old age
becomes miserable. He goes on grinding and grinding in the same rut,
perhaps growing richer and richer. What matters it? He cannot eat his
gold. He cannot spend it. His money, instead of being beneficial to him,
becomes a curse. He is the slave of avarice, the meanest of sins. He is
spoken of as a despicable creature. He becomes base, even in his own
estimation.

What a miserable end was that of the rich man who, when dying, found no
comfort save in plunging his hands into a pile of new sovereigns, which
had been brought to him from the bank. As the world faded from him, he
still clutched them; handled and fondled them one by one,--and then he
passed away,--his last effort being to finger his gold! Elwes the miser
died shrieking, "I will keep my money!--nobody shall deprive me of my
property!" A ghastly and humiliating spectacle!

Rich men are more punished for their excess of economy, than poor men
are for their want of it. They become miserly, think themselves daily
growing poorer, and die the deaths of beggars. We have known several
instances. One of the richest merchants in London, after living for some
time in penury, went down into the country, to the parish where he was
born, and applied to the overseers for poor's relief. Though possessing
millions, he was horror-struck by the fear of becoming poor. Relief was
granted him, and he positively died the death of a pauper. One of the
richest merchants in the North died in the receipt of poor's relief. Of
course, all that the parish authorities had doled out to these poor-rich
men was duly repaid by their executors.

And what did these rich persons leave behind them? Only the reputation
that they had died rich men. But riches do not constitute any claim to
distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches. Money is
a drug in the market. Some of the most wealthy men living are mere
nobodies. Many of them are comparatively ignorant. They are of no moral
or social account. A short time since, a list was published of two
hundred and twenty-four English millionaires. Some were known as screws;
some were "smart men" in regard to speculations; some were large
navvies, coal-miners, and manufacturers; some were almost unknown beyond
their own local circle; some were very poor creatures; very few were men
of distinction. All that one could say of them was, that they died rich
men.

"All the rich and all the covetous men in the world," said Jeremy
Taylor, "will perceive, and all the world will perceive for them, that
it is but an ill recompense for all their cares, that by this time all
that shall be left will be this, that the neighbours shall say, _He died
a rich man:_ and yet his wealth will not profit him in the grave, but
hugely swell the sad accounts of his doomsday."

"One of the chief causes," says Mrs. Gore, "which render the pursuit of
wealth a bitterer as well as more pardonable struggle in England than on
the Continent, is the unequal and capricious distribution of family
property.... Country gentlemen and professional men,--nay, men without
the pretension of being gentlemen,--are scarcely less smitten with the
mania of creating 'an eldest son' to the exclusion and degradation of
their younger children; and by the individuals thus defrauded by their
nearest and dearest, is the idolatry of Mammon pursued without the least
regard to self-respect, or the rights of their fellow-creatures.
Injured, they injure in their turn. Their days are devoted to a campaign
for the recovery of their birthright. Interested marriages, shabby
bargains, and political jobbery, may be traced to the vile system of
things which converts the elder son into a Dives, and makes a Lazarus of
his brother."

But democrats have quite as great a love for riches as aristocrats; and
many austere republicans are eager to be millionaires. Forms of
government do not influence the desire for wealth. The elder Cato was a
usurer. One of his means of making money was by buying young half-fed
slaves at a low price; then, by fattening them up, and training them to
work, he sold them at an enhanced price. Brutus, when in the Isle of
Cyprus, lent his money at forty-eight per cent. interest,[1] and no one
thought the worse of him for his Usury. Washington, the hero of American
freedom, bequeathed his slaves to his wife. It did not occur to him to
give them their liberty. Municipal jobbery is not unknown in New York;
and its influential citizens are said to be steeped to the lips in
political corruption. Mr. Mills says, that the people of the
North-Eastern States have apparently got rid of all social injustices
and inequalities; that the proportion of population to capital and land
is such as to ensure abundance for every able-bodied man; that they
enjoy the six points of the Charter, and need never complain of poverty.
Yet "all that these advantages have done for them is, that the life of
the whole of our sex is devoted to dollar-hunting; and of the other, to
breeding dollar-hunters. This," Mr. Mill adds, "is not a kind of social
perfection which philanthropists to come will feel any very eager desire
to assist in realizing."[2]

[Footnote 1: Cicero's Letters]

[Footnote 2: _Principles of Political Economy_, Book iv., ch. vi.]

Saladin the Great conquered Syria, Arabia, Persia, and Mesopotamia. He
was the greatest warrior and conqueror of his time. His power and wealth
were enormous. Yet he was fully persuaded of the utter hollowness of
riches. He ordered, by his will, that considerable sums should be
distributed to Mussulmans, Jews, and Christians, in order that the
priests of the three religions might implore for him the mercy of God.
He commanded that the shirt or tunic which he wore at the time of his
death should be carried on the end of a spear throughout the whole camp
and at the head of his army, and that the soldier who bore it should
pause at intervals and say aloud, "Behold all that remains of the
Emperor Saladin!--of all the states he had conquered; of all the
provinces he had subdued; of the boundless treasures he had amassed; of
the countless wealth he possessed, he retained, in dying, nothing but
this shroud!"