XL
It is not true that authors, artists, &c., are uniformly ill-paid; they are often improvident, and look upon an income as an estate. A literary man who has made even five or six hundred a-year for a length of time has only himself to blame if he has none of it left (a tradesman with the same annual profits would have been rich or independent); an artist who breaks for ten thousand pounds cannot surely lament the want of patronage. A sieve might as well petition against a dry season. Persons of talent and reputation do not make money, because they do not keep it; and they do not keep it, because they do not care about it till they feel the want of it—and then the public stop payment. The prudent and careful, even among players, lay by fortunes.