“Where, then, do you draw the line? and what is the boundary beyond which your independence must not step?”
“I hold that man,” cried he, with energy, “to be independent, who treats the Great as the Little, and the Little as the Great, who neither exults in riches nor blushes in poverty, who owes no man a groat, and who spends not a shilling he has not earned.”
“You will not, indeed, then, have a very numerous acquaintance, if this is the description of those with whom you purpose to associate! but is it possible you imagine you can live by such notions? why the Carthusian in his monastery, who is at least removed from temptation, is not mortified so severely as a man of spirit living in the world, who would prescribe himself such rules.”
“Not merely have I prescribed,” returned Belfield, “I have already put them in practice; and far from finding any pennance, I never before found happiness. I have now adopted, though poor, the very plan of life I should have elected if rich; my pleasure, therefore, is become my business, and my business my pleasure.”
“And is this plan,” cried Monckton, “nothing more than turning Knight-errant to the Booksellers?”
“'Tis a Knight-errantry,” answered Belfield, laughing, “which, however ludicrous it may seem to you, requires more soul and more brains than any other. Our giants may, indeed, be only windmills, but they must be attacked with as much spirit, and conquered with as much bravery, as any fort or any town, in time of war [to] be demolished; and though the siege, I must confess, may be of less national utility, the assailants of the quill have their honour as much at heart as the assailants of the sword.”
“I suppose then,” said Monckton, archly, “if a man wants a biting lampoon, or an handsome panegyric, some newspaper scandal, or a sonnet for a lady—”
“No, no,” interrupted Belfield eagerly, “if you imagine me a hireling scribbler for the purposes of defamation or of flattery, you as little know my situation as my character. My subjects shall be my own, and my satire shall be general. I would as much disdain to be personal with an anonymous pen, as to attack an unarmed man in the dark with a dagger I had kept concealed.”
A reply of rallying incredulity was rising to the lips of Mr Monckton, when reading in the looks of Cecilia an entire approbation of this sentiment, he checked his desire of ridicule, and exclaimed, “spoken like a man of honour, and one whose works may profit the world!”
“From my earliest youth to the present hour,” continued Belfield, “literature has been the favourite object of my pursuit, my recreation in leisure, and my hope in employment. My propensity to it, indeed, has been so ungovernable, that I may properly call it the source of my several miscarriages throughout life. It was the bar to my preferment, for it gave me a distaste to other studies; it was the cause of my unsteadiness in all my undertakings, because to all I preferred it. It has sunk me to distress, it has involved me in difficulties; it has brought me to the brink of ruin by making me neglect the means of living, yet never, till now, did I discern it might itself be my support.”