The young nobleman was much surprised with the description of “Despair” in that canto, and betrayed an unusual kind of transport on the discovery of so new and uncommon a genius. After he had read some verses he called his steward, and bade him give the person who brought those verses £50; but upon reading the next stanza, he ordered the sum to be doubled. The steward was as much surprised as his master, and thought it his duty to make some delay in executing so sudden and lavish a bounty; but upon reading one stanza more, Sir Philip raised his gratuity to £200, and commanded the steward to give it immediately, lest, as he read farther, he might be tempted to give away his whole estate. Unfortunately this generous patron was killed at the early age of thirty-two, and it was after his decease that Spenser for a time was under a cloud. Subsequently he was befriended by the Earl of Leicester, and upon the appointment of Lord Grey of Wilton to be Lord Deputy of Ireland, the poet became his secretary, and was rewarded by a grant from the Queen of three thousand acres. This he was not destined to enjoy very long, for in the rebellion of Tyrone he was plundered, and deprived of his estate, and when he arrived in England he was heart-broken by his misfortunes. He died in the greatest distress on the 16th January, 1599, and though interred in Westminster Abbey at the expense of the Earl of Essex, his death according to Ben Jonson was actually occasioned by “lack of bread.”
It is difficult to determine which is the more pitiable, the want and misery produced by the neglect of others, or the destitution resulting from evil courses; both demand our commiseration, though some of the stern moralists affect to have “no pity” for those whose troubles are the outcome of self-indulgence and dissipation. “A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind,” and only those who have been the victims of that enslaving mania for drink, which has blasted so many bright lives will have compassion for such a man as Samuel Boyce. This misguided mortal, the son of a dissenting minister, was born at Dublin in the year 1708, and when eighteen was sent to the Glasgow University, his father having designed him for the ministry. He married when he had been at college little more than a year, and soon developed habits of indulgence and extravagance, which effectually ruined him, in spite of much assistance received from the nobility and others. In the year 1731 he published a volume of poems, to which is subjoined the “Tablature of Cebes,” and a letter upon liberty, which appeared originally in the Dublin Journal five years previously. These productions gained him considerable reputation and substantial patronage from the Countess of Eglinton, to whom they were dedicated.
His next successful effort was an elegy upon the death of the Viscountess Stormont (a woman of the most refined taste, well versed in science, and a great admirer of poetry), entitled, ‘The Tears of the Muses,’ which so pleased Lord Stormont, the deceased lady’s husband, that he advertised for the author in one of the weekly papers, and caused his attorney to make him a very handsome present. In addition to the favour of Lady Eglinton and Lord Stormont, he was also befriended by the Duchess of Gordon, who gave him most material assistance while he continued in Scotland; and when he went to London, gave him a letter of introduction to Pope, and obtained another for him to Sir Peter King, Lord Chancellor of England. He had many other most valuable recommendations when he arrived in the metropolis, and possessing as he did ability of no common order, his opportunities were exceptionally fine; but nothing can withstand the devastating influences of the demon of drink; and at the age of thirty-two he is described as reduced to such an extremity of human wretchedness that he had not a shirt, a coat, or any kind of apparel to put on. The sheets in which he lay were carried to the pawnbroker’s, and he was obliged to be confined to his bed with no other covering than a blanket, and in this condition, thrusting his arm through a hole, he scribbled a quantity of verse for the Gentleman’s Magazine.
His genius was not confined to poetry, for he was skilled in painting, music, and heraldry; but by his pen alone, had he chosen to live decently, he could have commanded a very good living. His translations from the French were admittedly excellent; but the drawback to employing him at this work was that when he had copied a page or two he would pawn the original and re-pawn it as often he could induce his acquaintances to “get it out” for him. On one occasion Dr. Johnson managed to get up a sixpenny subscription for him in order to redeem his clothes, but the effort to help him was useless, for within two days he pawned them again, and the last state was at any rate no better than the first. He seems to have been so demoralised by drink that he was dead to every sense of honour and humanity; for, whenever he obtained half-a-guinea, whether by writing poetry or a begging letter, he would sit squandering it in a tavern while his wife and child starved at home. He got from bad to worse, and in 1742, when locked up in a spunging-house, sent the following appeal to Cave:
“I am every moment threatened to be turned out here, because I have not money to pay for my bed two nights past, which is usually paid beforehand; and I am loth to go into the Compter, till I can see if my affairs can possibly be made up. I hope, therefore, you will have the humanity to send me half-a-guinea for support till I finish your papers in my hands. I humbly entreat your answer, not having tasted anything since Tuesday evening I came here; and my coat will be taken off my back for the charge of the bed, so that I must go into prison naked, which is too shocking for me to think of.”
There are several accounts given of his death, which occurred when he was but forty-one years of age; and, though they vary as to the precise nature of his end, there is no doubt that it was accelerated by the habit he indulged in—of drinking hot beer to excess, which at last obscured and confused his intellectual faculties.
The sad side of impecuniosity is, unfortunately, so vast a subject that it would require an entire volume, instead of part of a chapter, to properly record the miseries of mind and body endured by those in past ages, who, not unknown to fame, have been permitted to pine and die in despair. The poets alone, so prolific are they in this respect, would furnish material sufficient; but the neglect of genius is anything but an uncommon thing, and therefore commonplace sufferings might not be regarded as “Curiosities of impecuniosity,” though in one sense it certainly is curious that their wants should not have been recognised. Men like Henry Carey or Cary, the author of ‘Sally in our Alley,’ and said by some to be the composer of the National Anthem, who was considered by all authorities to be a true son of the Muses, have been driven to desperation through want. It is said, “At the time that this poet could neither walk the streets nor be seated at the convivial board without listening to his own songs and his own music—for in truth the whole nation was echoing his verse, and crowded theatres were applauding his wit and humour; while this very man himself, urged by his strong humanity, founded a ‘Fund for Decayed Musicians’—he was so broken-hearted, and his own common comforts so utterly neglected, that in despair, not waiting for nature to relieve him from the burden of existence, he laid violent hands on himself; and when found dead had only a halfpenny in his pocket.”
The following lines written some time before his melancholy end show that he was no stranger to the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” and that his self-destruction was not the result of momentary madness, but rather induced by the humiliating torture of ills long borne.
“Far, far away then chase the harlot Muse,
Nor let her thus thy noon of life abuse;
Mix with the common crowd, unheard, unseen,
And if again thou tempt’st the vulgar praise,
May’st thou be crown’d with birch instead of bays!”
The untimely end of Chatterton is a companion picture to that of Cary, but the circumstances of his early death, his being without food for two days, and his poisoning himself with arsenic and water, when lodging at Mrs. Angel’s, a sack-maker in Brook Street, Holborn, are so well known that it is only necessary to mention his melancholy fate, which if it stood alone in the history of literature would be sufficient to show there is a very pathetic side to impecuniosity. Although this rash act is attributed to the state of starvation to which the poet was reduced, there is little doubt that Horace Walpole by his unsympathising, though strictly correct, reproof had much to do with the disordered condition of the poor fellow’s mind. When living at Bristol, Chatterton became possessed of some parchments which had been extracted from the coffin of a Mr. Canynge, and upon these he produced some poetry, which he described as a production of Thomas Canynge, and of his friend, one Thomas Rowley, a priest; sent them to Walpole and asked for assistance to enable him to quit his uncongenial occupation, and pursue one more poetic. The poems were submitted to competent antiquaries, and pronounced forgeries, whereupon Horace Walpole refused the boy’s application for help, at the same time reproving the attempted fraud in the most cold and cutting terms. For this treatment the great wit and prince of letter-writers has been severely censured; one writer remarking, “Just or unjust, the world has never forgiven Horace Walpole for Chatterton’s misery. His indifference has been contrasted with the generosity of Edmund Burke to Crabbe, a generosity to which we owe ‘The Village,’ ‘The Borough,’ and to which Crabbe owed his peaceful old age, and almost his existance. The cases were different, but Crabbe had his faults, and Chatterton was worth saving. It is well for genius that there are souls in the world more sympathising, less worldly, and more indulgent, than those of such men as Horace Walpole.”