An extract from a letter written by Burns to Thomson on the 19th of July, 1796, says:
“After all my boasted independence, cursed 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 disheartened; 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.”
Robert Bloomfield did not find those generous and helpful friends of genius whom the imagination of Thackeray created to people the eighteenth century. He, like Burns, was a farmer’s boy, who afterward became a shoemaker’s errand-boy, living in a garret at 7, Fisher’s Court, Coleman Street, in which he and four others, one being his brother, worked, and slept on “turn-up” beds. There he fetched the dinners from the cookshop, did the inferior part of the work, and ran errands; taught himself to read by the aid of borrowed newspapers and a little dictionary, bought for him at a second-hand stall, for fourpence, by one of his fellow-workers, and by listening to an eloquent dissenting minister named Fawcett, acquired the proper pronunciation of words. He began verse-writing at sixteen, and at that age also began to instruct his brother and his partners in the Fisher’s Court garret (for which they paid five shillings a week), and in another “parlour next the sky” in Blue Hart Court, Bell Alley, where a fellow-lodger made him inexpressibly happy by the loan of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ and Thomson’s ‘Seasons.’ When he fell in love with a young woman named Church, daughter of a boat-builder in the Government Yard at Woolwich, he sold his most precious possession (to purchase which he had practised much self-denial), his fiddle, on which he had taught himself to play. Writing to his brother, he said, “I have sold my fiddle and got a wife.”
His brother says, “Like most poor men, he got a wife first, and had to get household stuff afterwards.” It took him some years to get out of ready furnished lodgings. At length, by hard working, etc., he acquired a bed of his own, and hired the room up one pair of stairs at 14, Bell Alley, Coleman Street; and there, as he worked unaided by costly writing materials, amongst the noise and bustle of seven other workmen who, conjointly with himself, had hired a garret in the same house as their work-room, he composed his famous poem ‘The Farmer’s Boy,’ the latter portion of his ‘Autumn,’ and the whole of his ‘Winter.’ Not a line of either was committed to paper before each was corrected, altered, improved, and finally completed.
The poet Crabbe was another eighteenth-century genius who failed to find the generous, ever-ready patronage and friendship, whereof Thackeray said, “It would hardly be grateful to alter my old opinion that we (men of letters) do meet with good will and kindness, with generous and helping hands, in the time of our necessity; with cordial and friendly recognition.” Having failed in his medical practice at Aldborough, in Suffolk, where, in 1789 he was born, Crabbe borrowed five pounds, and with that sum came to London. Taking lodgings near the Exchange, he began his literary career full of hope and vigour. But the booksellers, Dodsley and Becket, civilly declined his productions; and when he published some poems cheaply at his own expense his publisher failed; and the poor poet’s little, carefully husbanded money being exhausted, he applied to Lord North for assistance,—in vain. Then he addressed verses to Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who said in reply, “his avocations did not leave him leisure to read verse.” For a time he lived by selling his clothes, and pawning his watch and surgical instruments; then his books were reluctantly sold, and then debt came, and he was threatened with imprisonment. In the midst of these anxious cares, fears, and sufferings, with starvation staring him in the face, he bade the muse a sorrowful adieu, and sought work as a druggist’s assistant. He had but eightpence in the world when he wrote to Edmund Burke, and himself left the letter at that eminent statesman’s house in Charles Street. Begging letters from starving poets and literary men were familiar enough in those days, and Burke received more than his fair share of them. Crabbe has himself told us how, weary, penniless, and hungry, being afraid to go back to his lodging, he traversed Westminster Bridge all throughout the night following the delivery of that letter until daybreak. The letter itself, a memorable curiosity of impecuniosity, I here append:
“Sir,—I am sensible that I need even your talents to apologize for the freedom I now take, but I have a plea which, however simply urged, will with a mind like yours, sir, procure me pardon. I am one of those outcasts on the world who are without a friend, without employment, without bread.
“Pardon me a short preface. I had a partial father who gave me a better education than his broken fortune would have allowed, and a better than was necessary, as he could give me that only. I was designed for the profession of Physic; but not having the wherewithal to complete the necessary studies, the design but served to convince me of a parent’s affection and the error it had occasioned. In April last I came to London with three pounds, and flattered myself this would be sufficient to supply me with the common necessaries of life till my abilities should procure me more; of these I had the highest opinion, and a poetical vanity contributed to my delusion. I knew little of the world and had read books only. I wrote, and fancied perfection in my compositions; when I wanted bread they promised me affluence and soothed me with dreams of reputation, whilst my appearance subjected me to contempt. In time reflection and want have shown me my mistake. I see my trifles in that which I think the true light, and whilst I deem them such have yet the opinion that holds them superior to the common run of poetical publications.
“I had some knowledge of the late Mr. Nassau, the brother of Lord Rochford; in consequence of which I asked his lordship’s permission to inscribe my little work to him, knowing it to be free from all political allusions and personal abuse. It was no material point to me to whom it was dedicated, his lordship thought it none to him, and obligingly consented to my request.
“I was told a subscription would be the more profitable method for me, and therefore endeavoured to circulate copies of the enclosed proposals.