It is hard to conceive a situation more replete with wretchedness than that of the struggling man of letters—of him who has offered his all before the shrine of long-looked-for fame; who has staked health, and peace, and happiness, that he may win her favour, and who nevertheless holds an uncertain tenure even of his “daily bread.” He is poor and in misery, yet he lives in a world of boundless wealth; but in this very thing is to be found the exquisite agony of his condition. What though haggard want wave around him her lean and famished hands, what avails that? Write he must, if it be but to satisfy the cravings of a stinted nature; write he must, though his only reward be the scanty pittance that was greedily covenanted for, and when his due, but grudgingly presented him. And then he must delineate plenty and happiness; he must describe “the short holiday of childhood,” the guileless period of maiden’s modesty, the sunshine of the moment when we first hear that we are loved, the placid calm of peaceful resignation; or it may be, the charms that nature wears in England’s happy vales, the beauty of her scenery, the splendour and wealth of her institutions, the protecting law for the poor man, her admirable code of jurisprudence. All, all these may be the theme of his song, or the subject of his appointed task; but the hours will pass away, and the spirits he has called up will disappear, and his visions of happiness will leave him only, if it be possible, more fearfully alive to his own helplessness—they cannot wake their echo in his soul, and instead of their worthier office of healing and blessedness, they render his wound deeper, deadlier, and more rankling.
And who is there, think you, kind reader, that can feel more acutely the sting of neglect and poverty than the lonely man of genius? Of him how truly may it be said, “he cannot dig, to beg he is ashamed!” His intellect is his world; it is the glorious city in which he abides, the treasure-house wherein his very being is garnered; it is to cultivate it that he has lived; and when it fails him in his wintry hour, is not he indeed “of all men most miserable?”
But let us suppose that his prescribed duty is done, that the required article is written, and that this child of his sick and aching brain is at last dismissed; and can his thoughts follow it? Can his heart bear the reflection that it shall find admission where he durst not make his appearance? He knows that it will be laid on the gorgeous table of the rich and honourable. He knows, too, that it will find its way to the happy fireside, the home where sorrow hath not yet entered—such as once was his own in the days of his childhood. He knows that the unnatural relation who spurned him from his door when he asked the bread of charity, may see it, and without at all knowing the writer, that even his scornful sneer may be thereby relaxed. He knows——but why more? Of himself he knows that want and woe have been his companions, that they are yet encamped around him, and that they will only end their ministry “where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest!”
This is by no means—oh, would that it were so!—an ideal picture. In London, amid her “wilderness of building,” there are at this hour hundreds whose sufferings could corroborate it, and whose necessities could give the stamping conviction to its truth. We were ourselves cognizant of the history of one young man’s life, his early and buoyant hopes, his subsequent misfortunes and miseries, and his early and unripe death, to all of which, anything that is painted above bears but a faint and indistinct resemblance. He was an Irishman, and gifted with the characteristics of his country—a romantic genius, united with feelings the most tremulous, and tender, and impassioned. Many years have since passed away, and over and over again have the wild flowers sprung up, and bloomed, and withered over his narrow resting place, no unmeet emblem of
“The poor inhabitant below!”
but never has the memory of his sad story faded from us—never may it fade! His lot was unhappy, and he “perished in his pride.” His reason eventually bowed before his intense sufferings; and excepting the few minutes just before his spirit passed away, his last hours were uncheered by the glimpse of that glorious intellect which had promised to crown him with a chaplet of undying fame. Even as it was, he had attracted notice; his writings were beginning to make for him a name; and the Prime Minister of England did not think it beneath him to visit his lonely lodging, and to endeavour to raise his sinking soul with the promise of almost unlimited patronage. But the restorative came too late: the poison had worked its portion, and in the guise of Fame, Death approached;
“And as around the brow
Of that ill-fated votary he wreath’d
The crown of victory, silently he twined
The cypress with the laurel: at his foot