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.
XLI
In general, however, it is not to be expected that those should grow rich by a special Providence, whose first and last object is by every means and at every sacrifice to grow famous. Vanity and avarice have different goals and travel different roads. The man of genius produces that which others admire: the man of business that which they will buy. If the poet is delighted with the ideas of certain things, the reader is equally satisfied with the idea of them too. The man of genius does that which no one else but himself can do: the man of business gets his wealth from the joint mechanical drudgery of all whom he has the means to employ. Trade is the Briareus that works with a hundred hands. A popular author grew rich, because he seemed to have a hundred hands to write with: but he wanted another hand to say to his well-got gains, ‘Come, let me clutch thee.’ Nollekens made a fortune (how he saved it we know) by having blocks of marble to turn into sharp-looking busts (which required a capital), and by hiring a number of people to hack and hew them into shape. Sir Joshua made more money than West or Barry, partly because he was a better painter, partly because gentlemen like their own portraits better than those of prophet or apostle, saint or hero. What the individual wants, he will pay the highest price for: what is done for the public the State must pay for. How if they will not? The historical painter cannot make them; and if he persists in the attempt, must be contented to fall a martyr to it. It is some glory to fail in great designs; and some punishment is due to having rashly or presumptuously embarked in them.
XLII
It is some comfort to starve on a name: it is something to be a poor gentleman; and your man of letters ‘writes himself armigero, in any bond, warrant, or quittance.’ In fixing on a profession for a child, it is a consideration not to place him in one in which he may not be thought good enough to sit down in any company. Miserable mortals that we are! If you make a lawyer of him, he may become Lord Chancellor; and then all his posterity are lords. How cheap and yet acceptable a thing is nobility in this country! It does not date from Adam or the conquest. We need not laugh at Buonaparte’s mushroom peers, who were something like Charlemagne’s or the knights of King Arthur’s round table.
XLIII
We talk of the march of intellect, as if it only unfolded the knowledge of good: the knowledge of evil, which communicates with twenty times the rapidity, is never once hinted at. Eve’s apple, the torch of Prometheus, and Pandora’s box, are discarded as childish fables by our wise moderns.
XLIV
As I write this, I hear out of the window a man beating his wife and calling her names. Is this what is meant by good-nature and domestic comfort? Or is it that we have so little of these, ordinarily speaking, that we are astonished at the smallest instances of them; and have never done lauding ourselves for the exclusive possession of them?