In this inquiry, concerning the discoveries and thoughts of the ancients attributed to the moderns, it has appeared advisable that their views of the mind, or intellectual system, should precede their consideration of sensible qualities, and the system of the universe. To persons unaccustomed to such investigations, the succeeding papers will be more interesting.
DISTRESSES OF MEN OF GENIUS.
Pope Urban VIII. erected an hospital for the benefit of decayed authors, and called it “The Retreat of the Incurables,” intimating that it was equally impossible to reclaim the patients from poverty or poetry.
Homer is the first poet and beggar of note among the ancients: he was blind, sung his ballads about the streets, and his mouth was oftener filled with verses than with bread.
Plautus, the comic poet, was better off; for he had two trades: he was a poet for his diversion, and helped to turn a mill in order to gain a living.
Terence was a slave, and Boethius died in a jail.
Among the Italians, Paulo Burghese, almost as good a poet as Tasso, knew fourteen different trades, and yet died because he could get no employment in either of them.
Tasso was often obliged to borrow a crown from a friend, to pay for a month’s subsistence. He has left us a pretty sonnet to his cat, in which he begs the light of her eyes to write by, being too poor to buy a candle.