This note may yet reach you
in time to save a fellow-creature from starvation. I have not a
farthing left, nor credit for a ha'penny--small debts press upon me,
and the publishers refused my last poem. Unless relieved within a
few hours I must perish.
"Your lordship's most humble,
"Most obedient, most grateful servant,
-------- ---------"
This letter, scarcely legible from the agitation and misery which
enfeebled the hand that wrote it, was folded, and directed, and
again the writer left his garret lodging on the errand of beggary; he
descended the narrow stairway, slowly dragged his steps through the
lane, and sought the dwelling of his patron.
Whether he obtained admittance, or was again turned from the door;
whether his necessities were relieved, or the letter was idly thrown
aside unopened, we cannot say. Once more mingled with the crowd,
we lose sight of him. It is not the man, but the letter which engages
our attention to-day. There is still much doubt and uncertainty
connected with the subsequent fate of the poor poet, but the note
written at that painful moment has had a brilliant career, a history
eventful throughout. If the reader is partial to details of misery, and
poverty, any volume of general literary biography will furnish him
with an abundant supply, for such has too often proved the lot of
those who have built up the noble edifice of British Literature: like
the band of laborers on the Egyptian pyramid, theirs was too often a
mess of leeks, while milk, and honey, and oil, were the portion of
those for whom they toiled, those in whose honor, and for whose
advantage the monument was raised.
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