ian artists were for the most part temperate and moderate
men, and lived within their means. Haydon, in his Autobiography, says,
"Rafaelle, Michael Angelo, Zeuxis, Apelles, Rubens, Reynolds, Titian,
were rich and happy. Why? Because with their genius they combined
practical prudence." Haydon himself was an instance of the contrary
practice. His life was a prolonged struggle with difficulty and debt. He
was no sooner free from one obligation, than he was involved in another.
His "Mock Election" was painted in the King's Bench prison, while he lay
there for debt. There is a strange entry in his Journal: "I borrowed L10
to-day of my butterman, Webb, an old pupil of mine, recommended to me by
Sir George Beaumont twenty-four years ago, but who wisely, after drawing
hands, set up _a butter shop_, and was enabled to send his old master
L10 in his necessity." Haydon's Autobiography is full of his contests
with lawyers and sheriffs' officers. Creditors dogged and dunned him at
every step. "Lazarus's head," he writes, "was painted just after an
arrest; Eucles was finished from a man in possession; the beautiful face
in Xenophon in the afternoon, after a morning spent in begging mercy of
lawyers; and Cassandra's head was finished in agony not to be described,
and her hand completed after a broker's man in possession, in an
execution put in for taxes."[1]

[Footnote 1: Haydon--_Autobiography_, vol. ii., p. 400.]

Cowper used to say that he never knew a poet who was not thriftless; and
he included himself. Notwithstanding his quiet, retired life, he was
constantly outrunning the constable. "By the help of good management,"
he once wrote, "and a clear notion of economical matters, I contrived in
three months to spend the income of a twelvemonth." But though the
number of thriftless poets may be great, it must not be forgotten that
Shakespeare, who stands at the head of the list, was a prudent man. He
economized his means, and left his family in comfort. His contemporaries
were, however, for the most part indebted men. Ben Jonson was often
embarrassed, and always poor, borrowing twenty shillings at a time from
Henslowe; though he rarely denied himself another jolly night at the
"Mermaid." Massinger was often so reduced in circumstances as not to be
able to pay his score at the same tavern.

Greene, Peele, and Marlowe lived lives of dissipation, and died in
poverty. Marlowe was killed in a drunken brawl. When Greene was on his
deathb