ed, dying of the disease which his excesses had caused, he was
haunted by the debt of ten pounds which he owed to the shoemaker who had
lodged him. He then warned his friend Peele to amend his ways; but
Peele, like him, died in distress and debt, one of the last letters he
wrote being an imploring letter to Burleigh asking for relief,--"Long
sickness," said he, "having so enfeebled me as maketh bashfulness almost
impudency." Spenser died forsaken, and in want. Ben Jonson says of him
that "he died for lack of bread in King Street, and refused twenty broad
pieces sent to him by my lord of Essex," adding, "he was sorrie he had
no time to spend them."

Of later poets and literary men, Milton died in obscurity, though not in
debt. Lovelace died in a cellar. Butler, the author of "Hudibras," died
of starvation in Rose Alley, the same place in which Dryden was beaten
by hired ruffians. Otway was hunted by bailiffs to his last hiding-place
on Tower Hill. His last act was to beg a shilling of a gentleman, who
gave him a guinea; and buying a loaf to appease his hunger, he choked at
the first mouthful. Wycherley lay seven years in gaol for debt, but
lived to die in his bed at nearly eighty. Fielding's extravagance and
dissipation in early life involved him in difficulties which he never
entirely shook off, and his death was embittered by the poverty in which
he left his widow and child in a foreign land.

Savage had a pension of fifty pounds a year, which he usually spent in a
few days. It was then fashionable to wear scarlet cloaks trimmed with
gold lace; and Johnson one day met him, just after he had got his
pension, with one of these cloaks upon his back, while, at the same
time, his naked toes were sticking through his shoes. After living a
life of recklessness and dissipation, he died in prison, where he had
lain six months for debt. In concluding his "Life of Savage," Johnson
says: "This relation will not be wholly without its use, if those who,
in confidence of superior capacities or attainments, disregard the
common maxims of life, shall be reminded that nothing will supply the
want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity, long continued,
will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible."

Sterne died poor, if he did not die insolvent. At his death, a
subscription was got up for the support of his wife and daughter.
Churchill was imprisoned for debt, occasioned by his dissoluteness and
extra