itterness; while his wife's separation from
him, which shortly followed, could not fail to push him almost to the
point of frenzy. Although he had declined to receive money for his first
poems, Byron altered his views, and even learnt to drive a pretty hard
bargain with his publisher.[1] But Moore does not, in his biography of
the poet, inform us whether he ever got rid, except by death, of his
grievous turmoil of debt.

[Footnote 1: "You offer 1,500 guineas for the new Canto [the fourth of
'Childe Harold']: I won't take it. I ask two thousand five hundred
guineas for it, which you will either give or not as you think
proper.... If Mr. Eustace was to have two thousand for a poem on
Education; if Mr. Moore is to have three thousand for Lalla; if Mr.
Campbell is to have three thousand for his prose or poetry.--I don't
mean to disparage these gentlemen or their labours.--but I ask the
aforesaid price for mine."--_Lord Byron to Mr. Murray_, Sept. 4th,
1817.]

There is the greatest difference in the manner in which men bear the
burden of debt. Some feel it to be no burden at all; others bear it very
lightly; whilst others look upon creditors in the light of persecutors,
and themselves in the light of martyrs. But where the moral sense is a
little more keen,--where men use the goods of others, without rendering
the due equivalent of money--where they wear unpaid clothes, eat unpaid
meat, drink unpaid wines, and entertain guests at the expense of the
butcher, grocer, wine-merchant, and greengrocer,--they must necessarily
feel that their conduct is of the essence, not only of shabbiness, but
of dishonesty, and the burden must then bear very heavily indeed.

Of light-hearted debtors, the proportion is considerable. Thus
Theophilus Cibber, when drowned in debt, begged the loan of a guinea,
and spent it on a dish of ortolans. Thus Foote when his mother wrote to
him--"Dear Sam, I am in prison for debt--come and help your loving
mother,"--replied, "Dear Mother, so am I, which prevents his duty being
paid to his loving mother by her affectionate son." Steele and Sheridan
both bore the load lightly. When entertaining company, they put the
bailiffs who were in possession in livery, and made them wait at table,
passing them off as servants. Nothing disturbed Steele's equanimity; and
when driven from London by debt, he carried his generosity into the
country, giving prizes to the lads and lasses assembled at rural games
and country da