and
dependence, which have hitherto been combined in his ideas of poverty,
he will read of content, innocence and cheerfulness, of health and
safety, tranquillity and freedom; of pleasures not known but to men
unencumbered with possessions; and of sleep that sheds his balsamick
anodynes only on the {23} cottage. Such are the blessings to be
obtained by the resignation of riches, that kings might descend from
their thrones and generals retire from a triumph, only to slumber
undisturbed in the elysium of poverty."

* * * * * *

"But it will be found upon a nearer view that they who extol the
happiness of poverty do not mean the same state with those who deplore
its miseries. Poets have their imaginations filled with ideas of
magnificence; and being accustomed to contemplate the downfall of
empires, or to contrive forms of lamentation for monarchs in distress,
rank all the classes of mankind in a state of poverty who make no
approaches to the dignity of crowns. To be poor, in the epick
language, is only not to command the wealth of nations, nor to have
fleets and armies in pay.

"Vanity has perhaps contributed to this impropriety of style. He that
wishes to become a philosopher at a cheap rate easily gratifies his
ambition by submitting to poverty when he does not feel it, and by
boasting his contempt of riches when he has already more than he
enjoys. He who would show the extent of his views and grandeur of his
conceptions, or discover his acquaintance with splendour and
magnificence, may talk, like Cowley, of an humble station and quiet
{24} obscurity, of the paucity of nature's wants, and the
inconveniences of superfluity, and at last, like him, limit his desires
to five hundred pounds a year; a fortune indeed, not exuberant, when we
compare it with the expenses of pride and luxury, but to which it
little becomes a philosopher to affix the name of poverty, since no man
can with any propriety be termed poor who does not see the greater part
of mankind richer than himself."

What good sense, what resolute grip on the realities of life, what a
love of truth and seriousness, shines through the long sentences! The
form and language of the essay may perhaps be too suggestive of the
professional author; but how much the opposite, how very human and
real, is the stuff and substance of what he says! Professor Raleigh
once proposed as a test of great literature, that it should be found