once attempted, but found himself quite inadequate to "the
profession."[B] In a garret, the author of the "Studies of Nature," as he
exultingly tells us, arranged his work. "It was in a little garret, in the
new street of St. Etienne du Mont, where I resided four years, in the
midst of physical and domestic afflictions. But there I enjoyed the most
exquisite pleasures of my life, amid profound solitude and an enchanting
horizon. There I put the finishing hand to my 'Studies of Nature,' and
there I published them." Pope, one day taking his usual walk with Harte
in the Haymarket, desired him to enter a little shop, where going up three
pair of stairs into a small room, Pope said, "In this garret AUDISON
wrote his 'Campaign!'" To the feelings of the poet this garret had become
a consecrated spot; Genius seemed more itself, placed in contrast with its
miserable locality!

[Footnote A: Spagnoletto, while sign-painting at Rome, attracted by his
ability the notice of a cardinal, who ultimately gave him a home in his
palace; but the artist, feeling that his poverty was necessary to his
industry and independence, fled to Naples, and recommenced a life of
labour.--ED.]

[Footnote B: Twice he repeated this resolution. See his Works, vol. xxxi,
p. 283; vol. xxxii. p. 90.]

The man of genius wrestling with oppressive fortune, who follows the
avocations of an author as a precarious source of existence, should take
as the model of the authorial life, that of Dr. JOHNSON. The dignity of
the literary character was as deeply associated with his feelings, and the
"reverence thyself" as present to his mind, when doomed to be one of the
_Helots_ of literature, by Osborn, Cave, and Miller, as when, in the
honest triumph of Genius, he repelled a tardy adulation of the lordly
Chesterfield. Destitute of this ennobling principle, the author sinks into
the tribe of those rabid adventurers of the pen who have masked the
degraded form of the literary character under the assumed title of
"authors by profession"[A]--the GUTHRIES, the RALPHS, and the AMHURSTS[B].
"There are worse evils for the literary man," says a living author, who
himself is the true model of the great literary character, "than neglect,
poverty, imprisonment, and death. There are even more pitiable objects
than Chatterton himself with the poison at his lips." "I should die with
hunger were I at peace with the world!" exclaimed a corsair of literature
--and dashed his pen into the