black flood before him of soot and gall.

[Footnote A: From an original letter which I have published from GUTHRIE
to a minister of state, this modern phrase appears to have been his own
invention. The principle unblushingly avowed, required the sanction of a
respectable designation. I have preserved it in "Calamities of Authors."]

[Footnote B: For some account of these men, see "Calamities of Authors."]

In substituting fortune for the object of his designs, the man of genius
deprives himself of those heats of inspiration reserved for him who lives
for himself; the _mollia tempora fandi_ of Art. If he be subservient to
the public taste, without daring to raise it to his own, the creature of
his times has not the choice of his subjects, which choice is itself a
sort of invention. A task-worker ceases to think his own thoughts. The
stipulated price and time are weighing on his pen or his pencil, while the
hour-glass is dropping its hasty sands. If the man of genius would be
wealthy and even luxurious, another fever besides the thirst of glory
torments him. Such insatiable desires create many fears, and a mind in
fear is a mind in slavery. In one of SHAKSPEARE'S sonnets he pathetically
laments this compulsion of his necessities which forced him to the trade
of pleasing the public; and he illustrates this degradation by a novel
image. "Chide Fortune," cries the bard,--

The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds;
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand;
_And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in_, LIKE THE DYER'S HAND.

Such is the fate of that author, who, in his variety of task-works, blue,
yellow, and red, lives without ever having shown his own natural
complexion. We hear the eloquent truth from one who has alike shared in
the bliss of composition, and the misery of its "daily bread." "A single
hour of composition won from the business of the day, is worth more than
the whole day's toil of him who works at the _trade of literature_: in the
one case, the spirit comes joyfully to refresh itself, like a hart to the
waterbrooks; in the other, it pursues its miserable way, panting and
jaded, with the dogs of hunger and necessity behind."[A] We trace the fate
of all task-work in the history of POUSSIN, when called on to reside at
the French court. Labouring without intermission, sometimes on one thing