To speed, to give, to want, to be undone!"

How affecting is the death of Sydenham, who had devoted his life to a
laborious version of Plato! He died in a sponging-house, and it was his
death which appears to have given rise to the Literary Fund "for the
relief of distressed authors."[19]

Who will pursue important labours when they read these anecdotes? Dr.
Edmund Castell spent a great part of his life in compiling his _Lexicon
Heptaglotton_, on which he bestowed incredible pains, and expended on it
no less than 12,000_l._, broke his constitution, and exhausted his
fortune. At length it was printed, but the copies remained _unsold_ on
his hands. He exhibits a curious picture of literary labour in his
preface. "As for myself, I have been unceasingly occupied for such a
number of years in this mass," _Molendino_ he calls them, "that that
day seemed, as it were, a holiday in which I have not laboured so much
as sixteen or eighteen hours in these enlarging lexicons and Polyglot
Bibles."

Le Sage resided in a little cottage while he supplied the world with
their most agreeable novels, and appears to have derived the sources of
his existence in his old age from the filial exertions of an excellent
son, who was an actor of some genius. I wish, however, that every man of
letters could apply to himself the epitaph of this delightful writer:--

_"Sous ce tombeau git LE SAGE, abattu Par le ciseau de la Parque
importune; S'il ne fut pas ami de la fortune, Il fut toujours ami de la
vertu."_

Many years after this article had been written, I published "Calamities
of Authors," confining myself to those of our own country; the catalogue
is incomplete, but far too numerous.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 18: For some time previous to his death he was in so abject a
state of poverty as to be dependent for subsistence upon the exertions
of his faithful servant Antonio, a native of Java, whom he had brought
with him from India, and who was accustomed to beg by night for the
bread which was to save his unhappy master from perishing by want the
next day. Camoeens, when death at last put an end to a life which
misfortune and neglect had rendered insupportable, was denied the solace
of having his faithful Antonio to close his eyes. He was aged only
fifty-five when he breathed his last in the hospital. This event
occurred in 1579, but so little regard was paid to the memory of this
great man that the day or month on which he expired re