The merits, so various, of W* * * *n's Jet Blacking."

~332~~ This trifle, well enough for the purpose, was honoured with
approbation.

The two friends, unwilling to offend the delicacy of the Poet by a
premature pecuniary compliment at this early stage of acquaintance, took
his address and departed, professing an intention of calling upon him at
his lodgings in the evening.

"I would not, were I a bricklayer's labourer," exclaimed Bob, "exchange
situations with this unfortunate literary hack--this poor devil of
mental toil and precarious result, who depends for scanty subsistence on
the caprice of his more fortunate inferiors, whose minds, unexpanded
by liberal feeling, and absorbed in the love of self, and the
sordid consideration of interest, are callous to the impression of
benevolence!--But let us hope that few such cases of genius in
adversity occur, even in this widely extended and varied scene of human
vicissitude."

"That hope," replied his Cousin, "is founded on

"The baseless fabric of a vision!"

There are, at this moment, thousands in London of literary merit, of
whom we may truly say,

"Chill penury repress their noble rage,
And freeze the genial current of the soul!"

Men unsustained by the hand of friendship, who pine in unheeded
obscurity, suffering the daily privations of life's indispensable
requisites, or obtaining a scanty pittance at the will of opulent
ignorance, and under the humiliating contumely, as we have just been
informed, even of Blacking Manufacturers!

"But here is a man, who, during a period of eight years, held a public
situation, the duties of which he performed satisfactorily to the last;
and yet, on the abolition of the establishment, while the Principal
retires in the full enjoyment of his ample salary, this senior Clerk
and his fellows in calamity are cast adrift upon the world, to live or
starve, and in the dearth of employment suitable to their habits and
education, the unfortunate outcasts are left to perish, perhaps by the
hand of famine in the streets, or that of despondency in a garret;
or, what is worse than either, consigned to linger out their remaining
wretched ~333~~ days under the "cold reluctant charity" of a parish
workhouse.{1}

"When the principal of a Public-office has battened for many years on
his liberal salary, and the sole duties required of him have been those
of occasionally signing a few official papers, why