have
his mind in a state fit for intellectual labours; to say nothing of the
temptations, arising from such distress, to abandon good principles, to
suppress useful opinions and useful facts; and, in short, to become a
disgrace to his kindred, and an evil to his country, instead of being an
honour to the former and a blessing to the latter. To be poor and
independent, is very nearly an impossibility.

55. But, then, poverty is not a positive, but a relative term. BURKE
observed, and very truly, that a labourer who earned a sufficiency to
maintain him as a labourer, and to maintain him in a suitable manner; to
give him a sufficiency of good food, of clothing, of lodging, and of
fuel, ought not to be called _a poor man_; for that, though he had
little riches, though his, _compared_ with that of a lord, was a state
of poverty, it was not a state of poverty in itself. When, therefore, I
say that poverty is the cause of a depression of spirit, of inactivity
and of servility in men of literary talent, I must say, at the same
time, that the evil arises from their own fault; from their having
created for themselves imaginary wants; from their having indulged in
unnecessary enjoyments, and from their having caused that to be poverty,
which would not have been poverty, if they had been moderate in their
enjoyments.

56. As it may be your lot (such has been mine) to live by your literary
talent, I will here, before I proceed to matter more applicable to
persons in other states of life, observe, that I cannot form an idea of
a mortal more wretched than a man of real talent, compelled to curb his
genius, and to submit himself in the exercise of that genius, to those
whom he knows to be far inferior to himself, and whom he must despise
from the bottom of his soul. The late Mr. WILLIAM GIFFORD, who was the
son of a shoemaker at ASHBURTON in Devonshire; who was put to school and
sent to the university at the expense of a generous and good clergyman
of the name of COOKSON, and who died, the other day, a sort of
whipper-in of MURRAY'S QUARTERLY REVIEW; this was a man of real genius;
and, to my certain personal knowledge, he detested, from the bottom of
his soul, the whole of the paper-money and Boroughmongering system, and
despised those by whom the system was carried on. But, he had imaginary
wants; he had been bred up in company with the rich and the extravagant;
expensive indulgences had been made necessary to him by habit; and, whe