ew of
all that rendered life pleasant in his eyes, the lack of which paralyzed
him in body and mind, rendered him pitiable to others, loathsome to
himself--so much so that he once said, 'Where is the beggar who would
change place with me, notwithstanding all my fame?' Ah! God knows
perfectly well how to strike. He permitted him to retain all his
literary fame to the very last--his literary fame for which he cared
nothing; but what became of the sweetnesses of life, his fine house, his
grand company, and his entertainments? The grand house ceased to be his;
he was only permitted to live in it on sufferance, and whatever grandeur
it might still retain to soon became as desolate a looking house as any
misanthrope could wish to see. Where were the grand entertainments and
the grand company? There are no grand entertainments where there is no
money; no lords and ladies where there are no entertainments--and there
lay the poor lodger in the desolate house, groaning on a bed no longer
his, smitten by the hand of God in the part where he was most vulnerable.
Of what use telling such a man to take comfort, for he had written the
'Minstrel' and 'Rob Roy'--telling him to think of his literary fame?
Literary fame, indeed! he wanted back his lost gentility:

'Retain my altar,
I care nothing for it--but oh! touch not my _beard_.'

PORNY'S _War of the Gods_.

He dies, his children die too, and then comes the crowning judgment of
God on what remained of his race, and the house which he had built. He
was not a Papist himself, nor did he wish anyone belonging to him to be
Popish, for he had read enough of the Bible to know that no one can be
saved through Popery, yet had he a sneaking affection for it, and would
at all times, in an underhand manner, give it a good word both in writing
and discourse, because it was a gaudy kind of worship, and ignorance and
vassalage prevailed so long as it flourished; but he certainly did not
wish any of his people to become Papists, nor the house which he had
built to become a Popish house, though the very name he gave it savoured
of Popery. But Popery becomes fashionable through his novels and
poems--the only one that remains of his race, a female grandchild,
marries a person who, following the fashion, becomes a Papist, and makes
her a Papist too. Money abounds with the husband who buys the house, and
then the house becomes the ranke