LITERARY QUARRELS FROM PERSONAL MOTIVES 529

INDEX 541

CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS:

INCLUDING

SOME INQUIRIES RESPECTING THEIR MORAL AND LITERARY CHARACTERS.

"Such a superiority do the pursuits of Literature possess above
every other occupation, that even he who attains but a mediocrity
in them, merits the pre-eminence above those that excel the most
in the common and vulgar professions."--HUME.

PREFACE.

The Calamities of Authors have often excited the attention of the
lovers of literature; and, from the revival of letters to this day,
this class of the community, the most ingenious and the most
enlightened, have, in all the nations of Europe, been the most
honoured, and the least remunerated. Pierius Valerianus, an attendant
in the literary court of Leo X., who twice refused a bishopric that he
might pursue his studies uninterrupted, was a friend of Authors, and
composed a small work, "De Infelicitate Literatorum," which has been
frequently reprinted.[1] It forms a catalogue of several Italian
literati, his contemporaries; a meagre performance, in which the
author shows sometimes a predilection for the marvellous, which
happens so rarely in human affairs; and he is so unphilosophical, that
he places among the misfortunes of literary men those fatal casualties
to which all men are alike liable. Yet even this small volume has its
value: for although the historian confines his narrative to his own
times, he includes a sufficient number of names to convince us that to
devote our life to authorship is not the true means of improving our
happiness or our fortune.

At a later period, a congenial work was composed by Theophilus
Spizelius, a German divine; his four volumes are after the fashion of
his country and his times, which could make even small things
ponderous. In 1680 he first published two volumes, entitled "Infelix
Literatus," and five years afterwards his "Felicissimus Literatus;" he
writes without size, and sermonises without end, and seems to have
been so grave a lover of symmetry, that he shapes his _Felicities_
just with the same measure as his _Infelicities_. These two equalised
bundles of hay might have held in suspense the casuistical ass of
Sterne, till he had died from want of a motive to choose either. Yet
Spizelius is not to be contemned because he is verbose and heavy; he
has reflected