red feeling, had the
mean art to prey upon their infirmities; or as bad fathers, because their
offspring have not always reflected the moral beauty of their own page.
But the magnet loses nothing of its virtue, even when the particles about
it, incapable themselves of being attracted, are not acted on by its
occult property.

CHAPTER XVII.

The poverty of literary men.--Poverty, a relative quality.--Of the poverty
of literary men in what degree desirable.--Extreme poverty.--Task-work.
--Of gratuitous works.--A project to provide against the worst state of
poverty among literary men.

Poverty is a state not so fatal to genius, as it is usually conceived to
be. We shall find that it has been sometimes voluntarily chosen; and that
to connect too closely great fortune with great genius, creates one of
those powerful but unhappy alliances, where the one party must necessarily
act contrary to the interests of the other.

Poverty is a relative quality, like cold and heat, which are but the
increase or the diminution in our own sensations. The positive idea must
arise from comparison. There is a state of poverty reserved even for the
wealthy man, the instant that he comes in hateful contact with the
enormous capitalist. But there is a poverty neither vulgar nor terrifying,
asking no favours and on no terms receiving any; a poverty which
annihilates its ideal evils, and, becoming even a source of pride, will
confer independence, that first step to genius.

Among the continental nations, to accumulate wealth in the spirit of a
capitalist does not seem to form the prime object of domestic life. The
traffic of money is with them left to the traffickers, their merchants,
and their financiers. In our country, the commercial character has so
closely interwoven and identified itself with the national one, and its
peculiar views have so terminated all our pursuits, that every rank is
alike influenced by its spirit, and things are valued by a market-price
which naturally admits of no such appraisement. In a country where "The
Wealth of Nations" has been fixed as the first principle of political
existence, wealth has raised an aristocracy more noble than nobility, more
celebrated than genius, more popular than patriotism; but however it may
partake at times of a generous nature, it hardly looks beyond its own
narrow pale. It is curious to notice that Montesquieu, who was in England,
observed, that "If I had been born here, no