ist himself: and now, he says,
he must be forced, for subsistence, to sell all his MS. collections to
the best bidder, without your lordship will be pleased to buy them for
the queen's library. They are fifty volumes in folio, of public affairs,
which he hath collected, but not printed. The price he asks is five
hundred pounds."

Simon Ockley, a learned student in Oriental literature, addresses a
letter to the same earl, in which he paints his distresses in glowing
colours. After having devoted his life to Asiatic researches, then very
uncommon, he had the mortification of dating his preface to his great
work from Cambridge Castle, where he was confined for debt; and, with an
air of triumph, feels a martyr's enthusiasm in the cause for which he
perishes.

He published his first volume of the History of the Saracens in 1708;
and, ardently pursuing his oriental studies, published his second, ten
years afterwards, without any patronage. Alluding to the encouragement
necessary to bestow on youth, to remove the obstacles to such studies,
he observes, that "young men will hardly come in on the prospect of
finding leisure, in a prison, to transcribe those papers for the press,
which they have collected with indefatigable labour, and oftentimes at
the expense of their rest, and all the other conveniences of life, for
the service of the public. No! though I were to assure them, from my own
experience, that _I have enjoyed more true liberty, more happy leisure,
and more solid repose, in six months_ HERE, than in thrice the same
number of years before. _Evil is the condition of that historian who
undertakes to write the lives of others, before he knows how to live
himself._--Not that I speak thus as if I thought I had any just cause to
be angry with the world--I did always in my judgment give the
possession of _wisdom_ the preference to that of _riches_!"

Spenser, the child of Fancy, languished out his life in misery, "Lord
Burleigh," says Granger, "who it is said prevented the queen giving him
a hundred pounds, seems to have thought the lowest clerk in his office a
more deserving person." Mr. Malone attempts to show that Spenser had a
small pension, but the poet's querulous verses must not be forgotten--

"Full little knowest thou, that hast not try'd,
What Hell it is, in suing long to bide."

To lose good days--to waste long nights--and, as he feelingly exclaims,

"To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,