mains
unknown.--Adamson's _Memoirs of Camoeens_, 1820.]

[Footnote 19: This melancholy event happened in 1788, fifteen years
after the original projector of the Literary Fund, Mr. David Williams,
had endeavoured to establish it. It appears that Mr. Floyer Sydenham was
arrested "for a small debt; he never spoke after being arrested, and
sunk under the pressure of his calamity." This is the published record
of the event by the officers of the present fund; and these simple words
are sufficiently indicative of the harrowing nature of the catastrophe;
it was strongly felt that Mr. Williams' hopeful plan of preventing a
second act so fatal should be encouraged. A small literary club took the
initiative, and subscribed a few guineas to pay for such advertisements
as were necessary to keep the intended objects of the founder before the
public, and solicit its aid. Two years afterwards a committee was
formed; another two years saw it take position among the established
institutions of the country. In 1818 it obtained a royal charter. In its
career it has relieved upwards of 1300 applicants, and devoted to that
purpose 47,725_l._]

IMPRISONMENT OF THE LEARNED.

Imprisonment has not always disturbed the man of letters in the progress
of his studies, but has unquestionably greatly promoted them.

In prison Boethius composed his work on the Consolations of Philosophy;
and Grotius wrote his Commentary on Saint Matthew, with other works: the
detail of his allotment of time to different studies, during his
confinement, is very instructive.

Buchanan, in the dungeon of a monastery in Portugal, composed his
excellent Paraphrases of the Psalms of David.

Cervantes composed the most agreeable book in the Spanish language
during his captivity in Barbary.

Fleta, a well-known law production, was written by a person confined in
the Fleet for debt; the name of the _place_, though not that of the
_author_, has thus been preserved; and another work, "Fleta Minor, or
the Laws of Art and Nature in, knowing the bodies of Metals, &c. by Sir
John Pettus, 1683;" received its title from the circumstance of his
having translated it from the German during his confinement in this
prison.

Louis the Twelfth, when Duke of Orleans, was long imprisoned in the
Tower of Bourges: applying himself to his studies, which he had
hitherto neglected, he became, in consequence, an enlightened monarch.

Margaret, queen of Henry the Fourth, King of Fr