n
in the year 1798, or thereabouts, he had to choose between a bit of
bacon, a scrag of mutton, and a lodging at ten shillings a week, on the
one side, and made-dishes, wine, a fine house and a footman on the other
side, he chose the latter. He became the servile Editor of CANNING'S
Anti-jacobin newspaper; and he, who had more wit and learning than all
the rest of the writers put together, became the miserable tool in
circulating their attacks upon everything that was hostile to a system
which he deplored and detested. But he secured the made-dishes, the
wine, the footman and the coachman. A sinecure as '_clerk of the Foreign
Estreats_,' gave him 329_l._ a year, a double commissionership of the
lottery gave him 600_l._ or 700_l._ more; and, at a later period, his
Editorship of the Quarterly Review gave him perhaps as much more. He
rolled in his carriage for several years; he fared sumptuously; he was
buried at _Westminster Abbey_, of which his friend and formerly his
brother pamphleteer in defence of PITT was the _Dean_; and never is he
to be heard of more! Mr. GIFFORD would have been full as happy; his
health would have been better, his life longer, and his name would have
lived for ages, if he could have turned to the bit of bacon and scrag of
mutton in 1798; for his learning and talents were such, his reasonings
so clear and conclusive, and his wit so pointed and keen, that his
writings must have been generally read, must have been of long duration!
and, indeed, must have enabled him (he being always a single man) to
live in his latter days in as good style as that which he procured by
becoming a sinecurist, a pensioner and a _hack_, all which he was from
the moment he lent himself to the Quarterly Review. Think of the
mortification of such a man, when he was called upon to justify the
power-of-imprisonment bill in 1817! But to go into particulars would be
tedious: his life was a life of luxurious misery, than which a worse is
not to be imagined.

57. So that poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and
raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. _The shame of poverty_,
the shame of being thought poor, is a great and fatal weakness, though
arising, in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves. When
a _good man_, as in the phraseology of the city, means a _rich man_, we
are not to wonder that every one wishes to be thought richer than he is.
When adulation is sure to follow wealth, and