,
or whence is this curse? Even from hence, the men that should employ
such as I am, are enamoured of their own wits, though they be never so
scurvie; that a scrivener is better paid than a scholar; and men of
art must seek to live among cormorants, or be kept under by dunces,
who count it policy to keep them bare to follow their books the
better." And then, Nash thus utters the cries of--

A DESPAIRING AUTHOR!

Why is't damnation to despair and die
When life is my true happiness' disease?
My soul! my soul! thy safety makes me fly
_The faulty means_ that might my pain appease;
Divines and dying men may talk of hell;
But in my heart her several torments dwell.

Ah worthless wit, to train me to this woe!
Deceitful arts that nourish discontent!
Ill thrive the folly that bewitch'd me so!
Vain thoughts, adieu! for now I will repent;
And yet my wants persuade me to proceed,
Since none take pity of a scholar's need!--

Forgive me, God, although I curse my birth,
And ban the air wherein I breathe a wretch!
For misery hath daunted all my mirth--
Without redress complains my careless verse,
And Midas' ears relent not at my moan!
In some far land will I my griefs rehearse,
'Mongst them that will be moved when I shall groan!
England, adieu! the soil that brought me forth!
Adieu, unkinde! where skill is nothing worth!

Such was the miserable cry of an "Author by Profession" in the reign
of Elizabeth. Nash not only renounces his country in his despair--and
hesitates on "the faulty means" which have appeased the pangs of many
of his unhappy brothers, but he proves also the weakness of the moral
principle among these men of genius; for he promises, if any Maecenas
will bind him by his bounty, he will do him "as much honour as any
poet of my beardless years in England--but," he adds, "if he be sent
away with a flea in his ear, let him look that I will rail on him
soundly; not for an hour or a day, while the injury is fresh in my
memory, but in some elaborate polished poem, which I will leave to the
world when I am dead, to be a living image to times to come of his
beggarly parsimony." Poets might imagine that CHATTERTON had written
all this, about the time he struck a balance of his profit and loss by
the death of Beckford the Lord Mayor, in which he concludes with "I am
glad he is dead by 3_l._ 13_s._ 6_d._"[19]

FOOTNOTES:

[17] An abundance