belisks to Burns, would have
rescued one half of his life from poverty, and the other half from
despair. The single sum which raised the monument to Sir Walter Scott in
Edinburgh, would have saved him from the final pressure which broke his
heart, elastic as it was, and dimmed his intellect, capable as he still
was of throwing a splendour over his native soil.

This neglect is known and suffered in no other province of public
service. The soldier, the sailor, the architect, the painter, are all
within sight of the most lavish prizes of public liberality. Parliament
has just given titles and superb pensions to the conquerors of the
Sikhs. The India Company has followed its example. We applaud this
munificent liberality in both instances. Two general officers have thus
obtained the peerage, with L7000 and L5000 a-year. They deserved those
rewards. But the whole literary encouragement of the British empire,
with a revenue of fifty-two millions sterling, is L1200, little more
than the tenth part of the pensions allotted to those two gallant men.
L1200 for the whole literary encouragement of England! There can be no
greater scandal to the intellectual honour of the country. The pettiest
German principality scarcely limits its literary encouragement to this
sum. We doubt whether Weimar, between literary offices and pensions, did
not give twice the sum annually. But named in competition with the
liberality of the leading sovereigns, it is utterly mean. Louis XIV.,
two hundred years ago, allotted 80,000 francs a-year to his forty
members of the Academy, a sum equivalent in _that day_, and in _France_,
to little less than L5000 a-year in our day, and in England. Frederic
II. gave pensions and appointments to a whole corps of literary men. At
this moment, there is scarcely a man of any literary distinction in
Paris, who has not a share in the liberal and wise patronage of
government, either in office or public pension.

But if we are to be answered by a class, plethoric with wealth and rank;
that literature ought to be content with living on its own means; must
not the obvious answer be--Is the author to be an author, down to his
grave? Is there to be no relaxation of his toil? is there to be no
allowance for the exhaustion of his overworked faculties? for the
natural infirmities of years? for the vexations of a noble spirit
compelled to submit to the caprices of public change? and with its full
share of the common calamities of