POETRY and poverty begin with the same letter, and in more respects than one, are “as like each other as two P’s.”—Nine tailors are the making of a man, but not so the nine Muses. Their votaries are notoriously only water drinkers, eating mutton cold, and dwelling in attics. Look at the miserable lives and deaths recorded of the poets. “Butler,” says Mr. D’Israeli, “lived in a cellar, and Goldsmith in a Deserted Village. Savage ran wild,—Chatterton was carried on St. Augustine’s Back like a young gipsy; and his half-starved Rowley always said Heigho, when he heard of gammon and spinach. Gray’s day’s were ode-ious, and Gay’s gaiety was fabulous. Falconer was shipwrecked. Homer was a blind beggar, and Pope raised a subscription for him, and went snacks. Crabbe found himself in the poor-house, Spenser couldn’t afford a great-coat, and Milton was led up and down by his daughters to save the expense of a dog.”
It seems all but impossible to be a poet, in easy circumstances. Pope has shown how verses are written by Ladies of Quality—and what execrable rhymes Sir Richard Blackmore composed in his chariot; in a hay-cart he might have sung like a Burns.
As the editors of magazines and annuals (save one) well know, the truly poetical contributions which can be inserted, are not those which come post free, in rose-coloured tinted paper, scented with musk, and sealed with fancy wax. The real article arrives by post, unpaid, sealed with rosin, or possibly with a dab of pitch or cobbler’s wax, bearing the impression of a halfpenny, or more frequently of a button,—the paper is dingy, and scant—the hand-writing has evidently come to the author by nature—there are trips in the spelling, and Priscian is a little scratch’d or so—but a rill of the true Castalian runs through the whole composition, though its fountain-head was a broken tea-cup, instead of a silver standish. A few years ago I used to be favoured with numerous poems for insertion, which bore the signature of Fitz-Norman; the crest on the seal had probably descended from the Conquest, and the packets were invariably delivered by a Patagonian footman in green and gold. The author was evidently rich, and the verses were as palpably poor; they were declined, with the usual answer to correspondents who do not answer, and the communications ceased—as I thought for ever, but I was deceived; a few days back one of the dirtiest and raggedest of street urchins delivered a soiled whity brown packet, closed with a wafer, which bore the impress of a thimble. The paper had more the odour of tobacco than of rose leaves, and the writing appeared to have been perpetrated with a skewer dipped in coffee-grounds; but the old signature of Fitz-Norman had the honour to be my “very humble servant” at the foot of the letter. It was too certain that he had fallen from affluence to indigence, but the adversity which had wrought such a change upon the writing implements, had, as usual, improved his poetry. The neat crowquill never traced on the superfine Bath paper any thing so unaffected as the following:—