This eBook was produced by Tapio Riikonen
and David Widger
Virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensedor crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity dothbest discover virtue.—BACON.
It is somewhat remarkable that while Talbot was bequeathing toClarence, as the most valuable of legacies, the doctrines of aphilosophy he had acquired, perhaps too late to practise, Glendowerwas carrying those very doctrines, so far as his limited sphere wouldallow, into the rule and exercise of his life.
Since the death of the bookseller, which we have before recorded,Glendower had been left utterly without resource. The others to whomhe applied were indisposed to avail themselves of an unknown ability.The trade of bookmaking was not then as it is now, and if it had been,it would not have suggested itself to the high-spirited and unworldlystudent. Some publishers offered, it is true, a reward temptingenough for an immoral tale; others spoke of the value of an attackupon the Americans; one suggested an ode to the minister, and anotherhinted that a pension might possibly be granted to one who would proveextortion not tyranny. But these insinuations fell upon a dull ear,and the tribe of Barabbas were astonished to find that an author couldimagine interest and principle not synonymous.
Struggling with want, which hourly grew more imperious and urgent;wasting his life on studies which brought fever to his pulse anddisappointment to his ambition; gnawed to the very soul by themortifications which his poverty gave to his pride; and watching withtearless eyes, but a maddening brain, the slender form of his wife,now waxing weaker and fainter, as the canker of disease fastened uponthe core of her young but blighted life,—there was yet a high,though, alas! not constant consolation within him, whenever, from thetroubles of this dim spot his thoughts could escape, like birdsreleased from their cage, and lose themselves in the lustre andfreedom of their native heaven.
"If," thought he, as he looked upon his secret and treasured work, "ifthe wind scatter or the rock receive these seeds, they were at leastdispersed by a hand which asked no selfish return, and a heart whichwould have lavished the harvest of its labours upon those who know notthe husbandman and trample his hopes into the dust."
But by degrees this comfort of a noble and generous nature, thesewhispers of a vanity rather to be termed holy than excusable, began togrow unfrequent and low. The cravings of a more engrossing and heavywant than those of the mind came eagerly and rapidly upon him; thefair cheek of his infant became pinched and hollow; his wife conquerednature itself by love, and starved herself in silence, and set breadbefore him with a smile and bade him eat.
"But you,—you?" he would ask inquiringly, and then pause.
"I have dined, dearest: I want nothing; eat, love, eat." But he atenot. The food robbed from her seemed to him more deadly than poison;and he would rise, and dash his hand to his brow, and go forth alone,with nature unsatisfied, to look upon this luxurious world and learncontent.
It was after such a scene that, one day, he wandered forth into thestreets, desperate and confused in mind, and fainting with hunger, andhalf insane with fiery and wrong thoughts, which dashed over hisbarren and gloomy soul, and desolated, but conquered not! It wasevening: he stood (for he had strode on so rapidly, at first, that hisstrength was now exhausted, and he was forced to pause) leaningagainst the railed area of a house in a