LETTER III.

We are assured that justice requires the admission of foreign authors to
the privilege of copyright, and in support of the claim that she presents
are frequently informed of the extreme poverty of many highly popular
English writers. Mrs. Inchbald, so well known as author of the "Simple
Story" and other novels, as well as in her capacity of editor, dragged on,
as we are told, to the age of sixty, a miserable existence, living always
in mean lodgings, and suffering frequently from want of the common
comforts of life. Lady Morgan, so well known as Miss Owenson, a brilliant
and accomplished woman, is now to some extent dependent upon the public
charity, administered in the form of a pension of less than five hundred
dollars a year. Mrs. Hemans, the universally admired poetess, lived and
died in poverty. Laman Blanchard lost his senses and committed suicide in
consequence of being compelled, by his extreme poverty, to the effort of
writing an article for a periodical while his wife lay a corpse in the
house. Miss Mitford, so well known to all of us, found herself, after a
life of close economy, so greatly reduced as to have been under the
necessity of applying to her American readers for means to extricate her
little property from the rude hands of the sheriff. Like Lady Morgan, she
is now a public pensioner. Leigh Hunt is likewise dependent on the public
charity. Tom Hood, so well known by his "Song of a Shirt"--the delight
of his readers, and a mine of wealth to his publishers; a man without
vices, and of untiring industry--lived always from day to day on the
produce of his labor. On his death-bed, when his lungs were so worn with