CHAPTER XI.

GAMBLING POETS, SAVANTS, PHILOSOPHERS, WITS, AND STATESMEN.

Perhaps the stern moralist who may have turned over these pages
has frowned at the facts of the preceding chapter. If so, I know
not what he will do at those which I am about to record.

If it may be said that gamesters must be madmen, or rogues, how
has it come to pass that men of genius, talent, and virtue
withal, have been gamesters?

Men of genius, `gifted men,' as they are called, are much to be
pitied. One of them has said--`Oh! if my pillow could reveal my
sufferings last night!' His was true grief--for it had no
witness.[105] The endowments of this nature of ours are so
strangely mixed--the events of our lives are so unexpectedly
ruled, that one might almost prefer to have been fashioned after
those imaginary beings who act so _CONSISTENTLY_ in the nursery
tales and other figments. Most men seem to have a double soul;
and in your men of genius--your celebrities--the battle between
the two seems like the tremendous conflict so grandly (and
horribly) described by Milton. Who loved his country more than
Cato? Who cared more for his country's honour? And yet Cato was
not only unable to resist the soft impeachments of alcohol--

Narratur et prisci Catonis
Saepe mero caluisse virtus--

but he was also a dice-player, a gambler.[106]