of the midnight lamp. But, because solitude and books are not
unpleasant to me,--nay, wished-for,--sought after,--shall I say to
my brother, Thou fool! Shall I take the world by the beard and say,
Thou art old, and mad!--Shall I look society in the face and say,
Thou art heartless!--Heartless! Beware of that word! Life, says very
wisely the good Jean Paul, Life in every shape, should be precious
to us, for the same reason that the Turks carefully collect every
scrap of paper that comes in their way, because the name of God may
be written upon it. Nothing is more true than this, yet nothing more
neglected!"

"If it be painful to see this misunderstanding between scholars
and the world," said the Baron, "I think it is still more painful to
see the private sufferings of authors by profession. How many have
languished in poverty, how many died broken-hearted, how many gone
mad with over-excitement and disappointed hopes! How instructive and
painfully interesting are their lives! with so many weaknesses,--so
much to pardon,--so much to pity,--so much to admire! I think he was
not so far out of the way, who said, that, next to the Newgate
Calendar, the Biography of Authors is the most sickening chapter in
the history of man."

"It is indeed enough to make one's heart ache!" interrupted
Flemming. "Only think of Johnson and Savage, rambling about the
streets of London at midnight, without a place to sleep in; Otway
starved to death; Cowley mad, and howling like a dog, through the
aisles of Chichester Cathedral, at the sound of church music; and
Goldsmith, strutting up Fleet Street in his peach-blossom coat, to
knock a bookseller over the pate with one of his own volumes; and
then, in his poverty, about to marry his landlady in Green Arbour