evidently not disinclined to venture, but Halhed recommending that they
should wait to hear how "Sumner and the wise few of their acquaintance"
would talk of the book, before they risked anything more than their
initials. In answer to Sheridan's inquiries as to the extent of sale
they may expect in Oxford, he confesses that, after three coffee-houses
had bought one a-piece, not two more would be sold.

That poverty is the best nurse of talent has long been a most
humiliating truism; and the fountain of the Muses, bursting from a
barren rock, is but too apt an emblem of the hard source from which much
of the genius of this world has issued. How strongly the young
translators of Aristaenetus were under the influence of this sort of
inspiration appears from every paragraph of Halhed's letters, and might
easily, indeed, be concluded of Sheridan, from the very limited
circumstances of his father, who had nothing besides the pension of L200
a year, conferred upon him in consideration of his literary merits, and
the little profits he derived from his lectures in Bath, to support with
decency himself and his family. The prospects of Halhed were much more
golden, but he was far too gay and mercurial to be prudent; and from the
very scanty supplies which his father allowed him, had quite as little
of "le superflu, chose si necessaire," as his friend. But whatever were
his other desires and pursuits, a visit to Bath,--to that place which
contained the two persons he most valued in friendship and in love,--was
the grand object of all his financial speculations; and among other ways
and means that, in the delay of the expected resources from
Aristaenetus, presented themselves, was an exhibition of L20 a year,
which the college had lately given him, and with five pounds of which he
thought he might venture "adire Corinthum."

Though Sheridan had informed his friend that the translation was put to