CHAPTER XLIX.

Virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed
or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth
best discover virtue.--BACON.

It is somewhat remarkable that while Talbot was bequeathing to
Clarence, as the most valuable of legacies, the doctrines of a
philosophy he had acquired, perhaps too late to practise, Glendower
was carrying those very doctrines, so far as his limited sphere would
allow, 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 whom
he 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 unworldly
student. Some publishers offered, it is true, a reward tempting
enough for an immoral tale; others spoke of the value of an attack
upon the Americans; one suggested an ode to the minister, and another
hinted that a pension might possibly be granted to one who would prove
extortion not tyranny. But these insinuations fell upon a dull ear,
and the tribe of Barabbas were astonished to find that an author could
imagine 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 and
disappointment to his ambition; gnawed to the very soul by the
mortifications which his poverty gave to his pride; and watching with
tearless eyes, but a maddening brain, the slender form of his wife,