4:0 On the Want of Money. [JAN. 



taken through the thin folds of the paper and the wax, which in some 

 measure indemnifies us for the delay : the bank-note, the post-bill seems 

 to smile upon us, and shake hands through its prison bars ; or it may 

 be a love-letter, and then the tantalization is at its height : to be deprived 

 in this manner of the only consolation that can make us amends for the 

 want of money, by this very want to fancy you can see the name to 

 try to get a peep at the hand-writing to touch the seal, and yet not 

 dare to break it open is provoking indeed the climax of amorous and 

 gentlemanly distress. Players are sometimes reduced to great extremity, 

 by the seizure of their scenes and dresses, or (what is called) the pro- 

 perty of the theatre, which hinders them from acting j as authors are 

 prevented from finishing a work, for want of money to buy the books 

 necessary to be consulted on some material point or circumstance, in the 

 progress of it. There is a set of poor devils, who live upon a printed 

 prospectus of a work that never will be written, for which they solicit 

 your name and half-a- crown. Decayed actresses take an annual benefit 

 at one of the theatres ; there are patriots who live upon periodical sub- 

 scriptions, and critics who go about the country lecturing on poetry. I 

 confess I envy none of these ; but there are persons who, provided they 

 can live, care not how they live who are fond of display, even when it 

 implies exposure ; who court notoriety under every shape, and embrace 

 the public with demonstrations of wantonness. There are genteel beg- 

 gars, who send up a well-penned epistle requesting the loan of a shilling. 

 Your snug bachelors and retired old-maids pretend they can distinguish 

 the knock of one of these at their door. I scarce know which I dislike 

 the most the patronage that affects to bring premature genius into 

 notice, or that extends its piecemeal, formal charity towards it in its 

 decline. I hate your Literary Funds, and Funds for Decayed Artists 

 they are corporations for the encouragement of meanness, pretence, and 

 insolence. Of all people, I cannot tell how it is, but players appear to 

 me the best able to do without money. They are a privileged class. If 

 not exempt from the common calls of necessity and business, they are 

 enabled " by their so potent art " to soar above them. As they make 

 imaginary ills their own, real ones become imaginary, sit light upon 

 them, and are thrown off with comparatively little trouble, Their life is 

 theatrical its various accidents are the shifting scenes of a play rags 

 and finery, tears and laughter, a mock-dinner or a real one, a crown of 

 jewels or of straw, are to them nearly the same. I am sorry I cannot 

 carry on this reasoning to actors who are past their prime. The gilding 

 of their profession is then worn off, and shews the false metal beneath ; 

 vanity and hope (the props of their existence) have had their day ; their 

 former gaiety and carelessness serve as a foil to their present discou- 

 ragements ; and want and infirmities press upon them at once. " We 

 know what we are," as Ophelia says, " but we know not what we shall 

 be." A workhouse seems the last resort of poverty and distress a 

 garish-pauper is another name for all that is mean and to be deprecated 

 in human existence. But that name is but an abstraction, an average 

 term " within that lowest deep, a lower deep may open to receive us." 

 I heard not long ago of a poor man, who had been for many years a 

 respectable tradesman in London, and who was compelled to take shelter 

 in one of those receptacles of age and wretchedness, and who said he 

 could be contented with it he had his regular meals, a nook in the 

 chimney, and a coat to his back but" he was forced to lie three in a bed, 



