230 



CHAPTER IX. 



Ah, worthless wit ! to train me to this woe : 

 Deceitful arts that nourish discontent ; 



111 thrive the folly that bewitch'd me so ! 

 Vain thought, adieu ! for now I will repent 



And yet my wants persuade me to proceed, 



For none take pity of a scholar's need. 



Ah, friends ! no friends that then ungentle frown 

 When changing fortune casts us headlong down. 



THOMAS NASH. 



WHIN, alas ! it is remembered that all the care- 

 ful preparation of 600 pages octavo for this Dartford 

 History was doomed to fall flat, prostrate, fruitless, 

 and still-born for want of a few pounds, how forcibly 

 we are struck by the marvellous and chilling de- 

 pendence of mind upon matter. Such failures, in- 

 deed, enable one to appreciate the value in bygone 

 days (before the vast increase of readers supplied a 

 remedy), of that encouragement which wealth and 

 position offered to talented poverty a relation which 

 admits of being as dignified as it may be degraded ; 

 for what fair-minded judgment would fail to recog- 

 nize, in such kindly and timely encouragement of 

 letters, that the needy author far more than repaid the 

 patron by linking him as a joint tenant in the in- 



