[Footnote: _Sonnet to Sidney_.]
"Poor of purse!" The words recall us to another of the poet's quarrels
with the world in which he is imprisoned. Should the philanthropist, as
has often been suggested, endow the poet with an independent income?
What a long and glorious tradition would then be broken! From Chaucer's
_Complaint to His Empty Purse_, onward, English poetry has borne
the record of its maker's poverty. The verse of our period is filled
with names from the past that offer our poets a noble precedent for
their destitution,--Homer, Cervantes, Camoeens, Spenser, Dryden, Butler,
Johnson, Otway, Collins, Chatterton, Burns,--all these have their want
exposed in nineteeth and twentieth century verse.
The wary philanthropist, before launching into relief schemes, may well
inquire into the cause of such wretchedness. The obvious answer is, of
course, that instead of earning a livelihood the poet has spent his time
on a vocation that makes no pecuniary return. Poets like to tell us,
also, that their pride, and a fine sense of honour, hold them back from
illegitimate means of acquiring wealth.
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