Page:Studies of a Biographer 1.djvu/70

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56
STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER

Campbell, for example, the richest author, according to Johnson, 'who ever grazed the common of literature'; the 'pious' gentleman on the same authority, who, though he never entered a church, never passed one without taking off his hat. And to speak of still living names, we have Richardson, who had the good luck to be printer as well as author, and Fielding, forced to choose between being a hackney author or a hackney coachman, and Johnson, who was presently to proclaim, as Carlyle puts it, the 'blast of doom' of patronage. The profession, or at least the trade, is beginning to be established, and there will naturally be a demand for editing. The author of the loftier sphere still laboured under the delusion that it was unworthy of him to take money for his works. Swift, as he tells us, never made anything, till the judicious advice of Pope brought something for his Miscellanies. Pope himself, though he made his fortune by his Homer, is hardly an exception. The sums which he received, indeed, enabled him to live at his ease, but they were the product of a subscription, and, I fancy, of such a subscription as has never been surpassed. The good society of those days held, and deserves credit for holding, that it would do well to give a kind of national