173
WOODSTOCK.
No. 22.— ALICE LEE.
The history of most fictions would be far stranger than the fictions themselves; but it would be a dark and sad chronicle. Half the works that constitute the charm of our leisure, that give their own interest to the long November evening, or add to the charm of a summer noon beneath the greenwood tree, are the offspring of poverty and of pain. Dr. Johnson wrote "Rasselas" to pay the last decent respect of the living to the dead—his mother's funeral expenses. How often is the writer obliged to put his own trouble, his suffering, or his sorrow aside, to finish the task! The hand may tremble, the eyes fill with unbidden tears, and the temples throb with feverish pain, yet how often is there some hard and harsh necessity, which says, "the work must be done." Readers, in general, think little of this: they will say, "Dear! how delightful to be able to write such charming things! how it must amuse you!" I believe if there were only the author's amuse-
