CHAP, vi.] PECKEAM SCHOOL AND GRUB STEBET.

that he must descend in the social scale, and peradventure
starve. But though it could not disgrace or degrade him,
it called a class of writers into existence whose degradation
reacted upon him; who flung a stigma on his pursuits, and
made the name of man-of-letters the synonyme for dishonest
hireling. Of the fifty thousand pounds which the Secret
Committee found to have been expended by Walpole's
ministry on daily scribblers for their daily bread, not a
sixpence was received, either then or when the Pelhams
afterwards followed the example, by a writer whose name is
now enviably known. All went to the Guthries, the
Amhersts, the Arnalls, the Ealphs, and the Oldmixons;
and while a Mr. Cook was pensioned, a Harry Fielding
solicited Walpole in vain. What the man of genius
received, unless the man of rank had wisdom to adorn it by
befriending him, was nothing but the shame of being
confounded, as one who lived by using the pen, with those
who lived by its prostitution and abuse.

It was in vain he strove to escape this imputation; it
increased, and it clove to him. To become author was to
be treated as adventurer: a man had only to write, to be
classed with what Johnson calls the lowest of all human
beings, the scribbler for party. One of Fielding's remarks,
under cover of a grave sneer, conveys a bitter sense of
this injustice. " An author, in a country where there is no
" public provision for men of genius, is not obliged to be a
" more disinterested patriot than any other. Why is he,
" whose livelihood is in Ms pen, a greater monster in using
"it to serve himself, than he who uses his tongue for the
" same purpose ? "

Nor was the injustice the work of the vulgar or unthinking;
it was strongest in the greatest of living statesmen. If anyor a parasite : its sentence upon him simply was,