I ask two thousand five hundred
guineas for it, which you will either give or not as you think
proper.... If Mr. Eustace was to have two thousand for a poem on
Education; if Mr. Moore is to have three thousand for Lalla; if Mr.
Campbell is to have three thousand for his prose or poetry.--I don't
mean to disparage these gentlemen or their labours.--but I ask the
aforesaid price for mine."--_Lord Byron to Mr. Murray_, Sept. 4th,
1817.]
There is the greatest difference in the manner in which men bear the
burden of debt. Some feel it to be no burden at all; others bear it very
lightly; whilst others look upon creditors in the light of persecutors,
and themselves in the light of martyrs. But where the moral sense is a
little more keen,--where men use the goods of others, without rendering
the due equivalent of money--where they wear unpaid clothes, eat unpaid
meat, drink unpaid wines, and entertain guests at the expense of the
butcher, grocer, wine-merchant, and greengrocer,--they must necessarily
feel that their conduct is of the essence, not only of shabbiness, but
of dishonesty, and the burden must then bear very heavily indeed.
Of light-hearted debtors, the proportion is considerable. Thus
Theophilus Cibber, when drowned in debt, begged the loan of a guinea,
and spent it on a dish of ortolans.
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