Failures in one direction have sometimes had the effect of forcing the farseeing student to apply himself in another. Thus Prideaux's failure as a candidate for the post of parish-clerk of Ugboro, in Devon, led to his applying himself to learning, and to his eventual elevation to the bishopric of Worcester. When Boileau, educated for the bar, pleaded his first cause, he broke down amidst shouts of laughter. He next tried the pulpit, and failed there too. And then he tried poetry, and succeeded. Fontenelle and Voltaire both failed at the bar. So Cowper, through his diffidence and shyness, broke down when pleading his first cause, though he lived to revive the poetic art in England. Montesquieu and Bentham both failed as lawyers, and forsook the bar for more congenial pursuits--the latter leaving behind him a treasury of legislative procedure for all time. Goldsmith failed in passing as a surgeon; but he wrote the 'Deserted Village' and the 'Vicar of Wakefield;' whilst Addison failed as a speaker, but succeeded in writing 'Sir Roger de Coverley,' and his many famous papers in the 'Spectator.' Even the privation of some important bodily sense, such as sight or hearing, has not been sufficient to deter courageous men from zealously pursuing the struggle of life. Milton, when struck by blindness, "still bore up and steered right onward." His greatest works were produced during that period of his life in which he suffered most--when he was poor, sick, old, blind, slandered, and persecuted. The lives of some of the greatest men have been a continuous struggle with difficulty and apparent defeat. Dante produced his greatest work in penury and exile. Banished from his native city by the local faction to which he was opposed, his house was given up to plunder, and he was sentenced in his absence to be burnt alive. When informed by a friend that he might return to Florence, if he would consent to ask for pardon and absolution, he replied: "No! This is not the way that shall lead me back to my country. I will return with hasty steps if you, or any other, can open to me a way that shall not derogate from the fame or the honour of Dante; but if by no such way Florence can be entered, then to Florence I shall never return." His enemies remaining implacable, Dante, after a banishment of twenty years, died in exile. They even pursued him after death, when his book, 'De Monarchia,' was publicly burnt at Bologna by order of the Papal Legate.