Xylander sold his notes on Dion Cassius for a dinner. He tells us that at the age of eighteen he studied to acquire glory, but at twenty-five he studied to get bread. Cervantes, the immortal genius of Spain, is supposed to have wanted food; Camöens, the solitary pride of Portugal, deprived of the necessaries of life, perished in an hospital at Lisbon. This fact has been accidentally preserved in an entry in a copy of the first edition of the Lusiad, in the possession of Lord Holland. It is a note, written by a friar who must have been a witness of the dying scene of the poet, and probably received the volume which now preserves the sad memorial, and which recalled it to his mind, from the hands of the unhappy poet:--"What a lamentable thing to see so great a genius so ill rewarded! I saw him die in an hospital in Lisbon, without having a sheet or shroud, _una sauana_, to cover him, after having triumphed in the East Indies, and sailed 5500 leagues! What good advice for those who weary themselves night and day in study without profit!" Camöens, when some fidalgo complained that he had not performed his promise in writing some verses for him, replied, "When I wrote verses I was young, had sufficient food, was a lover, and beloved by many friends and by the ladies; then I felt poetical ardour: now I have no spirits, no peace of mind. See there my Javanese, who asks me for two pieces to purchase firing, and I have them not to give him." The Portuguese, after his death, bestowed on the man of genius they had starved, the appellation of Great![18] Vondel, the Dutch Shakspeare, after composing a number of popular tragedies, lived in great poverty, and died at ninety years of age; then he had his coffin carried by fourteen poets, who without his genius probably partook of his wretchedness. The great Tasso was reduced to such a dilemma that he was obliged to borrow a crown for a week's subsistence. He alludes to his distress when, entreating his cat to assist him, during the night, with the lustre of her eyes--"_Non avendo candele per iscrivere i suoi versi_!" having no candle to see to write his verses. When the liberality of Alphonso enabled Ariosto to build a small house, it seems that it was but ill furnished. When told that such a building was not fit for one who had raised so many fine palaces in his writings, he answered, that the structure of _words_ and that of _stones_ was not the same thing. _"Che pervi le pietre, e porvi le parole, non è il medesimo!"_ At Ferrari this house is still shown, "Parva sed apta" he calls it, but exults that it was paid for with his own money. This was in a moment of good humour, which he did not always enjoy; for in his Satires he bitterly complains of the bondage of dependence and poverty. Little thought the poet that the _commune_ would order this small house to be purchased with their own funds, that it might be dedicated to his immortal memory.