As an example of the perseverance of genius under discouraging circumstances, we recall the trying experience of our own great naturalist Audubon, who had stored in a pine box a thousand and more of his drawings for his great work on "The Birds of America," while he pursued his studies. On opening the box, after the lapse of a few months, he found his carefully made illustrations destroyed and converted into a nest for rats. The work of years was irreparably gone to nought. After a brief period of bitter disappointment, he says: "I took up my gun, my note-book, and my pencil, and went forth to the woods as gayly as if nothing had happened. I felt pleased that I might now make better drawings than before; and, ere a period not exceeding three years had elapsed, my portfolio was again filled."[165] The destruction of his first thousand drawings was a blessing in disguise, both to science and to its modest disciple, since it confirmed him in the resolve which culminated in producing what Cuvier denominated "the most magnificent monument art had ever erected to ornithology." The destruction of Sir Isaac Newton's papers by his favorite dog, embracing the careful calculations of years of study, will occur to the reader in this connection, as well as the loss of Carlyle's first manuscript copy of the "French Revolution," burned by a maid-of-all-work to kindle the fire. Having no draft or copy of the same, he was compelled to reproduce it as nearly as possible from memory. There is positive pleasure in the original production of a piece of literary work; but the reproduction under such circumstances must have been agonizing. The history of literature is full of instances wherein its votaries have by patient perseverance finally achieved the much-desired fame which has inspired them to endure deprivation and labor. We affirm this, though at the same time recalling Douglas Jerrold's words,--"How much of what is thought by idle people fame is really sought for as the representative of so many legs of mutton! We may make Fame an angelic creature on the tombs of poets, but how often do bards invoke her as a bouncing landlady!" Pope made his way from obscurity, overcoming by sheer perseverance obstacles that genius hardly ever before encountered. He was not only deformed, as we have said, but he was diseased, "unable to take his own stockings off--a woman nurse with him always." So far as we know it, there was not much to love, or even respect, in his personal character; but we must all admire the wonderful perseverance and genius that enabled him to write what he did. His translation of the Iliad alone was sufficient to give him lasting fame; and it did give him plenty of money, as he received a little over five thousand three hundred pounds from it. How Goldsmith would have scattered that generous sum of money, and how securely Pope hoarded it!