Next to the "Newgate Calendar," it has been said, the biography of authors is the most sickening chapter in the history of man. "Woe be to the youthful poet who sets out upon his pilgrimage to the temple of fame with nothing but hope for his viaticum!" wrote Southey, in 1813, to a young man who had consulted him. "There is the Slough of Despond, and the Hill of Difficulty, and the Valley of the Shadow of Death upon the way." Coleridge's exhortation to youthful literati may be summed up in one sentence: "Never pursue literature as a trade." Béranger's advice was by no means to be despised. He spoke as one having authority, and he certainly had experience.[109] "Write if you will," he says, "versify if you must, sing away if the singing mood is an imperative mood, but on no account give up your other occupation; let your authorship be a pastime, not a trade; let it be your avocation, not your vocation." Even the successful Washington Irving speaks of "the seductive but treacherous paths of literature." He adds: "There is no life more precarious in its profits and more fallacious in its enjoyments than that of an author." But these lines were addressed to his nephew, and must be taken _cum grano salis_. He had genius, his nephew had not; he never could have acquired so much money had he, like Halleck, become a clerk,--even the clerk of Mr. Astor. The truth is, most writers have failed in authorship because they have not had talent enough to write books that an intelligent public would buy and read, and because their vagabond habits deterred them from being employed by merchants and tradesmen as salesmen and clerks. Real genius now obtains a remuneration always higher than that of clerks and tradesmen. It is mediocre writers who mourn in our days; but they should never have taken as a profession a role they were incompetent to fill. They are like doctors who cannot obtain patients, and lawyers who cannot attract clients.