We have spoken of De Foe in prison, he who produced two hundred volumes, yet died insolvent. Dr. Johnson said there was never anything written by man that was wished longer by its readers, except "Don Quixote," "Robinson Crusoe," and "Pilgrim's Progress." The author of "Robinson Crusoe" says of himself: "I have gone through a life of wonders, and am the subject of a great variety of providences. I have been fed more by miracles than Elijah when the ravens were his purveyors. In the school of affliction I have learned more philosophy than at the academy, and more divinity than from the pulpit. In prison I have learned that liberty does not consist in open doors and the egress and regress of locomotion. I have seen the rough side of the world as well as the smooth, and have in less than half a year tasted the difference between the closet of a king and the dungeon of Newgate." "Talent is often to be envied," says Holmes, "and genius very commonly to be pitied; it stands twice the chance of the other of dying in a hospital, in jail, in debt, in bad repute." The example of Robert Greene's life carries with it an impressive moral. He was well educated, taking his degree at Cambridge, England, and was a successful playwright and poet; but he was also improvident and reckless in his life, exhibiting more than the usual eccentricities of genius. He squandered his patrimony in dissipation, and died in great poverty. His last book, "The Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance," is a book both curious and rare.[121] With all his dissipated proclivities, Henry Fielding had much more genius than Robert Greene. He too was constantly poor through his own recklessness. Lady Montagu, who was a kinswoman of his, said: "He was always wanting money, and would have wanted it had his hereditary lands been as extensive as his imagination." And yet he was a marvel of industry, ever slaving with the pen, writing often under excruciating pain, and producing his most famous work, "Tom Jones," as has been said, with an ache and a pain to every sentence. He was, as usual, very short of money when this work was finished, and tried to sell it to a second-class publisher for twenty-five pounds. Thomson the poet heard of this from Fielding, and told him to come to Miller the book-publisher. This individual gave it to his wife to read, and she bade him to secure it by all means; so the publisher offered the impecunious author two hundred guineas for it, and the bargain was closed, to the entire satisfaction of both parties.[122] Critics have remarked upon the similarity between Steele and Fielding, though attributing the greater genius and learning to the latter. They were certainly alike in one respect; namely, as regarded a chronic state of impecuniosity.