felicity, the ill-treatment she received from the daughter she idolised; it is a kindling effusion of maternal reproach, and tenderness, and genius.[A] [Footnote A: Lettres inedites de Madame de Sevigne, pp. 201 and 203.] Some have been deemed disagreeable companions, because they felt the weariness of dulness, or the impertinence of intrusion; described as bad husbands, when united to women who, without a kindred feeling, had the mean art to prey upon their infirmities; or as bad fathers, because their offspring have not always reflected the moral beauty of their own page. But the magnet loses nothing of its virtue, even when the particles about it, incapable themselves of being attracted, are not acted on by its occult property. CHAPTER XVII. The poverty of literary men.--Poverty, a relative quality.--Of the poverty of literary men in what degree desirable.--Extreme poverty.--Task-work. --Of gratuitous works.--A project to provide against the worst state of poverty among literary men. Poverty is a state not so fatal to genius, as it is usually conceived to be. We shall find that it has been sometimes voluntarily chosen; and that to connect too closely great fortune with great genius, creates one of those powerful but unhappy alliances, where the one party must necessarily act contrary to the interests of the other. Poverty is a relative quality, like cold and heat, which are but the increase or the diminution in our own sensations. The positive idea must arise from comparison. There is a state of poverty reserved even for the wealthy man, the instant that he comes in hateful contact with the enormous capitalist. But there is a poverty neither vulgar nor terrifying, asking no favours and on no terms receiving any; a poverty which annihilates its ideal evils, and, becoming even a source of pride, will confer independence, that first step to genius.