_Mr. Fax._ The picture which you have drawn of poverty is not very tempting; and you must acknowledge that it is most galling to the most refined feelings. You must not, therefore, wonder that it is peculiarly obnoxious to the practical notions of poets. If the radiance of gold and silver gleam not through the foliage of the Pierian laurel, there is something to be said in their excuse if they carry their chaplet to those who will gild its leaves; and in that case they will find their best customers and patrons among those who are ambitious of acquiring panegyric by a more compendious method than the troublesome practice of the virtues that deserve it. _Mr. Forester._ You have quoted Juvenal, but you should have completed the sentence: ‘If you see no glimpse of coin in the Pierian shade, you will prefer the name and occupation of a barber or an auctioneer.’[47] This is most just: if the pursuits of literature, conscientiously conducted, condemn their votary to famine, let him live by more humble, but at least by honest, and therefore honourable occupations: he may still devote his leisure to his favourite pursuits. If he produce but a single volume consecrated to moral truth, its effect must be good as far as it goes; but if he purchase leisure and luxury by the prostitution of talent to the cause of superstition and tyranny, every new exertion of his powers is a new outrage to reason and virtue, and in precise proportion to those powers is he a curse to his country and a traitor to mankind. _Mr. Feathernest._ A barber, sir!—a man of genius turn barber! _Mr. O’Scarum._ Troth, sir, and I think it is better he should be in the suds himself, than help to bring his country into that situation. _Mr. Forester._ I can perceive, sir, in your exclamation the principle that has caused so enormous a superabundance in the number of bad books over that of good ones. The objects of the majority of men of talent seem to be exclusively two: the first, to convince the world of their transcendent abilities; the second, to convert that conviction into a source of the greatest possible pecuniary benefit to themselves. But there is no class of men more resolutely indifferent to the moral tendency of the means by which their ends are accomplished. Yet this is the most extensively pernicious of all modes of dishonesty; for that of a private man can only injure the pockets of a few individuals (a great evil, certainly, but light in comparison); while that of a public writer, who has previously taught the multitude to respect his talents, perverts what is much more valuable, the mental progress of thousands; misleading, on the one hand, the shallow believers in his sincerity; and on the other, stigmatising the whole literary character in the opinions of all who see through the veil of his venality. _Mr. Feathernest._ All this is no reason, sir, why a man of genius should condescend to be a barber.