---------------------------- WORKING AUTHORS AND ARTISTS. Godwin, the novelist and political writer, used to say that an author should have two heads,—one for his books, the other for worldly matters. And Holcroft, Godwin’s contemporary, made a similar remark on actors,—that they were so often filling other characters as to forget their own. These observations are, happily, of rare application in the cases of the present day. We, however, remember the phrase of _Grub-street_ in occasional use, and we find “the poor devil of an author” in one of Washington Irving’s early works. But this species is now extinct; and authors build villas, give large parties, and keep carriages, like other successful professional men. Nor must it be forgotten that they do not receive their money for corrupt services, as did the hacks of former days; and a Grub-street Author would be now almost as great a rarity as a living gorilla. We remember a specimen of “author and rags—author and dirt—author and gin,”—of forty years since. He lived in a garret,[112] in an old house at the top of Red Lion-court, Fleet-street: in one corner of the room, upon the floor, lay the bed; near the fire-place was an old chair; a box placed endwise served for a table; and these, with an almost spoutless coffee-pot, a maimed cup and saucer, a bottle for a candlestick, and an old chest, nearly completed the contents of the miserable apartment. The inmate was an old man turned of seventy, with shrunk shanks and loosely-fitting coat and breeches, and the conventional author’s-nightcap; his scratchwig being placed upon one of the uprights of his chair, which served as a block. Every portion of the room bore evidence of the _dirt;_ and the atmosphere was redolent of _gin_. He wrote a large black, sermon-like hand, upon paper of all sorts and sizes: his matter was as antiquated as his manner; his very talk was scholastic pedantry, and the room was strewed with scraps and shreds of his learning: but he lived within the classic shade of Valpy’s printing-office. With all his labour and learning, whatever he wrote was not half so serviceable or so interesting as a short-hand report of an occurrence of yesterday. Another humble practitioner of authorship had been driven to it by failure in business; and an undecided Chancery-suit had made him a pitiable, puling fellow; far less cheerful than the evergreen “Tom Hill,” who, failing as a drysalter at unlettered Queenhithe, betook himself to the editorship of the _Monthly Mirror_, but had to part with a collection of book-rarities (chiefly English poetry), which he began to make in early life as some relief to drysalting, which was any thing but Attic work!