[Footnote 1:  MOORE—­Life of Byron, ed. 1860. p. 127.]

Byron was almost driven to sell the copyright of his books, but he was prevented from doing so by his publisher, who pressed upon him a sum of money to meet his temporary wants.  During the first year of his marriage, his house was nine times in the possession of bailiffs, his door was almost daily beset by duns, and he was only saved from gaol by the privileges of his rank.  All this, to a sensitive nature such as his, must have been gall and bitterness; while his wife’s separation from him, which shortly followed, could not fail to push him almost to the point of frenzy.  Although he had declined to receive money for his first poems, Byron altered his views, and even learnt to drive a pretty hard bargain with his publisher.[1] But Moore does not, in his biography of the poet, inform us whether he ever got rid, except by death, of his grievous turmoil of debt.

[Footnote 1:  “You offer 1,500 guineas for the new Canto [the fourth of ’Childe Harold’]:  I won’t take it.  I ask two thousand five hundred guineas for it, which you will either give or not as you think proper....  If Mr. Eustace was to have two thousand for a poem on Education; if Mr. Moore is to have three thousand for Lalla; if Mr. Campbell is to have three thousand for his prose or poetry.—­I don’t mean to disparage these gentlemen or their labours.—­but I ask the aforesaid price for mine.”—­Lord Byron to Mr. Murray, Sept. 4th, 1817.]

There is the greatest difference in the manner in which men bear the burden of debt.  Some feel it to be no burden at all; others bear it very lightly; whilst others look upon creditors in the light of persecutors, and themselves in the light of martyrs.  But where the moral sense is a little more keen,—­where men use the goods of others, without rendering the due equivalent of money—­where they wear unpaid clothes, eat unpaid meat, drink unpaid wines, and entertain guests at the expense of the butcher, grocer, wine-merchant, and greengrocer,—­they must necessarily feel that their conduct is of the essence, not only of shabbiness, but of dishonesty, and the burden must then bear very heavily indeed.

Of light-hearted debtors, the proportion is considerable.  Thus Theophilus Cibber, when drowned in debt, begged the loan of a guinea, and spent it on a dish of ortolans.  Thus Foote when his mother wrote to him—­“Dear Sam, I am in prison for debt—­come and help your loving mother,”—­replied, “Dear Mother, so am I, which prevents his duty being paid to his loving mother by her affectionate son.”  Steele and Sheridan both bore the load lightly.  When entertaining company, they put the bailiffs who were in possession in livery, and made them wait at table, passing them off as servants.  Nothing disturbed Steele’s equanimity; and when driven from London by debt, he carried his generosity into the country, giving prizes to the lads and lasses assembled at rural games and country dances.