Sheridan also made very light of his debts, and had many a good joke over them.  Some one asked him how it was that the O’ was not prefixed to his name, when he replied that he was sure no family had a better right to it, “for in truth, we owe everybody.”  And when a creditor once apologized for the soiled and tattered state of a bill, which had been much worn by being so often presented, Sheridan advised him “as a friend, to take it home and write it upon parchment.”

Very different was it in the case of poor Burns, who was almost driven distracted because he owed a debt of L7 4_s_. for a volunteer’s uniform, which he could not pay.  He sent to his friend Thomson, the publisher of his songs, imploring the loan of L5, promising full value in “song-genius."[1] His last poem was a “love song,” in part payment of the loan, which he composed only a few days before his death.

[Footnote 1:  “After all my boasted independence,” he said, “curst necessity compels me to implore you for five pounds.  A cruel scoundrel of a haberdasher, to whom I owe an account, taking it into his head that I am dying, has commenced a process, and will infallibly put me in jail.  Do, for God’s sake, send me that sum, and by return of post.  Forgive me this earnestness; but the horrors of a jail have made me half distracted.  I do not ask all this gratuitously:  for upon returning health I promise and engage to furnish you with five pounds’ worth of the neatest song-genius you have seen.”—­Burns to Thomson. 12th July, 1796.  Burns died on the 21st of the same month.]

Sydney Smith had a severe struggle with poverty in the early part of his life.  He had a poor living, a wide parish, and a large family.  His daughter says that his debts occasioned him many sleepless nights, and that she has seen him in an evening, when bill after bill has poured in (carefully examining them, and gradually paying them off), quite overcome by the feeling of the debt hanging over him, cover his face with his hands, and exclaim, “Ah!  I see I shall end my old age in a gaol."[1] But he bore up bravely under the burden, labouring onward with a cheerful heart, eking out his slender means by writing articles for the Edinburgh, until at length promotion reached him, and he reaped the reward of his perseverance, his industry, and his independence.

[Footnote 1:  LADY HOLLAND—­Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith, vol. i, p. 206.]

De Foe’s life was a long battle with difficulty and debt.  He was constantly involved in broils, mostly of his own stirring up.  He was a fierce pamphleteer from his youth up; and was never for a moment at rest, He was by turns a soldier with the Duke of Monmouth, a pantile maker, a projector, a poet, a political agent, a novelist, an essayist, a historian.  He was familiar with the pillory, and spent much of his time in gaol.  When reproached by one of his adversaries with mercenariness, he piteously