Thus
difficulty, adversity, and suffering are not all evil, but often
the best source of strength, discipline, and virtue.
For the same reason, it is often of advantage for a man to be
under the necessity of having to struggle with poverty and conquer
it. "He who has battled," says Carlyle, "were it only with
poverty and hard toil, will be found stronger and more expert than
he who could stay at home from the battle, concealed among the
provision waggons, or even rest unwatchfully 'abiding by the
stuff.'"
Scholars have found poverty tolerable compared with the privation
of intellectual food. Riches weigh much more heavily upon the
mind. "I cannot but choose say to Poverty," said Richter, "Be
welcome! so that thou come not too late in life." Poverty, Horace
tells us, drove him to poetry, and poetry introduced him to Varus
and Virgil and Maecenas. "Obstacles," says Michelet, "are great
incentives. I lived for whole years upon a Virgil, and found
myself well off. An odd volume of Racine, purchased by chance at
a stall on the quay, created the poet of Toulon."
The Spaniards are even said to have meanly rejoiced the poverty of
Cervantes, but for which they supposed the production of his great
works might have been prevented. When the Archbishop of Toledo
visited the French ambassador at Madrid, the gentlemen in the
suite of the latter expressed their high admiration of the
writings of the author of 'Don Quixote,' and intimated their
desire of becoming acquainted with one who had given them so much
pleasure.
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