This study did not prove
remunerative; having been seized for debt, he was confined in Cambridge
Castle, and there finished his great work, _The History of the Saracens_.
His martyrdom was lifelong, as he died in destitution, having always (to
use his own words) given the possession of wisdom the preference to that
of riches. Floyer Sydenham, who died in a debtors' prison in 1788, and
incurred his hard fate through devoting his life to a translation of the
_Dialogues_ of Plato, was another martyr; from whose ashes arose the
Royal Literary Fund, which has prevented many struggling authors from
sharing his fate. Seventeen long years of labour, besides a handsome
fortune, did Edmund Castell spend on his _Lexicon Heptaglotton_; but a
thankless and ungrateful public refused to relieve him of the copies of
this learned work, which ruined his health while it dissipated his
fortune. These are only a few names which might be mentioned out of the
many. What a noble army of martyrs Literature could boast, if a roll-call
were sounded!
Amongst our booksellers we must not omit the name of Page, who suffered
with John Stubbs in the market-place at Westminster on account of the
latter's work entitled _The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf whereinto England
is like to be swallowed by another French marriage, if the Lord forbid not
the banes by letting her Majestie see the sin and punishment thereof_
(1579).
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