The Hazards, Hastles, Hazlitts of Translation & the want of Dead Presidents

[alice wellintown]

I suspect that Hazlitt would add the Street's Grubby Translators to
the New Hacks, the Online Blog Jopurnalists and Scribblers in the
Basements, those who have been lumped in with the 99% by dumb
Bartlebys who half know how to hold an ink stick now "occupying" or
taking up space if you prefer, as fake militants who have, ironically,
merely obesed the middle class myth, engrossed it with super-sized My
Me and Mine, and made of the soft in the middle comfort not combat
zone, a bulging belly in the likeness of Michael Moore, more, more,
more money for nothing. Meanwhile, those who would write for a room of
their own, take up the trades and scrap and scratch out a living in
the shadows of Hazlitt's wit.


Literally and truly, one cannot get on well in the world without
money. To be in want of it, is to pass through life with little credit
or pleasure; it is to live out of the world, or to be despised if you
come into it; it is not to be sent for to court, or asked out to
dinner, or noticed in the street; it is not to have your opinion
consulted or else rejected with contempt, to have your acquirements
carped at and doubted, your good things disparaged, and at last to
lose the wit and the spirit to say them; it is to be scrutinized by
strangers, and neglected by friends; it is to be a thrall to
circumstances, an exile in one's own country; to forego leisure,
freedom, ease of body and mind, to be dependent on the good-will and
caprice of others, or earn a precarious and irksome livelihood by some
laborious employment; it is to be compelled to stand behind a counter,
or to sit at a desk in some public office, or to marry your landlady,
or not the person you would wish; or to go out to the East or West
Indies, or to get a situation as judge abroad, and return home with a
liver- complaint; or to be a law-stationer, or a scrivener or
scavenger, or newspaper reporter; or to read law and sit in court
without a brief; or to be deprived of the use of your fingers by
transcribing Greek manuscripts, or to be a seal-engraver and pore
yourself blind; or to go upon the stage, or try some of the Fine Arts;
with all your pains, anxiety, and hopes, and most probably to fail,
or, if you succeed, after the exertions of years, and undergoing
constant distress of mind and fortune, to be assailed on every side
with envy, back-biting, and falsehood, or to be a favourite with the
public for awhile, and then thrown into the background - or a gaol, by
the fickleness of taste and some new favourite; to be full of
enthusiasm and extravagance in youth, of chagrin and disappointment in
after-life; to be jostled by the rabble because you do not ride in
your coach, or avoided by those who know your worth and shrink from it
as a claim on their respect or their purse; to be a burden to your
relations, or unable to do anything for them; to be ashamed to venture
into crowds; to have cold comfort at home; to lose by degrees your
confidence and any talent you might possess; to grow crabbed, morose,
and querulous, dissatisfied with every one, but most so with yourself;
and plagued out of your life, to look about for a place to die in, and
quit the world without any one's asking after your will. The wiseacres
will possibly, however, crowd round your coffin, and raise a monument
at a considerable expense, and after a lapse of time, to commemorate
your genius and your misfortunes!