In that civilised commonwealth of China, a mother strangles her child if she cannot afford to bring it up, preferring to lose it rather than sell it or let it endure the misery of the poor. Arnobius, Against the Nations, book 7, and Lactantius, book 5, chapter 9, level the same accusation against the ancient Greeks and Romans: in such circumstances they exposed their children to wild beasts, strangled them or dashed their brains out against a stone.

If we may believe Münster, among us Christians in Lithuania people voluntarily enslave themselves, selling themselves, their wives and children to the rich to escape hunger and beggary. Many kill themselves in this extremity. When the Roman Apicius reckoned his accounts and found only a hundred thousand crowns remaining, he killed himself for fear of starving to death.

Pieter van Foreest, in his medical observations, gives a memorable example of two brothers of Leuven who, having no means, both became melancholy and, in a state of despair, killed themselves. He gives another of a merchant, learned and otherwise wise and judicious, who was so deeply afraid of a loss at sea that, like Ventidius in the poet, he could not be persuaded that he would not die a beggar.

In a word, I may conclude this much about the poor: although they have abilities, they cannot display or use them. “Poverty blocks the road to excellence.” It is hard for a poor man to rise: “those whose abilities are hindered by straitened circumstances at home do not easily emerge.” “The wisdom of the poor is despised, and his words are not heard,” Ecclesiastes 6:19. His works are rejected and despised because of their author’s lowly and obscure condition; however praiseworthy and good in themselves, they are unlikely to gain acceptance.

No poems can long give pleasure or live on That are written by drinkers of water.

Poor people cannot please. Their actions, advice, deliberations and plans are held in contempt by the world: “they lose their judgement in their affairs,” as Gnatho observed long ago. “The wise man never made himself slippers or sandals”: a wise man never cobbled shoes, as the old saying goes. But how does he prove it? I am sure we find otherwise in our own day: “eloquence shivers in frost-covered rags.”

Homer himself must beg if he lacks means, going from door to door and singing ballads with a group of boys around him, as he reportedly once did. This general misery of theirs must surely distress them and make them discontented and melancholy, as they usually are: irritable and peevish, like a weary traveller, for—

“Hunger and delay stir bile into the nostrils.”

They are always grumbling and repining: “those who fare badly are ill-tempered because of their want,” as Plutarch quotes from Euripides. The comic poet aptly seconds him:

All whose fortunes are less prosperous are somehow More suspicious, more inclined to take everything as an insult; They think themselves neglected because of their powerlessness.

In adversity they are more suspicious and prone to misunderstanding; they think themselves scorned because of their misery. Many noble spirits in such circumstances therefore withdraw from all company, as the comic playwright Terence is said to have done. When he saw himself abandoned and poor, he went voluntarily into exile at Stymphalus, an insignificant town in Arcadia, and died there in misery.

Reduced to utter destitution, He therefore went out of everyone’s sight, to the remotest land of Greece.

Nor is this without reason, for we see people commonly respected according to their means—“everyone asks whether he is rich; no one whether he is good”—and despised if they are badly dressed. Philopoemen the orator was put to chopping wood because he was so plainly dressed. Terence was placed at the lower end of Caecilius’s table because of his shabby appearance. Dante, the famous Italian poet, was refused a seat at a feast because his clothes were so poor.

Gnatho scorned an old close friend because of his clothes: “I see a man covered in rags and years; at this I despised him in comparison with myself.” After his defeat, King Perseus sent a letter to the Roman general Paulus Aemilius: “Perseus to Paulus, consul, greetings.” But Paulus disdained to answer him, “silently reproaching him with his fortune,” as my author says: taunting him with his present condition.

Charles the Bold, that great duke of Burgundy, made Henry Holland, the exiled former duke of Exeter, run after his horse like a lackey, and would take no notice of him. Such is the world’s usual way. Poor people may therefore justly feel discontented and melancholy and complain of their present misery; and everyone may pray with Solomon: “Give me, O Lord, neither riches nor poverty; feed me with the food I need.”