His own earnings, as we have seen, were of no considerable amount.

There are men of letters, he wrote in 1767, to whom their industry has brought as much as twenty, thirty, eighty, or even a hundred thousand francs.

As for himself, he thought that perhaps the fruit of his literary occupations would come to about forty thousand crowns, or some five thousand pounds sterling.

"One could not amass wealth," he said pensively, and his words are of grievous generality for the literary tribe, "but one could acquire ease and comfort, if only these sums were not spread over so many years, did not vanish away as they were gathered in, and had not all been scattered and spent by the time that years had multiplied, wants, grown more numerous, eyes grown dim, and mind become blunted and worn."[239] This was his own case.

His earnings were never thriftily husbanded.