of society, not the insensibility of the dull, nor the levity of the volatile. Men of genius are often reverenced only where they are known by their writings; intellectual beings in the romance of life,-in its history, they are men! Erasmus compared them to the great figures in tapestry-work, which lose their effect when not seen at a distance. Their foibles and their infirmities are obvious to their associates, often only capable of discerning these qualities. The defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces. CHAPTER V. THE SPIRIT OF LITERATURE AND THE SPIRIT OF When a general intercourse in society prevails, the age of great genius has passed; and equality of talents rages among a multitude ef authors and artists; they have extended the superfices of genius, but have lost the intensity; the contest is more furious, but victory is more rare. The founders of National Literature and Art pursued their insulated studies in the full independence of their mind and the developement of their inventive faculty. The master-spirits who create an epoch, the inventors, lived at periods when they inherited nothing from their predecessors; in seclusion they stood apart, the solitary lights of their age. At length, when a people have emerged to glory, and a silent revolution has obtained, by a more uniform light of knowledge coming from all sides, the genius of society becomes greater than the genius of the individual: hence, the character of genius itself becomes subordinate. A conversation age succeeds a studious one, and the family of genius are no longer recluses. The man of genius is now trammelled with the artificial and mechanical forms of life; and in too close an intercourse with society, the loneliness and raciness of thinking is modified away in its seductive conventions. An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life constitutes the great interests of a luxurious and opulent age. It may be a question whether the literary man and the artist are not immolating their genius to society, when, with the mockery of Proteus, they lose their own by all forms, in the shadowiness of assumed talent. But a path of roses, where all the senses are flattered, is now opened to win an Epictetus from his hut. The morning lounge, the luxurious dinner, and the evening party are the regulated dissipations of hours which true genius knows are always too short for Art, and too rare for its inspirations: and hence so many of our contemporaries, whose cardracks are crowded, have produced only flashy fragments, -efforts, and not works. It is seduction, and not reward, which mere fashionable society offers the man of true genius, for he must be distinguished from those men of the world, who have assumed the literary character, for purposes very distinct from literary ones. In this society, the man of genius shall cease to interest, whatever be his talent; he will be sought for with enthusiasm, but he cannot escape from his certain fate,-that of becoming tiresome to his pretended admirers. The confidential confession of Racine to his son is remarkable. 'Do not think that I am sought after by the great for my dramas; Corneille composes nobler verses than mine, but no one notices him, and he only pleases by the mouth of the actors. never allude to my works when with men of the world, but I amuse them about matters they like to hear. My talent with them consists not in making them feel that I have any, but in showing them that they have'-Racine treated the Great, like the children of society; Corneille would not compromise for the tribute he exacted; and consoled himself when, at his entrance into the theatre, the audience usually rose to salute him. I Has not the fate of our reigning literary favourites been uniform? Their mayoralty hardly exceeds the year. They are pushed aside to put in their place another, who in his turn must descend. Such is the history of the literary character encountering the perpetual difficulty of appearing what he really is not, while he sacrifices to a few, in a certain corner of the metropolis, who have long fantastically called themselves 'The Word,' that more dignified celebrity which makes an author's name more familiar than his person. To one who appeared astonished at the extensive celebrity of Buffon, the modern Pliny replied, 'I have passed fifty years at my desk.' And has not one, the most sublime of the race, sung -che seggendo in piuma In Fama non si vien, ne sotto coltre; literature, observes, that literary men (and artists) seek The habitudes of genius, before it lost its freshness in this society, are the mould in which the character is cast; and these, in spite of all the disguise of the man, hereafter make him a distinct being from the man of society. There is something solitary in deep feelings; and the amusers who can only dazzle and surprise, will never spread that contagious energy only springing from the fullness of the heart. Let the man of genius then dread to level himevery-day society, lest he become one of themselves. self to that mediocrity of feeling and talent required in Ridicule is the shadowy scourge of society, and the terror of the man of genius; Ridicule surrounds him with her chimeras, like the shadowy monsters which opposed Eneas, too impalpable to be grasped, while the airy nothings triumph, unwounded by a weapon. Eneas was told to pass the grinning monsters unnoticed, and they would then be as harmless, as they were unreal. Study, Meditation, and Enthusiasm,-this is the progress of genius, and these cannot be the habits of him who lingers till he can only live among polished crowds. If he bears about him the consciousness of genius, he will be still acting under their influences. And perhaps there never was one of this class of men who had not either first entirely formed himself in solitude, or amidst society perpetually breaking out to seek for himself. Walker, who, when no longer touched by the fervours of literary and patriotic glory, grovelled into a domestic voluptuary, observed with some surprise of the great Earl of Chatham, that he sacrificed every pleasure of social life, even in youth, to his great pursuit of eloquence; and the Earl himself acknowledged an artifice he practised in his inter course with society, for he said, when he was young be always came late into company, and left it early. Vitto rio Alfieri, and a brother-spirit in our own noble poet, were rarely seen amidst the brilliant circle in which they were born; the workings of their imagination were perpetually emancipating them, and one deep loneliness of feeling proudly insulated them among the unimpassioned triflers of their rank. They preserved unbroken the unity of their character, in constantly escaping from the processional spectacle of society, by frequent intervals of retirement. It is no trivial observation of another noble writer, Lord Shaftesbury, that it may happen that a person may he so much the worse author, for being the finer gentleman.' An extraordinary instance of this disagreement between the man of the world and the literary character, we find in a philosopher seated on a throne. The celebrated Julian stained the imperial purple with an author's ink: and when that Emperor resided among the Antiochians, his unalterable character shocked that volatile and luxurious race; he slighted the plaudits of their theatre, he abhorred their dancers and their horse-racers, he was abstinent even at a festival, and perpetually incorrupt, admonished this dis sipated people of their impious abandonment of the laws of their country. They libelled the Emperor and prolantly lampooned his beard, which the philosopher care. lessiv wore, neither perfumed nor curled. Julian, scorning to inflict a sharper punishment, pointed at them his saura *Not by reposing on pillows or under canopies. is Fame acquired, without which he, who consumes his h, leaves such an unregarded vestige on the earth of his being, as the smoke in the air or the foam on the ware.' † D'Alemberer la Société des Gens de Lettres et des Grands. of the Misopogon, or the Antiochian; the Enemy of the Beard,' where amidst the irony and invective, the literary monarch bestows on himself many exquisite and individual touches. All that those persons of fashion alleged against the literary character, Julian unreservedly confesses his undressed beard and his awkwardnesses, his obstinacy, his unsociable habits, his deficient tastes, &c, while he represents his good qualities as so many extravagancies. But, in this pleasantry of self-reprehension, he has not failed to show this light and corrupt people that he could not possibly resemble them. The unhappiness of too strict an education under a family tutor, who never suffered him to swerve from the one right way, with the unlucky circumstance of his master having inspired Julian with such a reverence for Plato and Socrates, Aristotle and Theophrastus, as to have made them his models: Whatever manners,' says the Emperor, I may have previously contracted, whether gentle or boorish, it is impossible for me now to alter or unlearn. Habit is said to be a second nature; to oppose it is irksome, but to counteract the study of more than thirty years is extremely difficult, especially when it has been imbibed with so much attention." And what if men of genius, relinquishing their habits, could do this violence to their nature, should we not lose the original for a factitious genius, and spoil one race without improving the other? If nature, and habit, that second nature which prevails even over the first, have created two beings distinctly different, what mode of existence shall ever assimilate them? Antipathies and sympathies, those still occult causes, however concealed, will break forth at an unguarded moment. The man of genius will be restive even in his trammelled paces. Clip the wings of an eagle and place him to roost among the domestic poultry; will he peck with them? will he chuck like them? At some unforeseen moment his pinions will overshadow and terrify his tiny associates, for the feathered king' will be still musing on the rock and the cloud. Thus is it, as our literary Emperor discovered, that we cannot counteract the study of more than thirty years, when it has been imbibed with so much attention.' Men of genius are usually not practised in the minuter attentions; in those heartless courtesies, poor substitutes for generous feelings: they have rarely sacrificed to the unlaughing graces of Lord Chesterfield. Plato ingeniously compares Socrates to the gallipots of the Athenian apothecaries, which were painted on the exterior with the gro tesque figures of apes and owls, but contained within a precious balm. The man of genius may exclaim amidst many a circle, as did Themistocles, when asked to play on a lute I cannot fiddle, but I can make a little village a great city; and with Corneille he may be allowed to smile at his own deficiencies, and even disdain to please in trivials, asserting that, wanting all these things, he was not the less Corneille.' With the great thinkers and studen's, their character is still more hopeless. Adam Smith could never free himself from the embarrassed manners of a recluse; he was often absent; and his grave and formal conversation made him seem distant and reserved, when, in fact, no man had warmer feelings for his intimates. Buffon's conversation was very indifferent-and the most eloquent writer was then coarse and careless; after each laborious day of study, he pleaded that conversation was to him only a relaxation. Rousseau gave no indication of his energetic style in conversation. A princess, desirous of seeing the great moralist Nicolle, experienced inconceivable disappointment, when the moral instructor, entering with the most perplexing bow imaginable, sank down silently on his chair; the interview promoted no conversation; and the retired student, whose elevated spirit might have endured martyrdom, sank with timidity in the unaccustomed honour of conversing with a princess, and having nothing to say. A lively Frenchman, in a very ingenious description of the distinct sorts of conversations of his numerous literary friends, among whom was Dr Franklin, energetically hits off that close observer and thinker, wary even in society; among these varieties of conversa. tion be has noted down the silence of the celebrated Franklin. When Lord Oxford desired to be introduced to the studious Thomas Baker, he very unaffectedly declined, in a letter I have seen, that honour, as a rash adventure he could not think of engaging in, not having fitted bimself for any conversation, but with the dead.' Bot this deficient agreeableness in a man of genius may be often connected with those qualities which conduce to the greatness of his pulfic character. A vidid perception of truth on the sudden, bursts with an irruptive heat on the subdued tone of conversation; should he hesitate, that he may correct an equivocal expression, or grasp at a remote idea, he is in danger of sinking into pedantry or rising to genius. Even the tediousness he bestows on us, may swell out from the fulness of knowledge, or be hammered into a hard chain of reasoning; and how often is the cold tardiness of decision, the strict balancings of scepticism and candour! even obscurity may arise from the want of previous knowledge in the listener. But above all, what offends is that freedom of opinion, which a man of genius can no more divest himself of than of the features of his face; that intractable obstinacy which may be called resistance of character-a rock which checks the flowing stream of popular opinions, and divides them by the collision. Poor Burns could never account to himself why though when he had a mind he was pretty generally beloved, he could never get the art of commanding respect.' He imagined it was owing to his being deficient in what Sterne calls that understrapping virtue of descretion.' 'I am so apt,' he says, ' to a lapsus linguæ.' It is remarkable that the conversationists have rarely proved themselves to be the abler writers. He whose fancy is susceptible of excitement, in the presence of his auditors, making the minds of men run with his own, seizing on the first impressions, and touching, as if he really felt them, the shadows and outlines of things-with a memory where all lies ready at hand, quickened by habitual associ ations, and varying with all those extemporary changes and fugitive colours, which melt away in the rainbow of conversation; that jargon, or vocabulary of fashion, those terms and phrases of the week perpetually to be learnt; that wit, which is only wit in one place, and for a certain time; such vivacity of animal spirits, which often exists separately from the more retired intellectual powers; all these can strike out wit by habit, and pour forth a stream of phrase that has sometimes been imagined to require only to be written down, to be read with the same delight it was heard; we have not all the while been sensible of the flutter of their ideas, the violence of their transitions, their vague notions, their doubtful assertions, and their meagre knowledge-a pen is the extinguisher of these lu minaries. A curious contrast occurred between Buffon and his friend Montbelliard, who was associated in his great work: the one possessed the reverse qualities of the other. Montbelliard threw every charm of animation over his delightful conversation, but when he came to take his seat at the rival desk of Buffon, an immense interval separated them; his tongue distilled the music and the honey of the bee, but his pen seemed to be iron, as cold and as hard, while Buffon's was the soft pencil of the philosophical painter of nature. The characters of Cowly and Killegrew are an instance. Cowly was embarrassed in conversation, and had not quickness in argument or repartee; pensive elegance and refined combinations could not be struck at to catch fire; while with Killegrew the sparkling bubbles of his fancy rose and dropped; yet when this delightful conversationist wrote, the deception ceased. Denham, who knew them both, hit off the difference between them; Had Cowly re'er spoke; Killegrew ne'er writ, Combin'd in one, they had made a matchless wit.' Thought and expression are only found easily when they lie on the surface; the operations of the intellect with some, are slow and deep. Hence it is that slowminded men are not, as men of the world imagine, always the dullest. Nicolle said of a scintillant wit, He conbut he surrenders to me at quers me in the drawing-room, discretion on the staircase. Many a great wit has thought the wit which he never spoke, and many a great reasoner has perplexed his listeners. The conversationpowers of some resemble the show-glass of the fashionable trader; all his moderate capital is there spread out in the last novelties; the magasin within is neither rich nor rare. Chaucer was more facetious in his Tales, than in his conversation, for the Countess of Pembroke used to rally him, observing that his silence was more agreeable to her than his conversation. Tasso's conversation which his friend Manso has attempted to preserve to us, was nei their gay nor brilliant; and Goldoni, in his drama of Torquato Tasso, has contrasted the poets writings and his conversation ; Ammiro il suo talento, gradisco i carmi suoi; Ma piacer non trovo a conversar con lui. The sublime Dante was taciturn or satirical; Butler was sullen or biting; Descartes, whose habits had formed him for solitude and meditation, was silent. Addison and Moliere were only observers in society; and Dryden has very honestly told us, my conversation is slow and dull; my humour saturnine and reserved; in short I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company or make repartees.' It was ingeniously said of Vaucanson, that he was as much a machine as any he made. Hogarth and Swift, who looked on the circles of society with eyes of inspiration, were absent in company; but their grossness and asperity did not prevent the one from being the greatest of comic painters, nor the other as much a creator of manners in his way. Genius even in society is pursuing its own operations; but it would cease to be itself, in becoming another. One peculiar trait in the conversations of men of genius, which has often injured them when the listeners were not intimately acquainted with the man, are certain sports of a vacant mind; a sudden impulse to throw out opinions, and take views of things in some humour of the moment. Extravagant paradoxes and false opinions are caught up by the humbler prosers; and the Philistines are thus enabled to triumph over the strong and gifted man, because in the hour of confidence and the abandonment of the mind, he laid his head in their lap and taught them how he might be shorn of his strength. Dr. Johnson appears often to have indulged this amusement in good and in ill humour. Even such a calm philosopher as Adam Smith, as well as such a child of imagination as Burns, were remarked for this ordinary habit of men of genius, which perhaps as often originates in a gentle feeling of contempt for their auditors, as from any other cause. Not however that a man of genius does not utter many startling things in conversation which have been found admirable, when the public perused them. How widely the public often differ from the individual! a century's opinion may intervene between them. The fate of genius resembles that of the Athenian sculptor, who submitted his colossal Minerva to a private party; before the artist they trembled for his daring chisel, and behind him they calum niated. The man of genius smiled at the one, and forgave the other. The statue once fixed in a public place, and seen by the whole city, was the divinity. There is a certain distance at which opinious, as well as statues, must be viewed. But enough of those defects of men of genius, which often attend their conversations. Must we then bow to authorial dignity, and kiss hands, because they are inked; and to the artist, who thinks us as nothing unless we are canvass under his hands? are there not men of genius, the grace of society? fortunate men! more blest than their brothers; but for this, they are not the more men of genius nor the others less. To how many of the ordinary intimates of a superior genius, who complain of his defects, might one say,' Do his productions not delight and sometimes surprise you?-You are silent-I beg your pardon; the public has informed you of a great name; you would not otherwise have perceived the precious talent of your neighbour. You know little of your friend but his name.' The personal familiarity of ordinary minds with a man of genius has often produced a ludicrous prejudice. A scotchman, to whom the name of Dr Robertson had travelled down, was curious to know who he was? Your neighbour' but he could not persuade himself that the man whom he conversed with was the great historian of his country. Even a good man could not believe in the announcement of the Messiah, from the same sort of prejudice, Can there any thing good come out of Nazareth?' said Nathaniel. Suffer a man of genius to be such as nature and habit have formed him, and he will then be the most interesting companion; then will you see nothing but his mighty mind when it opens itself on you. Barry was the most repulsive of men in his exterior, in the roughness of his language and the wildness of his looks; intermingling vulgar oaths, which, by some unlucky association of habit, he seemed to use as strong expletives and notes of admiration. His conversation has communicated even a horror to some on one of these occasions, a pious lady, who had felt such intolerable uneasiness in his presence, did not however leave this man of genius that evening, without an impression that she had never heard so divine a man in her life. The conversation happening to turn on that principle of Benevolence which pervades Christianity and the meek ness of the Founder, it gave Barry an opportunity of opening on the character of Jesus, with that copiousness of heart and mind, which once heard could never he forgotten. That artist had indeed long in his meditations an ideal head of Christ, which he was always talking to execute;It is here!' he would cry, striking his head. What baffled the invention, as we are told, of Leonardo da Vinci, who left his Christ headless, having exhausted his creative faculty among the apostles, Barry was sull dreaming on; but this mysterious mixture of a human and celestial nature could only be conceived by his mind, and even the catholic enthusiasm of Barry was compelled to refrain from unveiling it to the eye, but this unpainted picture was perpetually exciting this artist's emotions in conversation. The literary character is reproached with an extreme passion for retirement, cultivating those insulating habits which are great interruptions, and even weakeners of domestic happiness, while in public life these often induce to a succession from its cares, thus eluding its active duties. Yet the vacancies of retired men are eagerly filled by so many unemployed men of the world more happily framed for its business. We do not hear these accusations raised against the painter who wears away his days at his casel, and the musician by the side of his instrument; and much less should we against the legal and the commercial character; yet all these are as much withdrawn from publio and private life as the literary character; their desk is 25 insulating as the library. Yet is the man who is working for his individual interest more highly estimated than the retired student, whose disinterested pursuits are at least more profitable to the world than to himself. La Bruyere discovered the world's erroneous estimate of luerary labour: There requires a better name to be bestowed on the leisure (the idleness he calls it) of the literary cha racter, and that to meditate, to compose, to read and to be tranquil, should be called working. But so invisible is the progress of intellectual pursuits, and so rarely are the objects palpable to the observers, that the literary character appears denied for his pursuits, what cannot be refused to every other. That unremitting application, that unbroken series of their thoughts. admired in every profession, is only complained of in that one whose professors with so much sincerity mourn over the shortness of life, which has often closed on them while sketching their works. It is, however, only in solitude that the genius of eminent men has been formed; there their first thoughts sprang, and there it will become them to find their last: for the solitude of old age-and old age must be often m solitude-will be found the happiest with the literary cha racter. Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the true parent of genius; in all ages it has been called for it has been flown to. No considerable work was ever composed, but its author, like an ancien: magician, first retired to the grove, or to the closet, to invocate. crowds, that is the moment to fly into seclusion and medi When genius languishes in an irksome solitude among tation. There is a society in the deepest solitude; in all the men of genius of the past First of your kind, Society divine! Thomson. and in themselves; for there only they can indulge in the romances of their soul, and only in solitude can they occupy themselves in their dreams and their vigils, and, with the morning, fly without interruption to the labour they had reluctantly quitted. This desert of solitude, so vast and so dreary to the man of the world, to the man of geolus opens the magical garden of Armida whose enchantments arose amidst solitude, while solitude was every where among those enchantments. Whenever Michael Angelo was meditating on some great design, he closed himself up from the world. Why do you lead so solitary a life?' asked a friend. 'Art,' replied the sublime artist, Art is a jealous god; it requires the whole and entire man.' We observe men of genius, in public situations, sighing for this solitude; amidst the impediments of the world, and their situation in it, they are doomed to view their intellectual banquet often rising before them, like some fairy delusion, never to taste it. They feel that finer existence in solitude. Lord Clarendon, whose life so happily combined the contemplative with the active powers of man, dwells on three periods of retirement which he enjoyed; he always took pleasure in relating the great tranquillity of spirit experienced during his solitude at Jersey, where for more than two years, employed on his History, he daily wrote one sheet of large paper with his own hand.' At the close of bis life, his literary labours in his other retirements are detailed with a proud satisfaction. Each of his solitudes occasioned a new acquisition; this the Spanish, that the French, and a third the Italian literature. The public are not yet acquainted with the fertility of Lord Clarendon's literary labours. It was not vanity that induced Scipio to declare of solitude, that it had no loneliness to him, since he voluntarily retired amidst a glorious life to his Linternum. Cicero was uneasy amidst applauding Rome, and has distinguished his numerous works by the titles of his various villas. Aulus Gellius marked his solitude by his "Attic Nights.' The Golden Grove' of Jeremy Taylor is the produce of his retreat at the Earl of Carberry's seat in Wales; and the Diversions of Purley' preserved a man of genius for posterity. Voltaire had talents, and perhaps a taste for society; but at one period of his life he passed five years in the most secret seclusion. Montesquieu quitted the brilliant circles of Paris for his books, his meditations, and his immortal work, and was ridiculed by the gay triflers he deserted. Harrington, to compose his Oceana, severed himself from the society of his friends. Descartes, inflamed by genius, hires an obscure house in an unfrequented quarter at Paris, and there he passes two years, unknown to his acquaintance. Adam Smith, after the publication of his first work, throws himself into a retirement that lasts ten years: even Hume rallies him for separating hiniself from the world; but by this means the great political inquirer satisfied the world by his great work. And thus it was with men of genius, long ere Petrarch withdrew to his Val chiusa. The interruption of visiters by profession has been feelingly lamented by men of letters.-The mind, maturing its speculation, feels the unexpected conversation of cold ceremony, chilling as the blasts of March winds over the blossoms of the Spring. Those unhappy beings who wander from house to house, privileged by the charter of society to obstruct the knowledge they cannot impart, to tire because they are tired, or to seek amusement at the cost of others, belong to that class of society which have affixed no other value to time than that of getting rid of it; these are judges not the best qualified to comprehend the nature and evil of their depredations in the silent apartment of the studious. 'We are afraid,' said some of those visiters to Baxter, that we break in upon your time.'-' To be sure you do,' replied the disturbed and blunt scholar. Ursinus, to hint as gently as he could to his friends that he was avaricious of time contrived to place an inscription over the door of his study, which could not fail to fix their eye, intimating that whoever remained there must join in his labours. The amiable Melancthon incapable of a harsh expression, when he received these idle visits, only noted down the time he had expended, that he might reanimate his industry, and not lose a day. The literary character has been driven to the most inventive shifts to escape the irruption of a formidable party at a single rush, who enter without besieging or beseeching,' as Milton has it. The Iate elegant, poetical Mr Elhs, on one of these occasions, at his country-house, showed a literary friend, that when driven to the last, he usually made his escape by a leap out of the window. Brand Hollis endeavoured to hold out the idea of singularity as a shield; and the great Robert Boyle was compelled to advertise in a newspaper that he must decline visits on certain days, that he might have leisure in finish some of his works.* But this soltu le, at first a necessity, and then a pleasure, at length is not borne without repining. To tame the forThis curious advertisement is preserved in Dr Birch's Life of Boyle, p. 272. is a vid wildness of youth to the strict regularities of study Had the mistaken notions of Sprat not deprived us of Cowley's correspondence, we doubtless had viewed the sorrows of lonely genius touched by a tender pencil. But we have Shenstone, and Gray, and Swift. The heart of Shenstone bleeds in the dead oblivion of solitude. Now I am come from a visit, every little uneasiness is sufficient to introduce my whole train of melancholy considerations, and to make me utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life I foresee I shall lead, I am angry and envious, and dejected, and frantic, and disregard all present things, as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely pleased, though it is a gloomy joy, with the application of Dr. Swift's complaint, that be is forced to die in a rage, like a rat in a poisoned hole." Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture throughout the year, in this stanza by the same amiable, but suffering poet Tedious again to curse the drizzling day, The self-same hawthorns bud, and cowslips blow. Vingt ans d'Ennuis pour quelques jours de Gloire. CHAPTER VII. THE MEDITATIONS OF GENIUS. A continuity of attention, a patient quietness of mind, forms one of the characteristics of genius. A work on the Art of Meditation has not yet been produced; it might prove of immense advantage to him who never happened to have more than one solitary idea. The pursuit of a single principle has produced a great work, and a loose hint has conducted to a new discovery. But while in every manual art, every great workman improves on his predecessor, of the art of the mind, notwithstanding the facility of practice and our incessant experience, millions are yet ignorant of the first rudiments; and men of genius themselves are rarely acquainted with the materials they are working on. Johnson has a curious observation on the mind itself,--he thinks it obtains a stationary point, from whence it can never advance, occurring before the middle of life. He says, when the powers of nature have attained their intended energy, they can be no more advanced. The shrub can never become a tree. Nothing then remains but practice and experience; and perhaps why they do so little, may be worth inquiry.'* The result I recommend the reader to turn to the whole passage, in Johnson's Letters to Mrs Thrale, Vol. I. p. 296. of this inquiry would probably lay a broader foundation for this art of the mind than we have hitherto possessed. Ferguson has expressed himself with sublimity-The lustre which man casts around him, like the flame of a meteor, shines only while his motion continues; the moments of rest and of obscurity are the same.' What is this art of meditation, but the power of withdrawing our selves from the world, to view that world moving within ourselves, while we are in repose; as the artist by an optical instrument concentrates the boundless landscape around him, and patiently traces all nature in that small space. We Certain constituent principles of the mind itself, which -Magnam mini mentem, animunque It is on the same principle of pre-disposing the mind, that many have first generated their feelings in the symphonies of music. Alfieri, often before he wrote, prepared his mind by listening to music-a circumstance which has been recorded of others. We are scarcely aware how we may govern our thoughts by means of our sensations. De Luc was subject to violent bursts of passion, but he calmed the interior tumult by the artifice of filling his mouth with sweets and comfits. When Goldoni found his sleep disturbed by the obtrusive ideas still floating from the studies of the day, he contrived to lull himself to rest by conning in his mind a vocabulary of the Venetian dialect, translating some word into Tuscan and French; which being a very uninteresting occupation, at the third or fourth version this recipe never failed. This was an act of withdrawing attention from the greater to the less emotion; where, as the interest weakened, the excitement ceased. Mendelsohn, whose feeble and too sensitive frame was often reduced to the last stage of suffering by intellectual exertion, when engaged in any point of difficulty, would in an instant contrive a perfect cessation from thinking, by mechanically going to the window, and counting the tiles upon the roof of his neighbour's house. Facts like these show how much art may be concerned in the management of the mind. Some profound thinkers could not pursue the operations of their mind in the distraction of light and noise. Mallebranche, Hobbes, Thomas, and others closed their curLains to concentrate their thoughts, as Milton says of the mind, in the spacious circuits of her musing. The study of an author or an artist would be ill placed in the midst of a beautiful landscape; the Penseroso of Milton, hid from day's garish eye,' is the man of genius. A se cluded and naked apartment, with nothing but a desk, a chair, and a single sheet of paper, was for fifty years the study of Buffon; the single ornament was a print of New ton placed before his eyes-nothing broke into the unity of his reveries. The arts of memory have at all times excited the attention of the studious; they open a world of undivulged mysteries; every one seems to form some discovery of his own, but which rather excites his astonishment than enlarges his comprehension. When the late William Hut ton, a man of an original cast of mind, as an experiment in memory, opened a book which he had divided into 365 columns, according to the days of the year, he resolved to try to recollect an anecdote, as insignificant and remote as he was able, rejecting all under ten years of age; and to his surprise, he filled those spaces for small reminiscen ces, within ten columns; but till this experiment had been made, he never conceived the extent of this faculty. When we reflect, that whatever we know, and whatever we feel, are the very smallest portions of all the knowledge and all the feelings we have been acquiring through life, how desirable would be that art, which should open again the scenes which have vanished, revive the emotions which other impressions have effaced, and enrich our thoughts, with thoughts not less precious; the man of ge nius who shall possess this art, will not satisfy himself with the knowledge of a few mornings and its transient emotions, writing on the moveable sand of present sensations, present feelings, which alter with the first breezes of public opinion. Memory is the foundation of genius; for this faculty, with men of genius, is associated with imagination and passion, it is a chronology not merely of events, but of emotions; hence they remember nothing that is not inter esting to their feelings, while the ordinary mind, accurate on all eve ts alike, is not impassioned on any. The incidents of the novelist, are often founded on the common ones of life; and the personages so admirably aine his fictions, he only discovered among the crowd. The arts of memory will preserve all we wish; they form a saving bank of genius, to which it may have recourse, 13 a wealth which it can accumulate unperceivably anudst the ordinary expenditure. Locke taught us the first rude ments of this art, when he showed us how he stored his thoughts and his facts, by an artificial arrangement; and Addison, before he commenced his Spectators, had amas sed three folios of materials; but the higher step will be the volume which shall give an account of a man to himself, where a single observation, a chronicled emotion, a hope or a project, on which the soul may still hang, like a clew of past knowledge in his hand, will restore to him all his lost studies; his evanescent existence again enters into his life, and he will contemplate on himself as an entire man: to preserve the past, is half of immortality. The memorials of Gibbon and Priestly present us with the experience and the habits of the literary Character. What I have known,' says Dr Priestly, with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my admiration and my contempt of others. Could we have entered into the mind of Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by which he produced his great works, we might see nothing very extraordinary in the process. Our student, with on ingenious simplicity, opens to us that variety of mechate ical expedients by which he secured and arranged his thoughts,' and that discipline of the mind, by a peculiar at rangement of his studies, for the day and for the year, in which he rivalled the calm and unalterable system pursued by Gibbon. Buffon and Voltaire employed the same ma nœuvres, and often only combined the knowledge they obtained, by humble methods. They knew what to ask for, and made use of an intelligent secretary: aware, as Lord Bacon has expressed it, that some Books may be read by deputy.' Buffon laid down an excellent rule to obtain originality, when he advised the writer, first to exhaust his own thoughts before he attempted to consult other writers. The advice of Lord Eacon, that we should pursue ouT studies, whether the mind is disposed or indiposed, is ex cellent; in the one case, we shall gain a great step, and in the other, we shall work out the knots and stands of the mind, and make the middle times the more pleasant." John Hunter very happily illustrated the advantages, which every one derives from putting his thoughts in writing i |