ter put in his claim to the chief discovery; it was answered by his brother. The Royal Society, to whom they appealed, concealed the documents of this unnatural feud. The blow was felt, and the jealousy of literary honour for ever separated the brothers, and the brothers of genius.* In the jealousy of genius, however, there is a peculiar case, where the fever rages not in its malignancy, yet silently consumes. Even the man of genius of the gentlest temper dies under its slow wastings; and this infection may happen among dear friends, when a man of genius loses that self-opinion which animated his so.itary labours and constituted his happiness-when he views himself at the height of his class, suddenly eclipsed by another great genius. It is then the morbid sensibility, acting on so delicate a frame, feels as if under the old witchcraft of tying the knot on the nuptial day-the faculties are suddenly extinct by the very imagination. This is the jealousy not of hatred, but of despair. A curious case of this kind appears in the anecdote of the Spanish artist Castillo, a man distinguished by every amiable disposition; he was the great painter of Seville. When some of Morillo's paintings were shown to him, who seems to have been his nephew, he stood in meek astonishment defore them, and when he recovered his voice, turning away, he exclaimed with a sigh, Ya murio Castillo! Castillo is no more! Returning home the stricken genius relinquish ed his pencil, and pined away in hopelessness. 1 CHAPTER X. WANT OF MUTUAL ESTEEM. Among men of genius that want of mutual esteem, usually attributed to envy or jealousy, often originates in a deficiency of analogous ideas, or sympathy, in the parties. On this principle several curious phenomena in the history of genius may be explained. Every man of genius has a manner of his own; a mode of thinking and a habit of style; and usually decides on a work as it approximates or varies from his own. When one great author depreciates another it has often no worse source than his own taste. The witty Cowey despised the natural Chaucer; the cold classical Boileau the rough sublimity of Crebillon; the refining Marivaux the familiar Moliere. Fielding ridiculed Richardson, whose manner so strongly contrasted with his own; and Richardson contemned Fielding and declared he would not last. Cumberland escaped a fit of unforgiveness, not living to read his own character by Bishop Watson, whose logical head tried the lighter elegancies of that polished man by his own nervous genius, destitute of whatever was beautiful in taste. There was no envy in the breast of Johnson when he advised Mrs Thrale not to purchase Gray's Letters as trifling and dull, no more than in Gray himself when he sunk the poetical character of Shenstone, his simplicity and purity of feeling, by an image of ludicrous contempt. The deficient sympathy in these men of genius, for modes of feeling opposite to their own, was the real cause of their opinions; and thus it happens that even superior genius is so often liable to be unjust and false in its decisions. The same principle operates still more strikingly in the remarkable contempt of men of genius for those pursuits and the pursuers, which require talents quite distinct from their own, with a cast of mind thrown by nature into another mould. Hence we must not be surprised at the antipathies of Selden and Locke, of Longerue and Buffon, and this class of genius, against poetry and poets: while on the other side, these undervalue the pursuits of the antiquary, the naturalist, and the metaphysician, by their own favourite course of imagination. We can only understand in the degree we comprehend; and in both these cases the parties will be found quite deficient in those qualities of genius which constitute the excellence of the other. A professor of polite literature condemned the study of botany, as adapted to mediocrity of talent and only demanding patience; but Linnæus showed how a man of genius becomes a creator even in a science which seems to depend only on order and method. It will not be a question with some whether a man must be endowed with the energy and aptitude of genius, to excel in antiquarianism, in natural history, &c.; and that the prejudices raised against the claims of such to the honours of genius have probably arisen from the secluded nature * See Dr Adam's interesting life of Mr John Hunter. of their pursuits, and the little knowledge the men of wit and imagination have of these persons, who live in a soci ety of their own. On this subject a very curious circumstance has been revealed of Peiresc, whose enthusiasm for science was long felt throughout Europe; his name was forty languages; yet was this great man unknown to se known in every country, and his death was lamented in veral men of genius in his own country; Rochefoucault declared he had never heard of his name, and Malherbe wondered why his death created so universal a senThus we see the classes of literature, like the planets of Heaven, revolving like distinct worlds; and it would not be less absurd for the inhabitants of Venus to treat with contempt the powers and faculties of those of those of the men of knowledge and curiosity. They are Jupiter, than it is for the men of wit and imagination, incapable of exerting the peculiar qualities which give a real value to these pursuits, and therefore they must remain ignorant of their nature and their result. sation. men of genius to undervalue each other; the want of CHAPTER XI. form another accusation against men of genius: but he Vanity, egotism, a strong sense of their own sufficiency, complexion of self-praise must alter with the occasion; for the simplicity of truth may appear vanity, and the consciousness of superiority seem envy-to Mediocrity. It is we who do nothing, who cannot even imagine any thing to be done, who are so much displeased with self-lauding, self-love, self-independence, self-admiration, which with the men of genius are nothing but a modification of the passion of glory. He who exults in himself is at least in earnest; but he who refuses to receive that praise in public for which he has devoted so much labour in his privacy, is not: he is compelled to suppress the very instinct of his nature; for while we censure no man for loving fame, but only for showing us how much he is possessed by the passion, we allow him to create the appetite, but we deny him the al ment. Our effeminate minds are the willing dupes of what is called the modesty of genius, or, as it has been termed, the polished reserve of modern times; and this from the selfish principle that it serves at least to keep out of the company its painful pre-eminence. But this po lished reserve,' like something as fashionable, the ladies' rouge, at first appearing with rather too much colour, will in the heat of an evening, be dying away till the true complexion comes out. We know well the numerous subterfuges of these modest men of genius, to extort that praise from their private circle which is thus openly denied them. Have they not been taken by surprise, enlarging their own panegyric, which might rival Pliny's on Trajan, for care and copiousness? or impudently veiling their naked beauty with the transparency of a third person? or never prefixing their name to the volume, which they would not easily forgive a friend to pass unnoticed. The love of praise is instinctive in the nature of men of genius. Their praise is the foot on which the past rests, and the wheel on which the future rolls. The generous qualities and the virtues of a man of genius are really produced by the applause conferred on him. To him whom the world admires, the happiness of the world must be dear, said Madame De Stael. Like the North American Indian, (for the savage and the man of genius preserve the genuine feelings of Nature,) he would listen to his own See Helvetus, De l'Esprit. name, when amidst his circle they chaunt their gods and their heroes. The honest savages laud the worthies among themselves, as well as their departed; and when an auditor hears his own name, he answers by a cry of pleasure and of pride. But pleasure and pride must raise no emotion in the breast of genius, amidst a polished circle to bring himself down to them, he must start at a compliment, and turn away even from one of his own vo taries. But this, it seems, is not always the case with men of genius, since the accusation we are noticing has been so often reiterated. Take from some that supreme opinion of themselves, that pride of exultation, and you crush the germ of their excellence. Many vast designs must have perished in the conception, had not their authors breathed this vital air of self-delight, this energy of vanity, so operative in great undertakings. We have recently seen this principle in the literary character unfold itself in the life of the late Bishop of Landaff: whatever he did, he felt it was done as a master; whatever he wrote, it was as he once declared, the best work on the subject yet written. It was this feeling with which he emulated Cicero in retirement or in action. When I am dead, you will not soon meet with another John Hunter,' said the great anatomist, to one of his garrulous friends. An apology is formed for relating the fact, but the weakness is only in the apology. Corneille has given a very noble full-length of the sublime egotism which accompanied him through life:* and I doubt if we had any such author in the present day, whether he would dare to be so just to himself, and so hardy to the public. The self-praise of Buffon at least equalled his genius; and the inscription beneath his statue in the library of the Jardin des Plantes, which I was told was raised to him in his life time, exceeds all panegyrics-it places him alone in Nature, as the first and the last interpreter of her works. He said of the great genuises of modern times, that there were not more than five, Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and Myself. It was in this spirit that he conceived and terminated his great works, that he sat in patient meditation at his desk for half a century, and that all Europe, even in a state of war, bowed to the modern Pliny. Nor is the vanity of Buffon, and Voltaire, and Rosseau so purely national as some will suppose; for men of genius in all ages have expressed a consciousness of the internal force of genius. No one felt this self-exultation more potent than our Hobbes, who has indeed, in his controversy with Wallis, asserted that there may be nothing more just than self-commendation;* and De Thou, one of the most noble-minded, the most thinking, the most impartial of historians, in the Memoirs of his own life, composed in the third person, has surprised and somewhat puzzled the critics, by that frequent distribution of self-commendation which they knew not how to accord with the modesty and gravity with which he was so amply endowed. After his great and solemn labour, amidst the injustice of his persecutors, that great man had sufficient experience of his own merits to assert them. Kepler, amidst his great discoveries, looks down like a superior being on other men. Thus he breaks forth in glory and egotism: I dare insult mankind by confessing that I am he who has turned science to advantage. If I am pardoned, I shall rejoice; if blamed, I shall endure it, The die is cast; I have written this book, and whether it be read by posterity or by my contemporaries, is of no consequence; it may well wait for a reader during one century, when God himself during six thousand years has waited for an observer like myself. He predicts that his discoveries would be verifed in succeeding ages, yet were Kepler now among us in familiar society, we should be invited to inspect a monster of inordinate vanity. But it was this solitary majesty; this lofty conception of their genius, which hovered over the sleepless pillow, and charmed the solitude, of Bacon, of Newton, and of Montesquieu; of Ben Jonson, of Milton, and Corneille; and of Michael Angelo. Such men of genius anticipate their contemporaries, and know they are creators, long before the tardy consent of the public; They see the laurel which entwines their bust, They mark the pomp which consecrates their dust, Shake off the dimness which obscures them now, And feel the future glory bind their brow.' Smedley's Prescience. * See it versified in Curiosities of Literature. ↑ Son Quarrels of Authors, Vol. III, p. 113. To be admired, is the noble simplicity of the Ancients in expressing with ardour the consciousness of genius, and openly claiming that praise by which it was nourished. The ancients were not infected by our spurious effeminate modesty. Socrates, on the day of his trial, firmly commended himself: he told the various benefits he had conferred on his country. Instead of condemning me for imaginary crimes, you would do better, considering my poverty, to order me to be maintained out of the public treasury. Epicurus, writing to a minister of state, declares If you desire glory, nothing can bestow it more than the letters I write to you:' and Seneca, in quoting these words, adds- What Epicurus promised to his friend, that, my Lucilius, I promise you.' Orna me! was the constant cry of Cicero; and he desires the historian Lucceius to write separately the conspiracy of Cataline, and publish quickly, that while he yet lived, he might taste of the sweetness of his glory. Horace and Ovid were equally sensible to their immortality: but what modern poet would be tolerated with such an avowal? Yet Dryden honestly declares that it was better for him to own this failing of vanity, than the world to do it for him; and adds, For what other reason have I spent my life in so unprofitable a study? Why am I grown old in seeking so barren a reward as fame? The same parts and application which have made me a poet, might have raised me to any honours of the gown.' Was not Cervantes very sensible to his own merits, when a rival started up; and did he not assert them too, when passing sentence on the bad books of the times, he distinguishes his own work by a handsome compliment? Nor was Butler less proud of his own merits; for he has done ample justice to his Hudibras, and traced out, with great self-delight, its variety of excellences. Richardson, the novelist, exhibits one of the most striking instances of what is called literary vanitythe delight of an author in his works; he has pointed out all the beauties of his three great works, in various manners.* He always taxed a visiter by one of his long letIt was this intense self-delight, which produced his voluminous labours. ters. There are certain authors whose very existence seems to require a high conception of their own talents; and who must, as some animals appear to do, furnish the means of life out of their own substance. These men of genius open their career with peculiar tastes, or with a predilection for some great work; in a word, with many unpopular dispositions. Yet we see them magnanimous, though defeated, proceeding with the public feeling against them. At length we view them ranking with their rivals. Without having yielded up their peculiar tastes or their incorri gible viciousness, they have, however, heightened their individual excellences. No human opinion can change their self opinion; alive to the consciousness of their powers, their pursuits are placed above impediment, and their great views can suffer no contraction. These men of genius bear a charmed mail on their breast; hopeless, not heartless,' may be often the motto of their ensign; and if they do not always possess reputation, they still look for fame; for these do not necessarily accompany each other. Acknowledge, too, that an author must be more sensible to his real merits, while he is unquestionably much less to his defects, than most of his readers; the author not only comprehends his merits better, because they have passed through a long process in his mind, but he is familiar with every part, while the reader has had but a vague notion of the whole. Why does the excellent work, by repetition, rise in interest? because in obtaining this gradual intimacy with an author, we appear to recover half the genius we had lost on a first perusal. The work of genius too is associated, in the mind of the author, with much more than it contains. Why are great men often found greater than the books they write? Ask the man of genius, if he has written all he wished he could have written? Has he satisfied himself, in this work for which you accuse his pride? The true supplement has not always accompanied the work itself. The mind of the reader has the limits of a mere recipient, while that of the author, even after his work, is teeming with creation. 'On many occasions, my soul seems to know more than it can say, and to be endowed with a mind by itself, far superior to the mind I really have,' said Marivaux, with equal truth and happiness. I have observed them in Curiosities of Literature, First Series. With these explanations of what are called the vanity and egotism of genius, be it remembered, that the sense of their own sufficiency is assumed at their own risk; the great man who thinks greatly of himself, is not diminishing that greatness, in heaping fuel on his fire. With his unlucky brethren, such a feeling may end in the aberrations of harmless madness: as it happened with Percival Stockdale. He, who after a parallel between himself and Charles XII, of Sweden, concludes that some parts will be to his advantage, and some to mine,' but in regard to fame, the main object between Stockdale and Charles XII.-Percival imagined that his own will not probably take its fixed and immoveable station, and shine with its expanded and permanent splendour till it consecrates his ashes, till it illumines his tomb.' After this, the reader, who may never have heard of the name of Percival Stockdale, must be told, that there exist his own Memoirs of his Life and Writings." * The Memoirs of a scribbler are instructive to literary men; to correct, and to be corrected, should be their daily practice, that they may be taught not only to exult in themselves, but to fear themselves. It is hard to refuse these men of genius that aura vitalis, of which they are so apt to be liberal to others. Are they not accused of the meanest adulations? When a young writer finds the notice of a person of some eminence, he has expressed himself in language which transcended that of mortality; a finer reason than reason itself, inspired it; the sensation has been expressed with all its fullness, by Milton, "The debt immense of endless gratitude.' Who ever pays an immense debt,' in small sums? Every man of genius has left such honourable traces of his private affections,-from Locke, whose dedication of his great work is more adulative than could be imagined, from a temperate philosopher to Churchill, whose warm eulogiums on his friends so beautifully contrast with the dark and evil passions of his satire. Even in advanced age, the man of genius dwells on the nutritious praise he caught in his youth from veteran genius; that seed sinks deep into a genial soil, roots there, and, like the aloe, will flower at the end of life. When Virgil was yet a youth, Cicero heard one of his eclogues, and exclaimed with his accustomed warmth, Magna spes altera Romæ ! "The second great hope of Rome;' intending by the first either himself or Lucretius. The words of Cicero were the secret honey on which the imagination of Virgil fed for many a year; for in one of his latest productions, the twelfth book of the Eneid, he applies these very words to Ascanius; the voice of Cicero had hung forever in his ear. Such then, is the extreme susceptibility of praise in men of genius, and not less their exuberant sensibility to censure; I have elsewhere shown how some have died of criticism. The Abbé Cassagne felt so acutely the severity of Boileau, that in the prime of life he fell melancholy, and died insane. I am informed that the poet, Scott of Amwell, could never recover from a ludicrous criticism, written by a physician, who never pretended to poetical taste. Some, like Racine, have died of a simple rebuke, and some have found an epigram, as one who fell a victim to one, said, 'fasten on their hearts, and have been thrown into a slow fever.' Pope has been seen writhing in anguish on his chair; and it is told of Montesquieu, that notwithstanding the greatness of his character, he was so much affected by the perpetual criticisms on his work on Laws, that they hastened his death. The morbid feelings of Hawkesworth closed in suicide. The self-love in genius is, perhaps, much more delicate than gross. But alas, their vengeance as quickly kindled lasts as long! Genius is a dangerous gift of nature; with a keener relish for enjoyment, and with passions more effervescent, the same material forms a Cataline, and a Cromwell, or a Cicero and a Bacon. Plato, in his visionary man of genius, lays great stress on his possessing the most vehement passions, while he adds reason to restrain them. But it is imagination which torments even their inflammable senses; give to the same vehement passion a different direction, and it is glory or infamy. 'Si je n'étois Cæsar, j'aurois ete Brutus.' Voltaire. The imagination of genius is the breath of its life, which I have sketched a character of Percival Stockdale, in Ca. lamities of Anthore, II, 818, it was taken ad vivum. breeds its own disease. How are we to describe symp toms which come from one source, but show themselves in all forms? It is now an intermittent fever, now a silent delirium, au hysterical affection, and now a hornid hypochondriasm. Have we no other opiate to still the aguny, to's reason? Must men of genius, who so rarely pass no other cordial to send its warmth to the heart, than Pla through this slow curative method, remain with all thes gusted, self-humiliated? The enmities of genius are often tortured and torturing passions about them, often self-disin casual slights, or in unguarded expressions, or in hasty connected with their morbid imagination; these origmats opinions, or in a witty derision, or even in the obtruding goodness of tender admonition-The man of genius broods over the phantom that darkens his feelings, and sharpens another public way, called a criticism. his vindictive fangs, in a libel, called his memoirs, or in We are told that Count de Charolois afterwards Duke of Burgundy, one day Comines the historian, when residing at the court of the returning from hunting, with inconsiderate joculanty sat boots; the Count would not affect greatness, and having down before the Count, ordering the Prince to pull off his executed his commission, in return for the princely amuse ment, the Count dashed the boot on Comines's nose, which bled; and from that time, he was mortified at the Count of Burgundy, by retaining the nick-name of the booted head. the Duke of Burgundy has come down to us in his me The blow rankled in the heart of the man of genue, and moirs, blackened by his vengeance. Many, unknown to their readers, like Comines, have had a booted head, but the secret poison is distilled on their lasting page. I have elsewhere fully written a tale of literary hatred, where is seen a man of genius, devoting a whole life in harrassing the industry or the genius which he himself could not at tain, in the character of Gilbert Stuart.* The French Revolution, among its illustrations of the worst human passions exhibits one, in Collot d'Herbois; when this wretch was tossed up in the storm, to the summit of power, the city of Lyons, and massacring its inhabitants. He had a monstrous imagination seized him; he projected raising even the heart to commence, and to continue this con p racy against human nature; the ostensible motive was royalism, but the secret one was literary vengeance! as wretched a poet and actor as a man, he had been hissed resolved to repay that ignominy, by the blood of its cin off the theatre in Lyons, and his dark remorseless genius zens and the very walls of the city. Is there but one Col genius becomes its madness, even the worst of human be lot d'Herbois in the universe? When the imagination of ings is only a genus. CHAPTER XII. THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF GENIUS. When the temper and the leisure of the literary charac ter are alike broken, even his best works, the too fansful mirrors of his state of mind, will participate of its inequal ties; and surely the incubations of genius in its delicate and shadowy combinations, are not less sensible in their operation than the composition of sonorous bodies, where, while the warm metal is settling in the mould, even an unu injure the tone. sual vibration of the air, during the moment of fusion, will compositions may be attributed to the domestic infelices Some of the conspicuous blemishes of several great of their authors. The desultory life of Camoens is immagined to be perceptible in the deficient connection of his epic; and Milton's peculiar situation and divided family prevented those passages from being erased, which others wise had not escaped from his revising hand-heft him self in the situation of his Sampson Agonistes, wine be so pathetically describes, as 'His foes' derision, captive, poor and blind." Cervantes, through precipitate publication, fe, those slips of memory observable in his satirical romaner. The careless rapid lines of Dryden are justly attributed to Ans distress, and he indeed pleads for his inequalities from bis domestic circumstances. Johnson silently, but eagerly often corrected the Ramblers in their successive editions of which so many had been despatched in haste. The learned Greaves offered some excuses for his errors in his edition of Abulfeda, from his being five years cocumbered with law-suits and diverted from his studies.' When * Sen Calamities of Authors, 11, 49. at length he returned to them, he expresses his surprise at the pains he had formerly undergone,' but of which he now felt himself unwilling, he knew not how, of again undergoing. Goldoni, when at the bar, abandoned his comic talent for several years: and having resumed it, his first comedy totally failed: My head,' says he, was occupied with my professional employment, I was uneasy in mind and in bad humour.' me of folly, but I have always found most pleasure in observing the nature of animals, studying their character, and writing their history. Even with those who have acquired their celebrity, the love of literary labour is not diminished, a circumstance recorded by the younger Pliny of Livy; in a preface to one of his lost books, that historian had said that he had got sufficient glory by his former writings on the Roman history, and might now repose in silence; but his mind was so restless and so abhorrent of indolence, that it only felt its existence in literary exertion. Such are the minds who are without hope, if they are without occupation. Amidst the repose and silence of study, delightful to the literary character, are the soothing interruptions of the voices of those whom he loves; these shall re-animate his languor, and moments of inspiration shall be caught in the emotions of affection, when a father or a friend, a wife, a daughter, or a sister, become the participators of his own tastes, the companions of his studies, and identify their happiness with his fame. If Horace was dear to his friends, he declares they owed him to his father, -purus et insons (Ut me collaudem) si vivo et carus amicis, Causa fuit Pater his. Lib. i. Sat. vi. v. 69. If pure and innocent, if dear (forgive Francis. The best years of Mengs's life were embittered by the misery and the harshness of his father, who himself a poor artist, and with poorer feelings, converted his home into a prison-house, forced his son into the slavery of stipulated task-work, while his bread and water were the only fruits of the fine arts; in this domestic persecution, from which he was at length obliged to fly, he contracted those morose and saturnine habits which for ever after shut up the ungenial Mengs in the dark solitude of his soul. It has been said of Alonso Cano, a celebrated Spanish painter, that he would have carried his art much higher had not the unceasing persecution of the inquisitors entirely deprived him of that tranquillity so necessary to the very existence of art. The poet Rousseau passed half his life in trouble, in anger, and in despair, from the severe persecution, or the justice, of his enemies, respecting an anonymous libel attributed to him; his temper was poisoned, and he poisoned. Ovid, in exile on the barren shores of Tomos, deserted by his genius, even in his copious Tristia, loses the luxuriance of his fancy. The reason which Rousseau alleges for the cynical spleen which so frequently breathes forth in his works, shows how the domestic character of vered the propensity of Horace's mind; for he removed This intelligent father, an obscure tax-gatherer, discothe man of genius leaves itself behind in his productions. the boy of genius from a rural seclusion to the metropoAfter describing the infelicity of his domestic affairs occasioned by the mother of Theresa, and Theresa herself, is, anxiously attending on him to his various masters. both women of the lowest order, he adds on this wretched Vitruvius pours forth a grateful prayer to the memory of his parents, who had instilled into his soul a love for litemarriage, these unexpected disagreeable events, in a state of my own choice, plunged me into literature, to give rary and philosophical subjects. The father of Gibbon urged him to literary distinction, and the dedication of the a new direction and diversion to my mind; and in all my first works, I scattered that bilious humour which had ocEssay on literature,' to that father, connected with his casioned this very occupation. Our author's character subsequent labour, shows the force of the excitement. in his works was the very opposite one in which he ap- sight of a column, which he had raised to the memory of The son of Buffon one day surprised his father by the peared to these low people; they treated his simplicity as utter silliness; feeling his degradation among them, his his father's eloquent genius. It will do you honour,' obpersonal timidity assumed a tone of boldness and originali-lution was led to the guillotine, he ascended in silence, so served the Gallic sage. And when that son in the revoty in his writings, while a strong sense of shame heighten-impressed with his father's fame, that he only told the peoed his causticity, contemning that urbanity he knew not to practise. His miserable subservience to these people was the real cause of his oppressed spirit calling out for some undefined freedom in society. Thus the real Rousseau, with all his disordered feelings, only appeared in his writings; the secrets of his heart were in his pen. The home of the literary character should be the abode of repose and of silence. There must be look for the feasts of study, in progressive and alternate labours; a taste which,' says Gibbon, I would not exchange for the treasures of India.' Rousseau had always a work going on for rainy days and spare hours, such as his dictionary of music; a variety of wokrs never tired; the single one only exhausted. Metastasio talks with delight of his variety, which resembled the fruits in the garden of Armida, E mentre spunta l'un, l'altro mature. While one matures, the other buds and blows. Nor is it always fame, nor any lower motive, which may induce him to hold an indefatigable pen; another equally powerful exists, which must remain inexplicable to him who knows not to escape from the listlessness of life-the passion for literary occupation. He whose eye can only measure the space occupied by the voluminous labours of the elder Pliny, of a Mazzuchelli, a Muratori, a Montfaucon, and a Gough; all men who laboured from the love of labour, and can see nothing in that space but the industry which filled it, is like him who only views a city at a distance the streets and the squares, and all the life and population within, he can never know. These Iterare characters projected these works as so many schemes to escape from uninteresting pursuits; and, in these folios, how many evils of life did they bury, while their happiness expanded with their volume. Aulus Gellius desired to live no longer, than he was able to retain the faculty of writing and observing. The literary character must grow as impassioned with his subject as Elian with his History of Animals; wealth and honour I might have obtained at the courts of princes; but I preferred the delight of multiplying my knowledge. I am aware that the avaricious and the ambitious will accuse ple, I am the son of Buffon! It was the mother of Burns who kindled his genius by delighting his childhood his father he attributed his cast of character; as Bishop with the recitations of the old Scottish ballads, while to Watson has recently traced to the affectionate influence of his mother, the religious feelings which he declares he had genius; in the home of a man of genius he diffuses an inherited from her. There is, what may be called, family electrical atmosphere; his own pre-eminence strikes out Court, had inspired his family with that variety of tastes talents in all. Evelyn, in his beautiful retreat at Sayes which he himself was spreading throughout the nation. His son translated Rapin's Gardens' which poem the busied in his study, excelled in the arts her busband loved, father proudly preserved in his Sylva; his lady, ever and designed the frontispiece to his Lucretius; she was the cultivator of their celebrated garden, which served as an example,' of his great work on 'forest trees.' Cowley, who has commemorated Evelyn's love of books and gardens, has delightfully applied them to his lady, in whom, says the bard, Evelyn meets both pleasures; "The fairest garden in her looks, And in her mind the wisest books.' The house of Haller resembled a temple consecrated to science and the arts, for the votaries were his own family. The universal acquirements of Haller, were possessed in some degree by every one under his roof; and their studious delight in transcribing manuscripts, in consulting authors, in botanising, drawing and colouring the plants under his eye, formed occupations which made the daughters happy and the sons eminent. The painter Stella inspired his family to copy his fanciful inventions, and the playful graver of Claudine Stella, his niece, animated his 'Sports of Children.' The poems of the late Hurdis were printed by the hands of his sisters. No event in literary history is more impressive than the fate of Quintillian; it was in the midst of his elaborate work, composed to form the literary character of a sor., his great hope, that he experienced the most terrible affliction in the domestic life of genius-the deaths of his wife, and one child after the other. It was a moral earthquake with a single survivor amidst the ruins. An awful burst of parental and literary affliction breaks forth in Quintillian's lamentation, my wealth, and my writings, the fruits of a long and painful life, must now be reserved only for strangers; all I possess is for aliens and no longer mine! The husband, the father, and the man of genius, utter one cry of agony. Deprived of these social consolations, we see Johnson call about him those whose calamities exiled them from society, and his roof lodges the blind, the lame and the poor; for the heart of genius must possess something human it can call its own to be kind to. Its elevated emotions, even in domestic life, would enlarge the moral vocabulary, like the Abbé de Saint Pierre, who has fixed in his language two significant words; one which served to explain the virtue most familar to him-bienfaisance; and the irritable vanity magnifying its ephemeral fame the sage reduced to a mortifying diminutive-la gloriole. diculed his philosophic relative, and turned to advantage his philosophic dispositions. They have been deemed disagreeable companions, because they felt the weariness of dullness, or the impertinence of intrusion; as bad husbands, when united to women, who without a kindred feeling had the mean sense, or the unnatural cruelty, to prey upon their infirmities. But is the magnet less a magnet, though the particles scattered about it, incapable of attraction, are unagitated by its occult quality? Poverty is the endemial distemper of the commonwealth; but poverty is no term for ears polite. Few can conceive a great character in a state of humble existence! That passion for wealth through all ranks, leaving the Hollanders aside, seems peculiar to the country where the Wealth of Nations' is made the first principle of its existence; and where the cui bono? is ever referred to a commercial result. This is not the chief object of life among the continental nations, where it seems properly restricted to the commercial class. Montesquieu, who was in England, observed that if he had been born here nothing could have consoled him on failing to accumulate a large fortune, but I do not lament the mediocrity of my circumstances in France.' This evil, for such it may be considered, has much increased here since Montesquieu's visit. It is useless to persuade some that there is a pov erty, neither vulgar, nor terrifying, asking no favours, and on no terms receiving any-a poverty which annulates its ideal evils, and becomes even a source of pride a state which will confer independence, that first step to genius. There have been men of genius who have even learnt to want. We see Rousseau rushing out of the hotel of the financier, selling his watch, copying music by the chasing ten for genius. We may smile at the enthusiasm of young Barry, who finding himself too constant a haunter of tavern-company, imagined that his expenditure of time was occasioned by having money; to put an end to the conflict, he threw the little he possessed at once into the Liffey; but let us not forget that Barry, in the maturity of life, confidently began a labour of years, and one of the noblest inventions in his art, a great poem in a picture, with no other resource than what he found in secret la bours through the night, by which he furnished the shops with those slight and saleable sketches which secured uninterrupted mornings for his genius. Spinosa, a name as celebrated and calumniated as Epicurus, lived in all sorts of abstinence, even of honours, of pensions, and of presents, which, however disguised by kindness, he would not accept, so fearful was this philosopher of a chain; lodging in a cottage, and,obtaining a livelihood by polishing optical glasses, and at his death his small accounts showed how he had subsisted on a few pence a day. It has often excited surprise that men of genius eminent in the world, are not more reverenced than other men in their domestic circle. The disparity between the public and the private esteem of the same man is often striking; in privacy the comic genius is not always cheerful, the sage is sometimes ridiculous, and the poet not delightful. The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the du ties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves-the creature of habits and infirmities. Men of genius, like the deities of Homer, are deities only in their Heaven of Invention:' mixing with mortals, they shed their blood like Venus, or bellow like Mars. Yet in the business of life the culti-sheet, and by the mechanical industry of two hours, pur vators of science and the arts, with all their simplicity of feeling and generous openness about them, do not meet on equal terms with other men; their frequent abstractions calling off the mind to whatever enters into its favourite pursuits, render them greatly inferior to others in practical and immediate observation. A man of genius may know the whole map of the world of human nature; but, like the great geographer, may be apt to be lost in the wood, which any one in the neighbourhood knows better than him. 'The conversation of a poet,' says Goldsmith, is that of a man of sense, while his actions are those of a fool.' Genius, careless of the future, and absent in the present, avoids to mix too deeply in common life as its business; hence it becomes an easy victim to common fools and vulgar villains. I love my family's welfare, but I cannot be so foolish as to make myself the slave to the minute affairs of a house,' said Montesquieu. The story told of a man of learning is probably true, however ridiculous; deeply occupied in his library, one, rushing in, informed him that the house was on fire! Go to my wife-these matters belong to her pettishly replied the interrupted student. Bacon sat at one end of his table wrapt in many a reverie, while at the other the creatures about him were trafficking with his honour, and ruining his good name; 'I am better fitted for this,' said that great man once, holding out a book, than for the life I have of late led.' ་ Buffon, who consumed his mornings in his old tower of Montbar, at the end of his garden, with all nature opening to him, formed all his ideas of what was passing before him by the arts of an active and pliant capuchin, and the comments of a perruquier on the scandalous chronicles; these he treated as children; but the children commanded the great man. Dr Young, whose satires give the very anatomy of human foibles, was entirely governed by his house-keeper; she thought and acted for him, which probably greatly assisted the Night Thoughts,' but his curate exposed the domes tic economy of a man of genius by a satirical novel. Was not the hero Marlborough, at the moment he was the terror of France and the glory of Germany, held under the finger of his wife by the meanest passion of avarice? But men of genius have too often been accused of imaginary crimes; their very eminence attracts the lie of calumny, a lie which tradition conveys beyond the possibility of refutation. Sometimes reproached for being undutiful sons, because they displeased their fathers in making an obscure name celebrated. The family of Descartes were insensible to the lustre his studies reflected on them; they lamented, as a blot in their escutcheon, that Descartes, who was born a gentleman, should become a philosopher. This elevated genius was even denied the satisfaction of embracing an unforgiving parent, while his dwarfish brother, with a mind diminutive as his person, ri 'Enjoy spare feast! a radish and an egg.'-Couper. Spinosa said he never had spent more than be earned, and certainly thought there was such a thing as superflu ous earnings. Such are the men who have often smiled at the light regard of their neighbours in contrast with their growing celebrity; and who feel that eternal truth, which the wisest and the poorest of the Athenians has sent down to us, that not to want any thing is an attribute of the Divinity; but man approximates to this perfection by wanting little.' There may be sufficient motives to induce the literary character to make a state of mediocrity his choice. If be loses his happiness, he mutilates his gemus. Goldini, with the simplicity of his feelings and habits, in reviewing his life, tells us how he was always relapsing into his old propensity of cornic writing; but the thought of this does not disturb me; for though in any other situation I might have been in easier circumstances, I should never have been so happy.' Bayle is a parent of the modem iterary character; he pursued the same course, and early in 'de adopted the principle Neither to fear bad fortune, nor have any ardent desires for good. He was acqua ted with the passions only as their historian, and having only for literature, he sacrificed to it the two great acquisitions of human pursuits-fortune and a family; but in England, in France, in Germany, in Italy, in Holland, in Flanders, at Geneva, he found a family of friends, and an seramolation of celebrity. A life of hard deprivations was hung the life of Linnæus. Without a fortune, 1 never seemed to him necessary to acquire. Peregrinating on foot wha stylus, a magnifying glass, and a basket for plants, be shared with the peasant hus rustic meal. Never was |