lied him for separating himself from the world; but the great political enquirer satisfied the world, and his friends, by his great work on the Wealth of Nations.

But this solitude, at first a necessity and then a pleasure, becomes at length not to be borne without repining. I will call for a witness a great genius, and he shall speak himself. Gibbon says "I feel and shall continue to feel that domestic solitude, however it may be alleviated by the world, by study, and even by friendship, is a comfortless state, which will grow more painful as I descend in the vale of years:" Memoirs, Vol. I, p. 216. and afterwards he writes to a friend "Your visit has only served to remind me that man, however amused and occupied in his closet, was not made to live alone."

I must therefore now sketch a different picture of literary solitude, than some sanguine and youthful minds conceive.

Even the sublimest of men, Milton, who is not apt to vent complaints, appears to have felt this irksome period of life. In the preface to Smectymnus, he says, "It is but justice,

not to defraud of due esteem the wearisome labours and studious watchings, wherein I have spent, and tired out almost a whole youth."

Solitude in a later period of life, or rather the neglect which awaits the solitary man, is

felt with acuter sensibility. Cowley, that enthusiast for rural seclusion, in his retirement calls himself "The melancholy Cowley." Mason has truly transferred the same epithet to Gray. Read in his letters the history of solitude. We lament the loss of Cowley's correspondence through the mistaken notion of Sprat; he assuredly had painted the sorrows of his heart. But Shenstone has filled his pages with the cries of an amiable being whose soul bleeds in the dead oblivion of solitude. Listen to his melancholy expressions. "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 he is forced to die in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole." Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture throughout the year, in the following stanza by the same poet.

Tedious again to curse the drizzling day,

Again to trace the wintry tracks of snow!
Or soothed by vernal airs again survey

The self-same hawthorns bud, and cowslips blow!

Swift's letters paint in terrifying colours a picture of solitude, and at length his despair closed with idiotism. The amiable Gresset could not sport with the brilliant wings of his butterfly-muse, without dropping some querulous expression on the solitude of genius. In his Epistle to his Muse," he exquisitely paints the situation of men of genius.

Je les vois, Victimes du genie,

Au foible prix d'un eclat panager,

Vivre isolès, sans jouir de la vie !"

And afterwards he adds,

"Vingt ans d'Ennuis, pour quelque jours de gloire !"

I shall now finish with one more anecdote, which may amuse the reader. When Menage, attacked by some, and abandoned by others, was seised by a splenetic humour, he retreated into the country, and gave up his famous Mercuriales; those Wednesdays when the Literati assembled at his house, to praise up or cry down one another, as is usual with the literary populace. Menage expected to find that tranquillity in the country which he had frequently described in his verses; but as he was only a poetical plagiarist, it is not strange our pastoral writer was greatly disappointed. Some country rogues having killed his pigeons, they

gave him more vexation than his critics. He hastened his return to Paris. It is better, he cried, since we are born to suffer, to feel only reasonable sorrows.

LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS.

A DELIGHTFUL topic opens to our contemplations. I enter the scene as Eneas the green Elysium, where he viewed the once illustrious inhabitants of the earth reposing in social felicity.

It is honourable to literature, that among the virtues it inspires is that of the most romantic friendship; and literary history presents some instances of its finest enthusiasm. The delirium of love is often too violent a passion for the student; and its caprices are still more incompatible with his pursuits than its delirium. But friendship is not only delightful but necessary to soothe a mind alternately elated and depressed: when the mind of a man of genius is infirm, it strengthens; when dubious, it enlightens; when discouraged, it animates. However, literary friendships are rarer, than one might imagine them to be.

The memorable friendship of Beaumont and Fletcher so closely united their labours, that we cannot discover the productions of either; and biographers cannot without difficulty compose the memoirs of the one without running into the life of the other. They pourtrayed the same cha

Mon

racters, while they mingled sentiment with sentiment, and their days were as closely interwoven as their Verses. Metastasio and Farinelli, were born about the same time, and early acquainted. They called one another Gemello, or twin! Both the delight of Europe; both lived to an advanced age, and died nearly at the same time. Their fortune bore too, a resemblance; for they were both pensioned, but lived and died separated in the distant courts of Vienna, and Madrid. taigne and Charron were rivals, but always friends; such was Montaigne's affection for Charron, that he permitted him by his will to bear the full arms of his family; and Charron evinced his gratitude to the manes of his departed friend, by leaving his fortune to the sister of Montaigne, who had married. Forty years of friendship, uninterrupted by rivalry or envy, crowned the lives of Poggius, and Leonard Aretin, two of the illustrious revivors of letters. A singular custom formerly prevailed among our own writers, which was an affectionate tribute to our literary veterans, by young writers.— The former adopted the latter by the title of sons. Ben Jonson had twelve of these poetical sons. Walton, the angler, adopted Cotton, the translator of Montaigne.

Among the most fascinating effusions of genius are those little pieces which it consecrates to the