MONTAIGNE appears to have been sensible of this fact in the literary character. Of authors, he says, he likes to read their little anecdotes and private passions:-"Car j'ai une singulière curiosité de connaître l'âme et les naïfs jugemens de mes auteurs. Il faut bien juger leur suffisance, mais non pas leurs mœurs, ni eux, par cette montre de leurs écrits qu'ils étalent au théâtre du monde." Which may be thus translated: "For I have a singular curiosity to know the soul and simple opinions of my authors. We must judge of their ability, but not of their manners, nor of themselves, by that show of their writings which they display on the theatre of the world." This is very just; are we yet sure, however, that the simplicity of this old favourite of Europe might not have been as much a theatrical gesture as the sentimentality of Sterne? The great anthors of the Port-Royal Logic have raised severe objections to prove that MONTAIGNE was not quite so open in respect to those simple details which he imagined might diminish his personal importance with his readers. He pretends that he reveals all his infirmities and weaknesses, while he is perpetually passing himself off for something more than he is. He carefully informs us that he has " a page, the usual attendant of an independent gentleman, and lives in an old family château; when the fact was, that his whole revenue did not exceed six thousand livres, a state beneath mediocrity. He is also equally careful not to drop any mention of his having a clerk with a bag; for he was a counsellor of Bordeaux, but affected the gentleman and the soldier. He trumpets himself forth for having been mayor of Bordeaux, as this offered an opportunity of telling us that he succeeded Marshal Biron, and resigned it to Marshal Matignon. Could he have discovered that any marshal had been a lawyer he would not have sunk that part of his life. Montaigne himself has said, "that in forming a judgment of a man's life, particular regard should be paid to his behaviour at the end of it ;" and he more than once tells us that the chief study of his life is to die calm and silent; and that he will plunge himself headlong and stupidly into death, as into an obscure abyss, which swallows one up in an instant; that to die was the affair of a moment's suffering, and required no precepts. He talked of reposing on the "pillow of doubt." But how did this great philosopher die ? He called for the more powerful opiates of the infallible church! The mass was performed in his chamber, and, in rising to embrace it, his hands

dropped and failed him; thus, as Professor Dugald Stewart observes on this philosopher-" He expired in performing what his old preceptor, Buchanan, would not have scrupled to describe as an act of idolatry."

We must not then consider that he who paints vice with energy is therefore vicious, lest we injure an honourable man; nor must we imagine that he who celebrates virtue is therefore virtuous, for we may then repose on a heart which knowing the right pursues the wrong.

These paradoxical appearances in the history of genius present a curious moral phenomenon. Much must be attributed to the plastic nature of the versatile faculty itself. Unquestionably many men of genius have often resisted the indulgence of one talent to exercise another with equal power; and some, who have solely composed sermons, could have touched on the foibles of society with the spirit of Horace or Juvenal. BLACKSTONE and Sir WILLIAM JONES directed that genius to the austere studies of law and philology, which might have excelled in the poetical and historical character. So versatile is this faculty of genius, that its possessors are sometimes uncertain of the manner in which they shall treat their subject, whether gravely or ludicrously. When BREBŒUF, the French translator of the Pharsalia of Lucan, had completed the first book as it now appears, he at the same time composed a burlesque version, and sent both to the great arbiter of taste in that day, to decide which the poet should continue. The decision proved to be difficult. Are there not writers who, with all the vehemence of genius, by adopting one principle can make all things shrink into the pigmy form of ridicule, or by adopting another principle startle us by the gigantic monsters of their own exaggerated imagination? On this principle, of the versatility of the faculty, a production of genius is a piece of art which, wrought up to its full effect with a felicity of manner acquired by taste and habit, is merely the result of certain arbitrary combinations of the mind. Are we then to reduce the works of a man of genius to a mere sport of his talents- -a game in which he is only the best player? Can he whose secret power raises so many emotions in our breasts be without any in his own? A mere actor performing a part? Is he unfeeling when he is pathetic, indifferent when he is indignant? Is he an alien to all the wisdom and virtue he inspires ? No! were men of genius themselves to assert this, and it is said some incline so to do,

there is a more certain conviction than their misconceptions, in our own consciousness, which for ever assures us, that deep feelings and elevated thoughts can alone spring from those who feel deeply and think nobly.

In proving that the character of the man may be very opposite to that of his writings, we must recollect that the habits of the life may be contrary to the habits of the mind.* The influence of their studies over men of genius is limited. Out of the ideal world, man is reduced to be the active creature of sensation. An author has, in truth, two distinct characters the literary, formed by the habits of his study; the personal, by the habits of his situation. GRAY, cold, effeminate, and timid in his personal, was lofty and awful in his literary character. We see ren of polished manners and bland affections, who, in grasping a pen, are thrusting a poniard; while others in domestic life with the simplicity of children and the feebleness of nervous affections, can shake the senate or the bar with the vehemence of their eloquence and the intrepidity of their spirit. The writings of the famous BAPTISTA PORTA are marked by the boldness of his genius, which formed a singular contrast with the pusillanimity of his conduct when menaced or attacked. The heart may be feeble, though the mind is strong. To think boldly may be the habit of the mind, to act weakly may be the habit of the constitution.

However the personal character may contrast with that of their genius, still are the works themselves genuine, and exist as realities for us and were so, doubtless, to the composers themselves in the act of composition. In the calm of study, a beautiful imagination may convert him whose morals are corrupt into an admirable moralist, awakening feelings which yet may be cold in the business of life: as we have shown that the phlegmatic can excite himself into wit, and the cheerful man delight in " Night Thoughts." SALLUST, the corrupt Sallust, might retain the most sublime conceptions of the virtues which were to save the Republic; and STERNE,

* Nothing is more delightful to me in my researches on the literary character than when I find in persons of unquestionable and high genius the results of my own discoveries. This circumstance has frequently happened to confirm my principles. Long after this was published, Madame de Staël made this important confession in her recent work, "Dix Années d'Exil," p. 154. "Je ne pouvais me dissimuler que je n'étais pas une personne courageuse; j'ai de la hardiesse dans l'imagination, mais de la timidité dans le caractère."

whose heart was not so susceptible in ordinary occurrences, while he was gradually creating incident after incident and touching successive emotions, in the stories of Le Fevre and Maria, might have thrilled-like some of his readers. Many have mourned over the wisdom or the virtue they contemplated, mortified at their own infirmity. Thus, though there may be no identity between the book and the man, still for us an author is ever an abstract being, and, as one of the Fathers said "A dead man may sin dead, leaving books that make others sin." An author's wisdom or his folly does not die with him. The volume, not the author, is our companion, and is for us a real personage, performing before us whatever it inspires-"He being dead, yet speaketh." Such is the vitality of a book!

CHAPTER XXI.

The man of letters.-Occupies an intermediate station between authors and readers. His solitude described. Often the father of genius. — Atticus, a man of letters of antiquity.-The perfect character of a modern man of letters exhibited in Peiresc.-Their utility to authors and artists.

AMONG the active members of the literary republic, there is a class whom formerly we distinguished by the title of MEN OF LETTERS-a title which, with us, has nearly gone out of currency, though I do not think that the general term of "literary men" would be sufficiently appropriate.

The man of letters, whose habits and whose whole life so closely resemble those of an author, can only be distinguished by this simple circumstance, that the man of letters is not an author.

Yet he whose sole occupation through life is literature— he who is always acquiring and never producing, appears as ridiculous as the architect who never raised an edifice, or the statuary who refrains from sculpture. His pursuits are reproached with terminating in an epicurean selfishness, and amidst his incessant avocations he himself is considered as a particular sort of idler.

This race of literary characters, as we now find them, could not have appeared till the press had poured forth its affluence. In the degree that the nations of Europe became literary, was

that philosophical curiosity kindled which induced some to devote their fortunes and their days, and to experience some of the purest of human enjoyments in preserving and familiarising themselves with "the monuments of vanished minds," as books are called by D'Avenant with so much sublimity. Their expansive library presents an indestructible history of the genius of every people, through all their eras-and whatever men have thought and whatever men have done, were at length discovered in books.

Men of letters occupy an intermediate station between authors and readers. They are gifted with more curiosity of knowledge, and more multiplied tastes, and by those precious collections which they are forming during their lives, are more completely furnished with the means than are possessed by the multitude who read, and the few who write.

The studies of an author are usually restricted to particular subjects. His tastes are tinctured by their colouring, his mind is always shaping itself by their form. An author's works form his solitary pride, and his secret power; while half his life wears away in the slow maturity of composition, and still the ambition of authorship torments its victim alike in disappointment or in possession.

But soothing is the solitude of the MAN OF LETTERS! View the busied inhabitant of the library surrounded by the objects of his love! He possesses them-and they possess him! These volumes-images of our mind and passions!as he traces them from Herodotus to Gibbon, from Homer to Shakspeare those portfolios which gather up the inventions of genius, and that selected cabinet of medals which holds so many unwritten histories; some favourite sculptures and pictures, and some antiquities of all nations, here and there about his house-these are his furniture!

In his unceasing occupations the only repose he requires, consists not in quitting, but in changing them. Every day produces its discovery; every day in the life of a man of letters may furnish a multitude of emotions and of ideas. For him there is a silence amidst the world; and in the scene ever opening before him, all that has passed is acted over again, and all that is to come seems revealed as in a vision. Often his library is contiguous to his chamber,* and *The contiguity of the CHAMBER to the LIBRARY is not the solitary fancy of an individual, but marks the class. Early in life, when in France