but we may scarcely wonder at his case, he having given us, if not an allsufficient, at any rate, a somewhat ludicrous clue to his malady, for he was actually caught one day rubbing his head in whiskey!-No marvel that he was hot-headed. Others again indulged strange vagaries and humors;-such as Menage, who, while science covered his head with laurels, used to cover his feet with several pairs of stockings. Pope used to brace himself up with corsets. It is related that Magliabechi, the learned librarian to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, used to divert himself with pelting spiders. He seldom left his books, for he usually ate, drank and slept among them; thus imitating the domestic propensities of his favorites. Sir Walter Scott entertained an absurd opinion that his poetic vein never flowed happy except between the vernal and autumnal equinoxes; he was accustomed to rise at 4, and walk about his room in a state of nudity, calling it his air-breath. Rousseau, when doomed to the company of the common-place, occupied himself with knitting lace strings, which he evidently preferred to long yarns. Bloomfield wrote his Farmer's Boy with chalk upon the top of a pair of bellows-a wind-instrument, till then a novelty in the choir of the Muses. Many of the eccentric sons of genius exhibit singular deficiency in conversational powers, as though Lature had designed to devote them to the pen, by denying them the gift of oral language. Corneille presents an example of this; he was so utterly insipid in company that his conversation was deemed contemptible, for he could scarcely speak correctly the language he so ennobled by his pen. Descartes was another who was made for seclusion and solitude, not for society; "he received his intellectual wealth," says a modern critic, "from nature in solid bars, not in current coin;" or, in the words of Themistocles, he might say, who, when asked to play on the lute, replied, "I cannot fiddle, but I can make a little village a great city." Addison was a taciturn companion in the social circle. Shakspeare, like Virgil, was cloudy and oblivious in colloquial discourse, but how transcendentally brilliant when they communed only with their own high thoughts. Chaucer, and Goldsmith, and Dryden, were dull and stupid, as also Isocrates, so celebrated for his sublime

compositions; and La Fontaine and La Bruyere might likewise be included in the category. The author, it is thus evident, is both more at ease and more to advantage in his study than anywhere else; and it is not surprising that we find him covet this seclusive retreat, and indulge his predilection sometimes at the expense of the rules of etiquette and courtesy.

Montesquieu's complaining epistle to a friend, affords evidence of this, where he intimates that the frequent and protracted visits of certain intruders caused much detriment to the progress of his works. Another scribe was so avaricious of his time, that his frequent appeals proving unavailing, he caused to be inscribed over the door of his study the inviting announcement, that whoever remained there must join in his labors. Melancthon, like Evelyn, was so chary of his time allotted to study, that he would note the intervals wasted by intrusive visitants, in order to redeem them from the hours devoted to repose. Others have been driven to the forlorn expedient of escaping from their window, being so hedged in by their considerate friends, as to be allowed of no more convenient egress; and Boyle actually had to resort to the advertising columns of a newspaper, to secure exemption from similar annoyances. A few words touching the connubial infelicities of the learned will bring our chapter to a close. That there have existed some renowned in the annals of literature, who, like Budous, enjoyed the singular good fortune to retain the full measure of matrimonial happiness, conjoined with the pleasures of literary pursuits, cannot be denied; but it may be doubted whether these do not form exceptions to rule. This great writer found in his wife an invaluable assistant in his arduous studies; ever at his side, assiduously collating, comparing, or transcribing, she contributed essentially to the reduction of his literary toils. In one of his letters he represents himself as married to two wives, one of whom blessed him with pleasant little ones, the other with books. Evelyn was no less felicitous in this respect, for he was indebted for much of his success to his amiable wife, whose refined taste and skill were equal to any emergency; and whose breast was fired with the same passion that inflamed her hus

band's pen; it was to her ingenious pencil the embellishment to his translation of Lucretius owed its origin. It is also true that many, we might perhaps say the majority of great men, seem to have repudiated matrimony altogether, probably from some premonition of their disqualification for its enjoyments. A host of great names occur to us, presenting an astounding array of sturdy old bachelors, enough to startle the complacency of the most charitable of the fair sex. Michael Angelo, Boyle, Newton, Locke, Bayle, Shenstone, Leibnitz, Hobbes, Voltaire, Pope, Adam Smith, Swift, Thomson, Akenside, Arbuthnot, Hume, Gibbon, Cowper, Goldsmith, Gay, Lamb, Washington Irving, et cum multis aliis, were all decided for celibacy. Michael Angelo replied to a remonstrance on the subject, that he had espoused his art, and his works were his children. Dr. Radcliffe lived and died unmarried; although within five or six years prior to his decease, he fell desperately in love with a patient of rank, wealth and beauty, triple charms to fascinate even an old beau; but alas for this gallant hero, his suit became non-suited, and to his mortification his rejected addresses were afterwards immortalized by Steele in his "Tattler." Without staying to inquire into the causes which superinduce this antisocial feature of the literary character, it may not be amiss to notice some of its anomalies. For example, Smollett, whose writings are but too frequently found not only prurient, but indelicate, was yet unimpeachable in his morals. La Fontaine wrote fictions fertile in intrigues, but he is not known to have left one amour on record in which he personally enacted a part. Sir Thomas More, who was a strenuous advocate of free toleration, yet himself became a fierce and bigoted persecutor; and Young, although constantly denouncing a love of preferment, was all his life long secretly pining after it, and, while the most sombrous of poets, was in private life a trifling punster. Cowper, the melancholy and misanthropic, perpetrated, it will be remembered, that laughter-provoking ballad, Johnny Gilpin; and we find a similar contradictory characteristic in Sterne's whining over a dead donkey, while he proved himself bankrupt in human sympathy and natural affection, beating his wife,

and leaving his maternal parent desolate and neglected in her last moments.

Byron's misanthropy, also, was only to be found in his pen; for his moral self seemed a strange compound of vanity and affectation, united with a love of the ludicrous, sarcasm and irony. And poor Hood, the punster, whose master-passion gave melancholy evidence of its absorbing power over him, even at the hour of its recent dissolution,-while his wit was vibrating the national heart, his own suffered from the extremest melancholy.— Among the many extempore puns he uttered in his sickness, in describing to a friend his near approach to dissolution, he could not resist his ruling impulse, for he added, "I came so near to death's door, that I heard the creaking of its hinges."

Returning to our subject of literary marriages, we remember reading of a certain little tract, which professed an investigation of this mystery, entitled, "De Matrimonia Literati, au calibem esse au vero nubere conveniat," in which the writer cites some cases of the good and bad among literary spouses; among others, that of the celebrated artist, Berghem, who resorted to rather a singular mode of proving her devotion to her husband's interests, by ever and anon thumping a long stick, which she kept for the purpose, against the ceiling, to prevent her liege-lord indulging a nap during the hours devoted to his profession; a summons which he responded to, by stamping with his foot; his room being immediately over hers. It was no inelegant plea, once urged by a learned scribe, for his choice of celibacy, that "Minerva and Venus never could exist together." And so it would seem, indeed, if we judge from the fact of Byron's fatal union and Bulwer's-the story of whose domestic strifes are too notorious to require comment-to say nothing of the like instances of the lamented and gifted Felicia Hemans, Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Norton, and the accomplished Mrs. Jameson. Some honorable exceptions exist to the foregoing, which redeem the literary profession from the sad odium ; the Howitts are enthusiastic lovers of their literary pursuits, and anxious to educate their children in the best possible manner, and therefore live a retired and domestic life. Though be

longing to the Society of Friends, and attached to its great principles of civil, moral, and religious liberty, they have long ago abandoned its peculiarities ; and in manners, dress and language, belong only to the world. For the honor of literature we may safely say, that, among the many consolatory proofs in modern times of how much literature may contribute to the happiness of life, the case of the Howitts is the most striking. The love of literature was the origin of their acquaintance, its pursuit has been the hand-inhand bond of the most perfect happiness of a long married life; and we may further add, for the honor of womanhood, that while our authoress sends forth her delightful works in unbroken succession, to the four quarters of the globe, William Howitt has been heard to declare, that he will challenge any woman, be she who she may, who ever wrote a line, to match his good woman in the management of a large household, at the same time she fills her own little world of home with the brightness of her own heart and spirit. Another name occurs to us, also, that of George Sloane,-to whom the reading world is, perhaps, mainly indebted for the introduction of German literature into our vernacular,—who, because he married for love," his cara sposa being a beauty of humble birth, was disinherited by his rigorous parent, the well-known Sir Hans Sloane. To be revenged, his son had recourse to the following futile species of retaliation: he wrote a violent tirade upon his father's productions, caricaturing his splendid museum of art, with the intention of publishing it in a newspaper; but through some strange chance the plot was detected, and before the printer could compose it, it was rescued; and Sir Hans had the precious document elegantly enclosed in a frame for the inspection of his friends, to the lasting discomfiture of the author. Poor fellow he paid "dearly for his whistle" without this infliction, for his amiable better half loaded him with the liberal bestowment of ten pledges of her love. A writer in the London Quarterly has supplied some curious facts in relation to the family history of intellectual men, which are too interesting to resist the temptation of an extract.

He says:

"We are going to speculate about the causes of the fact-but a fact it is-that men distinguished for extraordinary intellectual power, of any sort, rarely leave hind them. Men of genius have scarcely more than a very brief line of progeny beever done so-men of imaginative genius, we might say, almost never. With the one exception of the noble Surrey, we cannot, at this moment, point out a representative in the male line, even so far down as in the third generation, of any English poet, and we believe the same is the case in France. seldom be traced far down, even in the The blood of beings of that order can female line. With the exception of Surrey and Spencer, we are not aware of any English author of at all remote day, from whose body any living person claims to be descended. There is no other real English poet prior to the middle of the eighteenth century, and we believe no great author of any sort, except Clarendon and Shaftesbury, of whose blood we have any inheritance amongst us. Chaucer's only pired in his daughter's only daughter. son died childless. Shakspeare's line exNone of the other dramatists of that age have left any progeny-nor Raleigh, nor Bacon, nor Cowley, nor Butler. The grand-daughter of Milton was the last of his blood. Neither Bolingbroke, Addison, Warburton, Johnson, nor Burke, trans mitted their blood.

bright consummate flower,' in this kind, "When a human race has produced its it seems commonly to be near its end.'

"The theory is illustrated in our own day. The two greatest names in science and literature of our time, were Davy and Sir Walter Scott. The first died childless. Sir Walter Scott left four children, of whom three are dead, only one of them, (Mrs. Lockhart,) leaving issue, and the long married, has no issue." fourth, his eldest son, though living, and

The last particular we shall refer to, is the fact, that a prominent class of literary characters who have wives, seem, before the world, as though they had none in their social visitings: such as Anacreon Moore, Wordsworth, Proctor, Ainsworth, &c.; the author and his wife are very distinct individualities in their case, in the code of fashion; but it seems, as Dogberry says, "very tolerable, and not to be endured;" for this social divorce, we imagine, may very probably owe its origin to the habits of the authors themselves in part, and the conventionalisms of society. Our last paragraph seems, however, rather to trench upon the immunities of his "better half," than