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that noble wit of Scotland, Sir George Mackenzie, he had not known the beautiful turn of words and thoughts in poetry, which Sir George had explained and exemplified to him in conversation. As a judge, and king's advocate, will not the barbarous customs of the age defend his name? He is most hideously painted forth by the dark pencil of a poetical Spagnoletti (Grahame), in his poem on "The Birds of Scotland." Sir George lived in the age of rebellion, and used torture: we must entirely put aside his political, to attend to his literary character. Blair has quoted his pleadings as a model of eloquence, and Grahame is unjust to the fame of Mackenzie, when he alludes to his "half-forgotten name." In 1689, he retired to Oxford, to indulge the luxuries of study in the Bodleian Library, and to practise that solitude which so delighted him in theory; but three years afterwards he fixed himself in London. Evelyn, who wrote in favour of public employment being preferable to solitude, passed his days in the tranquillity of his studies, and wrote against the habits which he himself most loved. By this it may appear, that that of which we have the least experience ourselves, will ever be what appears most delightful! Alas! everything in life seems to have in it the nature of a bubble of air, and, when touched, we find nothing but emptiness in our hand. It is certain that the most eloquent writers in favour of solitude have left behind them too many memorials of their unhappy feelings, when they indulged this passion to excess; and some ancient has justly said, that none but a god, or a savage, can suffer this exile from human nature. The following extracts from Sir George Mackenzie's tract on Solitude are eloquent and impressive, and merit to be rescued from that oblivion which surrounds many writers, whose genius has not been effaced, but concealed, by the transient crowd of their posterity:-- I have admired to see persons of virtue and humour long much to be in the city, where, when they come they found nor sought for no other divertissement than to visit one another; and there to do nothing else than to make legs, view others habit, talk of the weather, or some such pitiful subject, and it may be, if they made a farther inroad upon any other affair, they did so pick one another, that it afforded them matter of eternal quarrel; for what was at first but an indifferent subject, is b
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