s, what cannot be refused to every other. That unremitting
application and unbroken series of their thoughts, admired in every
profession, is only complained of in that one whose professors with so
much sincerity mourn over the brevity of life, which has often closed on
them while sketching their works.

It is, however, only in solitude that the genius of eminent men has been
formed. There their first thoughts sprang, and there it will become them
to find their last: for the solitude of old age--and old age must be often
in solitude--may be found the happiest with the literary character.
Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the true parent of
genius. In all ages solitude has been called for--has been flown to. No
considerable work was ever composed till its author, like an ancient
magician, first retired to the grove, or to the closet, to invocate. When
genius languishes in an irksome solitude among crowds, that is the moment
to fly into seclusion and meditation. There is a society in the deepest
solitude; in all the men of genius of the past

First of your kind, Society divine!

and in themselves; for there only can they indulge in the romances of
their soul, and there only can they occupy themselves in their dreams and
their vigils, and, with the morning, fly without interruption to the
labour they had reluctantly quitted. If there be not periods when they
shall allow their days to melt harmoniously into each other, if they do
not pass whole weeks together in their study, without intervening
absences, they will not be admitted into the last recess of the Muses.
Whether their glory come from researches, or from enthusiasm, time, with
not a feather ruffled on his wings, time alone opens discoveries and
kindles meditation. This desert of solitude, so vast and so dreary to the
man of the world, to the man of genius is the magical garden of Armida,
whose enchantments arose amidst solitude, while solitude was everywhere
among those enchantments.

Whenever MICHAEL ANGELO, that "divine madman," as Richardson once wrote on
the back of one of his drawings, was meditating on some great design, he
closed himself up from the world, "Why do you lead so solitary a life?"
asked a friend. "Art," replied the sublime artist, "Art is a jealous god;
it requires the whole and entire man." During his mighty labour in the
Sistine Chapel, he refused to have any communication with any person even
at his own house. Such u