ndisturbed and solitary attention is demanded even
by undoubted genius as the price of performance. How then shall we deem of
that feebler race who exult in occasional excellence, and who so often
deceive themselves by mistaking the evanescent flashes of genius for that
holier flame which burns on its altar, because the fuel is incessantly
supplied?

We observe men of genius, in public situations, sighing for this solitude.
Amidst the impediments of the world, they are doomed to view their
intellectual banquet often rising before them, like some fairy delusion,
never to taste it. The great VERULAM often complained of the disturbances
of his public life, and rejoiced in the occasional retirement he stole
from public affairs. "And now, because I am in the country, I will send
you some of my country fruits, which with me are good meditations; when I
am in the city, they are choked with business." Lord CLARENDON, whose life
so happily combined the contemplative with the active powers of man,
dwells on three periods of retirement which he enjoyed; he always took
pleasure in relating the great tranquillity of spirit experienced during
his solitude at Jersey, where for more than two years, employed on his
history, he daily wrote "one sheet of large paper with his own hand." At
the close of his life, his literary labours in his other retirements are
detailed with a proud satisfaction. Each of his solitudes occasioned a new
acquisition; to one he owed the Spanish, to another the French, and to a
third the Italian literature. The public are not yet acquainted with the
fertility of Lord Clarendon's literary labours. It was not vanity that
induced Scipio to declare of solitude, that it had no loneliness for him,
since he voluntarily retired amidst a glorious life to his Linternum.
CICERO was uneasy amid applauding Rome, and has distinguished his numerous
works by the titles of his various villas. AULUS GELLIUS marked his
solitude by his "Attic Nights." The "Golden Grove" of JEREMY TAYLOR is the
produce of his retreat at the Earl of Carberry's seat in Wales; and the
"Diversions of Purley" preserved a man of genius for posterity. VOLTAIRE
had talents well adapted for society; but at one period of his life he
passed five years in the most secret seclusion, and indeed usually lived
in retirement. MONTESQUIEU quitted the brilliant circles of Paris for his
books and his meditations, and was ridiculed by the gay triflers he
deserted; "but