considered as a plagiary? and
he only allows Dante's superiority from having written in the vulgar
idiom, which he did not consider an enviable merit. Thus frigidly Petrarch
could behold the solitary AEtna before him, in the "Inferno," while he
shrunk into himself with the painful consciousness of the existence of
another poet, obscuring his own majesty. It is curious to observe Lord
SHAFTESBURY treating with the most acrimonious contempt the great writers
of his own times--Cowley, Dryden, Addison, and Prior. We cannot imagine
that his lordship was so entirely destitute of every feeling of wit and
genius as would appear by this damnatory criticism on all the wit and
genius of his age. It is not, indeed, difficult to comprehend a different
motive for this extravagant censure in the jealousy which even a great
writer often experiences when he comes in contact with his living rivals,
and hardily, if not impudently, practises those arts of critical
detraction to raise a moment's delusion, which can gratify no one but
himself.

The moral sense has often been found too weak to temper the malignancy of
literary jealousy, and has impelled some men of genius to an incredible
excess. A memorable example offers in the history of the two brothers, Dr.
WILLIAM and JOHN HUNTER, both great characters fitted to be rivals; but
Nature, it was imagined, in the tenderness of blood, had placed a bar to
rivalry. John, without any determined pursuit in his youth, was received
by his brother at the height of his celebrity; the doctor initiated him
into his school; they performed their experiments together; and William
Hunter was the first to announce to the world the great genius of his
brother. After this close connexion in all their studies and discoveries,
Dr. William Hunter published his magnificent work--the proud favourite of
his heart, the assertor of his fame. Was it credible that the genius of
the celebrated anatomist, which had been nursed under the wing of his
brother, should turn on that wing to clip it? John Hunter put in his claim
to the chief discovery; it was answered by his brother. The Royal Society,
to whom they appealed, concealed the documents of this unnatural feud. The
blow was felt, and the jealousy of literary honour for ever separated the
brothers--the brothers of genius.

Such, too, was the jealousy which separated AGOSTINO and ANNIBAL CARRACCI,
whom their cousin LUDOVICO for so many years had attempted to unite, an