at some
future Spectator!

Mediocrity can _talk_; but it is for genius to _observe_.

The cynical Mandeville compared Addison, after having passed an evening
in his company, to "a silent parson in a tie-wig."

Virgil was heavy in conversation, and resembled more an ordinary man
than an enchanting poet.

La Fontaine, says La Bruyere, appeared coarse, heavy, and stupid; he
could not speak or describe what he had just seen; but when he wrote he
was a model of poetry.

It is very easy, said a humorous observer on La Fontaine, to be a man of
wit, or a fool; but to be both, and that too in the extreme degree, is
indeed admirable, and only to be found in him. This observation applies
to that fine natural genius Goldsmith. Chaucer was more facetious in his
tales than in his conversation, and the Countess of Pembroke used to
rally him by saying, that his silence was more agreeable to her than his
conversation.

Isocrates, celebrated for his beautiful oratorical compositions, was of
so timid a disposition, that he never ventured to speak in public. He
compared himself to the whetstone which will not cut, but enables other
things to do so; for his productions served as models to other orators.
Vaucanson was said to be as much a machine as any he had made.

Dryden says of himself--"My conversation is slow and dull, my humour
saturnine and reserved. In short, I am none of those who endeavour to
break jests in company, or make repartees."[41]

VIDA.

What a consolation for an aged parent to see his child, by the efforts
of his own merits, attain from the humblest obscurity to distinguished
eminence! What a transport for the man of sensibility to return to the
obscure dwelling of his parent, and to embrace him, adorned with public
honours! Poor _Vida_ was deprived of this satisfaction; but he is placed
higher in our esteem by the present anecdote, than even by that classic
composition, which rivals the Art of Poetry of his great master.

_Jerome Vida_, after having long served two Popes, at length attained to
the episcopacy. Arrayed in the robes of his new dignity, he prepared to
visit his aged parents, and felicitated himself with the raptures which
the old couple would feel in embracing their son as their bishop. When
he arrived at their village, he learnt that it was but a few days since
they were no more. His sensibilities were exquisitely pained. The muse
dictated some elegiac verse, and in the solemn pathos d