it is not humanity. The truth is, there is always a
latent love of fame, that prompts to this strong devotion of labour;
and he who has given a long life to that which he has so much desired,
and can never enjoy, might well be excused receiving our insults, if
he cannot extort our pity.

A remarkable instance occurs in the fate of the late Rev. WILLIAM
COLE;[68] he was the college friend of Walpole, Mason, and Gray; a
striking proof how dissimilar habits and opposite tastes and feelings
can associate in literary friendship; for Cole, indeed, the public had
informed him that his friends were poets and men of wit; and for them,
Cole's patient and curious turn was useful, and, by its extravagant
trifling, must have been very amusing. He had a gossip's ear, and a
tatler's pen--and, among better things, wrote down every grain of
literary scandal his insatiable and minute curiosity could lick up; as
patient and voracious as an ant-eater, he stretched out his tongue
till it was covered by the tiny creatures, and drew them all in at one
digestion. All these tales were registered with the utmost simplicity,
as the reporter received them; but, being but tales, the exactness of
his truth made them still more dangerous lies, by being perpetuated;
in his reflections he spared neither friend nor foe; yet, still
anxious after truth, and usually telling lies, it is very amusing to
observe, that, as he proceeds, he very laudably contradicts, or
explains away in subsequent memoranda what he had before registered.
Walpole, in a correspondence of forty years, he was perpetually
flattering, though he must imperfectly have relished his fine taste,
while he abhorred his more liberal principles, to which sometimes he
addressed a submissive remonstrance. He has at times written a letter
coolly, and, at the same moment, chronicled his suppressed feelings in
his diary, with all the flame and sputter of his strong prejudices. He
was expressly nicknamed Cardinal Cole. These scandalous chronicles,
which only show the violence of his prejudices, without the force of
genius, or the acuteness of penetration, were ordered not to be opened
till twenty years after his decease; he wished to do as little
mischief as he could, but loved to do some. I well remember the cruel
anxiety which prevailed in the nineteenth year of these inclosures; it
spoiled the digestions of several of our literati who had had the
misfortune of Cole's intimate friendship, or enmit