POMPONIUS LAETUS, so called from his natural good-humour, was the personal friend of HERMOLATTS BARBABUS, whose saturnine and melancholy disposition he often exhilarated; the warm, impetuous LUTHER, was the beloved friend of the mild and amiable MELANCTHON; the caustic BOILEAU was the companion of RACINE and MOLIERE; and France, perhaps, owes the chefs-d’oeuvre of her tragic and her comic poet to her satirist.  The delicate taste and the refining ingenuity of HURD only attached him the more to the impetuous and dogmatic WARBURTON[A].  No men could be more opposite in personal character than the careless, gay, and hasty STEELE, and the cautious, serious, and the elegant ADDISON; yet no literary friendship was more fortunate than their union.

[Footnote A:  For a full account of their literary career see the first article in “Quarrels of Authors.”]

One glory is reserved for literary friendship.  The friendship of a great name indicates the greatness of the character who appeals to it.  When SYDENHAM mentioned, as a proof of the excellence of his method of treating acute diseases, that it had received the approbation of his illustrious friend LOCKE, the philosopher’s opinion contributed to the physician’s success.

Such have been the friendships of great literary characters; but too true it is, that they have not always contributed thus largely to their mutual happiness.  The querulous lament of GLEIM to KLOPSTOCK is too generally participated.  As Gleim lay on his death-bed he addressed the great bard of Germany—­“I am dying, dear Klopstock; and, as a dying man will I say, in this world we have not lived long enough together and for each other; but in vain would we now recal the past!” What tenderness in the reproach!  What self-accusation in its modesty!

CHAPTER XX.

The literary and the personal character.—­The personal dispositions of an author may be the reverse of those which appear in his writings.  —­Erroneous conceptions of the character of distant authors.—­Paradoxical appearances in the history of Genius.—­Why the character of the man may be opposite to that of his writings.

Are the personal dispositions of an author discoverable in his writings, as those of an artist are imagined to appear in his works, where Michael Angelo is always great, and Raphael ever graceful?

Is the moralist a moral man?  Is he malignant who publishes caustic satires?  Is he a libertine who composes loose poems?  And is he, whose imagination delights in terror and in blood, the very monster he paints?