When the city of Rhodes was taken by Demetrius, the man of genius was discovered in his garden, tranquilly finishing a picture.  “How is it that you do not participate in the general alarm?” asked the conqueror.  “Demetrius, you war against the Rhodians, but not against the fine arts,” replied the man of genius.  Demetrius had already shown this by his conduct, for he forbade firing that part of the city where the artist resided.

The house of the man of genius has been spared amidst contending empires, from the days of Pindar to those of Buffon; “the Historian of Nature’s” chateau was preserved from this elevated feeling by Prince Schwartzenberg, as our MARLBOROUGH had performed the same glorious office in guarding the hallowed asylum of FENELON.[A] In the grandeur of Milton’s verse we perceive the feeling he associated with this literary honour: 

  The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
  The house of Pindarus when temple and tower
  Went to the ground—.

[Footnote A:  The printing office of Plantyn, at Antwerp, was guarded in a similar manner during the great revolution that separated Holland and Belgium, when a troop of soldiers were stationed in its courtyard.  See “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. i. p. 77, note.—­ED.]

And the meanest things, the very household stuff, associated with the memory of the man of genius, become the objects of our affections.  At a festival, in honour of THOMSON the poet, the chair in which he composed part of his “Seasons” was produced, and appears to have communicated some of the raptures to which he was liable who had sat in that chair.  RABEIAIS, amongst his drollest inventions, could not have imagined that his old cloak would have been preserved in the university of Montpelier for future doctors to wear on the day they took their degree; nor could SHAKSPEARE have supposed, with all his fancy, that the mulberry-tree which he planted would have been multiplied into relics.  But in such instances the feeling is right, with a wrong direction; and while the populace are exhausting their emotions on an old tree, an old chair, and an old cloak, they are paying that involuntary tribute to genius which forms its pride, and will generate the race.

CHAPTER XXV.

Influence of Authors on society, and of society on Authors.—­National tastes a source of literary prejudices.—­True Genius always the organ of its nation.—­Master-writers preserve the distinct national character.  —­Genius the organ of the state of the age.—­Causes of its suppression in a people.—­Often invented, but neglected.—­The natural gradations of genius.—­Men of Genius produce their usefulness in privacy.—­The public mind is now the creation of the public writer.—­Politicians affect to deny this principle.—­Authors stand between the governors and the governed.—­A view of the solitary Author in his study.—­They create an epoch in history.—­Influence of popular Authors.—­The immortality of thought.—­The Family of Genius illustrated by their genealogy.