Had the mistaken notions of Sprat not deprived us of Cowley’s correspondence, we doubtless had viewed the picture of lonely genius touched by a tender pencil.[A] But we have SHENSTONE, and GRAY, and SWIFT.  The heart of Shenstone bleeds in the dead oblivion of solitude:  —­“Now I am come from a visit, every little uneasiness is sufficient to introduce my whole train of melancholy considerations, and to make me utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life I foresee I shall lead.  I am angry, and envious, and dejected, and frantic, and disregard all present things, as becomes a madman to do.  I am infinitely pleased, though it is a gloomy joy, with the application of Dr. Swift’s complaint, that he is forced to die in a rage, like a rat in a poisoned hole.”  Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture throughout the year, in this stanza, by the same amiable but suffering poet:—­

  Tedious again to curse the drizzling day,
  Again to trace the wintry tracks of snow,
  Or, soothed by vernal airs, again survey
  The self-same hawthorns bud, and cowslips blow.

Swift’s letters paint with terrifying colours a picture of solitude; and at length his despair closed with idiotism.  Even the playful muse of GRESSET throws a sombre querulousness over the solitude of men of genius:—­

      —­Je les vois, victimes du genie,
  Au foible prix d’un eclat passager,
  Vivre isoles, sans jouir de la vie! 
  Vingt ans d’ennuis pour quelques jours de gloire.

Such are the necessity, the pleasures, and the inconveniences of solitude!  It ceases to be a question whether men of genius should blend with the masses of society; for whether in solitude, or in the world, of all others they must learn to live with themselves.  It is in the world that they borrow the sparks of thought that fly upwards and perish but the flame of genius can only be lighted in their own solitary breast.

[Footnote A:  See the article on Cowley in “Calamities of Authors.”]

CHAPTER XI.

The meditations of genius.—­A work on the art of meditation not yet produced.—­Predisposing the mind.—­Imagination awakens imagination.  —­Generating feelings by music.—­Slight habits.—­Darkness and silence, by suspending the exercise of our senses, increase the vivacity of our conceptions.—­The arts of memory.—­Memory the foundation of genius.  —­Inventions by several to preserve their own moral and literary character.—­And to assist their studies.—­The meditations of genius depend on habit.—­Of the night-time.—­A day of meditation should precede a day of composition.—­Works of magnitude from slight conceptions.—­Of thoughts never written.—­The art of meditation exercised at all hours and places.  —­Continuity of attention the source of philosophical discoveries.  —­Stillness of meditation the first state of existence in genius.

A continuity of attention, a patient quietness of mind, forms one of the characteristics of genius.  To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius—­the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.  There is a thread in our thoughts, as there is a pulse in our hearts; he who can hold the one, knows how to think; and he who can move the other, knows how to feel.