too much, of the tender domesticity of life is violated by literary characters.  All that lives under their eye, all that should be guided by their hand, the recluse and abstracted men of genius must leave to their own direction.  But let it not be forgotten, that, if such neglect others, they also neglect themselves, and are deprived of those family enjoyments for which few men have warmer sympathies.  While the literary character burns with the ambition of raising a great literary name, he is too often forbidden to taste of this domestic intercourse, or to indulge the versatile curiosity of his private amusements—­for he is chained to his great labour.  ROBERTSON felt this while employed on his histories, and he at length rejoiced when, after many years of devoted toil, he returned to the luxury of reading for his own amusement and to the conversation of his friends.  “Such a sacrifice,” observes his philosophical biographer, “must be more or less made by all who devote themselves to letters, whether with a view to emolument or to fame; nor would it perhaps be easy to make it, were it not for the prospect (seldom, alas! realised) of earning by their exertions that learned and honourable leisure which he was so fortunate as to attain.”

[Footnote A:  For some account of this place, see the chapter on “Literary Residences” in vol. iii. p. 395, of “Curiosities of Literature.”]

[Footnote B:  These facts are drawn from a manuscript of the late Sir Herbert Croft, who regretted that Dr. Johnson would not suffer him to give this account during the doctor’s lifetime, in his Life of Young, but which it had always been his intention to have added to it.]

But men of genius have often been accused of imaginary crimes.  Their very eminence attracts the lie of calumny, which tradition often conveys beyond the possibility of refutation.  Sometimes they are reproached as wanting in affection, when they displease their fathers by making an obscure name celebrated.  The family of DESCARTES lamented, as a blot in their escutcheon, that Descartes, who was born a gentleman, should become a philosopher; and this elevated genius was refused the satisfaction of embracing an unforgiving parent, while his dwarfish brother, with a mind diminutive as his person, ridiculed his philosophic relative, and turned to advantage his philosophic disposition.  The daughter of ADDISON was educated with a perfect contempt of authors, and blushed to bear a name more illustrious than that of all the Warwicks, on her alliance to which noble family she prided herself.  The children of MILTON, far from solacing the age of their blind parent, became impatient for his death, embittered his last hours with scorn and disaffection, and combined to cheat and rob him.  Milton, having enriched our national poetry by two immortal epics, with patient grief blessed the single female who did not entirely abandon him, and the obscure fanatic who was pleased with his poems because they were religious.  What