“The Perfection of a Christian, or the Life of a Christian;” yet was he an utter stranger to Gospel maxims; and FREDERICK THE GREAT, when young, published his “Anti-Machiavel,” and deceived the world by the promise of a pacific reign.  This military genius protested against those political arts which, he afterwards adroitly practised, uniting the lion’s head with the fox’s tail—­and thus himself realising the political monster of Machiavel!

[Footnote A:  See what is said on this subject in the article on Sterne in the “Literary Miscellanies,” of the present volume.]

And thus also is it with the personal dispositions of an author, which may be quite the reverse from those which appear in his writings.  Johnson would not believe that HORACE was a happy man because his verses were cheerful, any more than he could think POPE so, because the poet is continually informing us of it.  It surprised Spence when Pope told him that ROWE, the tragic poet, whom he had considered so solemn a personage, “would laugh all day long, and do nothing else but laugh.”  Lord Kaimes says, that ARBUTHNOT must have been a great genius, for he exceeded Swift and Addison in humorous painting; although we are informed he had nothing of that peculiarity in his character.  YOUNG, who is constantly contemning preferment in his writings, was all his life pining after it; and the conversation of the sombrous author of the “Night Thoughts” was of the most volatile kind, abounding with trivial puns.  He was one of the first who subscribed to the assembly at Wellwyn.  Mrs. Carter, who greatly admired his sublime poetry, expressing her surprise at his social converse, he replied, “Madam, there is much difference between writing and talking.”

MOLIERE, on the contrary, whose humour is so perfectly comic, and even ludicrous, was thoughtful and serious, and even melancholy.  His strongly-featured physiognomy exhibits the face of a great tragic, rather than of a great comic, poet.  Boileau called Moliere “The Contemplative Man.”  Those who make the world laugh often themselves laugh the least.  A famous and witty harlequin of France was overcome with hypochondriasm, and consulted a physician, who, after inquiring about his malady, told his miserable patient, that he knew of no other medicine for him than to take frequent doses of Carlin—­“I am Carlin himself,” exclaimed the melancholy man, in despair.  BURTON, the pleasant and vivacious author of “The Anatomy of Melancholy,” of whom it is noticed, that he could in an interval of vapours raise laughter in any company, in his chamber was “mute and mopish,” and at last was so overcome by that intellectual disorder, which he appeared to have got rid of by writing his volume, that it is believed he closed his life in a fit of melancholy.[A]

[Footnote A:  It is reported of him that his only mode of alleviating his melancholy was by walking from his college at Oxford to the bridge, to listen to the rough jokes of the bargemen.]