Scarcely have two centuries elapsed since the literature of every nation was limited to its fatherland, and men of genius long could only hope for the spread of their fame in the single language of ancient Rome; which for them had ceased to be natural, and could never be popular.  It was in the intercourse of the wealth, the power, and the novel arts of the nations of Europe, that they learned each other’s languages; and they discovered that, however their manners varied as they arose from their different customs, they participated in the same intellectual faculties, suffered from the same wants, and were alive to the same pleasures; they perceived that there were no conventional fashions, nor national distinctions, in abstract truths and fundamental knowledge.  A new spirit seems to bring them nearer to each other:  and, as if literary Europe were intent to form but one people out of the populace of mankind, they offer their reciprocal labours; they pledge to each other the same opinions; and that knowledge which, like a small river, takes its source from one spot, at length mingles with the ocean-stream common to them all.

But those who stand connected with this literary community are not always sensible of the kindred alliance; even a genius of the first order has not always been aware that he is the founder of a society, and that there will ever be a brotherhood where there is a father-genius.

These literary characters are partially, and with a melancholy colouring, exhibited by JOHNSON.  “To talk in private, to think in solitude, to inquire or to answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar.  He wanders about the world without pomp or terror; and is neither known nor valued but by men like himself.”  Thus thought this great writer during those sad probationary years of genius when

  Slow rises worth, by poverty depress’d;

not yet conscious that he himself was devoting his days to cast the minds of his contemporaries and of the succeeding age in the mighty mould of his own; JOHNSON was of that order of men whose individual genius becomes that of a people.  A prouder conception rose in the majestic mind of MILTON, of “that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise which God and good men have consented shall be the reward of those whose PUBLISHED LABOURS advanced the good of mankind.”

The LITERARY CHARACTER is a denomination which, however vague, defines the pursuits of the individual, and separates him from other professions, although it frequently occurs that he is himself a member of one.  Professional characters are modified by the change of manners, and are usually national; while the literary character, from the objects in which it concerns itself, retains a more permanent, and necessarily a more independent nature.