had illuminated his mind, did Petrarch boldly observe that he had not been anxious to inquire after it, for intending himself to compose in the vernacular idiom, he had no wish to be considered as a plagiary? and he only allows Dante’s superiority from having written in the vulgar idiom, which he did not consider an enviable merit.  Thus frigidly Petrarch could behold the solitary AEtna before him, in the “Inferno,” while he shrunk into himself with the painful consciousness of the existence of another poet, obscuring his own majesty.  It is curious to observe Lord SHAFTESBURY treating with the most acrimonious contempt the great writers of his own times—­Cowley, Dryden, Addison, and Prior.  We cannot imagine that his lordship was so entirely destitute of every feeling of wit and genius as would appear by this damnatory criticism on all the wit and genius of his age.  It is not, indeed, difficult to comprehend a different motive for this extravagant censure in the jealousy which even a great writer often experiences when he comes in contact with his living rivals, and hardily, if not impudently, practises those arts of critical detraction to raise a moment’s delusion, which can gratify no one but himself.

The moral sense has often been found too weak to temper the malignancy of literary jealousy, and has impelled some men of genius to an incredible excess.  A memorable example offers in the history of the two brothers, Dr. WILLIAM and JOHN HUNTER, both great characters fitted to be rivals; but Nature, it was imagined, in the tenderness of blood, had placed a bar to rivalry.  John, without any determined pursuit in his youth, was received by his brother at the height of his celebrity; the doctor initiated him into his school; they performed their experiments together; and William Hunter was the first to announce to the world the great genius of his brother.  After this close connexion in all their studies and discoveries, Dr. William Hunter published his magnificent work—­the proud favourite of his heart, the assertor of his fame.  Was it credible that the genius of the celebrated anatomist, which had been nursed under the wing of his brother, should turn on that wing to clip it?  John Hunter put in his claim to the chief discovery; it was answered by his brother.  The Royal Society, to whom they appealed, concealed the documents of this unnatural feud.  The blow was felt, and the jealousy of literary honour for ever separated the brothers—­the brothers of genius.

Such, too, was the jealousy which separated AGOSTINO and ANNIBAL CARRACCI, whom their cousin LUDOVICO for so many years had attempted to unite, and who, during the time their academy existed, worked together, combining their separate powers.[A] The learning and the philosophy of Agostino assisted the invention of the master genius, Annibal; but Annibal was jealous of the more literary and poetical character of Agostino, and, by his sarcastic humour, frequently mortified his learned brother.