When the temper and the leisure of the literary character are alike broken, even his best works, the too faithful mirrors of his state of mind, will participate in its inequalities; and surely the incubations of genius, in its delicate and shadowy combinations, are not less sensible in their operation than the composition of sonorous bodies, where, while the warm metal is settling in the mould, even an unusual vibration of the air during the moment of fusion will injure the tone.

Some of the conspicuous blemishes of several great compositions may be attributed to the domestic infelicities of their authors.  The desultory life of CAMOENS is imagined to be perceptible in the deficient connexion of his epic; and MILTON’S blindness and divided family prevented that castigating criticism, which otherwise had erased passages which have escaped from his revising hand.  He felt himself in the situation of his Samson Agonistes, whom he so pathetically describes—­

  His foes’ derision, captive, poor, and blind.

Even LOCKE complains of his “discontinued way of writing,” and “writing by incoherent parcels,” from the avocations of a busy and unsettled life, which undoubtedly produced a deficiency of method in the disposition of the materials of his great work.  The careless rapid lines of DRYDEN are justly attributed to his distress, and indeed he pleads for his inequalities from his domestic circumstances.  JOHNSON often silently, but eagerly, corrected the “Ramblers” in their successive editions, of which so many had been despatched in haste.  The learned GREAVES offered some excuses for his errors in his edition of “Abulfeda,” from “his being five years encumbered with lawsuits, and diverted from his studies.”  When at length he returned to them, he expresses his surprise “at the pains he had formerly undergone,” but of which he now felt himself “unwilling, he knew not how, of again undergoing.”  GOLDONI, when at the bar, abandoned his comic talent for several years; and having resumed it, his first comedy totally failed:  “My head,” says he, “was occupied with my professional employment; I was uneasy in mind and in bad humour.”  A lawsuit, a bankruptcy, a domestic feud, or an indulgence in criminal or in foolish pursuits, have chilled the fervour of imagination, scattered into fragments many a noble design, and paralysed the finest genius.  The distractions of GUIDO’S studies from his passion for gaming, and of PARMEGIANO’S for alchemy, have been traced in their works, which are often hurried over and unequal.  It is curious to observe, that CUMBERLAND attributes the excellence of his comedy, The West Indian, to the peculiarly happy situation in which he found himself at the time of its composition, free from the incessant avocations which had crossed him in the writing of The Brothers. “I was master of my time, my mind was free, and I was happy in the society of the dearest friends I had on earth.  The calls of office, the cavillings of angry rivals, and the gibings of newspaper critics, could not reach me on the banks of the Shannon, where all within-doors was love and affection.  In no other period of my life have the same happy circumstances combined to cheer me in any of my literary labours.”