Me, non nato a percotere
  Le dure illustri porte,
  Nudo accorra, ma libero
  Il regno della morte.

Naked, but free!  A life of hard deprivations was long that of the illustrious LINNAEUS.  Without fortune, to that great mind it never seemed necessary to acquire any.  Perigrinating on foot with a stylus, a magnifying-glass, and a basket for plants, he shared the rustic meal of the peasant.  Never was glory obtained at a cheaper rate! exclaims one of his eulogists.  Satisfied with the least of the little, he only felt one perpetual want—­that of completing his Flors.  Not that LINNAEUS was insensible to his situation, for he gave his name to a little flower in Lapland—­the Linnaea Borealis, from the fanciful analogy he discovered between its character and his own early fate, “a little northern plant flowering early, depressed, abject, and long overlooked.”  The want of fortune, however, did not deprive this man of genius of his true glory, nor of that statue raised to him in the gardens of the University of Upsal, nor of that solemn eulogy delivered by a crowned head, nor of those medals which his nation struck to commemorate the genius of the three kingdoms of nature!

This, then, is the race who have often smiled at the light regard of their good neighbours when contrasted with their own celebrity; for in poverty and in solitude such men are not separated from their fame; that is ever proceeding, ever raising a secret, but constant, triumph in their minds.[A]

Yes!  Genius, undegraded and unexhausted, may indeed even in a garret glow in its career; but it must be on the principle which induced ROUSSEAU solemnly to renounce writing “par metier.”  This in the Journal de Scavans he once attempted, but found himself quite inadequate to “the profession."[B] In a garret, the author of the “Studies of Nature,” as he exultingly tells us, arranged his work.  “It was in a little garret, in the new street of St. Etienne du Mont, where I resided four years, in the midst of physical and domestic afflictions.  But there I enjoyed the most exquisite pleasures of my life, amid profound solitude and an enchanting horizon.  There I put the finishing hand to my ‘Studies of Nature,’ and there I published them.”  Pope, one day taking his usual walk with Harte in the Haymarket, desired him to enter a little shop, where going up three pair of stairs into a small room, Pope said, “In this garret AUDISON wrote his ‘Campaign!’” To the feelings of the poet this garret had become a consecrated spot; Genius seemed more itself, placed in contrast with its miserable locality!

[Footnote A:  Spagnoletto, while sign-painting at Rome, attracted by his ability the notice of a cardinal, who ultimately gave him a home in his palace; but the artist, feeling that his poverty was necessary to his industry and independence, fled to Naples, and recommenced a life of labour.—­ED.]

[Footnote B:  Twice he repeated this resolution.  See his Works, vol. xxxi, p. 283; vol. xxxii. p. 90.]