One position we may assume, that the studies, and even the happiness of the pursuits of men of genius, are powerfully influenced by the domestic associate of their lives.

They rarely pass through the age of love without its passion.  Even their Delias and their Amandas are often the shadows of some real object; for as Shakspeare’s experience told him,

  “Never durst poet touch a pen to write,
  Until his ink were temper’d with love’s sighs.”

Their imagination is perpetually colouring those pictures of domestic happiness on which they delight to dwell.  He who is no husband sighs for that tenderness which is at once bestowed and received; and tears will start in the eyes of him who, in becoming a child among children, yet feels that he is no father!  These deprivations have usually been the concealed cause of the querulous melancholy of the literary character.

Such was the real occasion of SHENSTONE’S unhappiness.  In early life he had been captivated by a young lady adapted to be both the muse and the wife of the poet, and their mutual sensibility lasted for some years.  It lasted until she died.  It was in parting from her that he first sketched his “Pastoral Ballad.”  SHENSTONE had the fortitude to refuse marriage.  His spirit could not endure that she should participate in that life of self-privations to which he was doomed; but his heart was not locked up in the ice of celibacy, and his plaintive love songs and elegies flowed from no fictitious source.  “It is long since,” said he, “I have considered myself as undone.  The world will not perhaps consider me in that light entirely till I have married my maid."[A]

[Footnote A:  The melancholy tale of Shenstone’s life is narrated in the third volume “Curiosities of Literature,”—­ED.]

THOMSON met a reciprocal passion in his Amanda, while the full tenderness of his heart was ever wasting itself like waters in a desert.  As we have been made little acquainted with this part of the history of the poet of the “Seasons,” I shall give his own description of those deep feelings from a manuscript letter written to Mallet.  “To turn my eyes a softer way, to you know who—­absence sighs it to me.  What is my heart made of? a soft system of low nerves, too sensible for my quiet—­capable of being very happy or very unhappy, I am afraid the last will prevail.  Lay your hand upon a kindred heart, and despise me not.  I know not what it is, but she dwells upon my thought in a mingled sentiment, which is the sweetest, the most intimately pleasing the soul can receive, and which I would wish never to want towards some dear object or another.  To have always some secret darling idea to which one can still have recourse amidst the noise and nonsense of the world, and which never fails to touch us in the most exquisite manner, is an art of happiness that fortune cannot deprive us of.  This may be called romantic; but whatever the cause is, the effect is really felt.  Pray, when you write, tell me when you saw her, and with the pure eye of a friend, when you see her again, whisper that I am her most humble servant.”