Born “in the dews of their youth,” this friendship will not expire on their tomb.  In the school or the college this immortality begins; and, engaged in similar studies, should even one excel the other, he will find in him the protector of his fame; as ADDISON did in STEELE, WEST in GRAY, and GRAY in MASON.  Thus PETRARCH was the guide of Boccaccio, thus BOCCACCIO became the defender of his master’s genius.  Perhaps friendship is never more intense than in an intercourse of minds of ready counsels and inspiring ardours.  United in the same pursuits, but directed by an unequal experience, the imperceptible superiority interests, without mortifying.  It is a counsel, it is an aid; in whatever form it shows itself, it has nothing of the malice of rivalry.

A beautiful picture of such a friendship among men of genius offers itself in the history of MIGNARD, the great French painter, and DU FRESNOY, the great critic of the art itself.  DU FRESNOY, abandoned in utter scorn by his stern father, an apothecary, for his entire devotion to his seductive art, lived at Rome in voluntary poverty, till MIGNARD, his old fellow-student, arrived, when they became known by the name of “the inseparables.”  The talents of the friends were different, but their studios were the same.  Their days melted away together in drawing from the ancient statues and the basso-relievos, in studying in the galleries of paintings, or among the villas which embellish the environs of Rome.  One roof sheltered them, and one table supplied their sober meal.  Light were the slumbers which closed each day, each the pleasing image of the former.  But this remarkable friendship was not a simple sentiment which limited the views of “the Inseparables,” for with them it was a perpetual source of mutual usefulness.  They gave accounts to each other of whatever they observed, and carefully noted their own defects.  DU FRESNOY, so critical in the theory of the art, was unsuccessful in the practical parts.  His delight in poetical composition had retarded the progress of his pictorial powers.  Not having been taught the handling of his pencil, he worked with difficulty; but MIGNARD succeeded in giving him a freer command and a more skilful touch; while DU FRESNOY, who was the more literary man, enriched the invention of MIGNARD by reading to him an Ode of Anacreon or Horace, a passage from the Iliad or Odyssey, or the AEneid, or the Jerusalem Delivered, which offered subjects for the artist’s invention, who would throw out five or six different sketches on the same subject; a habit which so highly improved the inventive powers of MIGNARD, that he could compose a fine picture with playful facility.  Thus they lived-together, mutually enlightening each other.  MIGNARD supplied DU FRESNOY with all that fortune had refused him; and, when he was no more, perpetuated his fame, which he felt was a portion of his own celebrity, by publishing his posthumous poem, De Arts Graphica;[A] a poem, which Mason has made readable by his versification, and Reynolds even interesting by his invaluable commentary.