[Footnote A:  These interesting letters are preserved in Count Baldelli’s “Life of Boccaccio,” p. 115.]

The unity of feeling is displayed in such memorable associates as BEAUMONT and FLETCHER; whose labours are so combined, that no critic can detect the mingled production of either; and whose lives are so closely united, that no biographer can compose the memoirs of the one without running into the history of the other.  Their days were interwoven as their verses.  MONTAIGNE and CHARRON, in the eyes of posterity, are rivals; but such literary friendship knows no rivalry.  Such was Montaigne’s affection for Charron, that he requested him by his will to bear the arms of the Montaignes; and Charrot evinced his gratitude to the manes of his departed friend, by leaving his fortune to the sister of Montaigne.

How pathetically ERASMUS mourns over the death of his beloved Sir THOMAS MORE!—­“In Moro mihi videor extinctus"—­“I seem to see myself extinct in More.”  It was a melancholy presage of his own death, which shortly after followed.  The Doric sweetness and simplicity of old ISAAC WALTON, the angler, were reflected in a mind as clear and generous, when CHARLES COTTON continued the feelings, rather than the little work of Walton.  METASTASIO and FARINELLI called each other il Gemello, the Twin:  and both delighted to trace the resemblance of their lives and fates, and the perpetual alliance of the verse and the voice.  The famous JOHN BAPTISTA PORTA had a love of the mysterious parts of sciences, such as physiognomy, natural magic, the cryptical arts of writing, and projected many curious inventions which astonished his age, and which we have carried to perfection.  This extraordinary man saw his fame somewhat diminishing by a rumour that his brother John Vincent had a great share in the composition of his works; but this never disturbed him; and Peiresc, in an interesting account of a visit to this celebrated Neapolitan, observed, that though now aged and grey-haired, he treated his younger brother as a son.  These single-hearted brothers, who would not marry that they might never be separated, knew of but one fame, and that was the fame of Porta.

GOGUET, the author of “The Origin of the Arts and Sciences,” bequeathed his MSS. and his books to his friend Fugere, with whom he had long united his affections and his studies, that his surviving friend might proceed with them:  but the author had died of a slow and painful disorder, which Fugere had watched by his side, in silent despair.  The sight of those MSS. and books was the friend’s death-stroke; half his soul, which had once given them animation, was parted from him, and a few weeks terminated his own days.  When LLOYD heard of the death of CHURCHILL, he neither wished to survive him, nor did[A].  The Abbe de St. Pierre gave an interesting proof of literary friendship for Varignon, the geometrician.  They were of congenial dispositions, and St. Pierre, when he went to Paris, could not endure