to part with Varignon, who was too poor to accompany him; and St. Pierre was not rich.  A certain income, however moderate, was necessary for the tranquil pursuits of geometry.  St. Pierre presented Varignon with a portion of his small income, accompanied by that delicacy of feeling which men of genius who know each other can best conceive:  “I do not give it you,” said St. Pierre, “as a salary but as an annuity, that you may be independent, and quit me when you dislike me.”  The same circumstance occurred between AKENSIDE and DYSON.  Dyson, when the poet was in great danger of adding one more illustrious name to the “Calamities of Authors,” interposed between him and ill-fortune, by allowing him an annuity of three hundred a-year; and, when he found the fame of his literary friend attacked, although not in the habit of composition, he published a defence of his poetical and philosophical character.  The name and character of Dyson have been suffered to die away, without a single tribute of even biographical sympathy; as that of LONGUEVILLE, the modest patron of BUTLER, in whom that great political satirist found what the careless ingratitude of a court had denied:  but in the record of literary glory, the patron’s name should be inscribed by the side of the literary character:  for the public incurs an obligation whenever a man of genius is protected.

[Footnote A:  This event is thus told by Southey:  “The news of Churchill’s death was somewhat abruptly announced to Lloyd as he sat at dinner; he was seized with a sudden sickness, and saying, ‘I shall follow poor Charles,’ took to his bed, from which he never rose again; dying, if ever man died, of a broken heart.  The tragedy did not end here:  Churchill’s favourite sister, who is said to have possessed much of her brother’s sense, and spirit, and genius, and to have been betrothed to Lloyd, attended him during his illness, and, sinking under the double loss, soon followed her brother and her lover to the grave.”—­ED.]

The statesman Fouquet, deserted by all others, witnessed LA FONTAINE hastening every literary man to his prison-gate.  Many have inscribed their works to their disgraced patrons, as POPE did so nobly to the Earl of Oxford in the Tower: 

  When interest calls off all her sneaking train,
  And all the obliged desert, and all the vain,
  They wait, or to the scaffold, or the cell,
  When the last lingering friend has bid farewell.

Literary friendship is a sympathy not of manners, but of feelings.  The personal character may happen to be very opposite:  the vivacious may be loved by the melancholic, and the wit by the man of learning.  He who is vehement and vigorous will feel himself a double man by the side of the friend who is calm and subtle.  When we observe such friendships, we are apt to imagine that they are not real because the characters are dissimilar; but it is their common tastes and pursuits which form a bond of union.