while other motives, by no means blameable, induced you to adopt an honourable leisure; honestum otium."[A] These motives appear in the interesting memoirs of this man of letters; a contempt of political intrigues combined with a desire to escape from the splendid bustle of Rome to the learned leisure of Athens.  He wished to dismiss a pompous train of slaves for the delight of assembling under his roof a literary society of readers and transcribers.  And having collected under that roof the portraits or busts of the illustrious men of his country, inspired by their spirit and influenced by their virtues or their genius, he inscribed under them, in concise verses, the characters of their mind.  Valuing wealth only for its use, a dignified economy enabled him to be profuse, and a moderate expenditure allowed him to be generous.

[Footnote A:  “Ad Atticum,” Lib. i.  Ep. 17.]

The result of this literary life was the strong affections of the Athenians.  At the first opportunity the absence of the man of letters offered, they raised a statue to him, conferring on our POMPONIUS the fond surname of ATTICUS.  To have received a name from the voice of the city they inhabited has happened to more than one man of letters.  PINELLI, born a Neapolitan, but residing at Venice, among other peculiar honours received from the senate, was there distinguished by the affectionate title of “the Venetian.”

Yet such a character as ATTICUS could not escape censure from “men of the world.”  They want the heart and the imagination to conceive something better than themselves.  The happy indifference, perhaps the contempt of our ATTICUS for rival factions, they have stigmatised as a cold neutrality, a timid pusillanimous hypocrisy.  Yet ATTICUS could not have been a mutual friend, had not both parties alike held the man of letters as a sacred being amidst their disguised ambition; and the urbanity of ATTICUS, while it balanced the fierceness of two heroes, Pompey and Caesar, could even temper the rivalry of genius in the orators Hortensius and Cicero.  A great man of our own country widely differed from the accusers of Atticus.  Sir MATTHEW HALE lived in distracted times, and took the character of our man of letters for his model, adopting two principles in the conduct of the Roman.  He engaged himself with no party business, and afforded a constant relief to the unfortunate, of whatever party.  He was thus preserved amidst the contests of the times.

If the personal interests of the man of letters be not deeply involved in society, his individual prosperity, however, is never contrary to public happiness.  Other professions necessarily exist by the conflict and the calamities of the community:  the politician becomes great by hatching an intrigue; the lawyer, in counting his briefs; the physician, his sick-list.  The soldier is clamorous for war; the merchant riots on high prices.  But the man of letters only calls for peace and books, to unite himself with his brothers