La Harpe, an author by profession, observes, that as it has been shown that there are some maladies peculiar to artisans[A]—­there are also some sorrows peculiar to them, and which the world can neither pity nor soften, because they do not enter into their experience.  The querulous language of so many men of genius has been sometimes attributed to causes very different from the real ones—­the most fortunate live to see their talents contested and their best works decried.  Assuredly many an author has sunk into his grave without the consciousness of having obtained that fame for which he had sacrificed an arduous life.  The too feeling SMOLLETT has left this testimony to posterity:—­“Had some of those, who are pleased to call themselves my friends, been at any pains to deserve the character, and told me ingenuously what I had to expect in the capacity of an author, I should, in all probability, have spared myself the incredible labour and chagrin I have since undergone.”  And Smollett was a popular writer!  POPE’S solemn declaration in the preface to his collected works comes by no means short of Smollett’s avowal.  HUME’S philosophical indifference could often suppress that irritability which Pope and Smollett fully indulged.

[Footnote A:  See Ramazini, “De Morbis Artificium Diatriba,” which Dr. James translated in 1750.  It is a sad reflection, resulting from this curious treatise, that the arts entail no small mischief upon their respective workmen; so that the means by which they live are too often the occasion of their being hurried out of the world.]

But were the feelings of HUME more obtuse, or did his temper, gentle as it was by constitution, bear, with a saintly patience, the mortifications his literary life so long endured?  After recomposing two of his works, which incurred the same neglect in their altered form, he raised the most sanguine hopes of his History, but he tells us, “miserable was my disappointment!” Although he never deigned to reply to his opponents, yet they haunted him; and an eye-witness has thus described the irritated author discovering in conversation his suppressed resentment—­“His forcible mode of expression, the brilliant quick movements of his eyes, and the gestures of his body,” these betrayed the pangs of contempt, or of aversion!  HOGARTH, in a fit of the spleen, advertised that he had determined not to give the world any more original works, and intended to pass the rest of his days in painting portraits.  The same advertisement is marked by farther irritability.  He contemptuously offers the purchasers of his “Analysis of Beauty,” to present them gratis with “an eighteenpenny pamphlet,” published by Ramsay the painter, written in opposition to Hogarth’s principles.  So untameable was the irritability of this great inventor in art, that he attempts to conceal his irritation by offering to dispose gratuitously of the criticism which had disturbed his nights.[A]