And yet it is seduction, and not reward, which mere fashionable society offers the man of true genius.  He will be sought for with enthusiasm, but he cannot escape from his certain fate—­that of becoming tiresome to his pretended admirers.

At first the idol—­shortly he is changed into a victim.  He forms, indeed, a figure in their little pageant, and is invited as a sort of improvisatore; but the esteem they concede to him is only a part of the system of politeness; and should he be dull in discovering the favourite quality of their self-love, or in participating in their volatile tastes, he will find frequent opportunities of observing, with the sage at the court of Cyprus, that “what he knows is not proper for this place, and what is proper for this place he knows not.”  This society takes little personal interest in the literary character.  HORACE WALPOLE lets us into this secret when writing to another man of fashion, on such a man of genius as GRAY—­“I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about Gray; he is the worst company in the world.  From a melancholy turn, from living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses easily; all his words are measured and chosen, and formed into sentences:  his writings are admirable—­he himself is not agreeable.”  This volatile being in himself personified the quintessence of that society which is called “the world,” and could not endure that equality of intellect which genius exacts.  He rejected Chatterton, and quarrelled with every literary man and every artist whom he first invited to familiarity—­and then hated.  Witness the fates of Bentley, of Muntz, of Gray, of Cole, and others.  Such a mind was incapable of appreciating the literary glory on which the mighty mind of BURKE was meditating.  WALPOLE knew BURKE at a critical moment of his life, and he has recorded his own feelings:—­“There was a young Mr. BURKE who wrote a book, in the style of Lord Bolingbroke, that was much admired.  He is a sensible man, but has not worn off his authorism yet, and thinks there is nothing so charming as writers, and to be one:  he will know better one of these days” GRAY and BURKE!  What mighty men must be submitted to the petrifying sneer—­that indifference of selfism for great sympathies—­of this volatile and heartless man of literature and rank!

                          That thing of silk,
  Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk!

The confidential confession of RACINE to his son is remarkable:—­“Do not think that I am sought after by the great for my dramas; Corneille composes nobler verses than mine, but no one notices him, and he only pleases by the mouth of the actors.  I never allude to my works when with men of the world, but I amuse them about matters they like to hear.  My talent with them consists, not in making them feel that I have any, but in showing them that they have.”  Racine treated the great like the children of society;