immense ones to spread out her papers, solid ones to hold her instruments, lighter ones, &c.  Yet with all this she could not escape from the accident which happened to Philip II., after passing the night in writing, when a bottle of ink fell over the despatches; but the lady did not imitate the moderation of the prince; indeed, she had not written on State affairs, and what was spoilt in her room was algebra, much more difficult to copy out.”  Here is a pair of portraits of a great poet and a great mathematician, whose habits were discordant with the fashionable circle in which they resided—­the representation is just, for it is by one of the coterie itself.

Study, meditation, and enthusiasm,—­this is the progress of genius, and these cannot be the habits of him who lingers till he can only live among polished crowds; who, if he bear about him the consciousness of genius, will still be acting under their influences.  And perhaps there never was one of this class of men who had not either first entirely formed himself in solitude, or who amidst society will not be often breaking out to seek for himself.  WILKES, no longer touched by the fervours of literary and patriotic glory, suffered life to melt away as a domestic voluptuary; and then it was that he observed with some surprise of the great Earl of CHATHAM, that he sacrificed every pleasure of social life, even in youth, to his great pursuit of eloquence.  That ardent character studied Barrow’s Sermons so often as to repeat them from memory, and could even read twice from beginning to end Bailey’s Dictionary; these are little facts which belong only to great minds!  The earl himself acknowledged an artifice he practised in his intercourse with society, for he said, “when he was young, he always came late into company, and left it early.”  VITTORIO ALFIERI, and a brother-spirit, our own noble poet, were rarely seen amidst the brilliant circle in which they were born.  The workings of their imagination were perpetually emancipating them, and one deep loneliness of feeling proudly insulated them among the unimpassioned triflers of their rank.  They preserved unbroken the unity of their character, in constantly escaping from the processional spectacle of society.[A] It is no trivial observation of another noble writer, Lord SHAFTESBURY, that “it may happen that a person may be so much the worse author, for being the finer gentleman.”

[Footnote A:  In a note which Lord BYRON has written in a copy of this work his lordship says, “I fear this was not the case; I have been but too much in that circle, especially in 1812-13-14.”

To the expression of “one deep loneliness of feeling,” his lordship has marked in the margin “True.”  I am gratified to confirm the theory of my ideas of the man of genius, by the practical experience of the greatest of our age.]