Formed by the same habits, and influenced by the same motives, notwithstanding the contrast of talents and tempers, and the remoteness of times and places, the literary character has ever preserved among its followers the most striking family resemblance.  The passion for study, the delight in books, the desire of solitude and celebrity, the obstructions of human life, the character of their pursuits, the uniformity of their habits, the triumphs and the disappointments of literary glory, were as truly described by CICERO and the younger PLINY as by PETRARCH and ERASMUS, and as they have been by HUME and GIBBON.  And this similarity, too, may equally be remarked with respect to that noble passion of the lovers of literature and of art for collecting together their mingled treasures; a thirst which was as insatiable in ATTICUS and PEIRESC as in our CRACHERODE and TOWNLEY.[A] We trace the feelings of our literary contemporaries in all ages, and among every people who have ranked with nations far advanced in civilization; for among these may be equally observed both the great artificers of knowledge and those who preserve unbroken the vast chain of human acquisitions.  The one have stamped the images of their minds on their works, and the others have preserved the circulation of this intellectual coinage, this

—­Gold of the dead,
Which Time does still disperse, but not devour.

[Footnote A:  The Rev. C.M.  Cracherode bequeathed at his death, in 1799, to the British Museum, the large collection of literature, art, and virtu he had employed an industrious life in collecting.  His books numbered nearly 4500 volumes, many of great rarity and value.  His drawings, many by early Italian masters, and all rare or curious, were deposited in the print-room of the same establishment; his antiquities, &c. were in a similar way added to the other departments.  The “Townley Gallery” of classic sculpture was purchased of his executors by Government for 28,200_l_.  It had been collected with singular taste and judgment, as well as some amount of good fortune also; Townley resided at Rome during the researches on the site of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli; and he had for aids and advisers Sir William Hamilton, Gavin Hamilton, and other active collectors; and was the friend and correspondent of D’Haucarville and Winckelmann.—­ED.]

CHAPTER II.

Of the Adversaries of Literary Men among themselves.—­Matter-of-fact Men, and Men of Wit.—­The Political Economist.—­Of those who abandon their studies.—­Men in office.—­The arbiters of public opinion.—­Those who treat the pursuits of literature with levity.

The pursuits of literature have been openly or insidiously lowered by those literary men who, from motives not always difficult to penetrate, are eager to confound the ranks in the republic of letters, maliciously conferring the honours of authorship on that “Ten Thousand” whose recent list is not so much a muster-roll of heroes as a table of population.[A]