It is, however, only in solitude that the genius of eminent men has been formed.  There their first thoughts sprang, and there it will become them to find their last:  for the solitude of old age—­and old age must be often in solitude—­may be found the happiest with the literary character.  Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the true parent of genius.  In all ages solitude has been called for—­has been flown to.  No considerable work was ever composed till its author, like an ancient magician, first retired to the grove, or to the closet, to invocate.  When genius languishes in an irksome solitude among crowds, that is the moment to fly into seclusion and meditation.  There is a society in the deepest solitude; in all the men of genius of the past

  First of your kind, Society divine!

and in themselves; for there only can they indulge in the romances of their soul, and there only can they occupy themselves in their dreams and their vigils, and, with the morning, fly without interruption to the labour they had reluctantly quitted.  If there be not periods when they shall allow their days to melt harmoniously into each other, if they do not pass whole weeks together in their study, without intervening absences, they will not be admitted into the last recess of the Muses.  Whether their glory come from researches, or from enthusiasm, time, with not a feather ruffled on his wings, time alone opens discoveries and kindles meditation.  This desert of solitude, so vast and so dreary to the man of the world, to the man of genius is the magical garden of Armida, whose enchantments arose amidst solitude, while solitude was everywhere among those enchantments.

Whenever MICHAEL ANGELO, that “divine madman,” as Richardson once wrote on the back of one of his drawings, was meditating on some great design, he closed himself up from the world, “Why do you lead so solitary a life?” asked a friend.  “Art,” replied the sublime artist, “Art is a jealous god; it requires the whole and entire man.”  During his mighty labour in the Sistine Chapel, he refused to have any communication with any person even at his own house.  Such undisturbed and solitary attention is demanded even by undoubted genius as the price of performance.  How then shall we deem of that feebler race who exult in occasional excellence, and who so often deceive themselves by mistaking the evanescent flashes of genius for that holier flame which burns on its altar, because the fuel is incessantly supplied?

We observe men of genius, in public situations, sighing for this solitude.  Amidst the impediments of the world, they are doomed to view their intellectual banquet often rising before them, like some fairy delusion, never to taste it.  The great VERULAM often complained of the disturbances of his public life, and rejoiced in the occasional retirement he stole from public affairs.  “And now, because I am in the country, I will send you some of my country fruits, which with