d gaiety; the next for rectitude of
conduct, piety, and learning; the last for knowledge, sagacity, and
eloquence. His praise of Reynolds, that he was the most invulnerable of
men, one of whom, if he had a quarrel with him, he should find it the
most difficult to say any ill, was praise rather of the negative kind.
The younger Warton, he contrived to alienate from him, as is related in
the life of that poet. There was, indeed, an entire harmony in their
political principles; but questions of literature touch an author yet
more sensibly than those of state; and the "idem sentire de republica,"
was an imperfect bond of amity between men who appreciated so
differently the Comus and Lycidas of Milton, and the Bucolics of
Theocritus. To Savage and Goldsmith he was attached by similarity of
fortunes and pursuits. A yet closer bond of sympathy united him with
Collins, as the reader will see in the following extracts from letters
which he wrote to Dr. Warton.

How little can we exult in any intellectual powers or literary
entertainments, when we see the fate of poor Collins. I knew him a few
years ago, full of hopes and full of projects, versed in many languages,
high in fancy, and strong in retention. This busy and forcible mind is
now under the government of those who lately would not have been able to
comprehend the least and most narrow of its designs.--March 8, 1754.

Poor dear Collins. Let me know whether you think it would give him
pleasure that I should write to him. I have often been near his state,
and therefore have it in great commisseration. * * *

What becomes of poor dear Collins? I wrote him a letter which he never
answered. I suppose writing is very troublesome to him. That man is no
common loss. The moralists all talk of the uncertainty of fortune, and
the transitoriness of beauty; but it is yet more dreadful to consider
that the powers of the mind are equally liable to change, that
understanding may make its appearance, and depart, that it may blaze and
expire.--April 15, 1756.[14]

Difference of opinion respecting the American war did not separate him
from Burke and Fox; and when the nation was afterwards divided by the
struggle between the court and populace on one side and the aristocracy
on the other, though his principles determined him to that party in
which he found the person though perhaps not the interests of his
sovereign, yet his affections continued with the great leader in the
House of Commo