that noble wit of Scotland, Sir George Mackenzie, he had not known the
beautiful turn of words and thoughts in poetry, which Sir George had
explained and exemplified to him in conversation. As a judge, and king's
advocate, will not the barbarous customs of the age defend his name? He
is most hideously painted forth by the dark pencil of a poetical
Spagnoletti (Grahame), in his poem on "The Birds of Scotland." Sir
George lived in the age of rebellion, and used torture: we must entirely
put aside his political, to attend to his literary character. Blair has
quoted his pleadings as a model of eloquence, and Grahame is unjust to
the fame of Mackenzie, when he alludes to his "half-forgotten name." In
1689, he retired to Oxford, to indulge the luxuries of study in the
Bodleian Library, and to practise that solitude which so delighted him
in theory; but three years afterwards he fixed himself in London.
Evelyn, who wrote in favour of public employment being preferable to
solitude, passed his days in the tranquillity of his studies, and wrote
against the habits which he himself most loved. By this it may appear,
that that of which we have the least experience ourselves, will ever be
what appears most delightful! Alas! everything in life seems to have in
it the nature of a bubble of air, and, when touched, we find nothing but
emptiness in our hand. It is certain that the most eloquent writers in
favour of solitude have left behind them too many memorials of their
unhappy feelings, when they indulged this passion to excess; and some
ancient has justly said, that none but a god, or a savage, can suffer
this exile from human nature.

The following extracts from Sir George Mackenzie's tract on Solitude are
eloquent and impressive, and merit to be rescued from that oblivion
which surrounds many writers, whose genius has not been effaced, but
concealed, by the transient crowd of their posterity:--

I have admired to see persons of virtue and humour long much to
be in the city, where, when they come they found nor sought for
no other divertissement than to visit one another; and there to
do nothing else than to make legs, view others habit, talk of
the weather, or some such pitiful subject, and it may be, if
they made a farther inroad upon any other affair, they did so
pick one another, that it afforded them matter of eternal
quarrel; for what was at first but an indifferent subject, is
b