of life. In the preface to
Smectymnuus, he says, "It is but justice, not to defraud of due esteem
the _wearisome labours_ and _studious watchings,_ wherein I have spent
and _tired_ out almost a whole youth."

Solitude in a later period of life, or rather the neglect which awaits
the solitary man, is felt with acuter sensibility. Cowley, that
enthusiast for rural seclusion, in his retirement calls himself "The
melancholy Cowley." Mason has truly transferred the same epithet to
Gray. Bead in his letters the history of solitude. We lament the loss of
Cowley's correspondence, through the mistaken notion of Sprat; he
assuredly had painted the sorrows of his heart. But Shenstone has filled
his pages with the cries of an amiable being whose soul bleeds in the
dead oblivion of solitude. Listen to his melancholy expressions:--"Now I
am come from a visit, every little uneasiness is sufficient to
introduce my whole train of melancholy considerations, and to make me
utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life I foresee I
shall lead. I am angry, and envious, and dejected, and frantic, and
disregard all present things, as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely
pleased (though it is a gloomy joy) with the application of Dr. Swift's
complaint, that he is forced to die in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a
hole." Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture throughout the
year, in the following stanza by the same poet:--

Tedious again to curse the drizzling day,
Again to trace the wintry tracks of snow!
Or, soothed by vernal airs, again survey
The self-same hawthorns bud, and cowslips blow!

Swift's letters paint in terrifying colours a picture of solitude, and
at length his despair closed with idiotism. The amiable Gresset could
not sport with the brilliant wings of his butterfly muse, without
dropping some querulous expression on the solitude of genius. In his
"Epistle to his Muse," he exquisitely paints the situation of men of
genius:

----Je les vois, victimes du genie,
Au foible prix d'un eclat passager,
Vivre isoles, sans jouir de la vie!

And afterwards he adds,

Vingt ans d'ennuis, pour quelques jours de gloire!

I conclude with one more anecdote on solitude, which may amuse. When
Menage, attacked by some, and abandoned by others, was seized by a fit
of the spleen, he retreated into the country, and gave up his famous
Mercuriales; those Wednesdays when the literati a