ssembled at his house,
to praise up or cry down one another, as is usual with the literary
populace. Menage expected to find that tranquillity in the country which
he had frequently described in his verses; but as he was only a poetical
plagiarist, it is not strange that our pastoral writer was greatly
disappointed. Some country rogues having killed his pigeons, they gave
him more vexation than his critics. He hastened his return to Paris. "It
is better," he observed, "since we are born to suffer, to feel only
reasonable sorrows."

LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS.

The memorable friendship of Beaumont and Fletcher so closely united
their labours, that we cannot discover the productions of either; and
biographers cannot, without difficulty, compose the memoirs of the one,
without running into the life of the other. They pourtrayed the same
characters, while they mingled sentiment with sentiment; and their days
were as closely interwoven as their verses. Metastasio and Farinelli
were born about the same time, and early acquainted. They called one
another _Gemello_, or The Twin, both the delight of Europe, both lived
to an advanced age, and died nearly at the same time. Their fortune
bore, too, a resemblance; for they were both pensioned, but lived and
died separated in the distant courts of Vienna and Madrid. Montaigne and
Charron were rivals, but always friends; such was Montaigne's affection
for Charron, that he permitted him by his will to bear the full arms of
his family; and Charron evinced his gratitude to the manes of his
departed friend, by leaving his fortune to the sister of Montaigne, who
had married. Forty years of friendship, uninterrupted by rivalry or
envy, crowned the lives of Poggius and Leonard Aretin, two of the
illustrious revivers of letters. A singular custom formerly prevailed
among our own writers, which was an affectionate tribute to our literary
veterans by young writers. The former adopted the latter by the title of
sons. Ben Jonson had twelve of these poetical sons. Walton the angler
adopted Cotton, the translator of Montaigne.

Among the most fascinating effusions of genius are those little pieces
which it consecrates to the cause of friendship. In that poem of Cowley,
composed on the death of his friend Harvey, the following stanza
presents a pleasing picture of the employments of two young students:--

Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights,
How oft unwearied have we spent the nigh