t his
constitution was liable to be afflicted with jealousy. Literary jealousy
seems often proportioned to the degree of genius, and the shadowy and
equivocal claims of literary honour is the real cause of this terrible
fear; for in cases where the object is more palpable and definite than
intellectual excellence, jealousy does not appear so strongly to affect
the claimant for admiration. The most beautiful woman, in the season of
beauty, is more haughty than jealous; she rarely encounters a rival;
and while her claims exist, who can contend with a fine feature or a
dissolving glance? But a man of genius has no other existence than in the
opinion of the world; a divided empire would obscure him, and a contested
one might prove his annihilation.

The lives of authors and artists exhibit a most painful disease in that
jealousy which is the perpetual fever of their existence. Why does PLATO
never mention XENOPHON, and why does XENOPHON inveigh against PLATO,
studiously collecting every little rumour which may detract from his fame?
They wrote on the same subject! The studied affectation of ARISTOTLE to
differ from the doctrines of his master PLATO while he was following them,
led him into ambiguities and contradictions which have been remarked. The
two fathers of our poetry, CHAUCER and GOWER, suffered their friendship to
be interrupted towards the close of their lives. Chaucer bitterly reflects
on his friend for the indelicacy of some of his tales: "Of all such
_cursed stories_ I say fy!" and GOWER, evidently in return, erased those
verses in praise of his friend which he had inserted in the first copy of
his "Confessio Amantis." Why did CORNEILLE, tottering to the grave, when
RACINE consulted him on his first tragedy, advise the author never to
write another? Why does VOLTAIRE continually detract from the sublimity of
Corneille, the sweetness of Racine, and the fire of Crebillon? Why did
DRYDEN never speak of OTWAY with kindness but when in his grave, then
acknowledging that Otway excelled him in the pathetic? Why did LEIBNITZ
speak slightingly of LOCKE's Essay, and meditate on nothing less than the
complete overthrow of NEWTON'S system? Why, when Boccaccio sent to
PETRARCH a copy of DANTE, declaring that the work was like a first light
which had illuminated his mind, did Petrarch boldly observe that he had
not been anxious to inquire after it, for intending himself to compose in
the vernacular idiom, he had no wish to be