talent for several years; and having resumed it, his first comedy
totally failed: "My head," says he, "was occupied with my professional
employment; I was uneasy in mind and in bad humour." A lawsuit, a
bankruptcy, a domestic feud, or an indulgence in criminal or in foolish
pursuits, have chilled the fervour of imagination, scattered into
fragments many a noble design, and paralysed the finest genius. The
distractions of GUIDO'S studies from his passion for gaming, and of
PARMEGIANO'S for alchemy, have been traced in their works, which are often
hurried over and unequal. It is curious to observe, that CUMBERLAND
attributes the excellence of his comedy, _The West Indian_, to the
peculiarly happy situation in which he found himself at the time of its
composition, free from the incessant avocations which had crossed him in
the writing of _The Brothers._ "I was master of my time, my mind was free,
and I was happy in the society of the dearest friends I had on earth. The
calls of office, the cavillings of angry rivals, and the gibings of
newspaper critics, could not reach me on the banks of the Shannon, where
all within-doors was love and affection. In no other period of my life
have the same happy circumstances combined to cheer me in any of my
literary labours."

The best years of MENGS' life were embittered by his father, a poor
artist, and who, with poorer feelings, converted his home into a
prison-house, forced his son into the slavery of stipulated task-work,
while bread and water were the only fruits of the fine arts. In this
domestic persecution, the son contracted those morose and saturnine
habits which in after-life marked the character of the ungenial MENGS.
ALONSO CANO, a celebrated Spanish painter, would have carried his art to
perfection, had not the unceasing persecution of the Inquisitors entirely
deprived him of that tranquillity so necessary to the very existence of
art. OVID, in exile on the barren shores of Tomos, deserted by his
genius, in his copious _Tristia_ loses much of the luxuriance of his
fancy.

We have a remarkable evidence of domestic unhappiness annihilating the
very faculty of genius itself, in the case of Dr. BROOK TAYLOR, the
celebrated author of the "Linear Perspective." This great mathematician in
early life distinguished himself as an inventor in science, and the most
sanguine hopes of his future discoveries were raised both at home and
abroad. Two unexpected events in domestic life e