et insons
(Ut me collaudem) si vivo et carus amicis,
Causa fuit Pater his.

If pure and innocent, if dear (forgive
These little praises) to my friends I live,
My father was the cause.

This intelligent father, an obscure tax-gatherer, discovered the
propensity of Horace's mind; for he removed the boy of genius from a rural
seclusion to the metropolis, anxiously attending on him to his various
masters. GROTIUS, like Horace, celebrated in verse his gratitude to his
excellent father, who had formed him not only to be a man of learning, but
a great character. VITRUVIUS pours forth a grateful prayer to the memory
of his parents, who had instilled into his soul a love for literary and
philosophical subjects; and it is an amiable trait in PLUTARCH to have
introduced his father in the Symposiacs, as an elegant critic and
moralist, and his brother Lamprias, whose sweetness of disposition,
inclining to cheerful raillery, the Sage of Cheronaea has immortalised.
The father of GIBBON urged him to literary distinction, and the dedication
of the "Essay on Literature" to that father, connected with his subsequent
labour, shows the force of the excitement. The father of POPE lived long
enough to witness his son's celebrity.

Tears such as tender fathers shed,
Warm from my eyes descend,
For joy, to think when I am dead,
My son shall have mankind his Friend.[A]

The son of BUFFON one day surprised his father by the sight of a column,
which he had raised to the memory of his father's eloquent genius. "It
will do you honour," observed the Gallic sage.[B] And when that son in the
revolution was led to the guillotine, he ascended in silence, so impressed
with his father's fame, that he only told the people, "I am the son of
Buffon!"

[Footnote A: These lines have been happily applied by Mr. BOWLES to the
father of POPE.--The poet's domestic affections were as permanent as they
were strong.]

[Footnote B: It still exists in the gardens of the old chateau at
Montbard. It is a pillar of marble bearing this inscription:--"Excelsae
turris humilia columna, Parenti suo filius Buffon. 1785."--ED.]

Fathers absorbed in their occupations can but rarely attract their
offspring. The first durable impressions of our moral existence come from
the mother. The first prudential wisdom to which Genius listens falls from
her lips, and only her caresses can create the moments of tenderness. The
earnest discernment of a mothe