while they
become the easy dupes of the designing. A friend, who was in office with
the late Mr. CUMBERLAND, assures me, that he was so intractable to the
forms of business, and so easily induced to do more or to do less than he
ought, that he was compelled to perform the official business of this
literary man, to free himself from his annoyance; and yet Cumberland could
not be reproached with any deficiency in a knowledge of the human
character, which he was always touching with caustic pleasantry.

ADDISON and PRIOR were unskilful statesmen; and MALESHERBES confessed, a
few days before his death, that TURGOT and himself, men of genius and
philosophers, from whom the nation had expected much, had badly
administered the affairs of the state; for "knowing men but by books, and
unskilful in business, we could not form the king to the government." A
man of genius may know the whole map of the world of human nature; but,
like the great geographer, may be apt to be lost in the wood which any one
in the neighbourhood knows better than him.

"The conversation of a poet," says Goldsmith, "is that of a man of sense,
while his actions are those of a fool." Genius, careless of the future,
and often absent in the present, avoids too deep a commingling in the
minor cares of life. Hence it becomes a victim to common fools and vulgar
villains. "I love my family's welfare, but I cannot be so foolish as to
make myself the slave to the minute affairs of a house," said MONTESQUIEU.
The story told of a man of learning is probably true, however ridiculous
it may appear. Deeply occupied in his library, one, rushing in, informed
him that the house was on fire: "Go to my wife--these matters belong to
her!" pettishly replied the interrupted student. BACON sat at one end of
his table wrapt in many a reverie, while at the other the creatures about
him were trafficking with his honour, and ruining his good name: "I am
better fitted for this," said that great man once, holding out a book,
"than for the life I have of late led. Nature has not fitted me for that;
knowing myself by inward calling to be fitter to hold a book than to play
a part."

BUFFON, who consumed his mornings in his old tower of Montbard, at the end
of his garden,[A] with all nature opening to him, formed all his ideas of
what was passing before him from the arts of a pliant Capuchin, and the
comments of a perruquier on the scandalous chronicle of the village. These
humble confi