him, "had always a metaphysical passion for one princess
or other,--the rustic Lucy Porter, or the haughty Molly Aston, or the
sublimated methodistic Hill Boothby; and, lastly, the more charming Mrs.
Thrale." Even in his advanced age, at the height of his celebrity, we hear
his cries of lonely wretchedness. "I want every comfort; my life is very
solitary and very cheerless. Let me know that I have yet a friend--let us
be kind to one another." But the "kindness" of distant friends is like
the polar sun--too far removed to warm us. Those who have eluded the
individual tenderness of the female, are tortured by an aching void in
their feelings. The stoic AKENSIDE, in his "Odes," has preserved the
history of a life of genius in a series of his own feelings. One entitled,
"At Study," closes with these memorable lines:--

Me though no peculiar fair
Touches with a lover's care;
Though the pride of my desire
Asks immortal friendship's name,
Asks the palm of honest fame
And the old heroic lyre;
Though the day have smoothly gone,
Or to letter'd leisure known,
Or in social duty spent;
Yet at the eve my lonely breast
_Seeks in vain for perfect rest,
Languishes for true content._

If ever a man of letters lived in a state of energy and excitement which
might raise him above the atmosphere of social love, it was assuredly the
enthusiast, THOMAS HOLLIS, who, solely devoted to literature and to
republicanism, was occupied in furnishing Europe and America with editions
of his favourite authors. He would not marry, lest marriage should
interrupt the labours of his platonic politics. But his extraordinary
memoirs, while they show an intrepid mind in a robust frame, bear witness
to the self-tormentor who had trodden down the natural bonds of domestic
life. Hence the deep "dejection of his spirits;" those incessant cries,
that he has "no one to advise, assist, or cherish those magnanimous
pursuits in him." At length he retreated into the country, in utter
hopelessness. "I go not into the country for attentions to agriculture as
such, nor attentions of interest of any kind, which I have ever despised
as such; but as a _used man_, to pass the remainder of a life in tolerable
sanity and quiet, after having given up the flower of it, voluntarily,
day, week, month, year after year, successive to each other, to public
service, and being no longer able to sustain, in _body or mind_, the
labours that I have cho