e inspires, is often that of the most
romantic friendship. The delirium of love, and even its lighter caprices,
are incompatible with the pursuits of the student; but to feel friendship
like a passion is necessary to the mind of genius alternately elated and
depressed, ever prodigal of feeling and excursive in knowledge.

The qualities which constitute literary friendship, compared with those of
men of the world, must render it a sentiment as rare as love itself, which
it resembles in that intellectual tenderness in which both so deeply
participate.

Born "in the dews of their youth," this friendship will not expire on
their tomb. In the school or the college this immortality begins; and,
engaged in similar studies, should even one excel the other, he will find
in him the protector of his fame; as ADDISON did in STEELE, WEST in GRAY,
and GRAY in MASON. Thus PETRARCH was the guide of Boccaccio, thus
BOCCACCIO became the defender of his master's genius. Perhaps friendship
is never more intense than in an intercourse of minds of ready counsels
and inspiring ardours. United in the same pursuits, but directed by an
unequal experience, the imperceptible superiority interests, without
mortifying. It is a counsel, it is an aid; in whatever form it shows
itself, it has nothing of the malice of rivalry.

A beautiful picture of such a friendship among men of genius offers itself
in the history of MIGNARD, the great French painter, and DU FRESNOY, the
great critic of the art itself. DU FRESNOY, abandoned in utter scorn
by his stern father, an apothecary, for his entire devotion to his
seductive art, lived at Rome in voluntary poverty, till MIGNARD, his old
fellow-student, arrived, when they became known by the name of "the
inseparables." The talents of the friends were different, but their
studios were the same. Their days melted away together in drawing from the
ancient statues and the basso-relievos, in studying in the galleries of
paintings, or among the villas which embellish the environs of Rome. One
roof sheltered them, and one table supplied their sober meal. Light were
the slumbers which closed each day, each the pleasing image of the former.
But this remarkable friendship was not a simple sentiment which limited
the views of "the Inseparables," for with them it was a perpetual source
of mutual usefulness. They gave accounts to each other of whatever they
observed, and carefully noted their own defects. DU FRESNOY, so crit