hus told by Southey: "The news of Churchill's
death was somewhat abruptly announced to Lloyd as he sat at dinner; he was
seized with a sudden sickness, and saying, 'I shall follow poor Charles,'
took to his bed, from which he never rose again; dying, if ever man died,
of a broken heart. The tragedy did not end here: Churchill's favourite
sister, who is said to have possessed much of her brother's sense, and
spirit, and genius, and to have been betrothed to Lloyd, attended him
during his illness, and, sinking under the double loss, soon followed her
brother and her lover to the grave."--ED.]

The statesman Fouquet, deserted by all others, witnessed LA FONTAINE
hastening every literary man to his prison-gate. Many have inscribed their
works to their disgraced patrons, as POPE did so nobly to the Earl of
Oxford in the Tower:

When interest calls off all her sneaking train,
And all the obliged desert, and all the vain,
They wait, or to the scaffold, or the cell,
When the last lingering friend has bid farewell.

Literary friendship is a sympathy not of manners, but of feelings. The
personal character may happen to be very opposite: the vivacious may be
loved by the melancholic, and the wit by the man of learning. He who is
vehement and vigorous will feel himself a double man by the side of the
friend who is calm and subtle. When we observe such friendships, we are
apt to imagine that they are not real because the characters are
dissimilar; but it is their common tastes and pursuits which form a bond
of union. POMPONIUS LAETUS, so called from his natural good-humour, was
the personal friend of HERMOLATTS BARBABUS, whose saturnine and melancholy
disposition he often exhilarated; the warm, impetuous LUTHER, was the
beloved friend of the mild and amiable MELANCTHON; the caustic BOILEAU was
the companion of RACINE and MOLIERE; and France, perhaps, owes the
_chefs-d'oeuvre_ of her tragic and her comic poet to her satirist. The
delicate taste and the refining ingenuity of HURD only attached him the
more to the impetuous and dogmatic WARBURTON[A]. No men could be more
opposite in personal character than the careless, gay, and hasty STEELE,
and the cautious, serious, and the elegant ADDISON; yet no literary
friendship was more fortunate than their union.

[Footnote A: For a full account of their literary career see the first
article in "Quarrels of Authors."]

One glory is reserved for literary friendship. The friendship