converse with the man of genius at his work. There is an elevated
intercourse between power and genius; and if they are deficient in
reciprocal esteem, neither are great. The intellectual nobility seems to
have been asserted by De Harlay, a great French statesman; for when the
Academy was once not received with royal honours, he complained to the
French monarch, observing, that when "a man of letters was presented to
Francis I. for the first time, the king always advanced three steps from
the throne to receive him." It is something more than an ingenious
thought, when Fontenelle, in his _eloge_ on LEIBNITZ, alluding to the
death of Queen Anne, adds of her successor, that "The Elector of Hanover
united under his dominion an electorate, the three kingdoms of Great
Britain, and LEIBNITZ and NEWTON."[A]

[Footnote A: This greatness of intellect that glorifies a court, however
small, is well instanced in that at Weimar, where the Duke Frederic
surrounded himself with the first men in Germany. It was the chosen
residence and burial-place of Herder; the birth-place of Kotzebue. Here
also Wieland resided for many years; and in the vaults of the ducal chapel
the ashes of Schiller repose by those of Goethe, who for more than half a
century assisted in the councils, and adorned the court of Weimar.--Ed.]

If ever the voice of individuals can recompense a life of literary labour,
it is in speaking a foreign accent. This sounds like the distant plaudit
of posterity. The distance of space between the literary character and the
inquirer, in some respects represents the distance of time which separates
the author from the next age. FONTENELLE was never more gratified than
when a Swede, arriving at the gates of Paris, inquired of the custom-house
officers where Fontenelle resided, and expressed his indignation that not
one of them had ever heard of his name. HOBBES expresses his proud delight
that his portrait was sought after by foreigners, and that the Great Duke
of Tuscany made the philosopher the object of his first inquiries. CAMDEN
was not insensible to the visits of German noblemen, who were desirous of
seeing the British Pliny; and POCOCK, while he received no aid from
patronage at home for his Oriental studies, never relaxed in those
unrequited labours, animated by the learned foreigners, who hastened to
see and converse with this prodigy of Eastern learning.

Yes! to the very presence of the man of genius will the world
spon