ffice in guarding the
hallowed asylum of FENELON.[A] In the grandeur of Milton's verse we
perceive the feeling he associated with this literary honour:

The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus when temple and tower
Went to the ground--.

[Footnote A: The printing office of Plantyn, at Antwerp, was guarded in a
similar manner during the great revolution that separated Holland and
Belgium, when a troop of soldiers were stationed in its courtyard. See
"Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 77, _note_.--ED.]

And the meanest things, the very household stuff, associated with the
memory of the man of genius, become the objects of our affections. At a
festival, in honour of THOMSON the poet, the chair in which he composed
part of his "Seasons" was produced, and appears to have communicated some
of the raptures to which he was liable who had sat in that chair.
RABEIAIS, amongst his drollest inventions, could not have imagined that
his old cloak would have been preserved in the university of Montpelier
for future doctors to wear on the day they took their degree; nor could
SHAKSPEARE have supposed, with all his fancy, that the mulberry-tree which
he planted would have been multiplied into relics. But in such instances
the feeling is right, with a wrong direction; and while the populace are
exhausting their emotions on an old tree, an old chair, and an old cloak,
they are paying that involuntary tribute to genius which forms its pride,
and will generate the race.

CHAPTER XXV.

Influence of Authors on society, and of society on Authors.--National
tastes a source of literary prejudices.--True Genius always the organ of
its nation.--Master-writers preserve the distinct national character.
--Genius the organ of the state of the age.--Causes of its suppression in
a people.--Often invented, but neglected.--The natural gradations of
genius.--Men of Genius produce their usefulness in privacy.--The public
mind is now the creation of the public writer.--Politicians affect to deny
this principle.--Authors stand between the governors and the governed.--A
view of the solitary Author in his study.--They create an epoch in
history.--Influence of popular Authors.--The immortality of thought.--The
Family of Genius illustrated by their genealogy.

Literary fame, which is the sole preserver of all other fame, participates
little, and remotely, in the remuneration and the honours of professional
characters