death to the mortifying recollections of life.[113]

On this interesting subject Fontenelle, in his "Eloge sur Newton," has
made the following observation:--"Newton was more desirous of remaining
unknown than of having the calm of life disturbed by those literary
storms which genius and science attract about those who rise to
eminence." In one of his letters we learn that his "Treatise on Optics"
being ready for the press, several premature objections which appeared
made him abandon its publication. "I should reproach myself," he said,
"for my imprudence, if I were to lose a thing so real as my ease to run
after a shadow." But this shadow he did not miss: it did not cost him
the ease he so much loved, and it had for him as much reality as ease
itself. I refer to Bayle, in his curious article, "Hipponax," note F. To
these instances we may add the fate of the Abbe Cassagne, a man of
learning, and not destitute of talents. He was intended for one of the
preachers at court; but he had hardly made himself known in the pulpit,
when he was struck by the lightning of Boileau's muse. He felt so
acutely the caustic verses, that they rendered him almost incapable of
literary exertion; in the prime of life he became melancholy, and
shortly afterwards died insane. A modern painter, it is known, never
recovered from the biting ridicule of a popular, but malignant wit.
Cummyns, a celebrated quaker, confessed he died of an anonymous letter
in a public paper, which, said he, "fastened on my heart, and threw me
into this slow fever." Racine, who died of his extreme sensibility to a
royal rebuke, confessed that the pain which one severe criticism
inflicted outweighed all the applause he could receive. The feathered
arrow of an epigram has sometimes been wet with the heart's blood of its
victim. Fortune has been lost, reputation destroyed, and every charity
of life extinguished, by the inhumanity of inconsiderate wit.

Literary history, even of our own days, records the fate of several who
may be said to have _died of Criticism_.[114] But there is more sense
and infinite humour in the mode which Phaedrus adopted to answer the
cavillers of his age. When he first published his Fables, the taste for
conciseness and simplicity were so much on the decline, that they were
both objected to him as faults. He used his critics as they deserved. To
those who objected against the _conciseness_ of his style, he tells a
long _tedious story_ (Lib. iii. F