us; a circumstance which contributed to
excite his emulation, and to hasten his studies. He who smiles at the
force of such emotions, only proves that he has not experienced what are
real and substantial as the scene itself--for those who are concerned in
them. Pope, who had far more enthusiasm in his poetical disposition than
is generally understood, was extremely susceptible of the literary
associations with localities: one of the volumes of his Homer was begun
and finished in an old tower over the chapel of Stanton Harcourt;[256]
and he has perpetuated the event, if not consecrated the place, by
scratching with a diamond on a pane of stained glass this inscription:--

In the year 1718,
ALEXANDER POPE
Finished here the f....
fifth volume of HOMER.[257]

It was the same feeling which induced him one day, when taking his
usual walk with Harte in the Haymarket, to desire Harte to enter a
little shop, where going up three pair of stairs into a small room, Pope
said, "In this garret Addison wrote his _Campaign_!" Nothing less than a
strong feeling impelled the poet to ascend this garret--it was a
consecrated spot to his eye; and certainly a curious instance of the
power of genius contrasted with its miserable locality! Addison, whose
mind had fought through "a campaign!" in a garret, could he have called
about him "the pleasures of imagination," had probably planned a house
of literary repose, where all parts would have been in harmony with his
mind.

Such residences of men of genius have been enjoyed by some; and the
vivid descriptions which they have left us convey something of the
delightfulness which charmed their studious repose.

The Italian, Paul Jovius, has composed more than three hundred concise
eulogies of statesmen, warriors, and literary men, of the fourteenth,
fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries; but the occasion which induced him
to compose them is perhaps more interesting than the compositions.

Jovius had a villa, situated on a peninsula, bordered by the Lake of
Como. It was built on the ruins of the villa of Pliny, and in his time
the foundations were still visible. When the surrounding lake was calm,
the sculptured marbles, the trunks of columns, and the fragments of
those pyramids which had once adorned the residence of the friend of
Trajan, were still viewed in its lucid bosom. Jovius was the enthusiast
of literature, and the leisure which it loves. He was an historian, with
the imaginati