When Montesquieu was deeply engaged in his great work, he writes to a friend:—"The favour which your friend Mr. Hein, often does me to pass his mornings with me, occasions great damage to my work as well by his impure French as the length of his details."—"We are afraid," said some of those visitors to BAXTER, "that we break in upon your time."—"To be sure you do," replied the disturbed and blunt scholar. To hint as gently as he could to his friends that he was avaricious of time, one of the learned Italians had a prominent inscription over the door of his study, intimating that whoever remained there must join in his labours. The amiable MELANCTHON, incapable of a harsh expression, when he received these idle visits, only noted down the time he had expended, that he might reanimate his industry, and not lose a day. EVELYN, continually importuned by morning visitors, or "taken up by other impertinencies of my life in the country," stole his hours from his night rest "to redeem his losses." The literary character has been driven to the most inventive shifts to escape the irruption of a formidable party at a single rush, who enter, without "besieging or beseeching," as Milton has it. The late Mr. Ellis, a man of elegant tastes and poetical temperament, on one of these occasions, at his country-house, assured a literary friend, that when driven to the last, he usually made his escape by a leap out of the window; and Boileau has noticed a similar dilemma when at the villa of the President Lamoignon, while they were holding their delightful conversations in his grounds.
Quelquefois de fâcheux arrivent trois volées,
Que du parc à l'instant assiègent les allées;
Alors sauve qui peut, et quatre fois heureux
Qui sait s'échapper, à quelque autre ignoré d'eux.
BRAND HOLLIS endeavoured to hold out "the idea of singularity as a shield;" and the great ROBERT BOYLE was compelled to advertise in a newspaper that he must decline visits on certain days, that he might have leisure to finish some of his works.[A]
[Footnote A: This curious advertisement is preserved in Dr. Birch's "Life of Boyle," p. 272. Boyle's labours were so exhausting to his naturally weak frame, and so continuous from his eager desire for investigation, that this advertisement was concocted by the advice of his physician, "to desire to be excused from receiving visits (unless upon occasions very extraordinary) two days in the week, namely, on the forenoon of Tuesdays and Fridays (both foreign post days), and on Wednesdays and Saturdays in the afternoons, that he may have some time, both to recruit his spirits, to range his papers, and fill up the lacunæ of them, and to take some care of his affairs in Ireland, which are very much disordered and have their face often changed by the public calamities there." He ordered likewise a board to be placed over his door, with an inscription signifying when he did, and when he did not receive visits.—ED.]
BOCCACCIO has given an interesting account of the mode of life of the studious Petrarch, for on a visit he found that Petrarch would not suffer his hours of study to be broken into even, by the person whom of all men he loved most, and did not quit his morning studies for his guest, who during that time occupied himself by reading or transcribing the works of his master. At the decline of day, Petrarch quitted his study for his garden, where he delighted to open his heart in mutual confidence.
But this solitude, at first a necessity, and then a pleasure, at length is not borne without repining. To tame the fervid wildness of youth to the strict regularities of study, is a sacrifice performed by the votary; but even MILTON appears to have felt this irksome period of life; for in the preface to "Smectymnuus" he says:—"It is but justice not to defraud of due esteem the wearisome labours and studious watchings wherein I have spent and tired out almost a whole youth." COWLEY, that enthusiast for seclusion, in his retirement calls himself "the Melancholy Cowley." I have seen an original letter of this poet to Evelyn, where he expresses his eagerness to see Sir George Mackenzie's "Essay on Solitude;" for a copy of which he had sent over the town, without obtaining one, being "either all bought up, or burnt in the fire of London."[A]—"I am the more desirous," he says, "because it is a subject in which I am most deeply interested." Thus Cowley was requiring a book to confirm his predilection, and we know he made the experiment, which did not prove a happy one. We find even GIBBON, with all his fame about him, anticipating the dread he entertained of solitude in advanced life. "I feel, and shall continue to feel, that domestic solitude, however it may be alleviated by the world, by study, and even by friendship, is a comfortless state, which will grow more painful as I descend in the vale of years." And again:—"Your visit has only served to remind me that man, however amused or occupied in his closet, was not made to live alone."
[Footnote A: This event happening when London was the chief emporium of books, occasioned many printed just before the time to be excessively rare. The booksellers of Paternoster-row had removed their stock to the vaults below St. Paul's for safety as the fire approached them. Among the stock was Prynne's records, vol. iii., which were all burnt, except a few copies which had been sent into the country, a perfect set has been valued in consequence at one hundred pounds. The rarity of all books published about the era of the great fire of London induced one curious collector, Dr. Bliss, of Oxford, to especially devote himself to gathering such in his library.—ED.]
Had the mistaken notions of Sprat not deprived us of Cowley's correspondence, we doubtless had viewed the picture of lonely genius touched by a tender pencil.[A] But we have SHENSTONE, and GRAY, and SWIFT. The heart of Shenstone bleeds in the dead oblivion of solitude: —"Now I am come from a visit, every little uneasiness is sufficient to introduce my whole train of melancholy considerations, and to make me utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life I foresee I shall lead. I am angry, and envious, and dejected, and frantic, and disregard all present things, as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely pleased, though it is a gloomy joy, with the application of Dr. Swift's complaint, that he is forced to die in a rage, like a rat in a poisoned hole." Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture throughout the year, in this stanza, by the same amiable but suffering poet:—
Tedious again to curse the drizzling day,
Again to trace the wintry tracks of snow,
Or, soothed by vernal airs, again survey
The self-same hawthorns bud, and cowslips blow.
Swift's letters paint with terrifying colours a picture of solitude; and at length his despair closed with idiotism. Even the playful muse of GRESSET throws a sombre querulousness over the solitude of men of genius:—