Touched by a personal knowledge of this union of genius and affection, even MALONE commemorates, with unusual warmth, the literary friendships of Sir Joshua Reynolds; and with a felicity of fancy, not often indulged, has raised an unforced parallel between the bland wisdom of Sir Joshua and the "mitis sapientia Laeli." "What the illustrious Scipio was to Laelius was the all-knowing and all-accomplished BURKE to REYNOLDS;" and what the elegant Laelius was to his master Panaetius, whom he gratefully protected, and to his companion the poet Lucilius, whom he patronised, was REYNOLDS to JOHNSON, of whom he was the scholar and friend, and to GOLDSMITH, whom he loved and aided[A].
[Footnote A: Reynolds's hospitality was unbounded to all literary men, and his evenings were devoted to their society. It was at his house they compared notes; and the President of the Royal Academy obtained that information which gave him a full knowledge of the outward world, which his ceaseless occupation could not else have allowed.—ED.]
Count AZARA mourns with equal tenderness and force over the memory of the artist and the writer Mengs. "The most tender friendship would call forth tears in this sad duty of scattering flowers on his tomb; but the shade of my extinct friend warns me not to be satisfied with dropping flowers and tears—they are useless; and I would rather accomplish his wishes, in making known the author and his works."
I am infinitely delighted by a circumstance communicated to me by one who had visited GLEIM, the German poet, who seems to have been a creature made up altogether of sensibility. His many and illustrious friends he had never forgotten, and to the last hour of a life, prolonged beyond his eightieth year, he possessed those interior feelings which can make even an old man an enthusiast. There seemed for GLEIM to be no extinction in friendship when the friend was no more; and he had invented a singular mode of gratifying his feelings of literary friendships. The visitor found the old man in a room of which the wainscot was panelled, as we still see among us in ancient houses. In every panel GLEIM had inserted the portrait of a friend, and the apartment was crowded. "You see," said the grey-haired poet, "that I never have lost a friend, and am sitting always among them."
Such friendship can never be the lot of men of the world; for the source of these lies in the interior affections and the intellectual feelings. FONTENELLE describes with characteristic delicacy the conversations of such literary friends: "Our days passed like moments; thanks to those pleasures, which, however, are not included in those which are commonly called pleasures." The friendships of the men of society move on the principle of personal interest, but interest can easily separate the interested; or they are cherished to relieve themselves from the listlessness of existence; but, as weariness is contagious, the contact of the propagator is watched. Men of the world may look on each other with the same countenances, but not with the same hearts. In the common mart of life intimacies may be found which terminate in complaint and contempt; the more they know one another, the less is their mutual esteem: the feeble mind quarrels with one still more imbecile than itself; the dissolute riot with the dissolute, and they despise their companions, while they too have themselves become despicable.
Literary friendships are marked by another peculiarity; the true philosophical spirit has learned to bear that shock of contrary opinions which minds less meditative are unequal to encounter. Men of genius live in the unrestrained communication of their ideas, and confide even their caprices with a freedom which sometimes startles ordinary observers. We see literary men, the most opposite in dispositions and opinions, deriving from each other that fulness of knowledge which unfolds the certain, the probable, the doubtful. Topics which break the world into factions and sects, and truths which ordinary men are doomed only to hear from a malignant adversary, they gather from a friend! If neither yields up his opinions to the other, they are at least certain of silence and a hearing; but usually
The wise new wisdom from the wise acquire.
This generous freedom, which spares neither reprimands nor exhortation, has often occurred in the intercourse of literary men. HUME and ROBERTSON were engaged in the same studies, but with very opposite principles; yet Robertson declined writing the English history, which he aspired to do, lest it should injure the plans of Hume; a noble sacrifice!
Politics once divided Boccaccio and Petrarch. The poet of Valchiusa had never forgiven the Florentines for their persecution of his father. By the mediation of BOCCACCIO they now offered to reinstate PETRARCH in his patrimony and his honours. Won over by the tender solicitude of his friend, PETRARCH had consented to return to his country; but with his usual inconstancy of temper, he had again excused himself to the senate of Florence, and again retreated to his solitude. Nor was this all; for the Visconti of Milan had by their flattery and promises seduced PETRARCH to their court; a court, the avowed enemy of Florence. BOCCACCIO, for the honour of literature, of his friend, of his country, indignantly heard of PETRARCH'S fatal decision, and addressed him by a letter—the most interesting perhaps which ever passed between two literary friends, who were torn asunder by the momentary passions of the vulgar, but who were still united by that immortal friendship which literature inspires, and by a reverence for that posterity which they knew would concern itself with their affairs.
It was on a journey to Ravenna that BOCCACCIO first heard the news of PETRARCH'S abandonment of his country, when he thus vehemently addressed his brother-genius:—