which his reputation as a satirist could never disturb, that historical painting was his true vocation. That the mild Melancthon approved of the burning of Servetus. That Joseph Scaliger, who perfectly understood thirteen languages, was deeply versed in almost every branch of literature--perhaps one of the greatest scholars that any age has produced--found so much perplexity, not in acquiring, but in communicating his knowledge, that sometimes, like Nero, he wished he had never known his letters. That Chillingworth, the constant study of whose works was recommended by Locke, "for attaining the way of right reasoning," and of whom it was affirmed that he had "such extraordinary clear reason, that if the great Turk or devil could be converted, he was able to do it," contracted, according to Lord Clarendon, "such an irresolution and habit of doubting, that at last he was confident of nothing." That Gray's Elegy, taking the author's own word for it, was not intended for the public; the poet's sole ambition being to gratify a few of his friends; his own family, even, were not made a party to his writings, and his fond mother lived and died in ignorance of his immortal verse. That Playfair, when racked on his death-bed with pain, and a relation wishing to amuse him by reading one of Scott's novels, of which he was very fond, dissuaded it, saying, he would rather try the Principia. That Horace Walpole, who was greedy to excess of praise, and keenly sensitive to criticism, professed a strong aversion to being considered a man of letters; and that with all his avowed contempt for literary fame, left fair copies of his private correspondence, with copious notes, to be published after his decease. That Mirabeau, who came into the world with "a huge head, a pair of grinders, one foot twisted, and tongue-tied, disfigured when three years old by confluent small-pox," called, as he grew up, a "monster," a "disheveled bully," "as ugly as the nephew of Satan," turned out to be the Demosthenes of France, and the idol of beautiful Parisian women. That Sanson, the hereditary French executioner, who officiated at the decapitation of Louis XVI., founded, before he died, a perpetual anniversary mass for the repose of the monarch's soul; and wrote his Memoirs in the style of a philanthropist, whom fate had condemned to officiate at the guillotine. That Rousseau, the chief article of whose rather hazy creed was the duty of universal philanthropy, fancied himself the object of all men's hatred. That Cowper, who held that the first duty of man was the love of God, fancied himself the object of the irrevocable hatred of his Creator. That the very name of the Cross was forbidden by the French Republic at the very time when it had proclaimed unbounded religious freedom. That the charge of plagiarism against Sterne rests in great part upon his plagiarizing an invective against plagiarism. That George Crabbe gave the leisure of more than twenty of his ripest years to