La Fontaine penned tales fertile in intrigues, and yet he was never known, says D’Israeli, to have been engaged in a single amour. Smollett was anything but what his writings would lead us to expect. Cowley boasted of his mistresses, and wanted the courage to address one. Burton declaimed against melancholy, and yet he was the most miserable of men. Sir Thomas More preached in favour of toleration, yet in practice was a fierce persecutor. Zimmerman, whilst he was inculcating beautiful lessons of benevolence, was by his tyranny driving his son into madness, and leaving his daughter an outcast from home. Goëthe says, “Zimmerman’s harshness towards his children was the effect of hypochondria, a sort of madness or moral assassination, to which he himself fell a victim after sacrificing his offspring.” Byron occasionally fancied he was visited by a spectre, which he confesses was but the effect of an overstimulated brain. Tasso, whose fine imagination the passions of hopeless love, and of grief occasioned by ill treatment, disordered, was in daily communication with a spirit. This circumstance is alluded to in the following anecdote of him, prefixed to Hoole’s translation of his “_La Gierusalemme Liberata_.” “In this place (at Bisaccio, near Naples) Manso had an opportunity of examining the singular effects of Tasso’s melancholy, and often disputed with him concerning a familiar spirit, with which he pretended to converse. Manso endeavoured in vain to persuade his friend that the whole was the illusion of a disturbed imagination; but the latter was strenuous in maintaining the reality of what he asserted; and to convince Manso, desired him to be present at one of these mysterious conversations. Manso had the complaisance to meet him next day; and while they were engaged in discourse, on a sudden he observed that Tasso kept his eyes fixed upon a window, and remained in a manner immovable. He called him by his name several times, but received no answer. At last Tasso cried out, ‘There is the friendly spirit, who is come to converse with me. Look, and you will be convinced of the truth of all that I have said.’ Manso heard him with surprise; he looked, but saw nothing except the sunbeams darting through the window: he cast his eyes all over the room, but could perceive nothing, and was just going to ask where the pretended spirit was, when he heard Tasso speak with great earnestness, sometimes putting questions to the spirit, and sometimes giving answers, delivering the whole in such a pleasing manner, and with such elevated expressions, that he listened with admiration, and had not the least inclination to interrupt him. At last the uncommon conversation ended with the departure of the spirit, as appeared by Tasso’s words, who, turning to Manso, asked him if his doubts were removed? Manso was more amazed than ever; he scarce knew what to think of his friend’s situation, and waved any further conversation on the subject.”