When they accompanied Mecaenas into the country, while the minister amused himself at tennis, the two bards reposed on a vernal bank amidst the freshness of the shade.
The younger Pliny, who was so perfect a literary character, was charmed by the Roman mode of hunting, or rather fowling by nets, which admitted him to sit a whole day with his tablets and stylus; so, says he, "should I return with empty nets, my tablets may at least be full." THOMSON was the hero of his own "Castle of Indolence;" and the elegant WALLER infuses into his luxurious verses the true feeling: Oh, low I long my careless limbs to lay Under the plantane shade, and all the day Invoke the Muses and improve my vein.
The youth of genius, whom Beattie has drawn after himself, and I after observation, a poet of great genius, as I understand, has declared to be "too effeminate and timid, and too much troubled with delicate nerves.

The _greatest poets_ of all countries," he continues, "have been men eminently endowed with _bodily powers_, and rejoiced and excelled in all _manly exercises_." May not our critic of northern habits have often mistaken the art of the great poets in _describing_ such "manly exercises or bodily powers," for the proof of their "rejoicing and excelling in them ?" Poets and artists, from their habits, are not usually muscular and robust.[A] Continuity of thought, absorbing reverie, and sedentary habits, will not combine with corporeal skill and activity.

There is also a constitutional delicacy which is too often the accompaniment of a fine intellect.
The inconveniences attached to the inferior sedentary labourers are participated in by men of genius; the analogy is obvious, and their fate is common.

Literary men may be included in Ramazzini's "Treatise on the Diseases of Artizans." ROSSEAU has described the labours of the closet as enervating men, and weakening the constitution, while study wears the whole machinery of man, exhausts the spirits, destroys his strength, and renders him pusillanimous.[B] But there is a higher principle which guides us to declare, that men of genius should not _excel_ in "all manly exercises." SENECA, whose habits were completely literary, admonishes the man of letters that "Whatever amusement he chooses, he should not slowly return from those of the body to the mind, while he should be exercising the latter night and day." Seneca was aware that "to rejoice and excel in all manly exercises," would in some cases intrude into the habits of a literary man, and sometimes be even ridiculous.

MORTIMER, once a celebrated artist, was tempted by his athletic frame to indulge in frequent violent exercises; and it is not without reason suspected, that habits so unfavourable to thought and study precluded that promising genius from attaining to the maturity of his talents, however he might have succeeded in invigorating his physical powers.
[Footnote A: Dr.Currie, in his "Life of Burns," has a passage which may be quoted here: "Though by nature of an athletic form, Burns had in his constitution the peculiarities and the delicacies that belong to the temperament of genius.