His generalising views take things only in masses, while in his rapid emotions he interrogates, and doubts, and is caustic; in a word, he thinks he converses while he is at his studies.

Sometimes, apparently a complacent listener, we are mortified by detecting the absent man: now he appears humbled and spiritless, ruminating over some failure which probably may be only known to himself; and now haughty and hardy for a triumph he has obtained, which yet remains a secret to the world.

No man is so apt to indulge the extremes of the most opposite feelings: he is sometimes insolent, and sometimes querulous; now the soul of tenderness and tranquillity,--then stung by jealousy, or writhing in aversion! A fever shakes his spirit; a fever which has sometimes generated a disease, and has even produced a slight perturbation of the faculties.[A] In one of those manuscript notes by Lord BYRON on this work, which I have wished to preserve, I find his lordship observing on the feelings of genius, that "the depreciation of the lowest of mankind is more painful than the applause of the highest is pleasing." Such is the confession of genius, and such its liability to hourly pain.
[Footnote A: I have given a history of _literary quarrels from personal motives_, in "Quarrels of Authors," p.529.There we find how many controversies, in which the public get involved, have sprung from some sudden squabbles, some neglect of petty civility, some unlucky epithet, or some casual observation dropped without much consideration, which mortified or enraged the _genus irritabile_; a title which from ancient days has been assigned to every description of authors.

The late Dr.
WELLS, who had some experience in his intercourse with many literary characters, observed, that "in whatever regards the fruits of their mental labours, this is universally acknowledged to be true.

Some of the malevolent passions indeed frequently become in learned men more than ordinarily strong, from want of that restraint upon their excitement which society imposes." A puerile critic has reproached me for having drawn my description entirely from my own fancy:--I have taken it from life! See further symptoms of this disease at the close of the chapter on _Self-praise_ in the present work.] Once we were nearly receiving from the hand of genius the most curious sketches of the temper, the irascible humours, the delicacy of soul, even to its shadowiness, from the warm _sbozzos_ of BURNS, when he began a diary of the heart,--a narrative of characters and events, and a chronology of his emotions.