286 (last edition) .-- ED.] [Footnote B: Johnson was displeased at the portrait Reynolds painted of him which dwelt on his nearsightedness; declaring that "a man's defects should never be painted." The same defect was made the subject of a caricature particularly allusive to critical prejudices in his "Lives of the Poets," in which he is pictured as an owl "blinking at the stars." -- ED.] Those who give so many sensations to others must themselves possess an excess and a variety of feelings.

We find, indeed, that they are censured for their extreme irritability; and that happy equality of temper so prevalent among MEN OF LETTERS, and which is conveniently acquired by men of the world, has been usually refused to great mental powers, or to fervid dispositions--authors and artists.

The man of wit becomes petulant, the profound thinker morose, and the vivacious ridiculously thoughtless.
When ROUSSEAU once retired to a village, he had to learn to endure its conversation; for this purpose he was compelled to invent an expedient to get rid of his uneasy sensations.

"Alone, I have never known ennui, even when perfectly unoccupied: my imagination, filling the void, was sufficient to busy me.

It is only the inactive chit-chat of the room, when every one is seated face to face, and only moving their tongues, which I never could support.