But discord, who found means to roll her apple into the banqueting
chamber of the goddesses, has had the address to scatter her laurels in
the seminaries of learning. The friendship of students and of beauties
is for the most part equally sincere, and equally durable: as both
depend for happiness on the regard of others, on that of which the value
arises merely from comparison, they are both exposed to perpetual
jealousies, and both incessantly employed in schemes to intercept the
praises of each other.

I am, however, far from intending to inculcate that this confinement of
the studious to studious companions, has been wholly without advantage
to the publick: neighbourhood, where it does not conciliate friendship,
incites competition; and he that would contentedly rest in a lower
degree of excellence, where he had no rival to dread, will be urged by
his impatience of inferiority to incessant endeavours after great
attainments.

These stimulations of honest rivalry are, perhaps, the chief effects of
academies and societies; for whatever be the bulk of their joint
labours, every single piece is always the production of an individual,
that owes nothing to his colleagues but the contagion of diligence, a
resolution to write, because the rest are writing, and the scorn of
obscurity while the rest are illustrious[1].


[1] It may not be uninteresting to place in immediate comparison with
this finished paper its first rough draught as given in Boswell,
vol. i.

"_Confederacies difficult; why_.