ALFIERI said he could never be taught by a French dancing-master, whose
art made him at once shudder and laugh. HORACE, by his own confession, was
a very awkward rider, and the poet could not always secure a seat on his
mule: METASTASIO humorously complains of his gun; the poetical sportsman
could only frighten the hares and partridges; the, truth was, as an elder
poet sings,

Instead of hounds that make the wooded hills
Talk in a hundred voices to the rills,
I, like the pleasing cadence of a line,
Struck by the concert of the sacred Nine.

And we discover the true "humour" of the indolent contemplative race in
their great representatives VIRGIL and HORACE. When they accompanied
Mecænas 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