grow more painful as I descend in the vale of years." And afterwards he
writes to a friend, "Your visit has only served to remind me that man,
however amused and occupied in his closet, was not made to live alone."

I must therefore now sketch a different picture of literary solitude
than some sanguine and youthful minds conceive.

Even the sublimest of men, Milton, who is not apt to vent complaints,
appears to have felt this irksome period of life. In the preface to
Smectymnuus, he says, "It is but justice, not to defraud of due esteem
the _wearisome labours_ and _studious watchings,_ wherein I have spent
and _tired_ out almost a whole youth."

Solitude in a later period of life, or rather the neglect which awaits
the solitary man, is felt with acuter sensibility. Cowley, that
enthusiast for rural seclusion, in his retirement calls himself "The
melancholy Cowley." Mason has truly transferred the same epithet to
Gray. Bead in his letters the history of solitude. We lament the loss of
Cowley's correspondence, through the mistaken notion of Sprat; he
assuredly had painted the sorrows of his heart. But Shenstone has filled
his pages with the cries of an amiable being whose soul bleeds in the
dead oblivion of solitude. Listen to his melancholy expressions:--"Now I
am come from a visit, every little uneasiness is sufficient to
introduce my whole train of melancholy considerations, and to make me
utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life I foresee I
shall lead. I am angry, and envious, and dejected, and frantic, and
disregard all present things, as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely
pleased (though it is a gloomy joy) with the application of Dr. Swift's
complaint, that he is forced to die in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a
hole." Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture throughout the