the heart. When the first idea of the Essay on the Arts and Sciences
rushed on the mind of Rousseau, it occasioned such a feverish agitation
that it approached to a delirium.

This delicious inebriation of the imagination occasioned the ancients,
who sometimes perceived the effects, to believe it was not short of
divine inspiration. Fielding says, "I do not doubt but that the most
pathetic and affecting scenes have been writ with tears." He perhaps
would have been pleased to have confirmed his observation by the
following circumstances. The tremors of Dryden, after having written an
Ode, a circumstance tradition has accidentally handed down, were not
unusual with him; in the preface to his Tales he tells us, that in
translating Homer he found greater pleasure than in Virgil; but it was
not a pleasure without pain; the _continual agitation of the spirits_
must needs be a weakener to any constitution, especially in age, and
many pauses are required for refreshment betwixt the heats. In writing
the ninth scene of the second act of the Olimpiade, Metastasio found
himself in tears; an effect which afterwards, says Dr. Burney, proved
very contagious. It was on this occasion that that tender poet
commemorated the circumstance in the following interesting sonnet:--

SONNET FROM METASTASIO.
"_Scrivendo l'Autore in Vienna l'anno 1733 la sua Olimpiade si
senti commosa fino alle lagrime nell' esprimere la divisione di
due teneri amici: e meravigliandosi che un falso, e da lui
inventato disastro, potesse cagionargli una si vera passione,
si fece a riflettere quanto poco ragionevole e solido
fondamento possano aver le altre che soglion frequentamente
agitarci, nel corso di nostra vita_.