Authors frequently select models from their own characters. Lord Byron did so to a considerable extent; and Madame de Stael confessed as much to Mrs. Inchbald in regard to her characters of Delphine and Corinne. 'I am my own model,' said she.

Painters have many models to copy from; but the first of models is NATURE. 'Study the great works of 'the great masters for ever,' said Sir Joshua Reynolds. Study, too, as nearly as you can, in the order, in the manner, and on the principles, on which they studied. 'Study nature attentively, but always with those masters ' in your company; consider them as models which you are to imitate, and at the same time as rivals which you are to combat.' This may remind us of an assertion of Passeri, viz., that a painter, who has an ardent desire of learning, receives as much instruction from the works of deceased artists as from living masters.

D'Alembert tells us that Voltaire, in order to improve his taste in prose, kept Massillon's 'Petit Carême' perpetually on his table; and Racine's tragedies, to form his taste in poetry.

Some men form themselves by strict attention to one main rule, and by attachment to some particular authors. Demosthenes was attached to Thucydides, Scipio to Xenophon, and Brutus to Polybius; Montaigne to Plutarch, Fenelon to the Odyssey,' Grotius to Lucan, and Montesquieu to Tacitus. Rienzi read Cicero, Livy, Seneca, Cæsar's 'Commentaries,' and Valerius Maximus, so often, that he almost got them by heart. Hampden was equally attached to Davila. Lord Chatham was particularly solicitous that

his son should be well grounded in Thucydides and Polybius; and he esteemed no book more calculated to give a copia verborum than Barrow's sermons. Pope formed himself upon Boileau; Gibbon upon Grotius and Puffendorf, Locke, Montesquieu, Pascal, La Bleterie, and the Civil History of Naples' by Giannone. Sir William Jones read Cicero's works once a year; and, though out of chronological order, we may here remark that Columbus formed his plan relative to Cathay from having devotedly attached himself to the Travels of Marco Polo.

Conquerors, also, have selected models. Alexander had an extraordinary veneration for Cyrus; and he, in turn, has been a Jupiter to a puerile order of persons since. His imitators, in fact, have been exceedingly numerous; amongst whom we may remember Commodus and Caracalla, one of the Constantines, and Charles XII. As to Marlborough, he imbibed his taste for military life from reading Cæsar's 'Commentaries' and Vegetius's Treatise 'De Re Militari.'

To revert :-St. Basil formed himself upon St. Athanasius; and Bossuet, in some measure, upon Pascal. 'I would rather,' said he, 'have been the author of the 'Provincial Letters, than of any work ever written in France.' D'Aguesseau goes even so far as to say, that the fourteenth letter is equal to any composition of the antients; and Monsieur Vauvenarques asserts that it was in the school of Pascal, he became acquainted with the depth and labyrinth of the human heart. In ' that of Fenelon,' continues he, ' I learned to encourage it and give it comfort.'

CXXV.

OPEN CHARACTERS.

TASSO lived to know the danger of one; and he complains of the consequences in many letters. His was a life of scrupulosity amid every species of intrigue. He has, therefore, a claim upon our sympathy, whenever we detect him in the indulgence of complaint. But what apology shall those have, who give way to distrust before they have encountered any reasonable cause? Is it that, being ignorant, they feel as if walking in the dark, and therefore are afraid of stumbling at every step? Herbert of Cherbury insists that it is so.

Men of free, frank, and generous natures, who are, at the same time, well acquainted with men and things, indicate their honest competency to cope with circumstances, trials, and intricacies, so well; that we recognise their ability at a first interview, as we do the skill and science of a musician from the manner in which he first strikes the strings of his instrument.

CXXVI.

WHO ARE SUSCEPTIBLE OF CORRECTION IN RESPECT TO NATURAL PROPENSITIES.

WE may instance the Duke of Burgundy, educated by the illustrious Fenelon, and the late Princess Elizabeth of France. But many are the instances in this country exhibitive of the melancholy fact, that education, so far from improving the natural dispositions of

men, serves, frequently, to enlarge not only the desire, but the sphere, in which to exercise their capabilities of evil.

CXXVII.

SELF-CONFESSORS.

The faults of others I enough have shown;
'Tis just, at last, that I should tell my own.'

Boileau, Sat. ix.; Ozell.

CAN we triumph over our passions? Bandinello, the painter of Florence, candidly confessed that he never spoke well of any one; and Ortensio Lando, the Italian novelist, is said to have had such an appetite for scandal, that, unable even to spare himself, he drew his own portrait in colours so dark, that even those whom he satirized were satiated with revenge. This is being a severe expounder of ourselves indeed!

Horace, Pliny the Younger, Froissart, Montaigne, and Bayle, are delightful writers; were it only for the insight which their pages afford us of their own characters. Yet their confessions are not to be compared with those of Rousseau, who not only resembled Lord Herbert in laying open every defect and foible in his own character, but seems, as I have said before, to have taken pleasure in representing himself worse than he We may say the same, I hope, of Cellini.

was.

Many persons become self-accusers when they think it will administer to their own interests. Thus Lord Lauderdale, on the restoration of Charles II., called himself and nation' a thousand traitors and rebels ;'

seldom failed to acknowledge, even to his inferiors, how wrong he had been in offending, and how eager he was for their pardon.

Impartiality in judging of ourselves, of our conduct to others, and of the conduct of others to us, is a useful and an honourable indication, not only of the goodness of the heart, but of the strength of the head. But men and women would much more often confess their foibles, errors, indiscretions, and defeats, were others more able and more willing to appreciate the merit of such concessions. I would yield to the propriety of ' your arguments,' they would say, did I not feel that you would be too much elevated by the victory.' It demands no small degree of virtue, charity, and policy, to be able, publicly or privately, to appreciate a confession.

Youth is much addicted to vapour of manner; and not youth only; for some men, as I shall elsewhere be found to observe, presume as much upon their age as others do upon their youth.

I have known few men, who, having done a vile action, but had the hardihood to defend it on detection, in one way or another. But Augustus was politic enough to urge repentance for the crimes and atrocities of Octavius: and here we may remember what Marco Trivisano said to the celebrated historian, Paul Sarpi. • You are called the absolute master of your passions; yet, in my opinion, you have as many as other men, but only they appear under a different form. For