on this subject a very striking thing-one of those speeches which may be the cause of a great man hereafter; "Genius is only a great er aptitude to patience." Observe, that patience must be applied to every thing: patience in finding out one's line, patience in refifting the motives that divert, and patience in bearing what would dif courage a common man. I will mention some facts of Buffon. He would sometimes return from the suppers of Paris at two in the morning, when he was young. A boy was ordered to call him at five, however late he returned; and, in cafe of his lingering in bed, to drag him out on the floor. He used to work till fix at night. "I had at that time (said he) a mistress of whom I was very fond: but I would never allow my self to go to her till fix, even at the risk of finding her gone out." He thus diftributes his day. At five o'clock he rises, dresses, powders, dictates letters, and regulates his household matters. At fix he goes to the forefaid study, which is a furlong distant from the house, at the extremity of the garden. There are gates to open and terraces to climb by the way. When not engaged in writing, he paces up and down the furrounding avenues. No one may intrude on his retreat. He often reads over what he has written, and then lays it by for a time. "It is important," said he to me, "never to be in a hurry: review your compofitions often, and every time with a fresh eye, and you will always find that they can be mended." When he has made many corrections in a manuscript, he employs an amannenfis to transcribe it, and then he cor rects again. He told M. de S I refume the account of his day. At nine, breakfast is brought to him in the study. It confifts of two glaffes of wine and a bit of bread. He writes for about twohours after breakfast and then returns to the house. He does not love to hurry over his dinner; during which he gives vent to all the gaieties and trifles which fuggeft themselves while at table. He loves to talk smuttily; and the effect of his jokes and laughter are heightened by the natural ferioufness of his age and calmness of his character! but he is often so coarse as to compel the ladies to withdraw. He talks of himself with pleasure, and like a critic. He faid to me, " I learn every day to write; in my latter works there is infinitely more perfection than in my former. I often have my works read to me, and this mostly puts me upon fome improvement. There are, however, passages which I cannot improve." In this openness there is a fomething interesting, original, antique, attractive. Speaking of Rousseau, he faid, "I loved him much until I read his confeffions, and then I ceased to esteem him. I cannot fancy the spirit of the man; an unusual process happened to me with refpect to him after his death I loft my reverence for him." This great man is very much of a goffip, and, for at least an hour in the day, will make his hairdreffer and valets tell all the fean dal of the village. He knows every minute event that furrounds him. His confidence is almost wholly engroffed by a Mademoiselle Bleffeau: a woman now forty years old, well-made, who has been pretty, and has lived with him about twenty years. She is very attentive to him, manages in the house, and is hated by the servants. Madame de Buffon, who has long been dead, could not endure this woman. She adored her husband, and is said to have been very jealous of him. Mademoiselle de Blesseau is not the only one who manages Buffon. Father Ignatius Prouzut, a capuchin friar, born at Dijon, divides her empire. He is, it feenis, a convenient confeffor. Thirty years ago the author of the Epoques de la Nature fent for him at Eafter, and confefsed to him in the very laboratory in which be had put together his materialism, in which Rouffeap prostrated himself at the threfhord, Ignatius told me that M. de Buffon, when about to fubmit to this ceremony, hefitated awhile" the effect of human weakness"-added he-and infifted on his valet de chambre's confeffing himself first. This will furprize at Paris. Yes: Buffon, when at Montbart, receives the annual communion in his feignoral chapel, goes every Sunday to high mass, and diftributes a louis weekly among different descriptions of pious beggars. M. de Buffon tells me that he makes a point of respecting religion; that there muft Be a religion for the multitude; that in little places every one is observed; and that we should avoid giving offence. "I am perfuaded, (faid he to me,) that in your speeches you take care to let nothing escape you that should be remarked, or excite alarm on this head. I have ever had that attention in my writings, and have published them separately, that ordinary men may not catch at the connection of ideas. I have always named the Creator; but it is only putting, mentally, in its place, the energy of nature, which refults from the two great laws of attraction and impulse. When the Sorbonne plagued me, I gave all the fatisfactions which they folicited: 'twas a form which I despised, but men are filly enough to be fo fatisfied. For the fame reason, when I fall dangerously ill, I shall not hesitate to fend for the facraments. This is due to the public religion. Those who act otherwife are madmen. The arietation of Voltaire, of Diderot, of Helvetius, often wounded themselves. The latter was my friend; he spent more than four years at Montbart on different occafions. I recommended more referve to him. Had he attended to me, he would have been better off." In fact, this spirit of accommodation answered to M. de Buffon. His works demonftrate materialifm; yet they were printed at the royal press. My early volumes appeared, (faid he,) at the same time with the spirit of laws. We were teazed by the Sorbonne, both Montesquieu and I, and affailed by the critics. The prefident was quite furious; "What shall you swer?" faid he to me. "Nothing at all, president," replied I. He could not understand such coldbloodedness. an I was reading to Buffon one evening fome verses of Thomas on the immortality of the foul. "Pardieu, (faid he,) religion would be a noble present, if all that were true." He criticised these lines severely: he is inexorable as to style, and does not love poetry. "Never write verses, (faid he,) I could have made them as well as others: but Ifoon abandoned a course in which reason marches in fetters: she has chains enough already, without looking about for new ones." Buffon willingly quits his grounds, and walks about the village with his fon among the peasantry. At these times he always appears in a laced coat. Heisastickler about dress, and fcolds his fon for wearing a frockcoat. I was aware of this, and had taken care to arrive in an embroidered waistcoat and laced cloaths. My precaution succeeded wonderfully; he shewed me repeatedly to his fon. "There's a gentleman for you!" He loves to be called monsieur le Comte. After having risen from dinner, he pays little attention either to his family or his guests. He fleeps for an hour in his room; then takes a walk alone; after which he will perhaps come in and converse, or fit at his desk and look over papers that are brought for his opinion. He has lived thus these fifty years. To fome one who expressed aftonishment at his great reputation, he replied, "Have not I passed fifty years at my desk?" At nine he goes to bed. He is at present afflicted with the stone, which fufpends his employments. While I was at his house he had acute pains, shut himself up in his chamber, would scarcely fee his fon, and not his fifter. He admitted me repeatedly. His hair was always dreft; and he retained his fine calm look. He complained mildly of his ill health, and bore his pangs with a smile. He opened his whole foul to me: made me read to him the treatise on the loadstone, and, as he liftened, would reform the phrafes. Sometimes he would fend for a volume of his works, and request me to read aloud the finer efforts of style; such as the foliloquy of the first man, the description of an Arabian defert in the article camel, and a still finer piece of painting (in his opinion) in the article Kamichi. Sometimes he would explain to me his system of the formation of the universe, the genesis of beings, the internal moulds, &c. Sometimes he would recite whole pages of his compofitions; for he knows them almost all by heart. He liftens gladly to objections, discusses them, and furrenders to them when his judgment is convinced. Of natural history and of style he loves to talk, especially of the latter. No one better understands the theory of style, unless it be Beccaria, who did not possess the practice. "The style is the man, (faid he ;) our poets have no style; they are coerced by the rules of metre which makes flaves of them." How do you like Thomas?" I asked. Pretty well, (said he,) but he is stiff and bloated." And Rousseau? "His style is better: but he has all the faults. of bad education, interjection, exclamation, interrogation for ever." Favour me with your leading ideas on style. They are recorded in my discourse at the academy :however, two things form style, invention and expreffion. Invention depends on patience: contemplate your fubject long: it will gradually unrol and unfold-till a fort of electric electric spark convulfes for a moHe spoke to me of the paffion ment the brain, and spreads down for study, and of the happiness to the very heart a glow of irritation: Then are come the luxuries of genius, the true hours for production and compofition-hours so delightful, that I have spent twelve and fourteen fuccessively at my writing-desk, and still been in a Itate of pleasure. It is for this gratification, yet more than for glory, that I have toiled, Glory comes if it can, and mostly does come. This pleafure is greater if you confult no books: I have never confulted authors, till I had nothing left to say of my own.", which it bestows. He told me that he had voluntarily secluded himfelf from fociety; that at one time he courted the company of learned men, expecting to acquire much from their conversation, but he had difcovered that little of value could be so gleaned, and that, in order to pick up a phrafe, an evening was ill squandered: that labour was become a want to him, and he hoped to confecrate to it much of the three or four years of life which probably remained to him; that he feared not death-that the hope of an immortal renown was the most powerful of death-bed confolations. I asked him what is the best method of forming one's felf. He anfwered, "Read only the capital works, read them repeatedly, and read those in every department of taste and science; for the framers of fuch works are, as Cicero says, kindred-fouls, and the views of one may always be applied with advantage in fome very different branch by another. Be not afraid of the task. Capital works are scarce. I know but five great to bend down-at its feet what the geniuses-Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and myself. Newton, (continued he,) may have •difcovered an important principle, but he spent his life in frivolous calculations, and was no master of style." He thought higher of Leibnitz than of Bacon. He spoke of Montesquieu's genius, but thought his style too studied, and wanting • evolution. This, however, (faid he,) was a natural confequence of his frame of body. I knew him well; he was almost blind, and very impatient. If he had not clipt his ideas into short fentences, he would have lost his period before the amanuenfis had taken it down." He thewed me a letter from prince Henry of Pruffia, and another from the empress of Ruffia, with his answers. Over this lofty correfpondence between power and genius, where the latter retained its innate ascendancy, I felt my foul swell. Glory seemed to affume as it were a substantial form, and world has most exalted. In a few days, I left this good and great man; repeating, as I withdrew, two lines of the Oedipus of Voltaire : L'amitié d'un grand homme est un Je lijais mon devoir & mon fort dans Account of Apoftolo Zeno, from Burney's THE learned poet, critic and antiquary, Apoftolo Zeno, was born in 1669, and descended from an illuftrious Venetian family, which has been long fettled in the ifland of Candia, he * he early applied himself to literature, and the study of Italian history and antiquities. In 1696, he instituted at Venice the academy Degli Animofi, and was the editor of the Giornale de' Letterati d'Italia, of which he published thirty volumes, between the year 1710 and 1719. His first musical drama, L'Inganni Felici, was set by Carlo Fran. Polarolo, and performed at Venice, 1695. And between that time and his quitting Vienna, where he was invited by the emperor Charles VI. in 1718, he produced fortyfix operas, and seventeen oratorios, befides eighteen dramas, which he wrote jointly with Pariati. His dramatic works were collected and published at Venice, in 1744, in ten volumes octavo, by count Gozzi. And in 1752, his letters were printed in three volumes, by Forcellini, in which much found learning and criticism are manifested on various subjects. But one of the most useful of his critical labours seems to have been, his commentary on the Bibl. dell' Eloquenza Italiana di Fontanini, which was published in 1753; with a preface by his friend Forcellini, chiefly dictated, however, by Zeno himfelf, juft before his death, 1750, in the 82d year of his age. After he was engaged as Imperial laureate, he fet out from Venice for Vienna, in July 1718; but having been overturned in a chaise, the fourth day of his journey, he had the misfortune to break his leg, and was confined at an inn in the little town of Ponticaba, near Trevisa, till September. He arrived at Vienna, the 14th of that month, falvo, he fays, if not fano e guerito, after twelve days of exceffive fuffering on the road. Most of the dramas, sacred and secular, which he wrote for the Imperial Court, were set by Caldara, a grave composer and found harmonist, to whose style Zeno seems never to have been partial. But this excellent antiquary and critic seems never to have been fatisfied with his own poetical abilities. So early as the year 1722, in writing to his brother from Vienna, he says: "I find more and more every day, that I grow old, not only in body, but in mind: and that the business of writing verses is no longer a fit employment for me." And afterwards, modeftly sensible of the sterility of his poffeffions in Par-naffus, which, though they furnished useful productions, were not of a foil fufficiently rich to generate such gay, delicate, and beautiful flowers, as are requifite to embellish the lyric scene, he expressed a with that he might be allowed a partner in his labours; and was fo just and liberal as to mention the young Metaftafio, as a poet worthy to be honoured with the notice of his Imperial patron. Account of the Peasantry of Norway, from Mary Wollstonecraft's letters, during a short refidence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. THOUGH the king of Denmark be an absolute monarch, yet the Norwegians appear to enjoy all the bleffings of freedom. Norway may be termed a sister kingdom; but the people have no viceroy to lord it over them, and fatten bis dependants with the fruit of their labour. There are only two counts in the whole country, who have estates, and |