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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



to say that the power of a man's mind would gen- 

 erally be found to be in proportion to the amount 

 of coffee he drank. How well Cowper loved tea, 

 and how well he sang its praises, we all know. 

 As to Dante, so to him, the evening brought the 

 pleasantest hours of the twenty-four : 



" Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast ; 

 Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round ; 

 And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn 

 Throws up a 6teamy column, and the cups, 

 That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, 

 So let us welcome peaceful evening in I " 



Yet one may suspect that frequent cups of tea 

 did not improve the nervous system of the un- 

 happy poet; though he had other weaknesses 

 which were of themselves sufficient to account for 

 the final ruin of his mind. 



Innumerable have been the varieties of human 

 weaknesses in respect of things edible and pota- 

 ble. We forget the name of the French lady 

 who said she would commit a baseness for the 

 sake of fried potatoes. More than one person 

 may have only wanted her candor to make a 

 similar avowal of excessive affection for a particu- 

 lar dish. The English king who died of a surfeit 

 of peaches and new ale was hardly a great man ; 

 but the king who died of lampreys was in the first 

 rank of the statesmen and warriors of his age, to 

 say nothing of being something of a scholar into 

 the bargain. Englishmen have small affection for 

 the memory of Philip II., who irreparably ruined 

 his digestion by immoderate indulgence iD pastry ; 

 but he is still regarded by Spaniards as one of 

 their greatest monarchs. To turn to men of un- 

 questioned genius, Byron's most innocent passion 

 seems to have been for soda-water, on which at 

 one time he almost subsisted, with the aid of dry 

 biscuits. Apparently Beckford had a similar 

 weakness for the gaseous fluid. During the three 

 days and two nights of continuous work in which 

 he composed " Vathek," soda-water was his prin- 

 cipal sustenance. 



The names of Byron and Beckford, unequal 

 as they are, both call to mind one of the most 

 frequent and most troublesome failings of the 

 great, and of those who for their brief day were 

 thought great. " England's wealthiest son " and 

 England's cleverest son were, the one and the 

 other, incorrigible posers. In spite of Mr. Mat- 

 thew Arnold's fine lines, one may suspect that 

 Byron did not allow " the pageant of his bleeding 

 heart " to lose in effect from want of careful ar- 

 rangement. " It is ridiculous to imagine," ob- 

 served the blunt common-sense of Macaulay, 

 " that a man whose mind was really imbued with 



scorn of his fellow-creatures would publish three 

 or four books every year in order to tell them so ; 

 or that a man who could say with truth that he 

 neither sought sympathy nor needed it, would 

 have admitted all Europe to hear his farewell to 

 his wife, and his blessings on his child." Among 

 other distinguished farceurs, as the French plain- 

 ly term persons who act off the stage, everybody 

 will readily place Louis XIV. and Napoleon I. 

 (perhaps also Napoleon III.) ; and, reluctantly, 

 Chatham, together with Burke, whose dagger ex- 

 hibition is hopelessly indefensible. Rousseau is 

 perhaps the prince of the tribe ; though Diderot 

 has not inconsiderable claims to occupy that bad 

 eminence. Devaines, indeed, gives a wonderful 

 account of the latter's genius for what might be 

 called domestic tragedy. As the statesman knew 

 the writer well (and was always accounted a vera- 

 cious chronicler), there is no valid reason for 

 refusing him credence. On the eve of Diderot's 

 departure for Russia, Devaines went to say good- 

 by to him. Diderot, as he assures us, received 

 him with tears in his eyes, and led him into his 

 study ; where, in a voice choked with sobs, he 

 broke forth into a monologue in these terms : 

 " You see before you a man in despair ! I have 

 passed through the most cruel possible of scenes 

 for a father and a husband. My wife. . . . My 

 daughter. . . . Ah ! how can I separate myself 

 from them, after having been a witness to their 

 heart-rending grief ! We were at table ; I sat 

 with one on either side of me : no strangers, as 

 you may be sure. I wished to give to them and 

 to them alone my last moments. What a dinner ! 

 What a spectacle of desolation ! . . . We could 

 neither eat nor drink. . . . Ah ! my friend, how 

 sweet it is to be loved by beings so tender, but 

 how terrible to quit them ! No ; I shall not have 

 that hateful courage. What are the cajoleries of 

 power compared with the outpourings of nature ? 

 I stay ; I have made up my mind ; I will not 

 abandon my wife and daughter; I will not be 

 their executioner ; for, my friend, believe me, my 

 departure would be their death." As the philoso- 

 pher spoke, he leaned over his friend, and be- 

 dewed M. Devaines's waistcoat with his tears. 

 Before the friend had time to answer with a few 

 words of sympathy, Madame Diderot suddenly 

 burst into the room. The impassioned address 

 which she proceeded to deliver had at least the 

 merit of sincerity: "And pray, M. Diderot, what 

 are you doing there? You lose your time in 

 talking stuff, and forget your luggage. Nothing 

 will be ready to-morrow. You know you ought 

 to be off early in the morning ; yet there you are 



