outpourings of the mind, are generally those which cost the greatest effort.

The most accurate observer of nature, is generally the most painful thinker; the deepest thinker is seldom the best talker; and he whose memory draws least on his own imagination, (paradoxical as it may seem,) is often the most fluent writer. "Those animals," says Bacon, "which are the swiftest in the course are nimblest in the turn."

But the great evil of every department of literature which deals in fiction, is the habit the imagination acquires of domineering over sober judgment.

"In time," says the great moralist, "when some particular train of ideas has fixed the attention, all other intellectual gratifications are rejected, the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favourite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood, whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth. By degrees the reign of fancy is confirmed. She grows first imperious, and in time despotic. Then fiction begins to operate as reality, false opinions fasten on the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or anguish."

Such is the progress, but its origin is in the infatuation of the pursuits which draws him into

labour beyond his strength, and causes a prolonged application to composition, because the interest of the subject renders the mind insensible to fatigue. Scott seldom exceeded fifteen pages a day, but even this for a continuance was a toilsome task, that would have broken down the health of any other constitution at a much earlier period. Fyron, in his journal, says he wrote an entire poem, and one of considerable length, in four days, to banish the dreadful impression of a dream--an exertion of mind and body which appears almost incredible.

Pope boasts in one of his letters of having finished fifty lines of his "Homer" in one day; and it would appear to be the largest number he had accomplished.

Cowper, however, in his blank verse translation of the same author, for some time was in the habit of doing sixty lines a day; and even in his last illness, of revising one hundred lines daily. But of all literary labour that of Johnson appears the most stupendous. "In seven years," to use his own language, "he sailed a long and painful voyage round the world of the English language," and in that brief term produced his dictionary. The similar French performance occupied forty academicians nearly as many years.

During the period that Johnson was thus employed, he found leisure to produce his tregedy,

to complete the "Rambler," the "Vanity of Human Wishes," and several minor performances. At the later period, he speaks of having written forty-eight octavo pages of the "Life of Savage” in one day, and a part of the night.

Such labours as these, if they do not shorten life, are calculated to make it wretched, for hypochondria invariably follows close upon them.

CHAPTER XI.

LONGEVITY OF POLEMICAL AUTHORS-PHILOLOGISTS.

IN the list of polemical authors we find the longevity of those of fixed opinions on the subject of religion greater, by a hundred and five years, than that of authors of unsettled sentiments on this important inquiry after truth. The only wonder is, that the ages of the former have not furnished a still larger amount, when the different effects on health and life are taken into account, of certainty of opinion on the most important of all subjects: of tranquillity and peace of mind on the one hand; and on the other, of inquiries that present difficulties, doubts, or disbelief-of mental anxiety, and of the insecurity of the virtue of those whose sole dependance is on worldly honour, whose only guidance is the philosophy of men as fallible as themselves.

The list of the philologists exhibits very little difference from that of the divines in the amount of the united ages of each. Though many of the former have been devoted solely to scholastic

pursuits, these pursuits to a great extent are necessary to qualify the latter for their profession. But seclusion from the world, and sedéntary habits, can alone enable the philologist to make his memory the store-house of the erudition of past ages, or furnish the necessary materials for that vast pyramid of classical erudition, which is based on a catacomb of ancient learning, and has its apex in a cloud that sheds no rain on the arid soil beneath it.

The more we contemplate so wonderful a structure, the greater must be our disappointment if we fail to discover its utility, and the larger the surface over which its shadows are projected, the more must be questioned the advantages of the erroneous expenditure of time and labour that was necessary for the erection of such a pile. If Cobbett should ever deign to peruse these volumes, he will pardon our metaphor for the sake of its application; but none can be more sensible of the misfortune of entitling an opinion of the inutility of any branch of learning to the approbation of that gentleman than we are; but, nevertheless, we are inclined to question the advantage of a whole life's devotion to the study of the dead languages.

What good to science, or to society, has accrued from Parr's profound knowledge of the di