selves genuine, and exist as realities for us-and were so doubtless to themselves, in the act of composition. In the calm of study, a beautiful imagination may convert him whose morals are corrupt, into an admirable moralist, awakening feelings which yet may be cold in the business of life: since we have shown that the phlegmatic can excite himself into wit, and the cheerful man delight in "Night Thoughts." SALLUST, the corrupt Sallust, might retain the most sublime conceptions of the virtues which were to save the Republic; and STERNE, whose heart was not so susceptible in ordinary occurrences, while he was gradually creating incident after incident, touching the emotions one after another, in the stories of Le Fevre and Maria, might have thrilled-like some of his readers. Many have mourned over the wisdom or the virtue they contemplated, mortified at their own infirmity. Thus, though there may be no identity between the book and the man, still for us, an author is ever an abstract being, and, as one of the Fathers said, "a dead man may sin dead, leaving books that make others

sin." An author's wisdom or his folly does not die with him. The volume, not the author, is our companion, and is for us a real personage, performing before us whatever it inspires; "He being dead, yet speaketh." Such is the vitality of a book!

CHAPTER XXI.

THE MAN OF LETTERS-OCCUPIES AN INTERMEDIATE STATION BETWEEN AUTHORS AND READERS-HIS SOLITUDE DESCRIBED-OFTEN THE FATHER OF GENIUS-ATTICUS, A MAN OF LETTERS OF ANTIQUITY-THE PERFECT CHARACTER OF A MODERN MAN OF LETTERS EXHIBITED IN PEIRESCTHEIR UTILITY TO AUTHORS AND ARTISTS.

AMONG the active members of the republic there is a class to whom may be appropriately assigned the title of MEN OF LETTERS.

The man of letters, whose habits and whose whole life so closely resemble those of an author, can only be distinguished by the simple circumstance, that the man of letters is not an author.

Yet he whose sole occupation through life is literature, who is always acquiring and never producing, appears as ridiculous as the architect who never raised an edifice, or the statuary who refrains from sculpture. His pursuits are reproached with

terminating in an epicurean selfishness, and amidst his incessant avocations he himself is considered as a particular sort of idler.

This race of literary characters, as we now find them, could not have appeared till the press had poured its affluence; in the degree that the nations of Europe became literary, was that philosophical curiosity kindled, which induced some to devote their fortunes and their days, and to experience some of the purest of human enjoyments, in preserving and familiarising themselves with "the monuments of vanished minds," as books are called by D'Avenant with so much sublimity; their expansive library presents an indestructible history of the genius of every people, through all their æras—and whatever men have thought and whatever men have done, were at length discovered in books.

Men of letters occupy an intermediate station between authors and readers; with more curiosity of knowledge and more multiplied tastes, and by those precious collections which they are forming during their lives, more completely furnished with

the means than are possessed by the multitude who read, and the few who write.

The studies of an author are usually restricted to particular subjects; his tastes are tinctured by their colouring, and his mind is always shaping itself to them. An author's works form his solitary pride, and often mark the boundaries of his empire; while half his life wears away in the slow maturity of composition, and still the ambition of authorship torments its victim alike in disappointment or in possession.

But soothing is the solitude of the MAN OF LETTERS! View the busied inhabitant of the library surrounded by the objects of his love! he possesses them and they possess him! Those volumes-images of our mind and passions, as he traces them from Herodotus to Gibbon, from Homer to Shakspeare-those portfolios, which gather up the inventions of genius, and that selected cabinet of medals, which holds so many unwritten histories;-some favourite sculptures and pictures, and some antiquities of all nations, here and there about his house-these are his furniture!