People," he remarked, "may be taken in once who imagine that an author is greater in private life than other men. Uncommon parts require uncommon opportunities for their exertion."

"In barbarous society, superiority of parts is of real 5 consequence. Great strength, or great wisdom, is of much value to an individual. But in more polished times there are people to do everything for money; and then there are a number of other superiorities - such as those of birth and fortune and rank, that dissipate 10 men's attentions, and leave no extraordinary share of respect for personal and intellectual superiority. This is wisely ordered by Providence, to preserve some equality among mankind.”

"Sir, this book ["The Elements of Criticism " which 15 he had taken up] is a pretty essay, and deserves to be held in some estimation, though much of it is chimerical."

Speaking of one who, with more than ordinary boldness, attacked public measures and the royal family, he 20 said, "I think he is safe from the law, but he is an abusive scoundrel; and instead of applying to my Lord Chiefjustice to punish him, I would send half a dozen footmen, and have him well ducked."

"The notion of liberty amuses the people of England, 25 and helps to keep off the tædium vitæ. When a butcher tells you that his heart bleeds for his country, he has, in fact, no uneasy feeling."

"Sheridan will not succeed at Bath with his oratory." Ridicule has gone down before him; and, I doubt Der-30 rick is his enemy."

"Derrick may do very well as long as he can outrun his character; but the moment his character gets up with him, it is all over."

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It is, however, but just to record that, some years afterwards, when I reminded him of this sarcasm, he said, "Well, but Derrick has now got a character that he need not run away from."

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I was highly pleased with the extraordinary vigor of s his conversation, and regretted that I was drawn away from it by an engagement at another place. I had, for a part of the evening, been left alone with him, and had ventured to make an observation now and then, which he received very civilly; so that I was satisfied that, though there was a roughness in his manner, there was no ill-nature in his disposition. Davies followed me to the door, and when I complained to him a little of the hard blows which the great man had given me, he kindly took upon him to console me by saying: "Don't s be uneasy. I can see he likes you very well."

XLIV.

THE VALUE OF TIME.

BY SAMUEL JOHNSON.'

It is usual for those who are advised to the attainment of any new qualification, to look upon themselves as required to change the general course of their conduct, to dismiss business, and exclude pleasure, and to devote their days and nights to a particular attention. But all common degrees of excellence are attainable at a lower price; he that should steadily and resolutely assign to any science or language those interstitial vacancies which intervene in the most crowded variety of 25 diversion or employment, would find every day new

irradiations of knowledge, and discover how much more is to be hoped from frequency and perseverance than from violent efforts and sudden desires; efforts which are soon remitted when they encounter difficulty, and desires which, if they are indulged too often, will shake 5 off the authority of reason, and range capriciously from one object to another.

The disposition to defer every important design to a time of leisure, and a state of settled uniformity, proceeds generally from a false estimate of the human 10 powers. If we except those gigantic and stupendous intelligences who are said to grasp a system by intuition, and bound forward from one series of conclusions to another, without regular steps through intermediate propositions, the most successful students make their 15 advances in knowledge by short flights, between each of which the mind may lie at rest. For every single act of progression a short time is sufficient, and it is only necessary that, whenever that time is afforded, it be well employed.

Few minds will be long confined to severe and laborious meditation; and when a successful attack on knowledge has been made, the student recreates himself with the contemplation of his conquest, and forbears another incursion till the new-acquired truth has become 25 familiar, and his curiosity calls upon him for fresh gratifications. Whether the time of intermission is spent in company, or in solitude, in necessary business, or in voluntary levities, the understanding is equally abstracted from the object of inquiry; but, perhaps, if it be de-30 tained by occupations less pleasing, it returns again to study with greater alacrity than when it is glutted with ideal pleasures, and surfeited with intemperance of application. He that will not suffer himself to be dis

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couraged by fancied impossibilities may sometimes find his abilities invigorated by the necessity of exerting them in short intervals, as the force of a current is increased by the contraction of its channel.

From some cause like this it has probably proceeded that, among those who have contributed to the advancement of learning, many have risen to eminence in opposition to all the obstacles which external circumstances could place in their way, amid the tumult of business, the distresses of poverty, or the dissipations of a wan-10 dering and unsettled state. A great part of the life of Erasmus' was one continual peregrination; ill supplied with the gifts of fortune, and led from city to city, and from kingdom to kingdom, by the hopes of patrons and preferment hopes which always flattered and always 15 deceived him—he yet found means, by unshaken constancy, and a vigilant improvement of those hours which, in the midst of the most restless activity, will remain unengaged, to write more than another in the same condition would have hoped to read. Compelled by want 20 to attendance and solicitation, and so much versed in common life that he has transmitted to us the most perfect delineation of the manners of his age, he joined to his knowledge of the world such application to books that he will stand forever in the first rank of literary heroes. How this proficiency was obtained he sufficiently discovers by informing us that the "Praise of Folly," one of his most celebrated performances, was composed by him on the road to Italy, "lest the hours which he was obliged to spend on horseback should be 30 tattled away without regard to literature."

An Italian philosopher expressed in his motto that Time was his estate; an estate, indeed, which will produce nothing without cultivation, but will always abun

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dantly repay the labors of industry, and satisfy the most extensive desires, if no part of it be suffered to lie waste by negligence, to be overrun with noxious plants, or laid out for show rather than for use.

XLV.

THE FLIGHT OF TIME.

BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY.'

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THE flight of our human hours, not really more rapid s at one moment than another, yet oftentimes to our feelings seems more rapid, and this flight startles us like guilty things, with a more affecting sense of rapidity, when a distant church-clock strikes in the night-time; or when, upon some solemn summer evening, the sun's 10 disk, after settling for a minute with farewell horizontal rays, suddenly drops out of sight. The record of our loss in such a case seems to us the first intimation of its possibility; as if we could not be made sensible that the hours were perishable until it is announced to us that ↳ already they have perished.

We feel a perplexity of distress when that which seems to us the cruelest of injuries-a robbery committed upon our dearest possession by the conspiracy of the world outside-seems also as in part a robbery 20 sanctioned by our own collusion. The world, and the customs of the world, never cease to levy taxes upon our time; that is true, and so far the blame is not ours; but the particular degree in which we suffer by this robbery depends much upon the weakness with which we 25