Buffon laid down an excellent rule to obtain originality, when he advised the writer first to exhaust his own thoughts, before he attempted to consult other writers; and Gibbon, the most experienced reader of all our writers, offers the same important advice to an author.  When engaged on a particular subject, he tells us, “I suspended my perusal of any new book on the subject, till I had reviewed all that I knew, or believed, or had thought on it, that I might be qualified to discern how much the authors added to my original stock.”  The advice of Lord Bacon, that we should pursue our studies in whatever disposition the mind may be, is excellent.  If happily disposed, we shall gain a great step; and if indisposed, we “shall work out the knots and strands of the mind, and make the middle times the more pleasant.”  Some active lives have passed away in incessant competition, like those of Mozart, Cicero, and Voltaire, who were restless, perhaps unhappy, when their genius was quiescent.  To such minds the constant zeal they bring to their labour supplies the absence of that inspiration which cannot always be the same, nor always at its height.

Industry is the feature by which the ancients so frequently describe an eminent character; such phrases as “incredibili industria; diligentia singulars” are usual.  We of these days cannot conceive the industry of Cicero; but he has himself told us that he suffered no moments of his leisure to escape from him.  Not only his spare hours were consecrated to his books; but even on days of business he would take a few turns in his walk, to meditate or to dictate; many of his letters are dated before daylight, some from the senate, at his meals, and amid his morning levees.  The dawn of day was the summons of study to Sir William Jones.  John Hunter, who was constantly engaged in the search and consideration of new facts, described what was passing in his mind by a remarkable illustration:—­he said to Abernethy, “My mind is like a bee-hive.”  A simile which was singularly correct; “for,” observes Abernethy, “in the midst of buzz and apparent confusion there was great order, regularity of structure, and abundant food, collected with incessant industry from the choicest stores of nature.”  Thus one man of genius is the ablest commentator on the thoughts and feelings of another.  When we reflect on the magnitude of the labours of Cicero and the elder Pliny, on those of Erasmus, Petrarch, Baronius, Lord Bacon, Usher, and Bayle, we seem at the base of these monuments of study, we seem scarcely awake to admire.  These were the laborious instructors of mankind; their age has closed.