ever having shown his own natural complexion.  We hear the eloquent truth from one who has alike shared in the bliss of composition, and the misery of its “daily bread.”  “A single hour of composition won from the business of the day, is worth more than the whole day’s toil of him who works at the trade of literature:  in the one case, the spirit comes joyfully to refresh itself, like a hart to the waterbrooks; in the other, it pursues its miserable way, panting and jaded, with the dogs of hunger and necessity behind."[A] We trace the fate of all task-work in the history of POUSSIN, when called on to reside at the French court.  Labouring without intermission, sometimes on one thing and sometimes on another, and hurried on in things which required both time and thought, he saw too clearly the fatal tendency of such a life, and exclaimed, with ill-suppressed bitterness, “If I stay long in this country, I shall turn dauber like the rest here.”  The great artist abruptly returned to Rome to regain the possession of his own thoughts.

[Footnote A:  Quarterly Review, vol. viii. p. 538.]

It has been a question with some, more indeed abroad than at home, whether the art of instructing mankind by the press would not be less suspicious in its character, were it less interested in one of its prevalent motives?  Some noble self-denials of this kind are recorded.  The principle of emolument will produce the industry which furnishes works for popular demand; but it is only the principle of honour which can produce the lasting works of genius.  BOILEAU seems to censure Racine for having accepted money for one of his dramas, while he, who was not rich, gave away his polished poems to the public.  He seems desirous of raising the art of writing to a more disinterested profession than any other, requiring no fees for the professors.  OLIVET presented his elaborate edition of Cicero to the world, requiring no other remuneration than its glory.  MILTON did not compose his immortal work for his trivial copyright;[A] and LINNAEUS sold his labours for a single ducat.  The Abbe MABLY, the author of many political and moral works, lived on little, and would accept only a few presentation copies from the booksellers.  But, since we have become a nation of book-collectors, and since there exists, as Mr. Coleridge describes it, “a reading public,” this principle of honour is altered.  Wealthy and even noble authors are proud to receive the largest tribute to their genius, because this tribute is the certain evidence of the number who pay it.  The property of a book, therefore, represents to the literary candidate the collective force of the thousands of voters on whose favour his claims can only exist.  This change in the affairs of the literary republic in our country was felt by GIBBON, who has fixed on “the patronage of booksellers” as the standard of public opinion:  “the measure of their liberality,” he says, “is the least ambiguous