It should, indeed, be the characteristic of good Miscellanies, to be multifarious and concise.  Usbek, the Persian of Montesquieu, is one of the profoundest philosophers, his letters are, however, but concise pages.  Rochefoucault and La Bruyere are not superficial observers of human nature, although they have only written sentences.  Of Tacitus it has been finely remarked by Montesquieu, that “he abridged everything because he saw everything.”  Montaigne approves of Plutarch and Seneca, because their loose papers were suited to his dispositions, and where knowledge is acquired without a tedious study.  “It is,” said he, “no great attempt to take one in hand, and I give over at pleasure, for they have no sequel or connexion.”  La Fontaine agreeably applauds short compositions: 

  Les longs ouvrages me font peur;
  Loin d’epuiser une matiere,
  On n’en doit prendre que la fleur;

and Old Francis Osborne has a coarse and ludicrous image in favour of such opuscula; he says, “Huge volumes, like the ox roasted whole at Bartholomew fair, may proclaim plenty of labour and invention, but afford less of what is delicate, savoury, and well concocted, than smaller pieces.”  To quote so light a genius as the enchanting La Fontaine, and so solid a mind as the sensible Osborne, is taking in all the climates of the human mind; it is touching at the equator, and pushing on to the pole.

Montaigne’s works have been called by a cardinal “The Breviary of Idlers.”  It is therefore the book of man; for all men are idlers; we have hours which we pass with lamentation, and which we know are always returning.  At those moments miscellanists are conformable to all our humours.  We dart along their airy and concise page; and their lively anecdote or their profound observation are so many interstitial pleasures in our listless hours.

The ancients were great admirers of miscellanies; Aulus Gellius has preserved a copious list of titles of such works.  These titles are so numerous, and include such gay and pleasing descriptions, that we may infer by their number that they were greatly admired by the public, and by their titles that they prove the great delight their authors experienced in their composition.  Among the titles are “a basket of flowers;” “an embroidered mantle;” and “a variegated meadow.”  Such a miscellanist as was the admirable Erasmus deserves the happy description which Plutarch with an elegant enthusiasm bestows on Menander:  he calls him the delight of philosophers fatigued with study; that they have recourse to his works as to a meadow enamelled with flowers, where the sense is delighted by a purer air; and very elegantly adds, that Menander has a salt peculiar to himself, drawn from the same waters that gave birth to Venus.