in a continued accession of materials for a future period.  From the age of twenty, MONTESQUIEU was preparing the materials of L’Esprit des Loix, by extracts from the immense volumes of civil law.  TILLEMONT’S vast labours were traced out in his mind at the early age of nineteen, on reading Baronius; and some of the finest passages in RACINE’S tragedies were composed while a pupil, wandering in the woods of the Port-Royal.  So true is it that the seeds of many of our great literary and scientific works were lying, for many years antecedent to their being given to the world, in a latent state of germination.[A]

[Footnote A:  I need not to be reminded, that I am not worth mentioning among the illustrious men who have long formed the familiar subjects of my delightful researches.  But with the middling as well as with the great, the same habits must operate.  Early in life, I was struck by the inductive philosophy of Bacon, and sought after a Moral Experimental Philosophy; and I had then in my mind an observation of Lord Bolingbroke’s, for I see I quoted it thirty years ago, that “Abstract or general propositions, though never so true, appear obscure or doubtful to us very often till they are explained by examples.”  So far back as in 1793 I published “A Dissertation on Anecdotes,” with the simplicity of a young votary; there I deduced results, and threw out a magnificent project not very practicable.  From that time to the hour I am now writing, my metal has been running in this mould, and I still keep casting philosophy into anecdotes, and anecdotes into philosophy.  As I began I fear I shall end.]

The predisposition of genius has declared itself in painters and poets, who were such before they understood the nature of colours and the arts of verse; and this vehement propensity, so mysteriously constitutional, may be traced in other intellectual characters besides those which belong to the class of imagination.  It was said that PITT was born a minister; the late Dr. SHAW I always considered as one born a naturalist, and I know a great literary antiquary who seems to me to have been also born such; for the passion of curiosity is as intense a faculty, or instinct, with some casts of mind, as is that of invention with poets and painters:  I confess that to me it is genius in a form in which genius has not yet been suspected to appear.  One of the biographers of Sir HANS SLOANE expresses himself in this manner:—­“Our author’s thirst for knowledge seems to have been born with him, so that his Cabinet of Rarities may be said to have commenced with his being.”  This strange metaphorical style has only confused an obscure truth.  SLOANE, early in life, felt an irresistible impulse which inspired him with the most enlarged views of the productions of nature, and he exulted in their accomplishment; for in his will he has solemnly recorded, that his collections