with defects.  A man of genius composes in a state of intellectual emotion, and the magic of his style consists in the movements of his soul; but the art of conveying those movements is far separated from the feeling which inspires them.  The idea in the mind is not always found under the pen, any more than the artist’s conception can always breathe in his pencil.  Like FIAMINGO’S image, which he kept polishing till his friend exclaimed, “What perfection would you have?”—­“Alas!” exclaimed the sculptor, “the original I am labouring to come up to is in my head, but not yet in my hand.”

The writer toils, and repeatedly toils, to throw into our minds that sympathy with which we hang over the illusion of his pages, and become himself.  ARIOSTO wrote sixteen different ways the celebrated stanza descriptive of a tempest, as appears by his MSS. at Ferrara; and the version he preferred was the last of the sixteen.  We know that PETRARCH made forty-four alterations of a single verse:  “whether for the thought, the expression, or the harmony, it is evident that as many operations in the heart, the head, or the ear of the poet occurred,” observes a man of genius, Ugo Foscolo.  Quintilian and Horace dread the over-fondness of an author for his compositions:  alteration is not always improvement.  A picture over-finished fails in its effect.  If the hand of the artist cannot leave it, how much beauty may it undo! yet still he is lingering, still strengthening the weak, still subduing the daring, still searching for that single idea which awakens so many in the minds of others, while often, as it once happened, the dash of despair hangs the foam on the horse’s nostrils.  I have known a great sculptor, who for twenty years delighted himself with forming in his mind the nymph his hand was always creating.  How rapturously he beheld her! what inspiration! what illusion!  Alas! the last five years spoiled the beautiful which he had once reached, and could not stop and finish!

The art of composition, indeed, is of such slow attainment, that a man of genius, late in life, may discover how its secret conceals itself in the habit; how discipline consists in exercise, how perfection comes from experience, and how unity is the last effort of judgment.  When Fox meditated on a history which should last with the language, he met his evil genius in this new province.  The rapidity and the fire of his elocution were extinguished by a pen unconsecrated by long and previous study; he saw that he could not class with the great historians of every great people; he complained, while he mourned over the fragment of genius which, after such zealous preparation, he dared not complete.  CURRAN, an orator of vehement eloquence, often strikingly original, when late in life he was desirous of cultivating literary composition, unaccustomed to its more gradual march, found a pen cold, and destitute of every grace.  ROUSSEAU has glowingly described the ceaseless inquietude by which he obtained the