For this reason, writers and artists should, among their recreations, be forming a constant acquaintance with the history of their departed kindred.  In literary biography a man of genius always finds something which relates to himself.  The studies of artists have a great uniformity, and their habits of life are monotonous.  They have all the same difficulties to encounter, although they do not all meet with the same glory.  How many secrets may the man of genius learn from literary anecdotes! important secrets, which his friends will not convey to him.  He traces the effects of similar studies; warned sometimes by failures, and often animated by watching the incipient and shadowy attempts which closed in a great work.  From one he learns in what manner he planned and corrected; from another he may overcome those obstacles which, perhaps, at that very moment make him rise in despair from his own unfinished labour.  What perhaps he had in vain desired to know for half his life is revealed to him by a literary anecdote; and thus the amusements of indolent hours may impart the vigour of study; as we find sometimes in the fruit we have taken for pleasure the medicine which restores our health.  How superficial is that cry of some impertinent pretended geniuses of these times who affect to exclaim, “Give me no anecdotes of an author, but give me his works!” I have often found the anecdotes more interesting than the works.

Dr. Johnson devoted one of his periodical papers to a defence of anecdotes, and expresses himself thus on certain collectors of anecdotes:  “They are not always so happy as to select the most important.  I know not well what advantage posterity can receive from the only circumstance by which Tickell has distinguished Addison from the rest of mankind,—­the irregularity of his pulse; nor can I think myself overpaid for the time spent in reading the life of Malherbe, by being enabled to relate, after the learned biographer, that Malherbe had two predominant opinions; one, that the looseness of a single woman might destroy all her boast of ancient descent; the other, that French beggars made use, very improperly and barbarously, of the phrase noble gentlemen, because either word included the sense of both.”

These just observations may, perhaps, be further illustrated by the following notices.  Dr. J. Warton has informed the world that many of our poets have been handsome.  This, certainly, neither concerns the world, nor the class of poets.  It is trifling to tell us that Dr. Johnson was accustomed “to cut his nails to the quick.”  I am not much gratified by being informed, that Menage wore a greater number of stockings than any other person, excepting one, whose name I have really forgotten.  The biographer of Cujas, a celebrated lawyer, says that two things were remarkable of this scholar.  The first, that he studied on the floor, lying