1.  Elements of the Laws of England.
Model—­The Essay on Bailments.  ARISTOTLE.

2.  The History of the American War.
Model—­THUCYDIDES and POLYBIUS.

3.  Britain Discovered, an Epic Poem.  Machinery—­Hindu
Gods. Model—­HOMER.

4.  Speeches, Political and Forensic.
Model—­DEMOSTHENES.

5.  Dialogues, Philosophical and Historical.
Model—­PLATO.

And of favourite authors there are also favourite works, which we love to be familiarised with.  Bartholinus has a dissertation on reading books, in which he points out the superior performances of different writers.  Of St. Austin, his City of God; of Hippocrates, Coacae Praenotiones; of Cicero, De Officiis; of Aristotle, De Animalibus; of Catullus, Coma Berenices; of Virgil, the sixth book of the AEneid, &c.  Such judgments are indeed not to be our guides; but such a mode of reading is useful, by condensing our studies.

Evelyn, who has written treatises on several subjects, was occupied for years on them.  His manner of arranging his materials, and his mode of composition, appear excellent.  Having chosen a subject, he analysed it into its various parts, under certain heads, or titles, to be filled up at leisure.  Under these heads he set down his own thoughts as they occurred, occasionally inserting whatever was useful from his reading.  When his collections were thus formed, he digested his own thoughts regularly, and strengthened them by authorities from ancient and modern authors, or alleged his reasons for dissenting from them.  His collections in time became voluminous, but he then exercised that judgment which the formers of such collections are usually deficient in.  With Hesiod he knew that “half is better than the whole,” and it was his aim to express the quintessence of his reading, but not to give it in a crude state to the world, and when his treatises were sent to the press, they were not half the size of his collections.

Thus also Winkelmann, in his “History of Art,” an extensive work, was long lost in settling on a plan; like artists, who make random sketches of their first conceptions, he threw on paper ideas, hints, and observations which occurred in his readings—­many of them, indeed, were not connected with his history, but were afterwards inserted in some of his other works.

Even Gibbon tells us of his Roman History, “at the outset all was dark and doubtful; even the title of the work, the true aera of the decline and fall of the empire, the limits of the introduction, the division of the chapters, and the order of the narration; and I was often tempted to cast away the labour of seven years.”  Akenside has exquisitely described the progress and the pains of genius in its delightful reveries:  Pleasures of Imagination, b. iii. v. 373.  The pleasures of composition in an ardent genius were never so finely described as by Buffon.  Speaking of the hours of composition he said, “These are the most luxurious and delightful moments of life:  moments which have often enticed me to pass fourteen hours at my desk in a state of transport; this gratification more than glory is my reward.”