add anything to thy well-instructed knowledge, they yet may refresh thy well-stored remembrance, and if either, I have my end, and thou hast my endeavor. Finally, "If in any case these my poore labors may be found instrumental to weede out blacke melancholie, carking cares, harte-griefe from the minde-sed hoc magis volo quam expecto-Goe forth, childe of my brain-sweat: here I give him up to you, even doe with him what you please, my masters. Some I suppose, will applaud, commende, cry him up-(these are my friendes ;) others, again, will blame, hisse, reprehende in many things, cry down altogether my collections, for crude, inept, putid; they may call me singular, a pedant, fantastic-wordes of reproache in this age, which is all too neoterick and light for my humor."*

Thy friend and servant,

Fred. Saunders.

* Burton.

Authors are beings only half of earth-
They own a world apart from other men;
A glorious realm, given by their fancy birth;
Subjects, a sceptre, and a diadem;

A fairy land of thought in which sweet bliss

Would run to ecstasy in wild delight—
But that stern Nature drags them back to this

With call imperious, which they may not slight;
And then they traffic with their thoughts-to live,
And coin their laboring brains for daily bread,
Getting scant dross for the rich ore they give,

While often with the gift their life is shed.
And thus they die, leaving behind a name
At once their country's glory and her shame.

FRED. WEST.

AN author has been compared to asparagus, on the supposition that all that is good about him is-his head. We venture to protest against such a definition, on the plea that much of his value is also to be ascribed to his heart. It is indeed the latter quality which gives to the realm of authorship, its

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highest dignity and value. Who does not echo the sentiment of Byron on this point:

"One hates an author that's all author-fellows

In foolscap uniform turned up with ink;

So very anxious, clever, fine and jealous,

One don't know what to say to them, or think-
Unless to puff them with a pair of bellows;

Of coxcombry's worst coxcomb, e'en the pink
Are preferable to those shreds of paper-

Those unquenched snuffings of the midnight taper?"

Authors, again, have been styled lamps, exhausting themselves to give light to others: to bees, industriously collecting honey from the flowers, which they treasure up in the hive of books to sweeten and solace life. Author-craft is an imitative as well as a creative art; an original thinker is one who portrays the works of the great Author of the universe-the compiler, one who ingeniously adapts or rearranges the thoughts and illustrations of others; both in their degree may be said to exhibit creative power. Pseudo-authors are counterfeits and belong not to the true and honorable craft, and should be dealt with according to the laws of felony. Schlegel affirms that, authorship is "According to the spirit in which it is pursued-an infamy, a pastime, a day-labor, a handicraft, an art, a science, and a virtue." Much has been written in laudation of authorship, and mighty and majestic are its glorious achievements: yet Pope was not far wrong when he wrote:

"Authors are judged by strange, capricious rules,

The great ones are thought mad, the small ones, fools;

Yet sure the best are most severely fated

For fools are only laughed at-wits are hated."

Douglas Jerrold, himself a recent illustration of its truth, thus touchingly refers to the infelicities of men of genius:

"There is a golden volume yet to be written on the first struggles of forlorn genius in London-magnificent, miserable, ennobling, degrading London. If all who have suffered would confess their sufferingswould show themselves in the stark, shivering squalor in which they first walked her streets-would paint the wounds which first bled in her garrets-what a book might be placed in the hands of pride! what stern wholesome rebukes for the selfish sons of fortune! what sustaining sweetness for the faint of spirit! How often should we find the lowly comforting the high-the ignorant giving lessons to the accomplished -the poor of earth aiding and sustaining the richlyendowed!"

An author is a kind of anomaly in the human family-living apart from his race, and inhabiting an ideal world with feelings and impulses peculiarly his own. With the commonplace things of every day life he has generally but little sympathy-anti-social, isolate, and indulging an ascetic exclusiveness that at once induces our mingled pity and admiration. Too often the victim of an insatiate love of applause, he is thus the more sensitive to the caprices of fortune, and of fame. On the other hand, it has been justly remarked by a modern essayist,* that "Authors hold

* Whipple.

the same relation to the mind of man, that the agriculturist and manufacturer bear to his body; and by virtue of their sway over the realms of thought and emotion, they have exercised a vast influence upon human affairs, which has too often been overlooked or denied by earth's industrial and political sovereigns." Southey remarked of the literary character, that "One's character being teres atque rotundus, is not to be seen all at once. You must know him all round-in all moods and all weathers-to know him well; but in the common intercourse of the world, men see each other in only one mood-see only their manners in society, and hear nothing that comes from any part lying deeper than the larynx. Many people think they are well acquainted with me, who know little more of me than the cut of my jib and the sound of my voice."

Sir E. Bulwer Lytton says, that "Authors are the only men we ever really do know-the rest of mankind die with only the surface of their character understood." This sentiment admits of qualification; for we are told by another literary authority, that the reverse is no less proverbial. With a view to aid the reader in resolving the enigma, we propose to group together a few random characteristic facts connected with the private habits of literary men; as everything regarding their movements and peculiarities is full of interest.

While it has been affirmed that "genius is allied to madness," it is far pleasanter to indulge the opposite view of the subject, with Charles Lamb, who, in his beautiful essay on "The Sanity of True Genius," observes: