in the choice of life, or radical and irremediable imperfection
in the adventurer, the most glaring miscarriages are found to
result,--but it is also true, that all men, even the most illustrious,
have some fatal weakness, obliging both them and their rational admirers
to confess, that they partake of human frailty, and belong to a race of
beings which has small occasion to be proud. Each man has his assailable
part. He is vulnerable, though it be only like the fabled Achilles in
his heel. We are like the image that Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream, of
which though the head was of fine gold, and the breast and the arms were
silver, yet the feet were partly only of iron, and partly of clay. No
man is whole and entire, armed at all points, and qualified for every
undertaking, or even for any one undertaking, so as to carry it through,
and to make the achievement he would perform, or the work he would
produce, in all its parts equal and complete.

It is a gross misapprehension in such men as, smitten with admiration of
a certain cluster of excellencies, or series of heroic acts, are
willing to predicate of the individual to whom they belong, "This man
is consummate, and without alloy." Take the person in his retirement, in
his hours of relaxation, when he has no longer a part to play, and one
or more spectators before whom he is desirous to appear to advantage,
and you shall find him a very ordinary man. He has "passions,
dimensions, senses, affections, like the rest of his fellow-creatures,
is fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, warmed and
cooled by the same summer and winter." He will therefore, when narrowly
observed, be unquestionably found betraying human weaknesses, and
falling into fits of ill humour, spleen, peevishness and folly. No man
is always a sage; no bosom at all times beats with sentiments lofty,
self-denying and heroic. It is enough if he does so, "when the matter
fits his mighty mind."

The literary genius, who undertakes to produce some consummate work,
will find himself pitiably in error, if he expects to turn it out of his
hands, entire in all its parts, and without a flaw.

There are some of the essentials of which it is constituted, that he has
mastered, and is sufficiently familiar with them; but there are others,
especially if his work is miscellaneous and comprehensive, to which he
is glaringly incompetent. He must deny his nature, and become another
man, if he would execute the