I may parody a celebrated aphorism
of Quintilian, I would say, "Magna debetur hominibus reverentia(8):" in
other words, we should carefully examine what it is that we propose
to deliver in a permanent form to the taste and understanding of our
species. An author ought only to commit to the press the first fruits of
his field, his best and choicest thoughts. He ought not to take up the
pen, till he has brought his mind into a fitting tone, and ought to lay
it down, the instant his intellect becomes in any degree clouded, and
his vital spirits abate of their elasticity.

(8) Mankind is to be considered with reverence.

There are extraordinary cases. A man may have so thoroughly prepared
himself by long meditation and study, he may have his mind so charged
with an abundance of thought, that it may employ him for ten or twelve
hours consecutively, merely to put down or to unravel the conceptions
already matured in his soul. It was in some such way, that Dryden,
we are told, occupied a whole night, and to a late hour in the next
morning, in penning his Alexander's Feast. But these are the exceptions.
In most instances two or three hours are as much as an author can spend
at a time in delivering the first fruits of his field, his choicest
thoughts, before his intellect becomes in some degree clouded, and his
vital spirits abate of their elasticity.

Nor is this all. He might go on perhaps for some time longer with a
reasonable degree of clearness. But the fertility which ought to be his
boast, is exhausted. He no longer sports in the meadows of thought,
or revels in the exuberance of imagination, but becomes barren and
unsatisfactory. Repose is necessary, and that the soil should be
refreshed with the dews of another evening, the sleep of a night, and
the freshness and revivifying influence of another morning.

These observations lead, by a natural transition, to the question of the
true estimate and value of human life, considered as the means of the
operations of intellect.

A primary enquiry under this head is as to the duration of life: Is it
long, or short?

The instant this question is proposed, I hear myself replied to from
all quarters: What is there so well known as the brevity of human life?
"Life is but a span." It is "as a tale that is told." "Man cometh
forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and
continueth not." We are "as a sleep; or as grass: in the morning
it flourishe