o the direction of Horace, yet till their
fancy was cooled after the raptures of invention, and the glare of
novelty had ceased to dazzle the judgment.

There were in those days no weekly or diurnal writers; _multa dies et
multa litura_, much time, and many rasures, were considered as
indispensable requisites; and that no other method of attaining lasting
praise has been yet discovered, may be conjectured from the blotted
manuscripts of Milton now remaining, and from the tardy emission of
Pope's compositions, delayed more than once till the incidents to which
they alluded were forgotten, till his enemies were secure from his
satire, and, what to an honest mind must be more painful, his friends
were deaf to his encomiums.

To him, whose eagerness of praise hurries his productions soon into the
light, many imperfections are unavoidable, even where the mind furnishes
the materials, as well as regulates their disposition, and nothing
depends upon search or information. Delay opens new veins of thought,
the subject dismissed for a time appears with a new train of dependent
images, the accidents of reading our conversation supply new ornaments
or allusions, or mere intermission of the fatigue of thinking enables
the mind to collect new force, and make new excursions. But all those
benefits come too late for him, who, when he was weary with labour,
snatched at the recompense, and gave his work to his friends and his
enemies, as soon as impatience and pride persuaded him to conclude it.

One of the most pernicious effects of haste, is obscurity. He that teems
with a quick succession of ideas, and perceives how one sentiment
produces another, easily believes that he can clearly express what he so
strongly comprehends; he seldom suspects his thoughts of embarrassment,
while he preserves in his own memory the series of connection, or his
diction of ambiguity, while only one sense is present to his mind. Yet
if he has been employed on an abstruse, or complicated argument, he will
find, when he has awhile withdrawn his mind, and returns as a new reader
to his work, that he has only a conjectural glimpse of his own meaning,
and that to explain it to those whom he desires to instruct, he must
open his sentiments, disentangle his method, and alter his arrangement.

Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only
absence can set them free; and every man ought to restore himself to the
full exercise of his judgment,