d that one of these inscribed this distich on his manuscript
collection:

Plura voluminibus jungenda volumina nostris,
Nec mihi scribendi terminus ullus erit:

which, not to compose better verses than our original, may be
translated,

More volumes with our volumes still shall blend;
And to our writing there shall be no end!

But even great authors have sometimes so much indulged in the seduction
of the pen, that they appear to have found no substitute for the flow of
their ink, and the delight of stamping blank paper with their hints,
sketches, ideas, the shadows of their mind! Petrarch exhibits no
solitary instance of this passion of the pen, "I read and I write night
and day; it is my only consolation. My eyes are heavy with watching, my
hand is weary with writing. On the table where I dine, and by the side
of my bed, I have all the materials for writing; and when I awake in the
dark, I write, although I am unable to read the next morning what I have
written." Petrarch was not always in his perfect senses.

The copiousness and the multiplicity of the writings of many authors
have shown that too many find a pleasure in the act of composition which
they do not communicate to others. Great erudition and every-day
application is the calamity of that voluminous author, who, without good
sense, and, what is more rare, without that exquisite judgment, which we
call good taste, is always prepared to write on any subject, but at the
same time on no one reasonably. At the early period of printing, two of
the most eminent printers were ruined by the volumes of one author; we
have their petition to the pope to be saved from bankruptcy. Nicholas de
Lyra had inveigled them to print his interminable commentary on the
Bible. Their luckless star prevailed, and their warehouse groaned with
eleven hundred ponderous folios, as immovable as the shelves on which
they for ever reposed! We are astonished at the fertility and the size
of our own writers of the seventeenth century, when the theological war
of words raged, spoiling so many pages and brains. They produced folio
after folio, like almanacs; and Dr. Owen and Baxter wrote more than
sixty to seventy volumes, most of them of the most formidable size. The
truth is, however, that it was then easier to write up to a folio, than
in our days to write down to an octavo; for correction, selection, and
rejection were arts as yet unpractised. They went on with their work