ver the particulars which
characterise THE MAN--their souls, like damp gunpowder, cannot ignite
with the spark when it falls on them.

Yet of anecdotes which appear trifling, something may be alleged in
their defence. It is certainly safer for _some_ writers to give us all
they know, than to try their discernment for rejection. Let us sometimes
recollect, that the page over which we toil will probably furnish
materials for authors of happier talents. I would rather have a Birch,
or a Hawkins, appear heavy, cold, and prolix, than that anything
material which concerns a Tillotson, or a Johnson, should be lost. It
must also be confessed, that an anecdote, or a circumstance, which may
appear inconsequential to a reader, may bear some remote or latent
connexion: a biographer who has long contemplated the character he
records, sees many connexions which escape an ordinary reader. Kippis,
in closing the life of the diligent Dr. Birch, has, from his own
experience, no doubt, formed an apology for that minute research, which
some have thought this writer carried to excess. "It may be alleged in
our author's favour, that a man who has a deep and extensive
acquaintance with a subject, often sees a connexion and importance in
some smaller circumstances, which may not immediately be discerned by
others; and, on that account, may have reasons for inserting them, that
will escape the notice of superficial minds."

CONDEMNED POETS.

I flatter myself that those readers who have taken any interest in my
volume have not conceived me to have been deficient in the elevated
feeling which, from early life, I have preserved for the great literary
character: if time weaken our enthusiasm, it is the coldness of age
which creeps on us, but the principle is unalterable which inspired the
sympathy. Who will not venerate those master-spirits "whose PUBLISHED
LABOURS advance the good of mankind," and those BOOKS which are "the
precious life-blood of a master-spirit, imbalmed and treasured up on
purpose to a life beyond life?" But it has happened that I have more
than once incurred the censure of the inconsiderate and the tasteless,
for attempting to separate those writers who exist in a state of
perpetual illusion; who live on querulously, which is an evil for
themselves, and to no purpose of life, which is an evil to others. I
have been blamed for exemplifying "the illusions of writers in
verse,"[168] by the remarkable case of Percival St