ew
stores, and he persistently refreshed his memory by running over books
which he had read oftentimes before. The books and manuscripts which
Gibbon read in twenty years reached such an enormous number that, when
he attempted to form a catalogue of them, he was compelled to give up
the task in despair; he was constantly adding to the enormous
reservoir of knowledge which he had at command, and thus his work
never grew stale, and he was ready instantly with a hundred
illustrative lights on any point which chanced to crop up either in
conversation or in the course of his reading. The cheap and flashy
writer is inclined to disdain the men who are thorough in their
studies; but, while his work grows thin and poor, the judicious
reader's becomes marked by more and more of richness and fulness.

Burke kept his vast accumulations of knowledge perfectly fresh; and I
notice in him that, instead of growing more staid and commonplace in
his style as he increased in years, he grew more vigorous, until he
actually slid into the excess of gaudy redundancy. I am sorry that his
prose ever became Asiatic in its splendour; but even that fact shows
how steadfast effort may prevent a man from writing away his
originality and his freshness of manner. Observe the sad results of an
antagonistic proceeding for even the mightiest of brains. Sir Walter
Scott was building up his brain until he was forty years old; then we
had the Homeric strength of "Marmion," the perfect art of the
"Antiquary," the unequalled romantic interest of "Guy Mannering," "Rob
Roy," "Ivanhoe," "Quentin Durward." The long years of steady
production drained that most noble flood of knowledge and skill until
we reached the obvious fatuity of "Count Robert" and the imbecilities
of "Castle Dangerous." Any half-dozen of such books as "Redgauntlet,"
"The Pirate," and "Kenilworth" were sufficient to give a man the
reputation of being great--and yet even that overwhelming opulence was
at last worn down into mental poverty. Poor Scott never gave himself
time to recover when once his descent of the last perilous slope had
begun, and he suffered for his folly in not resting.

In Lord Tennyson's case we see how wisdom may preserve a man's power.
The poet who gave us "Ulysses" so long ago, the poet who brought forth
such a magnificent work as "Maud," retained his power so fully that
thirty years after "Maud" he gave us "Rizpah." This continued
freshness, lasting nearly threescore y