d, leaving books that make others sin." An author's wisdom or his folly
does not die with him. The volume, not the author, is our companion, and
is for us a real personage, performing before us whatever it inspires--"He
being dead, yet speaketh." Such is the vitality of a book!

CHAPTER XXI.

The man of letters.--Occupies an intermediate station between authors and
readers.--His solitude described.--Often the father of genius.--Atticus, a
man of letters of antiquity.--The perfect character of a modern man of
letters exhibited in Peiresc.--Their utility to authors and artists.

Among the active members of the literary republic, there is a class whom
formerly we distinguished by the title of MEN OF LETTERS--a title which,
with us, has nearly gone out of currency, though I do not think that the
general term of "literary men" would be sufficiently appropriate.

The man of letters, whose habits and whose whole life so closely resemble
those of an author, can only be distinguished by this simple circumstance,
that the man of letters is not an author.

Yet he whose sole occupation through life is literature--he who is always
acquiring and never producing, appears as ridiculous as the architect who
never raised an edifice, or the statuary who refrains from sculpture. His
pursuits are reproached with terminating in an epicurean selfishness, and
amidst his incessant avocations he himself is considered as a particular
sort of idler.

This race of literary characters, as we now find them, could not have
appeared till the press had poured forth its affluence. In the degree that
the nations of Europe became literary, was that philosophical curiosity
kindled which induced some to devote their fortunes and their days, and to
experience some of the purest of human enjoyments in preserving and
familiarising themselves with "the monuments of vanished minds," as books
are called by D'Avenant with so much sublimity. Their expansive library
presents an indestructible history of the genius of every people, through
all their eras--and whatever men have thought and whatever men have done,
were at length discovered in books.

Men of letters occupy an intermediate station between authors and readers.
They are gifted with more curiosity of knowledge, and more multiplied
tastes, and by those precious collections which they are forming during
their lives, are more completely furnished with the means than are
possessed by the multitude