d Old Francis Osborne has a coarse and ludicrous image in favour of such
opuscula; he says, "Huge volumes, like the ox roasted whole at Bartholomew
fair, may proclaim plenty of labour and invention, but afford less of what
is delicate, savoury, and well concocted, than _smaller pieces_." To quote
so light a genius as the enchanting La Fontaine, and so solid a mind as
the sensible Osborne, is taking in all the climates of the human mind; it
is touching at the equator, and pushing on to the pole.

Montaigne's works have been called by a cardinal "The Breviary of Idlers."
It is therefore the book of man; for all men are idlers; we have hours
which we pass with lamentation, and which we know are always returning. At
those moments miscellanists are conformable to all our humours. We dart
along their airy and concise page; and their lively anecdote or their
profound observation are so many interstitial pleasures in our listless
hours.

The ancients were great admirers of miscellanies; Aulus Gellius has
preserved a copious list of titles of such works. These titles are so
numerous, and include such gay and pleasing descriptions, that we may
infer by their number that they were greatly admired by the public, and by
their titles that they prove the great delight their authors experienced
in their composition. Among the titles are "a basket of flowers;" "an
embroidered mantle;" and "a variegated meadow." Such a miscellanist as was
the admirable Erasmus deserves the happy description which Plutarch with
an elegant enthusiasm bestows on Menander: he calls him the delight of
philosophers fatigued with study; that they have recourse to his works as
to a meadow enamelled with flowers, where the sense is delighted by a
purer air; and very elegantly adds, that Menander has a salt peculiar to
himself, drawn from the same waters that gave birth to Venus.

The Troubadours, Conteurs, and Jongleurs, practised what is yet called in
the southern parts of France, _Le guay Saber,_ or the gay science. I
consider these as the Miscellanists of their day; they had their grave
moralities, their tragical histories, and their sportive tales; their
verse and their prose. The village was in motion at their approach; the
castle was opened to the ambulatory poets, and the feudal hypochondriac
listened to their solemn instruction and their airy fancy. I would
call miscellaneous composition LE GUAY SABER, and I would have every
miscellaneous writer as solem