ssion has been carried to a
curious violence of affection, literary history affords numerous
instances. In reading Dr. Burney's "Musical Travels," it would seem that
music was the prime object of human life; Richardson, the painter, in his
treatise on his beloved art, closes all by affirming, that "_Raphael_ is
not only _equal_, but _superior_ to a _Virgil_, or a _Livy_, or a
_Thucydides_, or a _Homer_!" and that painting can reform our manners,
increase our opulence, honour, and power. Denina, in his "Revolutions of
Literature," tells us that to excel in historical composition requires
more ability than is exercised by the excelling masters of any other art;
because it requires not only the same erudition, genius, imagination, and
taste, necessary for a poet, a painter, or a philosopher, but the
historian must also have some peculiar qualifications; this served as a
prelude to his own history.[A] Helvetius, an enthusiast in the fine arts
and polite literature, has composed a poem on Happiness; and imagines that
it consists in an exclusive love of the cultivation of letters and the
arts. All this shows that the more intensely we attach ourselves to an
individual object, the more numerous and the more perfect are our
sensations; if we yield to the distracting variety of opposite pursuits
with an equal passion, our soul is placed amid a continual shock of ideas,
and happiness is lost by mistakes.

[Footnote A: One of the most amusing modern instances occurs in the
Preface to the late Peter Buchan's annotated edition of "Ancient Ballads
and Songs of the North of Scotland" (2 vols. 8vo, Edin. 1828), in which he
declares--"no one has yet conceived, nor has it entered the mind of man,
what patience, perseverance, and general knowledge are necessary for an
editor of a Collection of Ancient Ballads."--ED.]

* * * * *

ON NOVELTY IN LITERATURE.

"All is said," exclaims the lively La Bruyere; but at the same moment, by
his own admirable Reflections, confutes the dreary system he would
establish. An opinion of the exhausted state of literature has been a
popular prejudice of remote existence; and an unhappy idea of a wise
ancient, who, even in his day, lamented that "of books there is no end,"
has been transcribed in many books. He who has critically examined any
branch of literature has discovered how little of original invention is to
be found even in the most excellent works. To add a little