and were ludicrously mimetic of their prototype, even as
to the size of the volume and the form of the page. What has become of
these "Varieties of Literature," and "Delights of Literature," and
"Delicacies of Literature," and "Relics of Literature,"--and the other
Protean forms of uninspired compilation? Dead as they deserve to be:
while the work, the idea of which occurred to its writer in his early
youth, and which he lived virtually to execute in all the ripeness of
his studious manhood, remains as fresh and popular as ever,--the
Literary Miscellany of the English People.

I have ventured to enter into some details as to the earlier and
obscurer years of my father's life, because I thought that they threw
light upon human character, and that without them, indeed, a just
appreciation of his career could hardly be formed. I am mistaken, if we
do not recognise in his instance two very interesting qualities of life:
predisposition and self-formation. There was a third, which I think is
to be honoured, and that was his sympathy with his order. No one has
written so much about authors, and so well. Indeed, before his time, the
Literary Character had never been fairly placed before the world. He
comprehended its idiosyncrasy: all its strength and all its weakness. He
could soften, because he could explain, its infirmities; in the analysis
and record of its power, he vindicated the right position of authors in
the social scale. They stand between the governors and the governed, he
impresses on us in the closing pages of his greatest work.[4] Though he
shared none of the calamities, and scarcely any of the controversies, of
literature, no one has sympathised so intimately with the sorrows, or so
zealously and impartially registered the instructive disputes, of
literary men. He loved to celebrate the exploits of great writers, and
to show that, in these ages, the pen is a weapon as puissant as the
sword. He was also the first writer who vindicated the position of the
great artist in the history of genius. His pages are studded with
pregnant instances and graceful details, borrowed from the life of Art
and its votaries, and which his intimate and curious acquaintance with
Italian letters readily and happily supplied. Above all writers, he has
maintained the greatness of intellect, and the immortality of thought.

He was himself a complete literary character, a man who really passed
his life in his library. Even marriage produ