d.

In any case, it may be assumed that the original profession has been
deserted for that of authorship, mainly because the aspirant has been
wanting in those orderly methodical habits, and that patience and
submissiveness of temperament which secure success in those departments
of professional labor which are only to be overcome by progressive
degrees. In a word, it may be often said of the man of letters, that he
is not wanting in order because he is an author, but he is an author
because he is wanting in order. He is capable of occasional paroxysms of
industry; his spasms of energy are often great and triumphant. Where
results are to be obtained _per saltum_ he is equal to any thing and is
not easily to be frightened back. He has courage enough to carry a
fortress by assault, but he has not system enough to make his way by
regular approaches. He is weary of the work before he has traced out the
first parallel. In this very history of the rise of professional
authorship, we may often see the causes of its fall. The calamities of
authors are often assignable to the very circumstances that made them
authors. Wherefore is it that in many cases authors are disorderly and
improvident? simply because it is their nature to be so--because in any
other path of life they would be equally disorderly and improvident. The
want of system is not to be attributed to their profession. The evil
which we deplore arises in the first instance only from an inability to
master an inherent defect.

But it must be admitted that there are many predisposing circumstances
in the environments of literary life--that many of the causes which
aggravate, if they do not originate the malady, are incidental to the
profession itself. The absolute requirements of literary labor not
unfrequently compel an irregular distribution of time and with it
irregular social and moral habits. It would be cruel to impute that as a
fault to the literary laborer which is in reality his misfortune. We who
lay our work once every quarter before the public, and they who once a
year, or less frequently, present themselves with their comely octavo
volumes of fiction or biography--history or science--to the reading
world, may dine at home every day with their children, ring the bell at
ten o'clock for family prayers, rise early and retire early every day,
and with but few deviations throughout the year, regularly toil through,
with more or less of the afflatus upon them, t