of him, as you are too prodigal in mine. I
thank you for informing me what it is the learned desire to find in me;
my self-love suggests many little excuses, with which, you observe, I am
apt _to favour my defects_. If I am careless, it arises partly from my
ignorance, and more from my indolence; I am so constituted, that I
cannot conquer my nature; I precipitate rather than compose, and it is
far more irksome for me to revise than to write."

This parallel between Erasmus and Budaeus, though the parallel itself was
not of a malignant nature, yet disturbed the quiet, and interrupted the
friendship of both. When Longolius discovered that the Parisian
surpassed the Hollander in Greek literature and the knowledge of the
civil law, and worked more learnedly and laboriously, how did this
detract from the finer genius and the varied erudition of the more
delightful writer? The parallelist compares Erasmus to "a river swelling
its waters, and often overflowing its banks; Budaeus rolled on like a
majestic stream, ever restraining its waves within its bed. The
Frenchman has more nerve, and blood, and life, and the Hollander more
fulness, freshness, and colour."

The taste for _biographical parallels_ must have reached us from
Plutarch; and there is something malicious in our nature which inclines
us to form _comparative estimates_, usually with a view to elevate one
great man at the cost of another, whom we would secretly depreciate.
Our political parties at home have often indulged in these fallacious
parallels, and Pitt and Fox once balanced the scales, not by the
standard weights and measures which ought to have been used, but by the
adroitness of the hand that pressed down the scale. In literature, these
comparative estimates have proved most prejudicial. A finer model exists
not than the _parallel of Dryden and Pope_, by Johnson; for, without
designing any undue preference, his vigorous judgment has analysed them
by his contrasts, and has rather shown their distinctness than their
similarity. But literary _parallels_ usually end in producing _parties_;
and, as I have elsewhere observed, often originate in undervaluing one
man of genius, for his deficiency in some eminent quality possessed by
the other man of genius; they not unfrequently proceed from adverse
tastes, and are formed with the concealed design of establishing some
favourite one. The world of literature has been deeply infected with
this folly. Virgil probably