d so interested for other persons than those about him,
that he becomes the inhabitant of the visionary world of books. He
counts only his days by his acquisitions, and may be said by his
original discoveries to be the CREATOR OF FACTS; often exciting the
gratitude of the literary world, while the very name of the benefactor
has not always descended with the inestimable labours.

Such is the man whom we often find leaving, when he dies, his favourite
volumes only an incomplete project! and few of this class of literary
men have escaped the fate reserved for most of their brothers.
Voluminous works have been usually left unfinished by the death of the
authors; and it is with them as with the planting of trees, of which
Johnson has forcibly observed, "There is a frightful interval between
the seed and timber." And he admirably remarks, what I cannot forbear
applying to the labours I am now to describe: "He that calculates the
growth of trees has the remembrance of the shortness of life driven hard
upon him. He knows that he is doing what will never benefit himself;
and where he rejoices to see the stem rise, is disposed to repine that
another shall cut it down." The days of the patriotic Count Mazzuchelli
were freely given to his national literature; and six invaluable folios
attest the gigantic force of his immense erudition; yet these only carry
us through the letters A and B: and though Mazzuchelli had finished for
the press other volumes, the torpor of his descendants has defrauded
Europe of her claims.[338] The Abbe Goujet, who had designed a
classified history of his national literature, in the eighteen volumes
we possess, could only conclude that of the translators, and commence
that of the poets; two other volumes in manuscript have perished. That
great enterprise of the Benedictines, the "Histoire Literaire de la
France," now consists of twelve large quartos, and the industry of its
successive writers has only been able to carry it to the twelfth
century. David Clement designed the most extensive bibliography which
had ever appeared; but the diligent life of the writer could only
proceed as far as H. The alphabetical order, which so many writers of
this class have adopted, has proved a mortifying memento of human life!
Tiraboschi was so fortunate as to complete his great national history of
Italian literature. But, unhappily for us, Thomas Warton, after feeling
his way through the darker ages of our poetry, in pla