The craft of authorship is by no means so easy of practice as is generally imagined by the thousands who aspire to its practice. Almost all our works, whether of knowledge or of fancy, have been the product of much intellectual exertion and study; or, as it is better expressed by the poet-- "the well-ripened fruits of wise decay." Pope published nothing until it had been a year or two before him, and even then his printer's proofs were very full of alterations; and, on one occasion, Dodsley, his publisher, thought it better to have the whole recomposed than make the necessary corrections. Goldsmith considered four lines a day good work, and was seven years in beating out the pure gold of the _Deserted Village_. Hume wrote his _History of England_ on a sofa, but he went quietly on correcting every edition till his death. Robertson used to write out his sentences on small slips of paper; and, after rounding them and polishing them to his satisfaction, he entered them in a book, which, in its turn, underwent considerable revision. Burke had all his principal works printed two or three times at a private press before submitting them to his publisher. Akenside and Gray were indefatigable correctors, labouring every line; and so was our prolix and more imaginative poet, Thomson. On comparing the first and latest editions of the _Seasons_, there will be found scarcely a page which does not bear evidence of his taste and industry. Johnson thinks the poems lost much of their raciness under this severe regimen, but they were much improved in fancy and delicacy; the episode of Musidora, "the solemnly ridiculous bathing scene," as Campbell terms it, was almost entirely rewritten. Johnson and Gibbon were the least laborious in arranging their _copy_ for the press. Gibbon sent the first and only MS. of his stupendous work (the _Decline and Fall_) to his printer; and Johnson's high-sounding sentences were written almost without an effort. Both, however, lived and moved, as it were, in the world of letters, thinking or caring of little else--one in the heart of busy London, which he dearly loved, and the other in his silent retreat at Lausanne. Dryden wrote hurriedly, to provide for the day; but his _Absalom and Achitophel_, and the beautiful imagery of the _Hind and Panther_, must have been fostered with parental care. St. Pierre copied his _Paul and Virginia_ nine times, that he might render it the more perfect. Rousseau was a very coxcomb in these matters: the amatory epistles, in his new _Heloise_, he wrote on fine gilt-edged card-paper, and having folded, addressed, and sealed them, he opened and read them in the solitary woods of Clairens, with the mingled enthusiasm of an author and lover. Sheridan watched long and anxiously for bright thoughts, as the MS. of his _School for Scandal_, in its various stages, proves. Burns composed in the open air, the sunnier the better; but he laboured hard, and with