Minds, like some seed-plants, delight in sporting; there is great variety in thinking, but the few great ideas remain the same. They are constantly reappearing in all ages and in all literatures, modified by new circumstances and new uses; though in new dresses, they are still the old originals. Like the virtues, they have great and endless services to perform in this world. Now they appear in philosophy, now in fiction; the moralist uses them, and the buffoon; dissociate them, analyze them, strip them of their innumerable dresses, and they are recognized and identified--the same from the foundation and forever. If a discriminating general reader for forty years had noted their continual reappearance in the tons of books he has perused upon all subjects, he would be astonished at their varied and multiplied uses. Thinkers he would perhaps find more numerous than thoughts; yet of the former how few. The original thought of one age diffuses itself through the next, and expires in commonplace--to be born again when occasion necessitates and God wills. At each birth it is a new creation--to the brain it springs from and to the creatures it is to enlighten and serve. If the writer or speaker could know how often it has done even hack-service in the ages before him, he would repentantly blot it out, or choke in its utterance. In the unpleasant discovery, that indispensable and inspiring quality, self-conceit, would suffer a wound beyond healing. "The number of those writers who can, with any justness of expression," says Melmoth, "be termed thinking authors, would not form a very copious library, though one were to take in all of that kind which both ancient and modern times have produced. Epicurus, we are told, left behind him three hundred volumes of his own works, wherein he had not inserted a single quotation; and we have it upon the authority of Varro's own works, that he himself composed four hundred and ninety books. Seneca assures us that Didymus, the grammarian, wrote no less than four thousand; but Origen, it seems, was yet more prolific, and extended his performances even to six thousand treatises. It is obvious to imagine with what sort of materials the productions of such expeditious workmen were wrought up: sound thought and well-matured reflections could have no share, we may be sure, in these hasty performances. Thus are books multiplied, whilst authors are scarce; and so much easier is it to write than to think." "The same man," said Publius Syrus, "can rarely say a great deal and say it to the purpose." To ridicule the pervading absence of thought in common conversation, the author of Lothair makes Pinto exclaim, "English is an expressive language, but not difficult to master. Its range is limited. It consists, as far as I observe, of four words: 'nice,' 'jolly,' 'charming,' and 'bore;' and some grammarians add, 'fond.'"