Were it possible to collect some thoughts of great thinkers, which were never written, we should discover vivid conceptions, and an originality they never dared to pursue in their works! Artists have this advantage over authors, that their virgin fancies, their chance felicities, which labour cannot afterwards produce, are constantly perpetuated; and those "studies," as they are called, are as precious to posterity as their more complete designs. In literature we possess one remarkable evidence of these fortuitous thoughts of genius. POPE and SWIFT, being in the country together, observed, that if contemplative men were to notice "the thoughts which suddenly present themselves to their minds when walking in the fields, &c., they might find many as well worth preserving as some of their more deliberate reflections." They made a trial, and agreed to write down such involuntary thoughts as occurred during their stay there. These furnished out the "Thoughts" in Pope's and Swift's Miscellanies.[A] Among Lord Bacon's Remains, we find a paper entitled "_Sudden Thoughts,_ set down for Profit." At all hours, by the side of VOLTAIRE'S bed, or on his table, stood his pen and ink with slips of paper. The margins of his books were covered with his "sudden thoughts." CICERO, in reading, constantly took notes and made comments. There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing. [Footnote A: This anecdote is found in Ruffhead's "Life of Pope," evidently given by Warburton, as was everything of personal knowledge in that tasteless volume of a mere lawyer, who presumed to write the life of a poet.]