Influence of authors on society, and of society on authors. --National tastes a source of literary prejudices.--True genius always the organ of its nation.--Master-writers preserve the distinct national character.--Genius the organ of the state of the age.--Causes of its suppression in a people.--Often invented, but neglected.--The natural gradations of genius.--Men of genius produce their usefulness in privacy--The public mind is now the creation of the public writer.--Politicians affect to deny this principle.--Authors stand between the governors and the governed.--A view of the solitary author in his study.--They create an epoch in history.--Influence of popular authors.--The immortality of thought.--The family of genius illustrated by their genealogy. 258 LITERARY MISCELLANIES. Miscellanists 281 Prefaces 286 Style 291 Goldsmith and Johnson 294 Self-characters 295 On reading 298 On habituating ourselves to an individual pursuit 302 On novelty in literature 305 Vers de Societe 308 The genius of Moliere 310 The sensibility of Racine 325 Of Sterne 332 Hume, Robertson, and Birch 340 Of voluminous works incomplete by the deaths of the authors 350 Of domestic novelties at first condemned 355 Domesticity; or a dissertation on servants 364 Printed letters in the vernacular idiom 375 CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST. Advertisement 383 Of the first modern assailants of the character of James I., Burnet, Bolingbroke and Pope, Harris, Macaulay, and Walpole 386 His pedantry 388 His polemical studies 389 --how these were political 392 The Hampton Court conference 393 Of some of his writings 398 Popular superstitions of the age 400 The King's habits of life those of a man of letters 402 Of the facility and copiousness of his composition 404