After the completion of this business, Hamilton returned with increased vigour to his literary pursuits. The lives of men of letters, though often instructive in operation, progress, and result, are commonly barren in incident: while he was preparing the first part of his grand essay for the public, no private occurrences happened of sufficient importance to constitute a part of our narrative. One benefit he found, an author of sense may derive from writing on a continuous subject, within the reach of his abilities, and the range of his knowledge; while he attempts to inform and instruct others, he informs and instructs himself. The task which he undertook happened to require research and investigation, as well as deduction and exhibition, and improved his own knowledge and power of reasoning, whilst he endeavoured to communicate knowledge and instruction to others. At length the work made its public appearance, and established the literary character of its author. It demonstrated to the public the force and extent of his talents, the accuracy and range of his knowledge, the depth of his philosophy, which though yet more theoretical in several doctrines and opinions, than is consistent with fact and practice, manifested on the whole, that strength of discrimination, completeness of comprehension, boldness of conception, and fertility of invention, which when matured by experience, becomes soaring genius, guided by beneficial wisdom. The arrangement evinced a mind that at once perceived the relations and dependencies of parts, and grasped the whole. The language to the essential qualities of clearness, strength, and expressiveness, added the agreeable accompaniments of elegance and harmony. Fame and emolument did not fail to follow distinguished merit, arising from exertions on a subject which had been judiciously chosen, with a view at once to temporary popularity and permanent importance. With the public voice concurred those private individuals, whose opinions he chiefly regarded. A Robertson and a Gibbon, a Watson, a Fergusson, and a Burke, spoke its praises, while jackalls only of jacobinism barked disapprobation. A Strongbrain bore his testimony to the excellence of the production with discriminate applause; while detractors and envy attested the same truth in the obloquy of the dunces, the impotent babbling of the enraged and contemptible Doctor Dicky Scribble. Scribble lost a good deal of his own time in going from coffeehouse to coffeehouse, to abuse Hamilton’s production, and in the same period might have manufactured two or three books, by his usual drudgery. Hamilton enjoyed the feeling so pleasing to an author, in the assurance that his literary fame was established. Most of the reviews bore high testimony to the merits of Hamilton’s work; two, indeed, censured it, one the property of a bookseller, who was bringing out a publication on the same subject; and another that was supported by a club of democratic dissenters; but many