Another mode of reserve arises with some literary men, who believe themselves to be in possession of novel ideas. Cordiality of communication, or ardour of dispute, might betray them into a revelation of those golden thoughts, sometimes into a necessity of revealing them, since, without such aid, it might be impossible to maintain theirs in the discussion. On this principle it was--a principle of deliberate unsocial reserve--that Adam Smith is said to have governed his conversation; he professed to put a bridle on his words, lest by accident a pearl should drop out of his lips amongst the vigilant bystanders. And in no case would he have allowed himself to be engaged in a disputation, because both the passions of dispute and the necessities of dispute are alike apt to throw men off their guard. A most unamiable reason it certainly is, which places a man in one constant attitude of self-protection against petty larceny. And yet, humiliating as that may be to human nature, the furtive propensities or instincts of petty larceny are diffused most extensively through all ranks--directed, too, upon a sort of property far more tangible and more ignoble, as respects the possible motives of the purloiner, than any property in subjects purely intellectual. Rather more than ten years ago, a literary man of the name of Alton published, some little time before his own death, a very searching essay upon this chapter of human integrity--arraying a large list of common cases (cases of hats, gloves, umbrellas, books, newspapers, &c.) where the claim of ownership, left to itself and unsupported by accidents of shame and exposure, appeared to be weak indeed amongst classes of society prescriptively "respectable." And yet, for a double reason, literary larceny is even more to be feared; both because it is countenanced by a less ignoble quality of temptation, and because it is far more easy of achievement--so easy, indeed, that it may be practised without any clear accompanying consciousness.