In the case of Wordsworth, the physical constitution is believed to have been sound. His health at seventy-two was excellent; the two other instances are more doubtful in this respect, yet both these writers enjoy very fair health, after the pressure of brain-work has been removed for any considerable time. A clergyman of robust organization, who does a good deal of literary work at intervals, told me that, whenever he had attempted to make it regular, the consequence had always been distressing nervous sensations, from which at other times he was perfectly free. A tradesman, whose business affords an excellent outlet for energetic bodily activity, told me that having attempted, in addition to his ordinary work, to acquire a foreign language which seemed likely to be useful to him, he had been obliged to abandon it on account of alarming cerebral symptoms. This man has immense vigor and energy, but the digestive functions, in this instance, are sluggish. However, when he abandoned study, the cerebral inconveniences disappeared, and have never returned since. Two Londoners who followed literature as a profession, and who both worked to excess, had cerebral attacks of a still more decided kind. One of them, after his recovery, resolved to regulate his work in future, so that it might never pass the limits of moderation. He is now living, and in possession of a remarkably clear and richly furnished intellect. The other, who returned to his old habits, died in two years from softening of the brain. I am not aware that in these cases there was any other disease than that produced by an immoderate use of the mental powers. The health of Sir Walter Scott--we have this on his own testimony--was uncommonly robust, and there is every reason to believe that his paralysis was brought on by the excessive labor which resulted from his pecuniary embarrassments, and that without such excessive mental labor and anxiety he would have preserved his health much longer. The death of Byron was due, no doubt, quite as much to habits of dissipation as to poetical excitement; still it is probable that he would have borne either of these evil influences if it had not been accompanied by the other; and that to a man whose way of life was so exhausting as Byron's was, the addition of constant poetical excitement and hard work in production, may be said without exaggeration to have killed him. We know that Scott, with all his facility, had a dread of that kind of excitement, and withdrew from the poetical arena to avoid it. We know, too, that the brain of Southey proved ultimately unable to endure the burden of the tasks he laid upon it.