ances of Robertson and Hume, the histories of Scotland and of
the Stuarts. I will assume the presumption of saying, that I was not
unworthy to read them: nor will I disguise my different feelings in the
repeated perusals. The perfect composition, the nervous language, the
well-turned periods of Dr. Robertson, inflamed me to the ambitious hope
that I might one day tread in his footsteps: the calm philosophy, the
careless, inimitable beauties of his friend and rival, often forced me
to close the volume with a mixed sensation of delight and despair.

The design of my first work, the Essay on the Study of Literature,
was suggested by a refinement of vanity, the desire of justifying and
praising the object of a favourite pursuit. In France, to which my
ideas were confined, the learning and language of Greece and Rome were
neglected by a philosophic age. The guardian of those studies, the
Academy of Inscriptions, was degraded to the lowest rank among the
three royal societies of Paris: the new appellation of Erudits was
contemptuously applied to the successors of Lipsius and Casaubon; and
I was provoked to hear (see M. d'Alembert Discours preliminaire a
l'Encyclopedie) that the exercise of the memory, their sole merit,
had been superseded by the nobler faculties of the imagination and the
judgment. I was ambitious of proving by my own example, as well as by
my precepts, that all the faculties of the mind may be exercised and
displayed by the study of ancient literature: I began to select and
adorn the various proofs and illustrations which had offered themselves
in reading the classics; and the first pages or chapters of my essay
were composed before my departure from Lausanne. The hurry of the
journey, and of the first weeks of my English life, suspended all
thoughts of serious application: but my object was ever before my eyes;
and no more than ten days, from the first to the eleventh of July, were
suffered to elapse after my summer establishment at Buriton. My essay
was finished in about six weeks; and as soon as a fair copy had been
transcribed by one of the French prisoners at Petersfield, I looked
round for a critic and judge of my first performance. A writer can
seldom be content with the doubtful recompense of solitary approbation;
but a youth ignorant of the world, and of himself, must desire to weigh
his talents in some scales less partial than his own: my conduct
was natural, my motive laudable, my choice of Dr. Mat