second period of an
author's happiness, and tell of the tumultuous raptures of invention,
when the mind riots in imagery, and the choice stands suspended between
different sentiments.

These pleasures, I believe, may sometimes be indulged to those, who come
to a subject of disquisition with minds full of ideas, and with fancies
so vigorous, as easily to excite, select, and arrange them. To write is,
indeed, no unpleasing employment, when one sentiment readily produces
another, and both ideas and expressions present themselves at the first
summons; but such happiness, the greatest genius does not always obtain;
and common writers know it only to such a degree, as to credit its
possibility. Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow
diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by
necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment
starting to more delightful amusements.

It frequently happens, that a design which, when considered at a
distance, gave flattering hopes of facility, mocks us in the execution
with unexpected difficulties; the mind which, while it considered it in
the gross, imagined itself amply furnished with materials, finds
sometimes an unexpected barrenness and vacuity, and wonders whither all
those ideas are vanished, which a little before seemed struggling for
emission.

Sometimes many thoughts present themselves; but so confused and
unconnected, that they are not without difficulty reduced to method, or
concatenated in a regular and dependent series; the mind falls at once
into a labyrinth, of which neither the beginning nor end can be
discovered, and toils and struggles without progress or extrication.

It is asserted by Horace, that, "if matter be once got together, words
will be found with very little difficulty;" a position which, though
sufficiently plausible to be inserted in poetical precepts, is by no
means strictly and philosophically true. If words were naturally and
necessarily consequential to sentiments, it would always follow, that he
who has most knowledge must have most eloquence, and that every man
would clearly express what he fully understood: yet we find, that to
think, and discourse, are often the qualities of different persons: and
many books might surely be produced, where just and noble sentiments are
degraded and obscured by unsuitable diction.

Words, therefore, as well as things, claim the care of an author. Indeed
of many