lake, and the circle of the mountains, and the illimitable sky.

_Sir Thomas More_.--

"_Felicemque voco pariter studiique locique_!"

_Montesinos_.--

"--_meritoque probas artesque locumque_."

The simile of the bees,

"_Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes_,"

has often been applied to men who have made literature their profession;
and they among them to whom worldly wealth and worldly honours are
objects of ambition, may have reason enough to acknowledge its
applicability. But it will bear a happier application and with equal
fitness: for, for whom is the purest honey hoarded that the bees of this
world elaborate, if it be not for the man of letters? The exploits of
the kings and heroes of old, serve now to fill story-books for his
amusement and instruction. It was to delight his leisure and call forth
his admiration that Homer sung and Alexander conquered. It is to gratify
his curiosity that adventurers have traversed deserts and savage
countries, and navigators have explored the seas from pole to pole. The
revolutions of the planet which he inhabits are but matters for his
speculation; and the deluges and conflagrations which it has undergone,
problems to exercise his philosophy, or fancy. He is the inheritor of
whatever has been discovered by persevering labour, or created by
inventive genius. The wise of all ages have heaped up a treasure for
him, which rust doth not corrupt, and which thieves cannot break through
and steal. I must leave out the moth, for even in this climate care is
required against its ravages.

_Sir Thomas More_.--Yet, Montesinos, how often does the worm-eaten volume
outlast the reputation of the worm-eaten author!

_Montesinos_.--Of the living one also; for many there are of whom it may
be said, in the words of Vida, that--

"--_ipsi_
_Saepe suis superant monumentis_; _illaudatique_
_Extremum ante diem faetus flevere caducos_,
_Viventesque suae viderunt funera famae_."

Some literary reputations die in the birth; a few are nibbled to death by
critics, but they are weakly ones that perish thus, such only as must
otherwise soon have come to a natural death. Somewhat more numerous are
those which are overfed with praise, and die of the surfeit. Brisk
reputations, indeed, are like bottled twopenny, or pop "they sparkle, are
exhaled, and fly"--not to heaven, but to the Limbo. To live among books,
is in this respect like living among the tombs;