and, of course, an egotist, so that _criticism_
ruffled his temper, notwithstanding all his Platonism. When accused of
obscurities and extravagances, he said that, like the ostrich, he laid
his eggs in the sands, which would prove vital and prolific in time;
however, these ostrich-eggs have proved to be addled.

A habit of correctness in the lesser parts of composition will assist
the higher. It is worth recording that the great Milton was anxious for
correct punctuation, and that Addison was solicitous after the minutiae
of the press. Savage, Armstrong, and others, felt tortures on similar
objects. It is said of Julius Scaliger, that he had this peculiarity in
his manner of composition: he wrote with such accuracy that his MSS. and
the printed copy corresponded page for page, and line for line.

Malherbe, the father of French poetry, tormented himself by a prodigious
slowness; and was employed rather in perfecting than in forming works.
His muse is compared to a fine woman in the pangs of delivery. He
exulted in his tardiness, and, after finishing a poem of one hundred
verses, or a discourse of ten pages, he used to say he ought to repose
for ten years. Balzac, the first writer in French prose who gave majesty
and harmony to a period, did not grudge to expend a week on a page,
never satisfied with his first thoughts. Our "costive" Gray entertained
the same notion: and it is hard to say if it arose from the sterility of
their genius, or their sensibility of taste.

The MSS. of Tasso, still preserved, are illegible from the vast number
of their corrections. I have given a fac-simile, as correct as it is
possible to conceive, of one page of Pope's MS. Homer, as a specimen of
his continual corrections and critical erasures. The celebrated Madame
Dacier never could satisfy herself in translating Homer: continually
retouching the version, even in its happiest passages. There were
several parts which she translated in six or seven manners; and she
frequently noted in the margin--_I have not yet done it_.

When Pascal became warm in his celebrated controversy, he applied
himself with incredible labour to the composition of his "Provincial
Letters." He was frequently twenty days occupied on a single letter. He
recommenced some above seven and eight times, and by this means obtained
that perfection which has made his work, as Voltaire says, "one of the
best books ever published in France."

The Quintus Curtius of Vaugelas oc