s; but he was a writer of the old
school.[A]

[Footnote A: The account of Oldys and his manuscripts, in the third volume
of the "Curiosities of Literature," will furnish abundant proof of the
value of such _disfigurations_ when the work of certain hands.--ED.]

A professional student should divide his readings into a _uniform_ reading
which is useful, and into a _diversified_ reading which is pleasant. Guy
Patin, an eminent physician and man of letters, had a just notion of this
manner. He says, "I daily read Hippocrates, Galen, Fernel, and other
illustrious masters of my profession; this I call my profitable readings.
I frequently read Ovid, Juvenal, Horace, Seneca, Tacitus, and others, and
these are my recreations." We must observe these distinctions; for it
frequently happens that a lawyer or a physician, with great industry and
love of study, by giving too much into his diversified readings, may
utterly neglect what should be his uniform studies.

A reader is too often a prisoner attached to the triumphal car of an
author of great celebrity; and when he ventures not to judge for himself,
conceives, while he is reading the indifferent works of great authors,
that the languor which he experiences arises from his own defective taste.
But the best writers, when they are voluminous, have a great deal of
mediocrity.

On the other side, readers must not imagine that all the pleasures of
composition depend on the author, for there is something which a reader
himself must bring to the book that the book may please. There is a
literary appetite, which the author can no more impart than the most
skilful cook can give an appetency to the guests. When Cardinal Richelieu
said to Godeau, that he did not understand his verses, the honest poet
replied that it was not his fault. The temporary tone of the mind may be
unfavourable to taste a work properly, and we have had many erroneous
criticisms from great men, which may often be attributed to this
circumstance. The mind communicates its infirm dispositions to the book,
and an author has not only his own defects to account for, but also those
of his reader. There is something in composition like the game of
shuttlecock, where if the reader do not quickly rebound the feathered cock
to the author, the game is destroyed, and the whole spirit of the work
falls extinct.

A frequent impediment in reading is a disinclination in the mind to settle
on the subject; agitated by incongruous