s left to its own unprotected condition. I had not miscalculated the
wants of others by my own.

This first volume had reminded the learned of much which it is grateful
to remember, and those who were restricted by their classical studies,
or lounged only in perishable novelties, were in modern literature but
dry wells, for which I had opened clear waters from a fresh spring. The
work had effected its design in stimulating the literary curiosity of
those, who, with a taste for its tranquil pursuits, are impeded in their
acquirement. Imitations were numerous. My reading became more various,
and the second volume of "Curiosities of Literature" appeared, with a
slight effort at more original investigation. The two brother volumes
remained favourites during an interval of twenty years.

It was as late as 1817 that I sent forth the third volume; without a
word of preface. I had no longer anxieties to conceal or promises to
perform. The subjects chosen were novel, and investigated with more
original composition. The motto prefixed to this third volume from the
Marquis of Halifax is lost in the republications, but expresses the
peculiar delight of all literary researches for those who love them:
"The struggling for knowledge hath a pleasure in it like that of
wrestling with a fine woman."

The notice which the third volume obtained, returned me to the dream of
my youth. I considered that essay writing, from Addison to the
successors of Johnson, which had formed one of the most original
features of our national literature, would now fail in its attraction,
even if some of those elegant writers themselves had appeared in a form
which their own excellence had rendered familiar and deprived of all
novelty. I was struck by an observation which Johnson has thrown out.
That sage, himself an essayist and who had lived among our essayists,
fancied that "mankind may come in time to write all aphoristically;" and
so athirst was that first of our great moral biographers for the details
of human life and the incidental characteristics of individuals, that he
was desirous of obtaining anecdotes without preparation or connexion.
"If a man," said this lover of literary anecdotes, "is to wait till he
weaves anecdotes, we may be long in getting them, and get but few in
comparison to what we might get." Another observation, of Lord
Bolingbroke, had long dwelt in my mind, that "when examples are pointed
out to us, there is a kind of appeal with