portion of it.

Logan, in his "Ode to a Man of Letters," had formed this lofty
conception of a great author:--

Won from neglected wastes of time,
Apollo hails his fairest clime,
The provinces of mind;
An Egypt with eternal towers;[63]
See Montesquieu redeem the hours
From Louis to mankind.

No tame remission genius knows,
No interval of dark repose,
To quench the ethereal flame;
From Thebes to Troy, the victor hies,
And Homer with his hero vies,
In varied paths to Fame.

Our children will long repeat his "Ode to the Cuckoo," one of the most
lovely poems in our language; magical stanzas of picture, melody, and
sentiment.[64]

These authors were undoubtedly men of finer feelings, who all perished
immaturely, victims in the higher department of literature! But this
article would not be complete without furnishing the reader with a
picture of the fate of one who, with a pertinacity of industry not
common, having undergone regular studies, not very injudiciously
deemed that the life of a man of letters could provide for the simple
wants of a philosopher.

This man was the late ROBERT HERON, who, in the following letter,
transcribed from the original, stated his history to the Literary
Fund. It was written in a moment of extreme bodily suffering and
mental agony in the house to which he had been hurried for debt. At
such a moment he found eloquence in a narrative, pathetic from its
simplicity, and valuable for its genuineness, as giving the results of
a life of literary industry, productive of great infelicity and
disgrace; one would imagine that the author had been a criminal rather
than a man of letters.

"_The Case of a Man of Letters, of regular education, living by honest
literary industry._

"Ever since I was eleven years of age I have mingled with my studies
the labour of teaching or of writing, to support and educate myself.

"During about twenty years, while I was in constant or occasional
attendance at the University of Edinburgh, I taught and assisted young
persons, at all periods, in the course of education; from the Alphabet
to the highest branches of Science and Literature.

"I read a course of Lectures on the Law of Nature, the Law of Nations;
the Jewish, the Grecian, the Roman, and the Canon Law; and then on the
Feudal Law; and on the several forms of Municipal Jurisprudence
established in Modern Europe. I printed a Syllabus of these Lectures,
which was app