ss the same characters are
reprinted here, must be made up of second-rate persons, and the refuse
of authorship.--However, as I have begun, and made so large a progress
in this undertaking, _it is death to think of leaving it off_, though,
from the former considerations, so little credit is to be expected
from it."

Such were the fruits, and such the agonies, of nearly half a century
of assiduous and zealous literary labour! Cole urges a strong claim to
be noticed among our literary calamities. Another of his miseries was
his uncertainty in what manner he should dispose of his collections:
and he has put down this _naive_ memorandum--"I have long wavered how
to dispose of all my MS. volumes; to give them to _King's College_,
would be to throw them into a _horsepond_; and I had as lieve do one
as the other; they are generally so _conceited of their Latin and
Greek, that all other studies are barbarism_."[69]

The dread of incompleteness has attended the life-labours (if the
expression may be allowed) of several other authors who have never
published their works. Such was the learned Bishop LLOYD, and the Rev.
THOMAS BAKER, who was first engaged in the same pursuit as Cole, and
carried it on to the extent of about forty volumes in folio. Lloyd is
described by Burnet as having "many volumes of materials upon all
subjects, so that he could, with very little labour, write on any of
them, with more life in his imagination, and a truer judgment, than
may seem consistent with such a laborious course of study; but he did
not lay out his learning with the same diligence as he laid it in." It
is mortifying to learn, in the words of Johnson, that "he was always
hesitating and inquiring, raising objections, and removing them, and
waiting for clearer light and fuller discovery." Many of the labours
of this learned bishop were at length consumed in the kitchen of his
descendant. "Baker (says Johnson), after many years passed in
biography, left his manuscripts to be buried in a library, because
that was imperfect which could never be perfected." And to complete
the absurdity, or to heighten the calamity which the want of these
useful labours makes every literary man feel, half of the collections
of Baker sleep in their dust in a turret of the University; while the
other, deposited in our national library at the British Museum, and
frequently used, are rendered imperfect by this unnatural divorce.

I will illustrate the character of