but the two or three first chapters of the
_Vicar of Wakefield_ or the character of a Village Schoolmaster, they
would have stamped him a man of genius. The editors of Encyclopedias are
not usually reckoned the first literary characters of the age. The works
of which they have the management contain a great deal of knowledge,
like chests or warehouses, but the goods are not their own. We should
as soon think of admiring the shelves of a library; but the shelves of a
library are useful and respectable. I was once applied to, in a
delicate emergency, to write an article on a difficult subject for an
Encyclopedia, and was advised to take time and give it a systematic and
scientific form, to avail myself of all the knowledge that was to be
obtained on the subject, and arrange it with clearness and method. I
made answer that as to the first, I had taken time to do all that I ever
pretended to do, as I had thought incessantly on different matters for
twenty years of my life;(4) that I had no particular knowledge of the
subject in question, and no head for arrangement; and that the utmost
I could do in such a case would be, when a systematic and scientific
article was prepared, to write marginal notes upon it, to insert
a remark or illustration of my own (not to be found in former
Encyclopedias), or to suggest a better definition than had been offered
in the text. There are two sorts of writing. The first is compilation;
and consists in collecting and stating all that is already known of any
question in the best possible manner, for the benefit of the uninformed
reader. An author of this class is a very learned amanuensis of other
people's thoughts. The second sort proceeds on an entirely different
principle: instead of bringing down the account of knowledge to the
point at which it has already arrived, it professes to start from
that point on the strength of the writer's individual reflections; and
supposing the reader in possession of what is already known, supplies
deficiencies, fills up certain blanks, and quits the beaten road in
search of new tracts of observation or sources of feeling. It is in vain
to object to this last style that it is disjointed, disproportioned,
and irregular. It is merely a set of additions and corrections to
other men's works, or to the common stock of human knowledge, printed
separately. You might as well expect a continued chain of reasoning
in the notes to a book. It skips all the trite, interm