t is original, and as quaint as it is
ingenious. If the author is taken up with the ideas in his own head and
no others, he has a right; for he has ideas there that are to be met
with nowhere else, and which occasionally would not disgrace a Berkeley.
A dextrous plagiarist might get himself an immense reputation by putting
them in a popular dress. Oh! how little do they know, who have never
done anything but repeat after others by rote, the pangs, the labour,
the yearnings and misgivings of mind it costs to get at the germ of
an original idea--to dig it out of the hidden recesses of thought and
nature, and bring it half-ashamed, struggling, and deformed into the
day--to give words and intelligible symbols to that which was never
imagined or expressed before! It is as if the dumb should speak for the
first time, as if things should stammer out their own meaning through
the imperfect organs of mere sense. I wish that some of our fluent,
plausible declaimers, who have such store of words to cover the want of
ideas, could lend their art to this writer. If he, 'poor, unfledged' in
this respect, 'who has scarce winged from view o' th' nest,' could find
a language for his ideas, truth would find a language for some of her
secrets. Mr. Fearn was buried in the woods of Indostan. In his leisure
from business and from tiger-shooting, he took it into his head to look
into his own mind. A whim or two, an odd fancy, like a film before the
eye, now and then crossed it: it struck him as something curious, but
the impression at first disappeared like breath upon glass. He thought
no more of it; yet still the same conscious feelings returned, and what
at first was chance or instinct became a habit. Several notions had
taken possession of his brain relating to mental processes which he had
never heard alluded to in conversation, but not being well versed in
such matters, he did not know whether they were to be found in learned
authors or not. He took a journey to the capital of the Peninsula on
purpose, bout Locke, Reid, Stewart, and Berkeley, whom he consulted with
eager curiosity when he got home, but did not find what he looked for.
He set to work himself, and in a few weeks sketched out a rough draft of
his thoughts and observations on bamboo paper. The eagerness of his new
pursuit, together with the diseases of the climate, proved too much for
his constitution, and he was forced to return to this country. He put
his metaphysics, his ba