I» 



OJf REVEHIE. 121 



wiiagination, guarded by a Yigorous intellect; — that he 

 was willing to give loose to the wanderings of fancy, in 

 the midst of rural leisure : but ever associated the recol- 

 lection of want of time and fulness of occupation in the 

 metropolis, with the first aberration of thought from the 

 subject he had before him. — Besides, it is reasonable to 

 suppose, that the studies of Colbert, when in Paris, were 

 confined to the politics of the day ; a subject which, by 

 engaging every passion, must have entirely engrossed at- 

 tention, and deadened the force of external stimuli : 

 whereas his rural lucubrations had, probably, for their 

 subject, topics of speculative philosophy, less interesting, 

 less relating to self and immediate concern ; and therefore 

 less endowed with the power of detaining the mind, prone 

 to her favourite sallies of digression from her main em- 

 ployment. Nothing can be more absurd than an attempt Literature and 

 to unite a life of literature and of gaiety. — The remem- diversions can- 

 brance of glaring objects and tumultuous pleasures, per-^^^jj^^^ *^°"^' 

 petually obtruding itself on the mind, will soon convince 

 the scholar, that his eflforts to make thought and dissipa- 

 tion of thought meet in the same mind are vain.^ — ^Tfie 

 recollection of past, or anticipation of approaching frivo- 

 lities, makes abstraction a painful and violent, I may 

 safely affirm, an impossible exertion. The conceptions of 

 an eifeminate imagination unsettle the mind ; —they float 

 upon and confuse the ideas supplied by study. 



Indeed a habit of study and abstraction is the most Habits of ab- 

 powerful precaution that can be adopted against the in- straction gra- 

 trusions of reyerie. — Reverie resembles the enemy of ^jj^^j^^^-^^f^^"^ 

 mankind. Resist it, and it will flee from you. The verie. 

 oftener and the more vigorously you oppose it, the less 

 frequently will it recur, and the weaker will be its at- 

 tacks. While the idler and the man of pleasure cannot 

 peruse even a few pages of a novel without mental weari- 

 ness and wandering ; — the student will in time bring his 

 mind to the ability of prosecuting for ftiany hours, the 

 deepest reasoning, seldom interrupted by reverie, and 

 never overcome. 



When speaking of the force of habit, we cannot fail to Extemporanc- 

 rccommend the habit of extemporaneous speaking. When °^^ speaking. 

 a man finds that his words must flow in an uninterrupted 



Vol. XV.—Oct. 1806: R 



