The man of letters, whose habits and whose whole life so closely resemble those of an author, can only be distinguished by this simple circumstance, that the man of letters is not an author.

Yet he whose sole occupation through life is literature—­he who is always acquiring and never producing, appears as ridiculous as the architect who never raised an edifice, or the statuary who refrains from sculpture.  His pursuits are reproached with terminating in an epicurean selfishness, and amidst his incessant avocations he himself is considered as a particular sort of idler.

This race of literary characters, as we now find them, could not have appeared till the press had poured forth its affluence.  In the degree that the nations of Europe became literary, was that philosophical curiosity kindled which induced some to devote their fortunes and their days, and to experience some of the purest of human enjoyments in preserving and familiarising themselves with “the monuments of vanished minds,” as books are called by D’Avenant with so much sublimity.  Their expansive library presents an indestructible history of the genius of every people, through all their eras—­and whatever men have thought and whatever men have done, were at length discovered in books.

Men of letters occupy an intermediate station between authors and readers.  They are gifted with more curiosity of knowledge, and more multiplied tastes, and by those precious collections which they are forming during their lives, are more completely furnished with the means than are possessed by the multitude who read, and the few who write.

The studies of an author are usually restricted to particular subjects.  His tastes are tinctured by their colouring, his mind is always shaping itself by their form.  An author’s works form his solitary pride, and his secret power; while half his life wears away in the slow maturity of composition, and still the ambition of authorship torments its victim alike in disappointment or in possession.

But soothing is the solitude of the MAN OF LETTERS!  View the busied inhabitant of the library surrounded by the objects of his love!  He possesses them—­and they possess him!  These volumes—­images of our mind and passions!—­as he traces them from Herodotus to Gibbon, from Homer to Shakspeare—­those portfolios which gather up, the inventions of genius, and that selected cabinet of medals which holds so many unwritten histories;—­some favourite sculptures and pictures, and some antiquities of all nations, here and there about his house—­these are his furniture!