Prolific Writers.
The copiousness and the multiplicity of the writings of many authors, have shown that too many find a pleasure in the act of composition, which they do not communicate to others. Great erudition and every-day application is the calamity of that voluminous author, who, without good sense, and what is more rare, without that exquisite judgment which we call good taste is always prepared to write on any subject, but at the same time on no one reasonably. We are astonished at the fertility and the size of our own writers of the seventeenth century, when the theological war of words raged, spoiling so many pages and brains. They produced folio after folio, like almanacks. The truth is, that it was then easier to write up to a folio, than in our days to write down to an octavo; for correction, selection, and rejection, were arts as yet unpractised. They went on with their work, sharply or bluntly, like witless mowers, without stopping to whet their scythes. They were inspired by the scribbling demon of that rabbin, who, in his oriental style and mania of volume, exclaimed, that were “the heavens formed of paper, and were the trees of the earth pens, and if the entire sea run ink, these only could suffice” for the monstrous genius he was about to discharge on the world.