John Hunter, who was constantly engaged in the search and consideration of new facts, described what was passing in his mind by a remarkable illustration:--he said to Abernethy, "My mind is like a bee-hive." A simile which was singularly correct; "for," observes Abernethy, "in the midst of buzz and apparent confusion there was great order, regularity of structure, and abundant food, collected with incessant industry from the choicest stores of nature." Thus one man of genius is the ablest commentator on the thoughts and feelings of another.

When we reflect on the magnitude of the labours of Cicero and the elder Pliny, on those of Erasmus, Petrarch, Baronius, Lord Bacon, Usher, and Bayle, we seem at the base of these monuments of study, we seem scarcely awake to admire.

These were the laborious instructors of mankind; their age has closed.
Yet let not those other artists of the mind, who work in the airy looms of fancy and wit, imagine that they are weaving their webs, without the direction of a principle, and without a secret habit which they have acquired, and which some have imagined, by its quickness and facility, to be an instinct.

"Habit," says Reid, "differs from instinct, not in its nature, but in its origin; the last being natural, the first acquired." What we are accustomed to do, gives a facility and proneness to do on like occasions; and there may be even an art, unperceived by themselves, in opening and pursuing a scene of pure invention, and even in the happiest turns of wit.

One who had all the experience of such an artist has employed the very terms we have used, of "mechanical" and "habitual." "Be assured," says Goldsmith, "that wit is in some measure mechanical; and that a man long habituated to catch at even its resemblance, will at last be happy enough to possess the substance.