It is in revolving the subject that the whole mind becomes gradually agitated; as a summer landscape, at the break of day, is wrapped in mist: at first, the sun strikes on a single object, but the light and warmth increasing, the whole scene glows in the noonday of imagination.
How beautifully this state of the mind, in the progress of composition, is described by DRYDEN, alluding to his work, "when it was only a confused mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be distinguished, and then either to be chosen or rejected by the judgment!" At that moment, he adds, "I was in that eagerness of imagination which, by over-pleasing fanciful men, flatters them into the danger of writing." GIBBON tells us of his history, "At the onset all was dark and doubtful; even the title of the work, the true era of the decline and fall of the empire, &c.

I was often tempted to cast away the labour of seven years." WINCKELMANN was long lost in composing his "History of Art;" a hundred fruitless attempts were made, before he could discover a plan amidst the labyrinth.

Slight conceptions kindle finished works.

A lady asking for a few verses on rural topics of the Abbe de Lille, his specimens pleased, and sketches heaped on sketches produced "Les Jardins." In writing the "Pleasures of Memory," as it happened with "The Rape of the Lock," the poet at first proposed a simple description in a few lines, till conducted by meditation the perfect composition of several years closed in that fine poem.

That still valuable work, _L'Art de Penser_ of the Port-Royal, was originally projected to teach a young nobleman all that was practically useful in the art of logic in a few days, and was intended to have been written in one morning by the great ARNAULD; but to that profound thinker so many new ideas crowded in that slight task, that he was compelled to call in his friend NICOLLE; and thus a few projected pages closed in a volume so excellent, that our elegant metaphysician has recently declared, that "it is hardly possible to estimate the merits too highly." Pemberton, who knew NEWTON intimately, informs us that his Treatise on Natural Philosophy, full of a variety of profound inventions, was composed by him from scarcely any other materials than the _few propositions he had set down several years before_, and which having resumed, occupied him in writing one year and a half.