A curious circumstance has been preserved in the life of the other immortal man in philosophy, Lord BACON.

When young, he wrote a letter to Father Fulgentio concerning an Essay of his, to which he gave the title of "The Greatest Birth of Time," a title which he censures as too pompous.

The Essay itself is lost, but it was the first outline of that great design which he afterwards pursued and finished in his "Instauration of the Sciences." LOCKE himself has informed us, that his great work on "The Human Understanding," when he first put pen to paper, he thought "would have been contained in one sheet, but that the farther he went on, the larger prospect he had." In this manner it would be beautiful to trace the history of the human mind, and observe how a NEWTON and a BACON and a LOCKE were proceeding for thirty years together, in accumulating truth upon truth, and finally building up these fabrics of their invention.
Were it possible to collect some thoughts of great thinkers, which were never written, we should discover vivid conceptions, and an originality they never dared to pursue in their works! Artists have this advantage over authors, that their virgin fancies, their chance felicities, which labour cannot afterwards produce, are constantly perpetuated; and those "studies," as they are called, are as precious to posterity as their more complete designs.

In literature we possess one remarkable evidence of these fortuitous thoughts of genius.

POPE and SWIFT, being in the country together, observed, that if contemplative men were to notice "the thoughts which suddenly present themselves to their minds when walking in the fields, &c., they might find many as well worth preserving as some of their more deliberate reflections." They made a trial, and agreed to write down such involuntary thoughts as occurred during their stay there.