Nor should it be objected, that there have been
many men who daily spend fifteen or sixteen hours
in study: for by some of whom this is reported it
has never been done; others have done it for a short
time only; and of the rest it appears, that they
employed their minds in such operations as required
neither celerity nor strength, in the low drudgery of
collating copies, comparing authorities, digesting
dictionaries, or accumulating compilations.
Men of study and imagination are frequently
upbraided by the industrious and plodding sons of care,
with passing too great a part of their life in a state
of inaction. But these defiers of sleep seem not to
remember that though it must be granted them that
they are crawling about before the break of day, it
can seldom be said that they are perfectly awake;
they exhaust no spirits, and require no repairs; but
lie torpid as a toad in marble, or at least are known
to live only by an inert and sluggish loco-motive
faculty, and may be said, like a wounded snake, to
"drag their slow length along."
Man has been long known among philosophers
by the appellation of the microcosm, or epitome of
the world: the resemblance between the great and
little world might, by a rational observer, be detailed
to many particulars; and to many more by a fanciful
speculatist.
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