overbuild their nature with books. The motion of our thoughts is
impeded by too heavy a burden; and the mind, like the body, is
strengthened more by the warmth of exercise than of clothes. When
Buffon and Hogarth pronounced genius to be nothing but labour and
patience, they forgot history and themselves. The instinct must be in
the mind, and the fire be ready to fall. Toil alone would not have
produced the _Paradise Lost_ or the _Principia_. The born dwarf never
grows to the middle size. Rousseau tells a story of a painter's
servant, who resolved to be the rival or the conqueror of his master.
He abandoned his livery to live by his pencil; but instead of the
Louvre, he stopped at a sign-post. Mere learning is only a compiler,
and does with the pen what the compositor does with the type: each
sets up a book with the hand. Stone-masons collected the dome of St
Paul's, but Wren hung it in air.'

There is, perhaps, nothing very profound or original in this, but it
is all very sensible and pleasant. Something of novelty, however, will
be observed in the extract which follows next, on 'The Influence of
Air and Situation on the Thoughts.' The consideration, at anyrate, is
curious, both under its physiological and metaphysical aspect.

'It has been a subject of ingenious speculation if country or weather
may be said to cherish or check intellectual growth. Jeremy Collier
considered that the understanding needs a kind climate for its health,
and that a reader of nice observation might ascertain from the book in
what latitude, season, or circumstances, it had been written. The
opponents are powerful. Reynolds ridiculed the notion of thoughts
shooting forth with greater vigour at the summer solstice or the
equinox; Johnson called it a fantastic foppery.