of mountains, and exposes it amongst the sands of rivers, giving us
of her bounty what we could not hope for by our search. This
success attends your lordship's thoughts, which would look like
chance if it were not perpetual and always of the same tenor. If I
grant that there is care in it, it is such a care as would be
ineffectual and fruitless in other men; it is the curiosa felicitas
which Petronius ascribes to Horace in his odes. We have not
wherewithal to imagine so strongly, so justly, and so pleasantly:
in short, if we have the same knowledge, we cannot draw out of it
the same quintessence; we cannot give it such a turn, such a
propriety, and such a beauty. Something is deficient in the manner
or the words, but more in the nobleness of our conception. Yet when
you have finished all, and it appears in its full lustre; when the
diamond is not only found, but the roughness smoothed; when it is
cut into a form and set in gold, then we cannot but acknowledge that
it is the perfect work of art and nature; and every one will be so
vain to think he himself could have performed the like until he
attempts it. It is just the description that Horace makes of such a
finished piece; it appears so easy,


"Ut sibi quivis
Speret idem, sudet multum, frustraque laboret,
Ausus idem."


And besides all this, it is your lordship's particular talent to lay
your thoughts so chose together that, were they closer, they would
be crowded, and even a due connection would be wanting. We are not
kept in expectation of two good lines which are to come after a long