of certain precious manuscripts, to which the following volumes owe their existence.
I imagine I trace this latter bequest to a visit I paid the Sage, if so I may be permitted to call him, a few weeks before his death.
Although he read little of our modern literature, my friend, with the affable good-nature which belonged to him, graciously permitted me to consult him upon various literary undertakings meditated by the desultory ambition of a young and inexperienced student. And at that time I sought his advice upon a work of imagination, intended to depict the effects of enthusiasm upon different modifications of character. He listened to my conception, which was sufficiently trite and prosaic, with his usual patience; and then, thoughtfully turning to his bookshelves, took down an old volume, and read to me, first in Greek, and secondly in English, some extracts to the following effect:
"Plato here expresses four kinds of Mania, by which I desire to understand enthusiasm and the inspiration of the gods. — Firstly, the musical; secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the prophetic; and fourthly, that which belongs to Love."
The author he quoted, after contending that there is something in the soul above intellect, and stating that there are in our nature distinct energies, by the one of which we discover and seize as it were on sciences and theorems with almost intuitive rapidity, by another, through which high art is accomplished, like the statues of Phidias, proceeded to state that "enthusiasm, in the true acceptation of the word, is, when that part of the
