THE ORIENTAL HERALD. No. 43.-JULY 1827.-VOL. 14. ECCENTRICITIES OF AUTHORS. In the Arabian Nights, those accurate and veracious chronicles, it is related of certain Eastern sages, that they shut themselves up for a whole year in libraries, enclosed by magic within the bowels of some unfrequented mountain, or enchanted palace, and at the termination of that period returned to the world enriched with the choicest wisdom, and a degree of knowledge incredible. Among the Western nations, this fashion of study has been but seldom pursued; the interior of our mountains yielding but few libraries, and those in our palaces not being meant for use. We are much slower, too, in growing learned and wise than those Eastern philosophers; but whether this be owing to the dearth of subterranean libraries in these regions, or to our duller geniuses, we cannot exactly determine. Demosthenes unquestionably inclined towards the Oriental mode. He built himself a vaulted apartment, and studied under ground. There, it seems, he enjoyed perpetually that solitude and silence, which, in ordinary cases, men taste only at midnight, when sleep has put his staying hand upon the wheel of life, and arrested and covered with oblivion the thousand vulgar machines of thought, whose rattle disturbs us by day. There is an indication of weakness, however, in this passion for absolute seclusion from mankind, and every thing that could remind us of them, which, as in the case of Demosthenes, seems intimately allied to cowardice, which is nothing more than a too great susceptibility of disturbing impressions. This great man felt that the hum of business and the stir of life, floating around him like the restless chafing waves of some great ocean, disarranged his ideas, or altogether destroyed his capacity of winnowing and comparing them. It was by indescribable exertion that he conquered his antipathy to great multitudes, and his reluctance to draw out and array the riches of his mind before them. Time and practice, however, at length reconciled him to the murmurs and the acclamations of a popular Oriental Herald, Vol. 14. B 409238 |