Their acquirements,
doubtless, were different, and so were the particular objects of their
literary pursuits; as their tastes and characters, in these respects
differed like those of other men. Being, also, men of busy lives, with
great objects requiring action constantly before them, their attainments
in letters did not become showy or obtrusive. Yet I would hazard the
opinion, that, if we could now ascertain all the causes which gave them
eminence, and distinction in the midst of the great men with whom they
acted, we should find not among the least their early acquisitions
in literature, the resources which it furnished, the promptitude and
facility which it communicated, and the wide field it opened for analogy
and illustration; giving them thus, on every subject, a larger view and
a broader range, as well for discussion as for the government of their
own conduct.
Literature sometimes, and pretensions to it much oftener disgusts, by
appearing to hang loosely on the character, like something foreign or
extraneous, not a part, but an ill-adjusted appendage; or by seeming to
overload and weigh it down by its unsightly bulk, like the productions
of bad taste in architecture, where there is messy and cumbrous ornament
without strength or solidity of column.
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