The accumulation of manuscripts was slow and
costly, and confined almost entirely to monasteries. To these
circumstances it may, in some measure, be owing that we have not
been inundated by the intellect of antiquity--that the fountains
of thought have not been broken up, and modern genius drowned in
the deluge. But the inventions of paper and the press have put an
end to all these restraints. They have made every one a writer,
and enabled every mind to pour itself into print, and diffuse
itself over the whole intellectual world. The consequences are
alarming. The stream of literature has swollen into a
torrent--augmented into a river-expanded into a sea. A few
centuries since five or six hundred manuscripts constituted a
great library; but what would you say to libraries, such as
actually exist, containing three or four hundred thousand
volumes; legions of authors at the same time busy; and the press
going on with fearfully increasing activity, to double and
quadruple the number? Unless some unforeseen mortality should
break out among the progeny of the Muse, now that she has become
so prolific, I tremble for posterity. I fear the mere fluctuation
of language will not be sufficient. Criticism may do much; it
increases with the increase of literature, and resembles one of
those salutary checks on population spoken of by economists.
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