larly wanted for one of his weakly conftitution, to carry on his enquiries; and I have heard him fay, that he came to think three or four hours fleep very fufficient for a night, after he had used himself to it for fome MAGLIABECHI was not

years. obliged to follow the fame practice; his bufinefs gave him more time for it, in the day; and very little of that did he pafs, without his eyes being fixed on fome book or other.

The fuccefs of Mr. HILL in acquiring the three learned

languages,

languages, in the manner he did, is very extraordinary: But the extent of MAGLIABECHI's acquifitions is abfolutely amazing; by the accounts given of him, he had read almost every thing, remembered all he had read, and had each part of it at hand to produce whenever he was confulted about it.

I doubt not but that it is the fame with the faculties of the mind, as it is with the limbs of the body, which ever is exercifed much more than the reft.

It is a common obfervation, and generally holds through the whole fet, that a chairman's legs will be more muscular in proportion than his arms; and a rower's arms, will be more mufcular than his legs: Juft in the fame manner, if one man was to exercise his imagination only, [which I fear may have been the cafe with fome of our poets] that will grow ftronger and stronger, but his judgment will become feeble; if another was to exercise only his judgment, as happens too often

among

among the mathematicians, the powers of his imagination will pine and fade away; and if a third was to employ his memory only, which I fear was too far the cafe of MAGLIABECHI, his judgment by being neglected would grow weak and powerlefs. This, by the way, has made me often wonder at the practice that prevails in most of our schools; in fome of which, the mafters exercise the memory of their boys almost perpetually, and scarce ever find

out any employ for their judg

ments: Of which strange miftake, I have heard that great genius and poet frequently complain, who fays fo happily, as he did every thing, in one of his poems ;

"As on the land, while here the ocean gains, "In other parts it leaves wide fandy plains; "Thus in the foul while memory prevails, "The folid power of understanding fails. "Where beams of warm imagination play, "The memory's foft figures melt away || .'

That it was thus in a great meafure with MAGLIABECHI, his own admirers are not unapt to acknowledge. One of whom

Mr. Pope's Effay on Criticism; ver. 58.