 Deceit; upon which,
when she retired to her Chamber, she reflected with the highest Uneasiness and
conscious Shame. Nor could the peculiar Hardship of her Situation, and the
Necessity of the Case, at all reconcile her Mind to her Conduct; for the Frame
of her Mind was too delicate to bear the Thought of having been guilty of a
Falshood, however qualified by Circumstances. Nor did this Thought once suffer
her to close her Eyes during the whole succeeding Night.
 

                                    Book XIV

                              Containing two Days.

                                   Chapter I

    An Essay to prove that an Author will write the better, for having some
                  Knowledge of the Subject on which he writes.
 
As several Gentlemen in these Times, by the wonderful Force of Genius only,
without the least Assistance of Learning, perhaps, without being well able to
read, have made a considerable Figure in the Republic of Letters; the modern
Critics, I am told, have lately begun to assert, that all kind of Learning is
entirely useless to a Writer; and, indeed, no other than a kind of Fetters on
the natural Spriteliness and Activity of the Imagination, which is thus weighed
down, and prevented from soaring to those high Flights which otherwise it would
be able to reach.
    This Doctrine, I am afraid, is, at present, carried much too far: For why
should Writing differ so much from all other Arts? The Nimbleness of a
Dancing-Master is not at all prejudiced by being taught to move; nor doth any
Mechanic, I believe, exercise his Tools the worse by having learnt to use them.
For my own Part, I cannot conceive that Homer or Virgil would have writ with
more Fire, if, instead of being Masters of all the Learning of their Times, they
had been as ignorant as most of the Authors of the present Age. Nor do I believe
that all the Imagination, Fire, and Judgment of Pitt could have produced those
Orations that have made the Senate of England in these our Times a Rival in
Eloquence to Greece and Rome, if he had not been so well read in the Writings of
Demosthenes and Cicero, as to have transferred their whole Spirit into his
Speeches, and with their Spirit, their Knowledge too.
    I would not here be understood to insist on the same Fund of Learning in any
of my Brethren, as Cicero perswades us is necessary to the Composition of an
Orator. On the contrary, very little Reading is, I conceive, necessary to the
Poet, less to the Critic, and the least of all to the Politician. For the first,
perhaps, Byshe's Art of
