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EVERETT'S MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.

MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ.

[Boston Miscellany, Feb. 1842.]

Ir is remarkable that many of the best books of all sorts have been written by persons, who at the time of writing them, had no intention of becoming authors. Indeed, with a slight inclination to systematize and exaggerate, one might be almost tempted to maintain the position, however paradoxical it may at first blush appear, that no good book can be written in any other way; that the only literature of any value is that which grows indirectly out of the real action of society, intended directly to effect some other purpose; and that when a man sits down doggedly in his study, and says to himself, 'I mean to write a good book,' it is certain, from the necessity of the case, that the result will be a bad one.

To illustrate this by a few examples: Shakspeare, the Greek Dramatists, Lope and Calderon, Corneille, Racine, and Molière, in short, all the dramatic poets of much celebrity, prepared their works for actual representation, at times when the drama was the favorite amusement. Their plays, when collected, make excellent books. At a later period, when the drama had in a great measure gone out of fashion, Lord Byron, a man not inferior, perhaps, in