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The first studies.—The self-educated are marked by stubborn peculiarities.—Their errors.—Their improvement from the neglect or contempt they incur.—The history of self-education in Moses Mendelssohn. —Friends usually prejudicial in the youth of genius.—A remarkable interview between Petrarch in his first studies, and his literary adviser.—Exhortation.

The first studies form an epoch in the history of genius, and unquestionably have sensibly influenced its productions. Often have the first impressions stamped a character on the mind adapted to receive one, as the first step into life has often determined its walk. But this, for ourselves, is a far distant period in our existence, which is lost in the horizon of our own recollections, and is usually unobserved by others. Many of those peculiarities of men of genius which are not fortunate, and some which have hardened the character in its mould, may, however, be traced to this period. Physicians tell us that there is a certain point in youth at which the constitution is formed, and on which the sanity of life revolves; the character of genius experiences a similar dangerous period. Early bad tastes, early peculiar habits, early defective instructions, all the egotistical pride of an untamed intellect, are those evil spirits which will dog genius to its grave. An early attachment to the works of Sir Thomas Browne produced in JOHNSON an excessive admiration of that Latinised English, which violated the native graces of the language; and the peculiar style of Gibbon is traced by himself "to the constant habit of speaking one language, and writing another." The first studies of REMBRANDT affected his after-labours. The peculiarity of shadow which marks all his pictures, originated in the circumstance of his father's mill receiving light from an aperture at the top, which habituated the artist afterwards to view all objects as if seen in that magical light. The intellectual POUSSIN, as Nicholas has been called, could never, from an early devotion to the fine statues of antiquity, extricate his genius on the canvas from the hard forms of marble: he sculptured with his pencil; and that cold austerity of tone, still more remarkable in his last pictures, as it became mannered, chills the spectator on a first glance. When POPE was a child, he found in his mother's closet a small library of mystical devotion; but it was not suspected, till the fact was discovered, that the effusions of love and religion poured forth in his "Eloisa" were caught from the seraphic raptures of those erotic mystics, who to the last retained a place in his library among the classical bards of antiquity. The accidental perusal of Quintus Curtius first made BOYLE, to use his own words, "in love with other than pedantic books, and conjured up in him an unsatisfied appetite of knowledge; so that he thought he owed more to Quintus Curtius than did Alexander." From the perusal of Rycaut's folio of Turkish history in childhood, the noble and impassioned bard of our times retained those indelible impressions which gave life and motion to the "Giaour," "the Corsair," and "Alp." A voyage to the country produced the scenery. Rycaut only communicated the impulse to a mind susceptible of the poetical character; and without this Turkish history we should still have had the poet.[A]

[Footnote A: The following manuscript note by Lord Byron on this passage, cannot fail to interest the lovers of poetry, as well as the inquirers into the history of the human mind. His lordship's recollections of his first readings will not alter the tendency of my conjecture; it only proves that he had read much more of Eastern history and manners than Rycaut's folio, which probably led to this class of books:

"Knolles—Cantemir—De Tott—Lady M.W. Montagu—Hawkins's translation from Mignot's History of the Turks—the Arabian Nights—all travels or histories or books upon the East I could meet with, I had read, as well as Rycaut, before I was ten years old. I think the Arabian Nights first. After these I preferred the history of naval actions, Don Quixote, and Smollett's novels, particularly Roderick Random, and I was passionate for the Roman History.

"When a boy I could never bear to read any poetry whatever without disgust and reluctance."—MS. note by Lord Byron. Latterly Lord Byron acknowledged in a conversation held in Greece with Count Gamba, not long before he died, "The Turkish History was one of the first books that gave me pleasure when a child; and I believe it had much influence on my subsequent wishes to visit the Levant; and gave perhaps the Oriental colouring which is observed in my poetry."

I omitted the following note in my last edition, but I shall now preserve it, as it may enter into the history of his lordship's character:

"When I was in Turkey I was oftener tempted to turn Mussulman than poet, and have often regretted since that I did not. 1818."]

The influence of first studies in the formation of the character of genius is a moral phenomenon which has not sufficiently attracted our notice. FRANKLIN acquaints us that, when young and wanting books, he accidentally found De Foe's "Essay on Projects," from which work impressions were derived which afterwards influenced some of the principal events of his life. The lectures of REYNOLDS probably originated in the essays of Richardson. It is acknowledged that these first made him a painter, and not long afterwards an author; and it is said that many of the principles in his lectures may be traced in those first studies. Many were the indelible and glowing impressions caught by the ardent Reynolds from those bewildering pages of enthusiasm! Sir WALTER RAWLEIGH, according to a family tradition, when a young man, was perpetually reading and conversing on the discoveries of Columbus, and the conquests of Cortez and Pizarro. His character, as well as the great events of his life, seem to have been inspired by his favourite histories; to pass beyond the discoveries of the Spaniards became a passion, and the vision of his life. It is formally testified that, from a copy of Vegetius de Re Militari, in the school library of St. Paul's, MARLBOROUGH imbibed his passion for a military life. If he could not understand the text, the prints were, in such a mind, sufficient to awaken the passion for military glory. ROUSSEAU in early youth, full of his Plutarch, while he was also devouring the trash of romances, could only conceive human nature in the colossal forms, or be affected by the infirm sensibility of an imagination mastering all his faculties; thinking like a Roman, and feeling like a Sybarite. The same circumstance happened to CATHERINE MACAULEY, who herself has told us how she owed the bent of her character to the early reading of the Roman historians; but combining Roman admiration with English faction, she violated truth in English characters, and exaggerated romance in her Roman. But the permanent effect of a solitary bias in the youth of genius, impelling the whole current of his after-life, is strikingly displayed in the remarkable character of Archdeacon BLACKBURNE, the author of the famous "Confessional," and the curious "Memoirs of Hollis," written with such a republican fierceness.

I had long considered the character of our archdeacon as a lusus politicus et theologicus. Having subscribed to the Articles, and enjoying the archdeaconry, he was writing against subscription and the whole hierarchy, with a spirit so irascible and caustic, that one would have suspected that, like Prynne and Bastwick, the archdeacon had already lost both his ears; while his antipathy to monarchy might have done honour to a Roundhead of the Rota Club. The secret of these volcanic explosions was only revealed in a letter accidentally preserved. In the youth of our spirited archdeacon, when fox-hunting was his deepest study, it happened at the house of a relation, that on a rainy day he fell, among other garret lumber, on some worm-eaten volumes which had once been the careful collections of his great-grandfather, an Oliverian justice. "These," says he, "I conveyed to my lodging-room, and there became acquainted with the manners and principles of many excellent old Puritans, and then laid the foundation of my own." The enigma is now solved! Archdeacon BLACKBURNE, in his seclusion in Yorkshire amidst the Oliverian justice's library, shows that we are in want of a Cervantes but not of a Quixote, and Yorkshire might yet be as renowned a country as La Mancha; for political romances, it is presumed, may be as fertile of ridicule as any of the folios of chivalry.

We may thus mark the influence through life of those first unobserved impressions on the character of genius, which every author has not recorded.

Education, however indispensable in a cultivated age, produces nothing on the side of genius. Where education ends, genius often begins. GRAY was asked if he recollected when he first felt the strong predilection to poetry; he replied that, "he believed it was when he began to read Virgil for his own amusement, and not in school hours as a task." Such is the force of self-education in genius, that the celebrated physiologist, JOHN HUNTER, who was entirely self-educated, evinced such penetration in his anatomical discoveries, that he has brought into notice passages from writers he was unable to read, and which had been overlooked by profound scholars.[A]

[Footnote A: Life of John Hunter, by Dr. Adams, p. 59, where the case is curiously illustrated. [The writer therein defends Hunter from a charge of plagiarism from the Greek writers, who had studied accurately certain phases of disease, which had afterwards been "overlooked by the most profound scholars for nearly two thousand years," until John Hunter by his own close observation had assumed similar conclusions.]]

That the education of genius must be its own work, we may appeal to every one of the family. It is not always fortunate, for many die amidst a waste of talents and the wreck of mind.

Many a soul sublime

Has felt the influence of malignant star.

An unfavourable position in society is a usual obstruction in the course of this self-education; and a man of genius, through half his life, has held a contest with a bad, or with no education. There is a race of the late-taught, who, with a capacity of leading in the first rank, are mortified to discover themselves only on a level with their contemporaries. WINCKELMANN, who passed his youth in obscure misery as a village schoolmaster, paints feelings which strikingly contrast with his avocations. "I formerly filled the office of a schoolmaster with the greatest punctuality; and I taught the A, B, C, to children with filthy heads, at the moment I was aspiring after the knowledge of the beautiful, and meditating, low to myself, on the similes of Homer; then I said to myself, as I still say, 'Peace, my soul, thy strength shall surmount thy cares.'" The obstructions of so unhappy a self-education essentially injured his ardent genius, and long he secretly sorrowed at this want of early patronage, and these habits of life so discordant with the habits of his mind. "I am unfortunately one of those whom the Greeks named [Greek: opsimatheis], sero sapientes, the late-learned, for I have appeared too late in the world and in Italy. To have done something, it was necessary that I should have had an education analogous to my pursuits, and at your age." This class of the late-learned is a useful distinction. It is so with a sister-art; one of the greatest musicians of our country assures me that the ear is as latent with many; there are the late-learned even in the musical world. BUDÆUS declared that he was both "self-taught and late-taught."

The SELF-EDUCATED are marked by stubborn peculiarities. Often abounding with talent, but rarely with talent in its place, their native prodigality has to dread a plethora of genius and a delirium of wit: or else, hard but irregular students rich in acquisition, they find how their huddled knowledge, like corn heaped in a granary, for want of ventilation and stirring, perishes in its own masses. Not having attended to the process of their own minds, and little acquainted with that of other men, they cannot throw out their intractable knowledge, nor with sympathy awaken by its softening touches the thoughts of others. To conduct their native impulse, which had all along driven them, is a secret not always discovered, or else discovered late in life. Hence it has happened with some of this race, that their first work has not announced genius, and their last is stamped with it. Some are often judged by their first work, and when they have surpassed themselves, it is long ere it is acknowledged. They have improved themselves by the very neglect or even contempt which their unfortunate efforts were doomed to meet; and when once they have learned what is beautiful, they discover a living but unsuspected source in their own wild but unregarded originality. Glorying in their strength at the time that they are betraying their weakness, yet are they still mighty in that enthusiasm which is only disciplined by its own fierce habits. Never can the native faculty of genius with its creative warmth be crushed out of the human soul; it will work itself out beneath the encumbrance of the most uncultivated minds, even amidst the deep perplexed feelings and the tumultuous thoughts of the most visionary enthusiast, who is often only a man of genius misplaced.[A] We may find a whole race of these self-taught among the unknown writers of the old romances, and the ancient ballads of European nations; there sleep many a Homer and Virgil—legitimate heirs of their genius, though possessors of decayed estates. BUNYAN is the Spenser of the people. The fire burned towards Heaven, although the altar was rude and rustic.

[Footnote A: "One assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my own experience, that there exist folios on the human understanding and the nature of man which would have a far juster claim to their high rank and celebrity, if in the whole huge volume there could be found as much fulness of heart and intellect as burst forth in many a simple page of George Fox and Jacob Behmen."—Mr. Coleridge's Biographia Litteraria, i. 143.]

BARRY, the painter, has left behind him works not to be turned over by the connoisseur by rote, nor the artist who dares not be just. That enthusiast, with a temper of mind resembling Rousseau's, but with coarser feelings, was the same creature of untamed imagination consumed by the same passions, with the same fine intellect disordered, and the same fortitude of soul; but he found his self-taught pen, like his pencil, betray his genius.[B] A vehement enthusiasm breaks through his ill-composed works, throwing the sparks of his bold conceptions into the soul of the youth of genius. When, in his character of professor, he delivered his lectures at the academy, at every pause his auditors rose in a tumult, and at every close their hands returned to him the proud feelings he adored. This gifted but self-educated man, once listening to the children of genius whom he had created about him, exclaimed, "Go it, go it, my boys! they did so at Athens." This self-formed genius could throw up his native mud into the very heaven of his invention!

[Footnote B: Like Hogarth, when he attempted to engrave his own works, his originality of style made them differ from the tamer and more mechanical labours of the professional engraver. They have consequently less beauty, but greater vigour.—ED.]

But even such pages as those of BARRY'S are the aliment of young genius. Before we can discern the beautiful, must we not be endowed with the susceptibility of love? Must not the disposition be formed before even the object appears? I have witnessed the young artist of genius glow and start over the reveries of the uneducated BARRY, but pause and meditate, and inquire over the mature elegance of REYNOLDS; in the one he caught the passion for beauty, and in the other he discovered the beautiful; with the one he was warm and restless, and with the other calm and satisfied.

Of the difficulties overcome in the self-education of genius, we have a remarkable instance in the character of MOSES MENDELSSOHN, on whom literary Germany has bestowed the honourable title of "the Jewish Socrates."[A] So great apparently were the invincible obstructions which barred out Mendelssohn from the world of literature and philosophy, that, in the history of men of genius, it is something like taking in the history of man the savage of Aveyron from his woods—who, destitute of a human language, should at length create a model of eloquence; who, without the faculty of conceiving a figure, should at length be capable of adding to the demonstrations of Euclid; and who, without a complex idea and with few sensations, should at length, in the sublimest strain of metaphysics, open to the world a new view of the immortality of the soul!

[Footnote A: I composed the life of MENDELSSOHN so far back as in 1798, in a periodical publication, whence our late biographers have drawn their notices; a juvenile production, which happened to excite the attention of the late BARRY, then not personally known to me; and he gave all the immortality his poetical pencil could bestow on this man of genius, by immediately placing in his Elysium of Genius MENDELSSOHN shaking hands with ADDISON, who wrote on the truth of the Christian religion, and near LOCKE, the English master of MENDELSSOHN'S mind.]

Mendelssohn, the son of a poor rabbin, in a village in Germany, received an education completely rabbinical, and its nature must be comprehended, or the term of education would be misunderstood. The Israelites in Poland and Germany live with all the restrictions of their ceremonial law in an insulated state, and are not always instructed in the language of the country of their birth. They employ for their common intercourse a barbarous or patois Hebrew; while the sole studies of the young rabbins are strictly confined to the Talmud, of which the fundamental principle, like the Sonna of the Turks, is a pious rejection of every species of profane learning. This ancient jealous spirit, which walls in the understanding and the faith of man, was to shut out what the imitative Catholics afterwards called heresy. It is, then, these numerous folios of the Talmud which the true Hebraic student contemplates through all the seasons of life, as the Patuecos in their low valley imagine their surrounding mountains to be the confines of the universe.

Of such a nature was the plan of Mendelssohn's first studies; but even in his boyhood this conflict of study occasioned an agitation of his spirits, which affected his life ever after. Rejecting the Talmudical dreamers, he caught a nobler spirit from the celebrated Maimonides; and his native sagacity was already clearing up the surrounding darkness. An enemy not less hostile to the enlargement of mind than voluminous legends, presented itself in the indigence of his father, who was compelled to send away the youth on foot to Berlin, to find labour and bread.

At Berlin, Mendelssohn becomes an amanuensis to another poor rabbin, who could only still initiate him into the theology, the jurisprudence, and the scholastic philosophy of his people. Thus, he was as yet no farther advanced in that philosophy of the mind in which he was one day to be the rival of Plato and Locke, nor in that knowledge of literature which was finally to place him among the first polished critics of Germany.

Some unexpected event occurs which gives the first great impulse to the mind of genius. Mendelssohn received this from the companion of his misery and his studies, a man of congenial but maturer powers. He was a Polish Jew, expelled from the communion of the orthodox, and the calumniated student was now a vagrant, with more sensibility than fortitude. But this vagrant was a philosopher, a poet, a naturalist, and a mathematician. Mendelssohn, at a distant day, never alluded to him without tears. Thrown together into the same situation, they approached each other by the same sympathies, and communicating in the only language which Mendelssohn could speak, the Polander voluntarily undertook his literary education.

Then was seen one of the most extraordinary spectacles in the history of modern literature. Two houseless Hebrew youths might be discovered, in the moonlit streets of Berlin, sitting in retired corners, or on the steps of some porch, the one instructing the other, with a Euclid in his hand; but what is more extraordinary, it was a Hebrew version, composed by the master for a pupil who knew no other language. Who could then have imagined that the future Plato of Germany was sitting on those steps!

The Polander, whose deep melancholy had settled on his heart, died—yet he had not lived in vain, since the electric spark that lighted up the soul of Mendelssohn had fallen from his own.

Mendelssohn was now left alone; his mind teeming with its chaos, and still master of no other language than that barren idiom which was incapable of expressing the ideas he was meditating on. He had scarcely made a step into the philosophy of his age, and the genius of Mendelssohn had probably been lost to Germany, had not the singularity of his studies and the cast of his mind been detected by the sagacity of Dr. Kisch. The aid of this physician was momentous; for he devoted several hours every day to the instruction of a poor youth, whose strong capacity he had the discernment to perceive, and the generous temper to aid. Mendelssohn was soon enabled to read Locke in a Latin version; but with such extreme pain, that, compelled to search for every word, and to arrange their Latin order, and at the same time to combine metaphysical ideas, it was observed that he did not so much translate, as guess by the force of meditation.

This prodigious effort of his intellect retarded his progress, but invigorated his habit, as the racer, by running against the hill, at length courses with facility.

A succeeding effort was to master the living languages, and chiefly the English, that he might read his favourite Locke in his own idiom. Thus a great genius for metaphysics and languages was forming itself alone, without aid.

It is curious to detect, in the character of genius, the effects of local and moral influences. There resulted from Mendelssohn's early situation certain defects in his Jewish education, and numerous impediments in his studies. Inheriting but one language, too obsolete and naked to serve the purposes of modern philosophy, he perhaps overvalued his new acquisitions, and in his delight of knowing many languages, he with difficulty escaped from remaining a mere philologist; while in his philosophy, having adopted the prevailing principles of Wolf and Baumgarten, his genius was long without the courage or the skill to emancipate itself from their rusty chains. It was more than a step which had brought him into their circle, but a step was yet wanting to escape from it.

At length the mind of Mendelssohn enlarged in literary intercourse: he became a great and original thinker in many beautiful speculations in moral and critical philosophy; while he had gradually been creating a style which the critics of Germany have declared to be their first luminous model of precision and elegance. Thus a Hebrew vagrant, first perplexed in the voluminous labyrinth of Judaical learning, in his middle age oppressed by indigence and malady, and in his mature life wrestling with that commercial station whence he derived his humble independence, became one of the master-writers in the literature of his country. The history of the mind of Mendelssohn is one of the noblest pictures of the self-education of genius.

Friends, whose prudential counsels in the business of life are valuable in our youth, are usually prejudicial in the youth of genius. The multitude of authors and artists originates in the ignorant admiration of their early friends; while the real genius has often been disconcerted and thrown into despair by the false judgments of his domestic circle. The productions of taste are more unfortunate than those which depend on a chain of reasoning, or the detail of facts; these are more palpable to the common judgments of men; but taste is of such rarity, that a long life may be passed by some without once obtaining a familiar acquaintance with a mind so cultivated by knowledge, so tried by experience, and so practised by converse with the literary world, that its prophetic feeling can anticipate the public opinion. When a young writer's first essay is shown, some, through mere inability of censure, see nothing but beauties; others, from mere imbecility, can see none; and others, out of pure malice, see nothing but faults. "I was soon disgusted," says Gibbon, "with the modest practice of reading the manuscript to my friends. Of such friends some will praise for politeness, and some will criticise for vanity." Had several of our first writers set their fortunes on the cast of their friends' opinions, we might have lost some precious compositions. The friends of Thompson discovered nothing but faults in his early productions, one of which happened to be his noblest, the "Winter;" they just could discern that these abounded with luxuriances, without being aware that, they were the luxuriances of a poet. He had created a new school in art—and appealed from his circle to the public. From a manuscript letter of our poet's, written when employed on his "Summer," I transcribe his sentiments on his former literary friends in Scotland—he is writing to Mallet: "Far from defending these two lines, I damn them to the lowest depth of the poetical Tophet, prepared of old for Mitchell, Morrice, Rook, Cook, Beckingham, and a long &c. Wherever I have evidence, or think I have evidence, which is the same thing, I'll be as obstinate as all the mules in Persia." This poet of warm affections felt so irritably the perverse criticisms of his learned friends, that they were to share alike a poetic Hell—probably a sort of Dunciad, or lampoons. One of these "blasts" broke out in a vindictive epigram on Mitchell, whom he describes with a "blasted eye;" but this critic literally having one, the poet, to avoid a personal reflection, could only consent to make the blemish more active—

Why all not faults, injurious Mitchell! why

Appears one beauty to thy blasting eye?

He again calls him "the planet-blasted Mitchell." Of another of these critical friends he speaks with more sedateness, but with a strong conviction that the critic, a very sensible man, had no sympathy with the poet. "Aikman's reflections on my writings are very good, but he does not in them regard the turn of my genius enough; should I alter my way, I would write poorly. I must choose what appears to me the most significant epithet, or I cannot with any heart proceed." The "Mirror,"[A] when periodically published in Edinburgh, was "fastidiously" received, as all "home-productions" are: but London avenged the cause of the author. When SWIFT introduced PARNELL to Lord Bolingbroke, and to the world, he observes, in his Journal, "it is pleasant to see one who hardly passed for anything in Ireland, make his way here with a little friendly forwarding." MONTAIGNE has honestly told us that in his own province they considered that for him to attempt to become an author was perfectly ludicrous: at home, says he, "I am compelled to purchase printers; while at a distance, printers purchase me." There is nothing more trying to the judgment of the friends of a young man of genius than the invention of a new manner: without a standard to appeal to, without bladders to swim, the ordinary critic sinks into irretrievable distress; but usually pronounces against novelty. When REYNOLDS returned from Italy, warm with all the excellence of his art, and painted a portrait, his old master, Hudson, viewing it, and perceiving no trace of his own manner, exclaimed that he did not paint so well as when he left England; while another, who conceived no higher excellence than Kneller, treated with signal contempt the future Raphael of England.

[Footnote A: This weekly journal was chiefly supported by the abilities of the rising young men of the Scottish Bar. Henry Mackenzie, the author of the "Man of Feeling," was the principal contributor. The publication was commenced in January, 1779, and concluded May, 1790.—ED.]

If it be dangerous for a young writer to resign himself to the opinions of his friends, he also incurs some peril in passing them with inattention. He wants a Quintilian. One mode to obtain such an invaluable critic is the cultivation of his own judgment in a round of reading and meditation. Let him at once supply the marble and be himself the sculptor: let the great authors of the world be his gospels, and the best critics their expounders; from the one he will draw inspiration, and from the others he will supply those tardy discoveries in art which he who solely depends on his own experience may obtain too late. Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised; their progress is like those who travel without a map of the country. The more extensive an author's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his powers in knowing what to do. To obtain originality, and effect discovery, sometimes requires but a single step, if we only know from what point to set forwards. This important event in the life of genius has too often depended on chance and good fortune, and many have gone down to their graves without having discovered their unsuspected talent. CURRAN'S predominant faculty was an exuberance of imagination when excited by passion; but when young he gave no evidence of this peculiar faculty, nor for several years, while a candidate for public distinction, was he aware of his particular powers, so slowly his imagination had developed itself. It was when assured of the secret of his strength that his confidence, his ambition, and his industry were excited.

Let the youth preserve his juvenile compositions, whatever these may be; they are the spontaneous growth, and like the plants of the Alps, not always found in other soils; they are his virgin fancies. By contemplating them, he may detect some of his predominant habits, resume a former manner more happily, invent novelty from an old subject he had rudely designed, and often may steal from himself some inventive touches, which, thrown into his most finished compositions, may seem a happiness rather than an art. It was in contemplating on some of their earliest and unfinished productions, that more than one artist discovered with WEST that "there were inventive touches of art in his first and juvenile essay, which, with all his subsequent knowledge and experience, he had not been able to surpass." A young writer, in the progress of his studies, should often recollect a fanciful simile of Dryden—

As those who unripe veins in mines explore

On the rich bed again the warm turf lay,

Till time digests the yet imperfect ore;

And know it will be gold another day.

The youth of genius is that "age of admiration" as sings the poet of "Human Life," when the spell breathed into our ear by our genius, fortunate or unfortunate, is—"Aspire!" Then we adore art and the artists. It was RICHARDSON'S enthusiasm which gave REYNOLDS the raptures he caught in meditating on the description of a great painter; and REYNOLDS thought RAPHAEL the most extraordinary man the world had ever produced. WEST, when a youth, exclaimed that "A painter is a companion for kings and emperors!" This was the feeling which rendered the thoughts of obscurity painful and insupportable to their young minds.

But this sunshine of rapture is not always spread over the spring of the youthful year. There is a season of self-contest, a period of tremors, and doubts, and darkness. These frequent returns of melancholy, sometimes of despondence, which is the lot of inexperienced genius, is a secret history of the heart, which has been finely conveyed to us by Petrarch, in a conversation with John of Florence, to whom the young poet often resorted when dejected, to reanimate his failing powers, to confess his faults, and to confide to him his dark and wavering resolves. It was a question with Petrarch, whether he should not turn away from the pursuit of literary fame, by giving another direction to his life.

"I went one day to John of Florence in one of those ague-fits of faint-heartedness which often happened to me; he received me with his accustomed kindness. 'What ails you?' said he, 'you seem oppressed with thought: if I am not deceived, something has happened to you.' 'You do not deceive yourself, my father (for thus I used to call him), and yet nothing newly has happened to me; but I come to confide to you that my old melancholy torments me more than usual. You know its nature, for my heart has always been opened to you; you know all which I have done to draw myself out of the crowd, and to acquire a name; and surely not without some success, since I have your testimony in my favour. Are you not the truest man, and the best of critics, who have never ceased to bestow on me your praise—and what need I more? Have you not often told me that I am answerable to God for the talents he has endowed me with, if I neglected to cultivate them? Your praises were to me as a sharp spur: I applied myself to study with more ardour, insatiable even of my moments. Disdaining the beaten paths, I opened a new road; and I flattered myself that assiduous labour would lead to something great; but I know not how, when I thought myself highest, I feel myself fallen; the spring of my mind has dried up; what seemed easy once, now appears to me above my strength; I stumble at every step, and am ready to sink for ever into despair. I return to you to teach me, or at least advise me. Shall I for ever quit my studies? Shall I strike into some new course of life? My father, have pity on me! draw me out of the frightful state in which I am lost.' I could proceed no farther without shedding tears. 'Cease to afflict yourself, my son,' said that good man; 'your condition is not so bad as you think: the truth is, you knew little at the time you imagined you knew much. The discovery of your ignorance is the first great step you have made towards true knowledge. The veil is lifted up, and you now view those deep shades of the soul which were concealed from you by excessive presumption. In ascending an elevated spot, we gradually discover many things whose existence before was not suspected by us. Persevere in the career which you entered with my advice; feel confident that God will not abandon you: there are maladies which the patient does not perceive; but to be aware of the disease, is the first step towards the cure.'"

This remarkable literary interview is here given, that it may perchance meet the eye of some kindred youth at one of those lonely moments when a Shakspeare may have thought himself no poet, and a Raphael believed himself no painter. Then may the tender wisdom of a John of Florence, in the cloudy despondency of art, lighten up the vision of its glory!

INGENUOUS YOUTH! if, in a constant perusal of the master-writers, you see your own sentiments anticipated—if, in the tumult of your mind, as it comes in contact with theirs, new sentiments arise—if, sometimes, looking on the public favourite of the hour, you feel that within which prompts you to imagine that you could rival or surpass him—if, in meditating on the confessions of every man of genius, for they all have their confessions, you find you have experienced the same sensations from the same circumstances, encountered the same difficulties and overcome them by the same means; then let not your courage be lost in your admiration, but listen to that "still small voice" in your heart which cries with CORREGGIO and with MONTESQUIEU, "Ed io anche son pittore!"