Literary Character of Men of Genius Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions

eglect or contempt they incur.-The history of self-education in Moses Mendelssohn. -Friends usually prejudicial in th

o 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 cl

uirers into the history of the human mind. His lordship's recollections of his first readings will not alter the tendency of my conjecture

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

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;

n, but I shall now preserve it, as it may ente

d to turn Mussulman than poet, and have of

ording 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 na

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 acqu

hose first unobserved impressions on the charact

ry; 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 HUNTE

harge of plagiarism from the Greek writers, who had studied accurately certain phases of disease, which had afterwards been "overlooked by

peal to every one of the family. It is not always fortunate,

soul

influence of

th 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 th

ays 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

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 ful

ame 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 ros

lity of style made them differ from the tamer and more mechanical labours of the p

e 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 matu

d 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

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 immediat

guage 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 wa

ecting 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 hostil

nd 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

e 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

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 H

died-yet he had not lived in vain, since the electric spark th

any, 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 t

ogress, but invigorated his habit, as the racer, by run

lish, that he might read his favourite Locke in his own idiom. Thus a great

oo 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

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 wrest

n, 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

ults, injuriou

eauty to thy

ctions" 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 o

men of the Scottish Bar. Henry Mackenzie, the author of the "Man of Feeling," was the princi

veries 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 depende

pily, 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

nripe veins in

ed again the

ests the yet

will be gold

ts. 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

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 h

ed 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 s

those lonely moments when a Shakspeare may have thought himself no poet, and a Raphael believed himself no painter. T

u 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 circumstanc