Thus it happens that in the first years of life the education of the youth may not be the education of his genius; he lives unknown to himself and others. In all these cases nature had dropped the seeds in the soil: but even a happy disposition must be concealed amidst adverse circumstances: I repeat, that genius can only make that its own which is homogeneous with its nature. It has happened to some men of genius during a long period of their lives, that an unsettled impulse, unable to discover the object of its aptitude, a thirst and fever in the temperament of too sentient a being, which cannot find the occupation to which only it can attach itself, has sunk into a melancholy and querulous spirit, weary with the burthen of existence; but the instant the latent talent had declared itself, his first work, the eager offspring of desire and love, has astonished the world at once with the birth and the maturity of genius.
We are told that PELEGRINO TIBALDI, who afterwards obtained the glorious title of "the reformed Michael Angelo," long felt the strongest internal dissatisfaction at his own proficiency, and that one day, in melancholy and despair, he had retired from the city, resolved to starve himself to death: his friend discovered him, and having persuaded him to change his pursuits from painting to architecture, he soon rose to eminence. This story D'Argenville throws some doubt over; but as Tibaldi during twenty years abstained from his pencil, a singular circumstance seems explained by an extraordinary occurrence. TASSO, with feverish anxiety pondered on five different subjects before he could decide in the choice of his epic; the same embarrassment was long the fate of GIBBON on the subject of his history. Some have sunk into a deplorable state of utter languishment, from the circumstance of being deprived of the means of pursuing their beloved study, as in the case of the chemist BERGMAN. His friends, to gain him over to the more lucrative professions, deprived him of his books of natural history; a plan which nearly proved fatal to the youth, who with declining health quitted the university. At length ceasing to struggle with the conflicting desire within him, his renewed enthusiasm for his favourite science restored the health he had lost in abandoning it.
It was the view of the tomb of Virgil which so powerfully influenced the innate genius of BOCCACCIO, and fixed his instant decision. As yet young, and in the neighbourhood of Naples, wandering for recreation, he reached the tomb of the Mantuan. Pausing before it, his youthful mind began to meditate. Struck by the universal glory of that great name, he lamented his own fortune to be occupied by the obscure details of merchandise; already he sighed to emulate the fame of the Roman, and as Villani tells us, from that day he abandoned for ever the occupations of commerce, dedicating himself to literature. PROCTOR, the lost Phidias of our country, would often say, that he should never have quitted his mercantile situation, but for the accidental sight of Barry's picture of "Venus rising from the Sea;" a picture which produced so immediate an effect on his mind, that it determined him to quit a lucrative occupation. Surely we cannot account for such sudden effusions of the mind, and such instant decisions, but by the principle of that predisposition which only waits for an occasion to declare itself.
Abundant facts exhibit genius unequivocally discovering itself in youth. In general, perhaps, a master-mind exhibits precocity. "Whatever a young man at first applies himself to, is commonly his delight afterwards." This remark was made by HARTLEY, who has related an anecdote of the infancy of his genius, which indicated the manhood. He declared to his daughter that the intention of writing a book upon the nature of man, was conceived in his mind when he was a very little boy—when swinging backwards and forwards upon a gate, not more than nine or ten years old; he was then meditating upon the nature of his own mind, how man was made, and for what future end. Such was the true origin, in a boy of ten years old, of his celebrated book on "The Frame, the Duty, and the Expectation of Man." JOHN HUNTER conceived his notion of the principle of life, which to his last day formed the subject of his inquiries and experiments, when he was very young; for at that period of life, Mr. Abernethy tells us, he began his observations on the incubated egg, which suggested or corroborated his opinions.
A learned friend, and an observer of men of science, has supplied me with a remark highly deserving notice. It is an observation that will generally hold good, that the most important systems of theory, however late they may be published, have been formed at a very early period of life. This important observation may be verified by some striking facts. A most curious one will be found in Lord BACON'S letter to Father Fulgentio, where he gives an account of his projecting his philosophy thirty years before, during his youth. MILTON from early youth mused on the composition of an epic. DE THOU has himself told us, that from his tender youth his mind was full of the idea of composing a history of his own times; and his whole life was passed in preparation, and in a continued accession of materials for a future period. From the age of twenty, MONTESQUIEU was preparing the materials of L'Esprit des Loix, by extracts from the immense volumes of civil law. TILLEMONT'S vast labours were traced out in his mind at the early age of nineteen, on reading Baronius; and some of the finest passages in RACINE'S tragedies were composed while a pupil, wandering in the woods of the Port-Royal. So true is it that the seeds of many of our great literary and scientific works were lying, for many years antecedent to their being given to the world, in a latent state of germination.[A]
[Footnote A: I need not to be reminded, that I am not worth mentioning among the illustrious men who have long formed the familiar subjects of my delightful researches. But with the middling as well as with the great, the same habits must operate. Early in life, I was struck by the inductive philosophy of Bacon, and sought after a Moral Experimental Philosophy; and I had then in my mind an observation of Lord Bolingbroke's, for I see I quoted it thirty years ago, that "Abstract or general propositions, though never so true, appear obscure or doubtful to us very often till they are explained by examples." So far back as in 1793 I published "A Dissertation on Anecdotes," with the simplicity of a young votary; there I deduced results, and threw out a magnificent project not very practicable. From that time to the hour I am now writing, my metal has been running in this mould, and I still keep casting philosophy into anecdotes, and anecdotes into philosophy. As I began I fear I shall end.]
The predisposition of genius has declared itself in painters and poets, who were such before they understood the nature of colours and the arts of verse; and this vehement propensity, so mysteriously constitutional, may be traced in other intellectual characters besides those which belong to the class of imagination. It was said that PITT was born a minister; the late Dr. SHAW I always considered as one born a naturalist, and I know a great literary antiquary who seems to me to have been also born such; for the passion of curiosity is as intense a faculty, or instinct, with some casts of mind, as is that of invention with poets and painters: I confess that to me it is genius in a form in which genius has not yet been suspected to appear. One of the biographers of Sir HANS SLOANE expresses himself in this manner:—"Our author's thirst for knowledge seems to have been born with him, so that his Cabinet of Rarities may be said to have commenced with his being." This strange metaphorical style has only confused an obscure truth. SLOANE, early in life, felt an irresistible impulse which inspired him with the most enlarged views of the productions of nature, and he exulted in their accomplishment; for in his will he has solemnly recorded, that his collections were the fruits of his early devotion, having had from my youth a strong inclination to the study of plants and all other productions of nature. The vehement passion of PEIRESC for knowledge, according to accounts which Gassendi received from old men who had known him as a child, broke out as soon as he had been taught his alphabet; for then his delight was to be handling books and papers, and his perpetual inquiries after their contents obliged them to invent something to quiet the child's insatiable curiosity, who was hurt when told that he had not the capacity to understand them. He did not study as an ordinary scholar, for he never read but with perpetual researches. At ten years of age, his passion for the studies of antiquity was kindled at the sight of some ancient coins dug up in his neighbourhood; then that vehement passion for knowledge "began to burn like fire in a forest," as Gassendi happily describes the fervour and amplitude of the mind of this man of vast learning. Bayle, who was an experienced judge in the history of genius, observes on two friars, one of whom was haunted by a strong disposition to genealogical, and the other to geographical pursuits, that, "let a man do what he will, if nature incline us to certain things, there is no preventing the gratification of our desire, though it lies hid under a monk's frock." It is not, therefore, as the world is apt to imagine, only poets and painters for whom is reserved this restless and impetuous propensity for their particular pursuits; I claim it for the man of science as well as for the man of imagination. And I confess that I consider this strong bent of the mind in men eminent in pursuits in which imagination is little concerned, and whom men of genius have chosen to remove so far from their class, as another gifted aptitude. They, too, share in the glorious fever of genius, and we feel how just was the expression formerly used, of "their thirst for knowledge."
But to return to the men of genius who answer more strictly to the popular notion of inventors. We have BOCCACCIO'S own words for a proof of his early natural tendency to tale-writing, in a passage of his genealogy of the gods:—"Before seven years of age, when as yet I had met with no stories, was without a master, and hardly knew my letters, I had a natural talent for fiction, and produced some little tales." Thus the "Decamerone" was appearing much earlier than we suppose. DESCARTES, while yet a boy, indulged such habits of deep meditation, that he was nicknamed by his companions "The Philosopher," always questioning, and ever settling the cause and the effect. He was twenty-five years of age before he left the army, but the propensity for meditation had been early formed; and he has himself given an account of the pursuits which occupied his youth, and of the progress of his genius; of the secret struggle which he so long maintained with his own mind, wandering in concealment over the world for more than twenty years, and, as he says of himself, like the statuary labouring to draw out a Minerva from the marble block. MICHAEL ANGELO, as yet a child, wherever he went, busied himself in drawing; and when his noble parents, hurt that a man of genius was disturbing the line of their ancestry, forced him to relinquish the pencil, the infant artist flew to the chisel: the art which was in his soul would not allow of idle hands. LOPE DE VEGA, VELASQUEZ, ARIOSTO, and TASSO, are all said to have betrayed at their school-tasks the most marked indications of their subsequent characteristics.
This decision of the impulse of genius is apparent in MURILLO. This young artist was undistinguished at the place of his birth. A brother artist returning home from London, where he had studied under Van Dyk, surprised MURILLO by a chaste, and to him hitherto unknown, manner. Instantly he conceived the project of quitting his native Seville and flying to Italy —the fever of genius broke forth with all its restlessness. But he was destitute of the most ordinary means to pursue a journey, and forced to an expedient, he purchased a piece of canvas, which dividing into parts, he painted on each figures of saints, landscapes, and flowers—an humble merchandise of art adapted to the taste and devout feelings of the times, and which were readily sold to the adventurers to the Indies. With these small means he departed, having communicated his project to no one except to a beloved sister, whose tears could not prevail to keep the lad at home; the impetuous impulse had blinded him to the perils and the impracticability of his wild project. He reached Madrid, where the great VELASQUEZ, his countryman, was struck by the ingenuous simplicity of the youth, who urgently requested letters for Rome; but when that noble genius understood the purport of this romantic journey, VELASQUEZ assured him that he need not proceed to Italy to learn the art he loved. The great master opened the royal galleries to the youth, and cherished his studies. MURILLO returned to his native city, where, from his obscurity, he had never been missed, having ever lived a retired life of silent labour; but this painter of nature returned to make the city which had not noticed his absence the theatre of his glory.
The same imperious impulse drove CALLOT, at the age of twelve years, from his father's roof. His parents, from prejudices of birth, had conceived that the art of engraving was one beneath the studies of their son; but the boy had listened to stories of the miracles of Italian art, and with a curiosity predominant over any self-consideration, one morning the genius flew away. Many days had not elapsed, when finding himself in the utmost distress, with a gang of gipsies he arrived at Florence. A merchant of Nancy discovered him, and returned the reluctant boy of genius to his home. Again he flies to Italy, and again his brother discovers him, and reconducts him to his parents. The father, whose patience and forgiveness were now exhausted, permitted his son to become the most original genius of French art—one who, in his vivacious groups, the touch of his graver, and the natural expression of his figures, anticipated the creations of Hogarth.