CHAPTER IV.
Of natural genius.—Minds constitutionally different cannot have an equal aptitude.—Genius not the result of habit and education.— Originates in peculiar qualities of the mind.—The predisposition of genius.—A substitution for the white paper of Locke. 24
CHAPTER V.
Youth of genius.—Its first impulses may be illustrated by its subsequent actions.—Parents have another association of the man of genius than we.—Of genius, its first habits.—Its melancholy. —Its reveries.—Its love of solitude.—Its disposition to repose. —Of a youth distinguished by his equals.—Feebleness of its first attempts.—Of genius not discoverable even in manhood.—The education of the youth may not be that of his genius.—An unsettled impulse, querulous till it finds its true occupation.—With some, curiosity as intense a faculty as invention.—What the youth first applies to is commonly his delight afterwards.—Facts of the decisive character of genius. 31
CHAPTER VI.
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. 55
CHAPTER VII.
Of the irritability of genius.—Genius in society often in a state of suffering.—Equality of temper more prevalent among men of letters.—Of the occupation of making a great name.—Anxieties of the most successful.—Of the inventors.—Writers of learning.— Writers of taste. —Artists. 69
CHAPTER VIII.
The spirit of literature and the spirit of society.—The inventors. —Society offers seduction and not reward to men of genius.—The notions of persons of fashion of men of genius.—The habitudes of the man of genius distinct from those of the man of society.— Study, meditation, and enthusiasm, the progress of genius.—The disagreement between the men of the world and the literary character. 89