A curious decision on this obscure subject may be drawn from an admirable judge of the nature of genius.  AKENSIDE, in that fine poem which forms its history, tracing its source, sang,

From Heaven my strains begin, from Heaven descends
The flame of genius to the human breast.

But in the final revision of that poem, which he left many years after, the bard has vindicated the solitary and independent origin of genius, by the mysterious epithet,

THE CHOSEN BREAST.

The veteran poet was, perhaps, schooled by the vicissitudes of his own poetical life, and those of some of his brothers.

Metaphors are but imperfect illustrations in metaphysical inquiries:  usually they include too little or take in too much.  Yet fanciful analogies are not willingly abandoned.  The iconologists describe Genius as a winged child with a flame above its head; the wings and the flame express more than some metaphysical conclusions.  Let me substitute for “the white paper” of Locke, which served the philosopher in his description of the operations of the senses on the mind, a less artificial substance.  In the soils of the earth we may discover that variety of primary qualities which we believe to exist in human minds.  The botanist and the geologist always find the nature of the strata indicative of its productions; the meagre light herbage announces the poverty of the soil it covers, while the luxuriant growth of plants betrays the richness of the matrix in which the roots are fixed.  It is scarcely reasoning by analogy to apply this operating principle of nature to the faculties of men.

But while the origin and nature of that faculty which we understand by the term Genius remain still wrapt up in its mysterious bud, may we not trace its history in its votaries?  If Nature overshadow with her wings her first causes, still the effects lie open before us, and experience and observation will often deduce from consciousness what we cannot from demonstration.  If Nature, in some of her great operations, has kept back her last secrets; if Newton, even in the result of his reasonings, has religiously abstained from penetrating into her occult connexions, is it nothing to be her historian, although we cannot be her legislator?

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.