what purpose?” inquired the cardinal.  “To write books, like you, against the Huguenots.”  The cardinal, then aged and infirm, could not conceal his joy at the prospect of so hopeful a successor; and placing the pen in his hand, said, “I give it you as the dying shepherd, Damcetas, bequeathed his pipe to the little Corydon.”  Other children might have asked for a pen—­ but to write against the Huguenots evinced a deeper feeling and a wider association of ideas, indicating the future polemic.

[Footnote A:  I have preserved this manuscript narrative in “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. ii.]

Some of these facts, we conceive, afford decisive evidence of that instinct in genius, that primary quality of mind, sometimes called organization, which has inflamed a war of words by an equivocal term.  We repeat that this faculty of genius can exist independent of education, and where it is wanting, education can never confer it:  it is an impulse, an instinct always working in the character of “the chosen mind;”

  One with our feelings and our powers,
  And rather part of us, than ours.

In the history of genius there are unquestionably many secondary causes of considerable influence in developing, or even crushing the germ—­these have been of late often detected, and sometimes carried to a ridiculous extreme; but among them none seem more remarkable than the first studies and the first habits.

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.

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