An unfavourable position in society is a usual obstruction in the course of this self-education; and a man of genius, through half his life, has held a contest with a bad, or with no education.  There is a race of the late-taught, who, with a capacity of leading in the first rank, are mortified to discover themselves only on a level with their contemporaries.  WINCKELMANN, who passed his youth in obscure misery as a village schoolmaster, paints feelings which strikingly contrast with his avocations.  “I formerly filled the office of a schoolmaster with 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 those whom the Greeks named [Greek:  opsimatheis], sero sapientes, the late-learned, for I have appeared too late in the world and in Italy.  To have done something, it was necessary that I should have had an education analogous to my pursuits, and at your age.”  This class of the late-learned is a useful distinction.  It is so with a sister-art; one of the greatest musicians of our country assures me that the ear is as latent with many; there are the late-learned even in the musical world.  BUDAEUS declared that he was both “self-taught and late-taught.”

The SELF-EDUCATED are marked by stubborn peculiarities.  Often abounding with talent, but rarely with talent in its place, their native prodigality has to dread a plethora of genius and a delirium of wit:  or else, hard but irregular students rich in acquisition, they find how their huddled knowledge, like corn heaped in a granary, for want of ventilation and stirring, perishes in its own masses.  Not having attended to the process of their own minds, and little acquainted with that of other men, they cannot throw out their intractable knowledge, nor with sympathy awaken by its softening touches the thoughts of others.  To conduct their native impulse, which had all along driven them, is a secret not always 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