[Footnote A:  This weekly journal was chiefly supported by the abilities of the rising young men of the Scottish Bar.  Henry Mackenzie, the author of the “Man of Feeling,” was the principal contributor.  The publication was commenced in January, 1779, and concluded May, 1790.—­ED.]

If it be dangerous for a young writer to resign himself to the opinions of his friends, he also incurs some peril in passing them with inattention.  He wants a Quintilian.  One mode to obtain such an invaluable critic is the cultivation of his own judgment in a round of reading and meditation.  Let him at once supply the marble and be himself the sculptor:  let the great authors of the world be his gospels, and the best critics their expounders; from the one he will draw inspiration, and from the others he will supply those tardy discoveries in art which he who solely depends on his own experience may obtain too late.  Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised; their progress is like those who travel without a map of the country.  The more extensive an author’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his powers in knowing what to do.  To obtain originality, and effect discovery, sometimes requires but a single step, if we only know from what point to set forwards.  This important event in the life of genius has too often depended on chance and good fortune, and many have gone down to their graves without having discovered their unsuspected talent.  CURRAN’S predominant faculty was an exuberance of imagination when excited by passion; but when young he gave no evidence of this peculiar faculty, nor for several years, while a candidate for public distinction, was he aware of his particular powers, so slowly his imagination had developed itself.  It was when assured of the secret of his strength that his confidence, his ambition, and his industry were excited.

Let the youth preserve his juvenile compositions, whatever these may be; they are the spontaneous growth, and like the plants of the Alps, not always found in other soils; they are his virgin fancies.  By contemplating them, he may detect some of his predominant habits, resume a former manner more happily, invent novelty from an old subject he had rudely designed, and often may steal from himself some inventive touches, which, thrown into his most finished compositions, may seem a happiness rather than an art.  It was in contemplating on some of their earliest and unfinished productions, that more than one artist discovered with WEST that “there were inventive touches of art in his first and juvenile essay, which, with all his subsequent knowledge and experience, he had not been able to surpass.”  A young writer, in the progress of his studies, should often recollect a fanciful simile of Dryden—­

  As those who unripe veins in mines explore
    On the rich bed again the warm turf lay,
  Till time digests the yet imperfect ore;
    And know it will be gold another day.