The youth of genius is that “age of admiration” as sings the poet of “Human Life,” when the spell breathed into our ear by our genius, fortunate or unfortunate, is—­“Aspire!” Then we adore art and the artists.  It was RICHARDSON’S enthusiasm which gave REYNOLDS the raptures he caught in meditating on the description of a great painter; and REYNOLDS thought RAPHAEL the most extraordinary man the world had ever produced.  WEST, when a youth, exclaimed that “A painter is a companion for kings and emperors!” This was the feeling which rendered the thoughts of obscurity painful and insupportable to their young minds.

But this sunshine of rapture is not always spread over the spring of the youthful year.  There is a season of self-contest, a period of tremors, and doubts, and darkness.  These frequent returns of melancholy, sometimes of despondence, which is the lot of inexperienced genius, is a secret history of the heart, which has been finely conveyed to us by Petrarch, in a conversation with John of Florence, to whom the young poet often resorted when dejected, to reanimate his failing powers, to confess his faults, and to confide to him his dark and wavering resolves.  It was a question with Petrarch, whether he should not turn away from the pursuit of literary fame, by giving another direction to his life.

“I went one day to John of Florence in one of those ague-fits of faint-heartedness which often happened to me; he received me with his accustomed kindness.  ‘What ails you?’ said he, ’you seem oppressed with thought:  if I am not deceived, something has happened to you.’  ’You do not deceive yourself, my father (for thus I used to call him), and yet nothing newly has happened to me; but I come to confide to you that my old melancholy torments me more than usual.  You know its nature, for my heart has always been opened to you; you know all which I have done to draw myself out of the crowd, and to acquire a name; and surely not without some success, since I have your testimony in my favour.  Are you not the truest man, and the best of critics, who have never ceased to bestow on me your praise—­and what need I more?  Have you not often told me that I am answerable to God for the talents he has endowed me with, if I neglected to cultivate them?  Your praises were to me as a sharp spur:  I applied myself to study with more ardour, insatiable even of my moments.  Disdaining the beaten paths, I opened a new road; and I flattered myself that assiduous labour would lead to something great; but I know not how, when I thought myself highest, I feel myself fallen; the spring of my mind has dried up; what seemed easy once, now appears to me above my strength; I stumble at every step, and am ready to sink for ever into despair.  I return to you to teach me, or at least advise me.  Shall I for ever quit my studies?  Shall I strike into some new course of life?  My father, have pity on me! draw me out of the frightful state in which I am lost.’