ed 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 time that they are betraying their weakness, yet
are they still mighty in that enthusiasm which is only disciplined by its
own fierce habits. Never can the native faculty of genius with its
creative warmth be crushed out of the human soul; it will work itself out
beneath the encumbrance of the most uncultivated minds, even amidst the
deep perplexed feelings and the tumultuous thoughts of the most visionary
enthusiast, who is often only a man of genius misplaced.[A] We may find a
whole race of these self-taught among the unknown writers of the old
romances, and the ancient ballads of European nations; there sleep many a
Homer and Virgil--legitimate heirs of their genius, though possessors of
decayed estates. BUNYAN is the Spenser of the people. The fire burned
towards Heaven, although the altar was rude and rustic.

[Footnote A: "One assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my own
experience, that there exist folios on the human understanding and the
nature of man which would have a far juster claim to their high rank and
celebrity, if in the whole huge volume there could be found as much
fulness of heart and intellect as burst forth in many a simple page of
George Fox and Jacob Behmen."--_Mr. Coleridge's Biographia Litteraria_, i.
143.]

BARRY, the painter, has left behind him works not to be turned over by
the connoisseur by rote, nor the artist who dares not be just. That
enthusiast, with a temper of mind resembling Rousseau's, but with coarser
feelings, was the same creature of untamed imagination consumed by
the same passions, with the same fine intellect disordered, and the
same fortitude of soul; but he found his self-taught pen, like his
pencil, betray his genius.[B] A vehement enthusiasm breaks through his
ill-composed works, throwing the sparks of his bold conceptions into the
soul of the youth of genius. When, in his character of professor, he
deliv