trate that from which we only wish to draw our
conclusion. Why does this remarkable similarity prevail through the
classes of genius? Because each, in their favourite production, is working
with the same appropriate organ. The poetical eye is early busied with
imagery; as early will the reveries of the poetical mind be busied with
the passions; as early will the painter's hand be copying forms and
colours; as early will the young musician's ear wander in the creation of
sounds, and the philosopher's head mature its meditations. It is then the
aptitude of the appropriate organ, however it varies in its character, in
which genius seems most concerned, and which is connatural and connate
with the individual, and, as it was expressed in old days, is _born_ with
him. There seems no other source of genius; for whenever this has been
refused by nature, as it is so often, no theory of genius, neither habit
nor education, have ever supplied its want. To discriminate between the
_habit_ and the _predisposition_ is quite impossible; because whenever
great genius discovers itself, as it can only do by continuity, it has
become a habit with the individual; it is the fatal notion of habit having
the power of generating genius, which has so long served to delude the
numerous votaries of mediocrity. Natural or native power is enlarged by
art; but the most perfect art has but narrow limits, deprived of natural
disposition.

A curious decision on this obscure subject may be drawn from an admirable
judge of the nature of genius. AKENSIDE, in that fine poem which forms its
history, tracing its source, sang,

From Heaven my strains begin, from Heaven descends
The flame of genius to _the human breast_.

But in the final revision of that poem, which he left many years after,
the bard has vindicated the solitary and independent origin of genius, by
the mysterious epithet,

THE CHOSEN BREAST.

The veteran poet was, perhaps, schooled by the vicissitudes of his own
poetical life, and those of some of his brothers.

Metaphors are but imperfect illustrations in metaphysical inquiries:
usually they include too little or take in too much. Yet fanciful
analogies are not willingly abandoned. The iconologists describe Genius as
a winged child with a flame above its head; the wings and the flame
express more than some metaphysical conclusions. Let me substitute
for "the white paper" of Locke, which served the philosopher i