Thefe inftances, to which a thousand others might be added, will be fuffici ent to convince us, that genius oftentimes discovers itself in fpight of all obstacles; especially that fpecies of it, which determines men to be painters or poets: but thofe talents which are neceffary to form a great general or statesman, have feldom the fame opportunities for exerting themselves. Every one's experience will tell how feldom parents encourage a military genius in their children, unless birth, or fome other cause, gives them an intereft to push a youth in the army. The most fatal cramp to genius, is, parents determining on profeffions for their children, without confulting their inclinations. If a man has a relation, who fills a place of confequence in the law or the church, or who carries on an extenfive trade in the pro profeffion of a merchant, his firft determination is to breed his fon to one of those profeffions; the natural genius of the youth is feldom or never confidered. If that leads him to poetry or painting, fuch a bias will break out in contempt of every fhackle; but if he is born with a genius which deftines him to fhine at the head of armies, 'tis almoft entirely in the power of a parent to prevent his being able to gratify his inclinations; at leaft till the precious time is gone, in which experience should cultivate the feeds of nature. Thus the profpect of a better intereft in a different profeffion, the prudent circumfpection of a father, or the unambitious fondness of a mother, fhall bury the fineft genius, by directing its occupation into an unnatural channel. It is generally the fate of men of great talents, to make a very flow progress in profeffions for which nature did not defign them. Formed to make a confpicuous figure in one particular art or science, they find nothing in any other that can engage their attention. Thus a genius which destined a man for a great mathematician, will never enable him to excel at the bar, or in the pulpit: nor will those talents which naturally adapt a man to the profeffion of the law, ever diftinguish him in the ftudy of the mathematics. Claude Lorrain, the celebrated landscape painter, proving extremely dull and heavy, was foon taken from school, and bound an apprentice to a pastrycook, with whom he ferved his time out; and the immortal Sir Ifaac Newton was refused his degree at the univerfity, as a heavy young man, totally de void of genius. Can we fuppofe that a man born with a genius to command armies, or govern an empire, can exert his abilities, when they are confined to the compass of a compting-house? Will he not rather despise all the grovelling dirty littleness of trade? and while all his competitors outftrip his progress, his imagination shall be on the wing, and foar into far other regions than those of commerce? Ut fæpe fumma ingenia in occulto latent! Genius does not fo much confist of an exemption from faults, as of the production of great and ftriking beauties †. *Plaut. Capt. act. 1. fcen. 2. +Si un ouvrage fans défaut etoit poffible, il ne le feroit qu'à un homme médiocre. Effais fur divers fujets de literature, &c. tome iii. p. 107. Shake Shakespear was a poet of a moft unbounded imagination, but the faults in his works are innumerable. There cannot be a more abfurd notion than to judge of a poet's genius by the number of his beauties, inftead of their value. I could produce many speeches in Shakespear, that evidently speak their author a great genius, when they do not contain above half a dozen lines; and yet one of these strokes fhall be preferable to a whole tragedy of this age, which abounds in the elegancies of ftile and harmony of verfification. I had rather have been author of the conversation between Macbeth and his wife, when he came from the murder, and which does not confift of twenty words, than of the whole tragedy of Jane Shore, which is the best Rowe wrote. I had rather have been author of the defcription of Hector parting from Andro |