human strength, and exceeds perhaps the powers and contrivance of the wifeft man that ever exifted. These remarks may contribute to explain the cafe of genius breaking out at a late period in an unpromifing fubject. If genius be nothing more in the first inftance than a fpirit of prying obfervation and inceffant curiofity, there feems to be no impoffibility, though there may be a greatly increased difficulty, in generating it after the period above affigned.

There seems to be a cafe, more frequent than that of post-dated genius, though not fo much remarked; and not diffimilar to it in its circumftances. This is the cafe of genius, manifefting itself, and afterwards becoming extinct. There is one appearance of this kind that has not escaped notice; the degradation of powers of mind fometimes produced in a man for the remainder of his life, by fevere indifpofition.

But the cafe is probably an affair of very ufual occurrence. Examine the children of peasants. Nothing is more common than to find in them a promife of understanding, a quickness of ob servation, an ingenuoufness of character, and a delicacy of tact, at the age of feven years, the very traces of which are obliterated at the age of fourteen. The cares of the world fall upon them. They are enlifted at the crimping-house

of

of oppreffion. They are brutified by immoderate and unintermitted labour. Their hearts are hardened, and their fpirits broken, by all that they fee, all that they feel, and all that they look forward to. This is one of the moft interefting points of view in which we can confider the prefent order of fociety. It is the great flaughter-houfe of genius and of mind. It is the unrelenting murderer of hope and gaiety, of the love of reflection and the love of life.

Genius requires great care in the training, and the most favourable circumftances to bring it to perfection. Why should it not be supposed that, where circumfiances are eminently hoftile, it will languifh, ficken, and dic?

There is only one remark to be added here, to guard against mifapprehenfion. Genius, it feems to appear from the preceding fpeculations, is not born with us, but generated fubfequent to birth. It by no means follows from hence, that it is the produce of education, or ever was the work of the preceptor. Thousands of impreffions are made upon us, for one that is defignedly produced. The child receives twenty ideas per diem perhaps from the preceptor; it is not impoffible that he may have a million of perceptions in that period, with which the prcceptor has no concern. We learn, it may be, a

routine of barren leffons from our masters; a circumstance occurs perhaps, in the intercourfe of our companions, or in our commerce with nature, that makes its way directly to the heart, and becomes the fruitful parent of a thousand projects and contemplations.

ESSAY

1

ESSAY IV.

OF THE SOURCES OF GENIUS.

TRUE philofophy is probably the highest

improyement and moft defirable condition of human understanding.

But there is an infanity among philofophers, that has brought philofophy itself into difcredit. There is nothing in which this infanity more evidently displays itfelf, than in the rage of accounting for every thing.

Nature well known, no prodigies remain,
Comets are regular, and Wharton plain.

FOPE.

It may be granted that there is much of fyftem in the univerfe; or, in other words, it must be admitted that a careful obferver of nature will be enabled by his experience in many cafes, from an acquaintance with the antecedent, to foretel the confequent.

If one billiard-ball ftrike another in a particu lar manner, we have great reason to suppose that the refult will be fimilar to what we have already observed in like inftances. If fire be applied to gunpowder, we have great reason to expect an

explosion. If the gunpowder be compreffed in a tube, and a ball of lead be placed over it nearer the mouth of the tube, we have great reafon to suppose that the explofion will expel the ball, and cause it to move in the air in a certain curve. If the event does not follow in the manner we expected, we have great reafon to fuppofe that, upon further examination, we fhall find a difference in the antecedents correfpondent to the difference in the confequents.

This uniformity of events and power of prediction conftitute the entire bafis of human knowledge.

But there is a regularity and fyftem in the fpeculations of philofophers, exceeding any that is to be found in the operations of nature. We are too confident in our own skill, and imagine our science to be greater than it is.

We perceive the fucceffion of events, but we are never acquainted with any fecret virtue, by means of which two events are bound to each other.

If any man were to tell me that, if I pull the trigger of my gun, a fwift and beautiful horfe will immediately appear ftarting from the mouth of the tube; I can only answer that I do not expect it, and that it is contrary to the tenor of my former experience. But I can affign no reason, why this is an event intrinfically more

abfurd,