Education necessary to give Genius its full power and usefulness. Beattie's Edwin described.. Milton. Johnson. Sir William Tones. Subject of Genius. Satire. Genius, though daring, excels also in subjects of the most soft and pleasing hind. Virgil's Eclogues. Petrarch. Gray Cowper. The force of Fiction. Housseau. Richardson Fielding. Gentis. Pourney. Radcliffe. Female Genius. The varied direction of Genius.
Pub. June west, by T.Hurst, Paternoster Row.
Genius, a natural Impulse.
THO' in the dreary depths of Gothic gloom,
Genius will burst the fetters of her tomb;
Yet Education should direct her way,
And nerve, with firmer grasp, her powerful sway.
To shun instruction from the ancient page,
Despise the records of the classic age,
Would be the folly of a truant-mind
To counsel deaf, to its true interest blind.
He that neglects the culture of the soil
Whose richness would reward his utmost toil, 10
Deserves more censure than the rugged swain
Who wastes no labour on the barren plain.
---The mind on knowledge and on science bent,
Would sooner learn from others, than invent.
But few can hope unaided to explore
Where human footstep never was before.
Science still wears the blooming face of youth,
And darkness yet conceals some useful truth:
We should not spurn our Father's toil and aid
But build where sages their foundation laid.
Round the old oak the springing ivy twines,
Nor shuns support the wild luxuriant vines.
Wisdom a venerable form appears
Moving along beneath a load of years.
The comet's glare enlightens not the world,
Which flies thro' Heaven, in wild confusion hurl'd:
But 'tis the Sun that holds his stedfast sphere,
And crowns the seasons of the rolling year.
The marble buried, in its native mines,
Conceals the beauty of its clouds and lines;
The sculptor's polish can each feature give,
And even make the rugged marble live!
Thus Genius, in the night of darkness born,
May wind, unnotic'd, her resounding horn,
Unless fair Science to her wondering soul,
The page of Knowledge and of Art unroll.
Like the stout traveller straying from his course,
She errs the more from her exhaustless force.
Young Edwin * wandered in his native dell,
And woke the music of his simple shell;
* See Beattie's Minstrel---a work of the justest sentiment, of the finest painting, and which gives to the world
With pondering awe, he from the giddy steep,
"Like ship-wreck'd mariner," o'erhung the deep,
And listen'd to the billow's solemn roar,
Which rolling fell upon the winding shore.
With morning dawn, he left his lowly shed,
And, led in wonder, sought the mountain head,
Where, hid in trees, and seated on the ground,
He listen'd to the bell's far-distant sound.
His thoughtful mind unlettered, would explore
And muse in sadness that he knew no more;
At length an hermit, to his longing eyes,
Bad the sad visions of the world arise;
To his attention all his lore express'd,
And rous'd the Genius kindled in his breast.
The Muse of Milton * in his infant days
Lisp'd in sweet numbers pour'd prolific lays,
a picture in Edwin that can never be too much admired.
* I have thought no writer could answer better to confirm the doctrine which has been advanced than Milton.--The voice of criticism has pronounced him the most learned among the poets.--- His vast information, while it did not restrain, regulated his flight. Such was his ambition to excel, such was his love of learning, that from his twelfth year he commonly continued his studies until midnight. When he arrived at his seventeenth year he was a good classical scholar, was master of several languages, and had produced
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