nd adds by his own observation what
the industry of his predecessors may have yet left wanting to perfection.
Having well established his judgment, and stored his memory, he may now
without fear try the power of his imagination. The mind that has been
thus disciplined may be indulged in the warmest enthusiasm, and venture
to play on the borders of the wildest extravagance. The habitual
dignity, which long converse with the greatest minds has imparted to him,
will display itself in all his attempts, and he will stand among his
instructors, not as an imitator, but a rival.

These are the different stages of the art. But as I now address myself
particularly to those students who have been this day rewarded for their
happy passage through the first period, I can with no propriety suppose
they want any help in the initiatory studies. My present design is to
direct your view to distant excellence, and to show you the readiest path
that leads to it. Of this I shall speak with such latitude as may leave
the province of the professor uninvaded, and shall not anticipate those
precepts which it is his business to give and your duty to understand.

It is indisputably evident that a great part of every man's life must be
employed in collecting materials for the exercise of genius. Invention,
strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images
which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory. Nothing
can come of nothing. He who has laid up no materials can produce no
combinations.

A student unacquainted with the attempts of former adventurers is always
apt to overrate his own abilities, to mistake the most trifling
excursions for discoveries of moment, and every coast new to him for a
new-found country. If by chance he passes beyond his usual limits, he
congratulates his own arrival at those regions which they who have
steered a better course have long left behind them.

The productions of such minds are seldom distinguished by an air of
originality: they are anticipated in their happiest efforts; and if they
are found to differ in anything from their predecessors, it is only in
irregular sallies and trifling conceits. The more extensive therefore
your acquaintance is with the works of those who have excelled the more
extensive will be your powers of invention; and what may appear still
more like a paradox, the more original will be your conceptions. But the
difficulty on this occasi