nerally
adopted. We agree with him that, 'in moral impression they are
powerless;' yet we are bound to bear in mind that their _aim_ is not a
moral one; and we, furthermore, believe that, within their own scope
and province, they _may_ at least be serviceable in training and
developing the understanding. Not to dwell longer on this little
eccentricity of opinion, which is simply one of idiosyncrasy, let us
follow the author into some of the more congenial sections of his
dissertation. The following passage, on 'The three essential qualities
of an author,' seems not unsuitable for quotation:--

'Sir Philip Sidney said, that the most flying wits must have three
wings--art, meditation, exercise. Genius is in the instinct of flight.
A boy came to Mozart, wishing to compose something, and inquiring the
way to begin. Mozart told him to wait. "You composed much earlier?"
"But asked nothing about it," replied the musician. Cowper expressed
the same sentiment to a friend: "Nature gives men a bias to their
respective pursuits, and that strong propensity, I suppose, is what we
mean by genius." M. Angelo is hindered in his childish studies of art;
Raffaelle grows up with pencil and colours for playthings: one
neglects school to copy drawings, which he dared not bring home; the
father of the other takes a journey to find his son a worthier
teacher. M. Angelo forces his way; Raffaelle is guided into it. But
each looks for it with longing eyes. In some way or other, the man is
tracked in the little footsteps of the child. Dryden marks the three
steps of progress:--

"What the child admired,
The youth _endeavoured_, and the man ACQUIRED."

'Dryden was an example of his own theory. He read Polybius, with a
notion of his historic exactness, before he was ten years old.
Witnesses rise over the whole field of learning. Pope, at twelve,
feasted his eyes in the picture-galleries of Spenser. Murillo filled
the margin of his school-books with drawings. Le Brun, in the
beginning of childhood, drew with a piece of charcoal on the walls of
the house. The young Ariosto quietly watched the fierce gestures of
his father, forgetting his displeasure in the joy of copying from
life, into a comedy he was writing, the manner and speech of an old
man enraged with his son.

'Cowley, in the history of his own mind, shews the influence of boyish
fancies upon later life. He compares them to letters cut in the bark
of a young t