interview between Petrarch in his first studies, and his literary
adviser.--Exhortation.

The first studies form an epoch in the history of genius, and
unquestionably have sensibly influenced its productions. Often have the
first impressions stamped a character on the mind adapted to receive one,
as the first step into life has often determined its walk. But this, for
ourselves, is a far distant period in our existence, which is lost in the
horizon of our own recollections, and is usually unobserved by others.
Many of those peculiarities of men of genius which are not fortunate, and
some which have hardened the character in its mould, may, however, be
traced to this period. Physicians tell us that there is a certain point in
youth at which the constitution is formed, and on which the sanity of life
revolves; the character of genius experiences a similar dangerous period.
Early bad tastes, early peculiar habits, early defective instructions, all
the egotistical pride of an untamed intellect, are those evil spirits
which will dog genius to its grave. An early attachment to the works of
Sir Thomas Browne produced in JOHNSON an excessive admiration of that
Latinised English, which violated the native graces of the language; and
the peculiar style of Gibbon is traced by himself "to the constant habit
of speaking one language, and writing another." The first studies of
REMBRANDT affected his after-labours. The peculiarity of shadow which
marks all his pictures, originated in the circumstance of his father's
mill receiving light from an aperture at the top, which habituated the
artist afterwards to view all objects as if seen in that magical light.
The intellectual POUSSIN, as Nicholas has been called, could never, from
an early devotion to the fine statues of antiquity, extricate his genius
on the canvas from the hard forms of marble: he sculptured with his
pencil; and that cold austerity of tone, still more remarkable in his last
pictures, as it became mannered, chills the spectator on a first glance.
When POPE was a child, he found in his mother's closet a small library of
mystical devotion; but it was not suspected, till the fact was discovered,
that the effusions of love and religion poured forth in his "Eloisa" were
caught from the seraphic raptures of those erotic mystics, who to the last
retained a place in his library among the classical bards of antiquity.
The accidental perusal of Quintus Curtius first made BOYLE,