l sublime
Has felt the influence of malignant star.

An unfavourable position in society is a usual obstruction in the
course of this self-education; and a man of genius, through half his
life, has held a contest with a bad, or with no education. There is a race
of the late-taught, who, with a capacity of leading in the first
rank, are mortified to discover themselves only on a level with their
contemporaries. WINCKELMANN, who passed his youth in obscure misery as a
village schoolmaster, paints feelings which strikingly contrast with his
avocations. "I formerly filled the office of a schoolmaster with the
greatest punctuality; and I taught the A, B, C, to children with filthy
heads, at the moment I was aspiring after the knowledge of the beautiful,
and meditating, low to myself, on the similes of Homer; then I said to
myself, as I still say, 'Peace, my soul, thy strength shall surmount thy
cares.'" The obstructions of so unhappy a self-education essentially
injured his ardent genius, and long he secretly sorrowed at this want of
early patronage, and these habits of life so discordant with the habits of
his mind. "I am unfortunately one of those whom the Greeks named [Greek:
opsimatheis], _sero sapientes_, the late-learned, for I have appeared too
late in the world and in Italy. To have done something, it was necessary
that I should have had an education analogous to my pursuits, and at your
age." This class of the _late-learned_ is a useful distinction. It is so
with a sister-art; one of the greatest musicians of our country assures
me that the ear is as latent with many; there are the late-learned even
in the musical world. BUDAEUS declared that he was both "self-taught and
late-taught."

The SELF-EDUCATED are marked by stubborn peculiarities. Often abounding
with talent, but rarely with talent in its place, their native prodigality
has to dread a plethora of genius and a delirium of wit: or else, hard but
irregular students rich in acquisition, they find how their huddled
knowledge, like corn heaped in a granary, for want of ventilation and
stirring, perishes in its own masses. Not having attended to the process
of their own minds, and little acquainted with that of other men, they
cannot throw out their intractable knowledge, nor with sympathy awaken by
its softening touches the thoughts of others. To conduct their native
impulse, which had all along driven them, is a secret not always
discovered, or else discover