for metaphysics and languages was forming itself alone,
without aid.

It is curious to detect, in the character of genius, the effects of local
and moral influences. There resulted from Mendelssohn's early situation
certain defects in his Jewish education, and numerous impediments in his
studies. Inheriting but one language, too obsolete and naked to serve the
purposes of modern philosophy, he perhaps overvalued his new acquisitions,
and in his delight of knowing many languages, he with difficulty escaped
from remaining a mere philologist; while in his philosophy, having adopted
the prevailing principles of Wolf and Baumgarten, his genius was long
without the courage or the skill to emancipate itself from their rusty
chains. It was more than a step which had brought him into their circle,
but a step was yet wanting to escape from it.

At length the mind of Mendelssohn enlarged in literary intercourse: he
became a great and original thinker in many beautiful speculations in
moral and critical philosophy; while he had gradually been creating a
style which the critics of Germany have declared to be their first
luminous model of precision and elegance. Thus a Hebrew vagrant, first
perplexed in the voluminous labyrinth of Judaical learning, in his middle
age oppressed by indigence and malady, and in his mature life wrestling
with that commercial station whence he derived his humble independence,
became one of the master-writers in the literature of his country. The
history of the mind of Mendelssohn is one of the noblest pictures of the
self-education of genius.

Friends, whose prudential counsels in the business of life are valuable in
our youth, are usually prejudicial in the youth of genius. The multitude
of authors and artists originates in the ignorant admiration of their
early friends; while the real genius has often been disconcerted and
thrown into despair by the false judgments of his domestic circle. The
productions of taste are more unfortunate than those which depend on a
chain of reasoning, or the detail of facts; these are more palpable to the
common judgments of men; but taste is of such rarity, that a long life may
be passed by some without once obtaining a familiar acquaintance with a
mind so cultivated by knowledge, so tried by experience, and so practised
by converse with the literary world, that its prophetic feeling can
anticipate the public opinion. When a young writer's first essay is shown,
some, t