WALPOLE, schoolfellows and rivals, were observed to prevail through their
after-life; the liveliness and brilliancy of Bolingbroke appeared in his
attacks on Walpole, whose solid and industrious qualities triumphed by
resistance. A parallel instance might be pointed out in two great
statesmen of our own days; in the wisdom of the one, and the wit of the
other--men whom nature made rivals, and time made friends or enemies, as
it happened. A curious observer, in looking over a collection of the
Cambridge poems, which were formerly composed by its students, has
remarked that "Cowley from the first was quaint, Milton sublime, and
Barrow copious." If then the characteristic disposition may reveal itself
thus early, it affords a principle which ought not to be neglected at this
obscure period of youth.

Is there then a period in youth which yields decisive marks of the
character of genius? The natures of men are as various as their fortunes.
Some, like diamonds, must wait to receive their splendour from the slow
touches of the polisher, while others, resembling pearls, appear at once
born with their beauteous lustre.

Among the inauspicious circumstances is the feebleness of the first
attempts; and we must not decide on the talents of a young man by his
first works. DRYDEN and SWIFT might have been deterred from authorship had
their earliest pieces decided their fate. SMOLLETT, before he knew which
way his genius would conduct him, had early conceived a high notion of his
talents for dramatic poetry: his tragedy of the _Regicide_ was refused by
Garrick, whom for a long time he could not forgive, but continued to abuse
our Roscius, through his works of genius, for having discountenanced his
first work, which had none. RACINE'S earliest composition, as we may judge
by some fragments his son has preserved, remarkably contrasts with his
writings; for these fragments abound with those points and conceits which