Cast the bantling on the rocks,
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat;
Wintered with the hawk and fox,
Power and speed be hands and feet.[147]

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which
were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an
admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The
sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may
contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for
you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius.[148]
Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal
sense;[149] for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,--and our
first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last
Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest
merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato,[150] and Milton[151] is, that they
set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what
they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of
light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster
of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice
his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize
our own rejected thoughts:[152] they come back to us with a certain
alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson
for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression
with good-humored inflexibility then most when[153] the whole cry of
voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with
masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the
time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from
another.