and propensity for some certain science or employment, which is
commonly called Genius. The true Genius is a mind of large general
powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction. Sir
Joshua Reynolds, the great painter of the present age, had the first
fondness for his art excited by the perusal of Richardson's
treatise.

By his mother's solicitation he was admitted into Westminster
school, where he was soon distinguished. He was wont, says Sprat,
to relate, "that he had this defect in his memory at that time, that
his teachers never could bring it to retain the ordinary rules of
grammar."

This is an instance of the natural desire of man to propagate a
wonder. It is surely very difficult to tell anything as it was
heard, when Sprat could not refrain from amplifying a commodious
incident, though the book to which he prefixed his narrative
contained its confutation. A memory admitting some things, and
rejecting others, an intellectual digestion that concocted the pulp
of learning, but refused the husks, had the appearance of an
instinctive elegance, of a particular provision made by nature for
literary politeness. But in the author's own honest relation, the
marvel vanishes: he was, he says, such "an enemy to all constraint,
that his master never could prevail on him to learn the rules
without book." He does not tell that he could not learn the rules;
but that, being able to perform his exercises without them, and
being an "enemy to constraint," he spared himself the labour.

Among the English poets, Cowley, Milton, and Pope might be said "to
lisp in numbers;" and have given such early proofs, not only of