momentary inspiration: what could ever reconcile it to these but the
haughty and unquenchable consciousness of internal power; the hope
which has the fulness of certainty that in proportion to the toil is
the reward; the sanguine and impetuous anticipation of glory, which
bursts the boundaries of time and space, and ranges immortality with a
prophet's rapture? Rob Genius of its confidence, of its lofty self-
esteem, and you clip the wings of the eagle: you domesticate, it is
true, the wanderer you could not hitherto comprehend, in the narrow
bounds of your household affections; you abase and tame it more to the
level of your ordinary judgments, but you take from it the power to
soar; the hardihood which was content to brave the thundercloud and
build its eyrie on the rock, for the proud triumph of rising above its
kind, and contemplating with a nearer eye the majesty of heaven.

But if something of presumption is a part of the very essence of
genius, in Warner it was doubly natural, for he was still in the heat
and flush of a design, the defects of which he had not yet had the
leisure to examine; and his talents, self-taught and self-modelled,
had never received either the excitement of emulation or the chill of
discouragement from the study of the masterpieces of his art.

The painter had not been long alone in his concealment before he heard
steps; his heart beat violently, the door opened, and he saw, through
a small hole which he had purposely made in the curtain, a man with a
benevolent and prepossessing countenance, whom he instantly recognized
as Sir Joshua Reynolds, enter the room, accompanied by Talbot. They
walked up to the picture, the painter examined it closely, and in
perfect silence. "Silence," thought Warner, "is the best homage of
admiration;" but he trembled with impatience to hear the admiration
confirmed by words,--those words came too soon.