adequate development--of genius. That is a spark of supernal
inspiration, lighting where it pleases, often conforming, and always
striving to conform, circumstances to itself, and sometimes even
strengthened and purified by the contradictions it meets in life. Nay,
genius has sprung up in stranger quarters than in butcher's shops or
tailor's attics--it has lived and nourished in the dens of robbers,
and in the gross and fetid atmosphere of taverns. There was an
Allen-a-Dale in Robin Hood's gang; it was in the Bell Inn, at
Gloucester, that George Whitefield, the most gifted of popular
orators, was reared; and Bunyan's Muse found him at the
disrespectable trade of a tinker, and amidst the clatter of pots,
and pans, and vulgar curses, made her whisper audible in his ear,
"Come up hither to the Mount of Vision--to the summit of Mount Clear!"

It is said that Akenside was ashamed of his origin--and if so, he
deserved the perpetual recollection of it, produced by a life-long
lameness, originating in a cut from his father's cleaver. It is
fitting that men, and especially great men, should suffer through
their smallnesses of character. The boy was first sent to the
Free School of Newcastle, and thence to a private academy kept by
Mr. Wilson, a Dissenting minister of the place. He began rather early
to display a taste for poetry and verse-writing; and, in April 1737,
we find in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ a set of stanzas, entitled,
"The Virtuoso, in imitation of Spenser's style and stanza," prefaced
by a letter signed Marcus, in which the author, while requesting the
insertion of his piece, pleads the apology of his extreme youth. One
may see something of the future political zeal of the man in the
boy's selection of one of the names of Brutus. The _Gentleman's
Magazine_ was then rising toward that character of a readable medley
and agreeable _olla podrida_, which it long bore, although its