Of natural genius.--Minds constitutionally different cannot have an equal aptitude.--Genius not the result of habit and education.-- Originates in peculiar qualities of the mind.--The predisposition of genius.--A substitution for the white paper of Locke. 24 CHAPTER V. Youth of genius.--Its first impulses may be illustrated by its subsequent actions.--Parents have another association of the man of genius than we.--Of genius, its first habits.--Its melancholy. --Its reveries.--Its love of solitude.--Its disposition to repose. --Of a youth distinguished by his equals.--Feebleness of its first attempts.--Of genius not discoverable even in manhood.--The education of the youth may not be that of his genius.--An unsettled impulse, querulous till it finds its true occupation.--With some, curiosity as intense a faculty as invention.--What the youth first applies to is commonly his delight afterwards.--Facts of the decisive character of genius. 31 CHAPTER VI. The first studies.--The self-educated are marked by stubborn peculiarities.--Their errors.--Their improvement from the neglect or contempt they incur.--The history of self-education in Moses Mendelssohn.--Friends usually prejudicial in the youth of genius. --A remarkable interview between Petrarch in his first studies, and his literary adviser.--Exhortation. 55 CHAPTER VII. Of the irritability of genius.--Genius in society often in a state of suffering.--Equality of temper more prevalent among men of letters.--Of the occupation of making a great name.--Anxieties of the most successful.--Of the inventors.--Writers of learning.-- Writers of taste. --Artists. 69 CHAPTER VIII. The spirit of literature and the spirit of society.--The inventors. --Society offers seduction and not reward to men of genius.--The notions of persons of fashion of men of genius.--The habitudes of the man of genius distinct from those of the man of society.-- Study, meditation, and enthusiasm, the progress of genius.--The disagreement between the men of the world and the literary character. 89 CHAPTER IX. Conversations of men of genius.--Their deficient agreeableness may result from qualities which conduce to their greatness.--Slow-minded men not the dullest.--The conversationists not the ablest writers. --Their true excellence in conversation consists of associations with their pursuits. 99 CHAPTER X. Literary solitude.--Its necessity.--Its pleasures.--Of visitors by profession.--Its inconveniences. 109 CHAPTER XI.