The SELF-EDUCATED are marked by stubborn peculiarities. Often abounding with talent, but rarely with talent in its place, their native prodigality has to dread a plethora of genius and a delirium of wit: or else, hard but irregular students rich in acquisition, they find how their huddled knowledge, like corn heaped in a granary, for want of ventilation and stirring, perishes in its own masses. Not having attended to the process of their own minds, and little acquainted with that of other men, they cannot throw out their intractable knowledge, nor with sympathy awaken by its softening touches the thoughts of others. To conduct their native impulse, which had all along driven them, is a secret not always discovered, or else discovered late in life. Hence it has happened with some of this race, that their first work has not announced genius, and their last is stamped with it. Some are often judged by their first work, and when they have surpassed themselves, it is long ere it is acknowledged. They have improved themselves by the very neglect or even contempt which their unfortunate efforts were doomed to meet; and when once they have learned what is beautiful, they discover a living but unsuspected source in their own wild but unregarded originality. Glorying in their strength at the time that they are betraying their weakness, yet are they still mighty in that enthusiasm which is only disciplined by its own fierce habits. Never can the native faculty of genius with its creative warmth be crushed out of the human soul; it will work itself out beneath the encumbrance of the most uncultivated minds, even amidst the deep perplexed feelings and the tumultuous thoughts of the most visionary enthusiast, who is often only a man of genius misplaced.[A] We may find a whole race of these self-taught among the unknown writers of the old romances, and the ancient ballads of European nations; there sleep many a Homer and Virgil--legitimate heirs of their genius, though possessors of decayed estates. BUNYAN is the Spenser of the people. The fire burned towards Heaven, although the altar was rude and rustic. [Footnote A: "One assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my own experience, that there exist folios on the human understanding and the nature of man which would have a far juster claim to their high rank and celebrity, if in the whole huge volume there could be found as much fulness of heart and intellect as burst forth in many a simple page of George Fox and Jacob Behmen."--_Mr. Coleridge's Biographia Litteraria_, i. 143.]