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 uncommon indeed. Those who attempt to be great in many professions or sciences, are not likely to excel in any: it is therefore best, especially for youth, to find out and pursue what nature points out, and then to bind the mind only to one or two objects; this will have the fairest prospect of success, for the rays must converge to a point in order to glow intensely.

3 Genius consists in an assemblage of imaginations, judgment, and taste, but chiefly in the imagination. As to original genius, it may be defined a native and radical power of discovering something new or uncommon on every subject on which it employs its faculties.—Most enlightened nations can boast of many authors of great abilities, and whose works have been very acceptable, but there are very few who have possessed original genius. Men of original genius are generally remarkable for some singularities and extremes; their excursions, like those of an eagle, are towering and devious, or as the course of a comet, blazing and irregular, and their errors, as well its their excellencies, are generally inimitable.

4. A great genius is rather an obstacle to fortune, because, wherever a man of real genius goes, he raises envy in some, and fear in others; envy in those who cannot attain to the like merit, and fear in such as are already established, who may he apprehensive that they shall be supplanted; if they should advance, or suffer to be advanced, a man of greater genius than themselves.