The young painters, to ridicule the persevering labours of DOMENICHINO, which were at first heavy and unpromising, called him "the great ox;" and Passeri, while he has happily expressed the still labours of his concealed genius, _sua taciturna lentezza_, his silent slowness, expresses his surprise at the accounts he received of the early life of this great artist.

"It is difficult to believe, what many assert, that, from the beginning, this great painter had a ruggedness about him which entirely incapacitated him from learning his profession; and they have heard from himself that he quite despaired of success.

Yet I cannot comprehend how such vivacious talents, with a mind so finely organised, and accompanied with such favourable dispositions for the art, would show such signs of utter incapacity; I rather think that it is a mistake in the proper knowledge of genius, which some imagine indicates itself most decisively by its sudden vehemence, showing itself like lightning, and like lightning passing away." A parallel case we find in GOLDSMITH, who passed through an unpromising youth; he declared that he was never attached to literature till he was thirty; that poetry had no peculiar charms for him till that age;[A] and, indeed, to his latest hour he was surprising his friends by productions which they had imagined he was incapable of composing.

HUME was considered, for his sobriety and assiduity, as competent to become a steady merchant; and it was said of BOILEAU that he had no great understanding, but would speak ill of no one.

This circumstance of the character in youth being entirely mistaken, or entirely opposite to the subsequent one of maturer life, has been noticed of many.