While at his grammar lessons, as it happened to Lucian, he was employing tedious hours in modelling in wax, groups of men, animals, and other figures, the rod of the pedagogue often interrupted the fingers of our infant moulder, who never ceased working to amuse his little sisters with his waxen creatures, which constituted all his happiness.

Those arts of imitation were already possessing the soul of the boy Gesner, to which afterwards it became so entirely devoted.
[Footnote A: This is a remarkable expression from Goldsmith: but it is much more so when we hear it from Lord Byron.

See a note in the following chapter, on "The First Studies," p.

56.] Thus it happens that in the first years of life the education of the youth may not be the education of his genius; he lives unknown to himself and others.

In all these cases nature had dropped the seeds in the soil: but even a happy disposition must be concealed amidst adverse circumstances: I repeat, that genius can only make that its own which is homogeneous with its nature.