BUDAEUS declared that he was both "self-taught and late-taught." 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.