Norreys, however, was far too deep a reasoner to fall into the error of modern teachers, who suppose that education can dispense with labor. No mind becomes muscular without rude and early exercise. Labor should be strenuous, but in right directions. All that we can do for it is to save the waste of time in blundering into needless toils.
The master had thus first employed his neophyte in arranging and compiling materials for a great critical work in which Norreys himself was engaged. In this stage of scholastic preparation, Leonard was necessarily led to the acquisition of languages, for which he had great aptitude--the foundations of a large and comprehensive erudition were solidly constructed. He traced by the plowshare the walls of the destined city. Habits of accuracy and of generalization became formed insensibly; and that precious faculty which seizes, amidst accumulated materials, those that serve the object for which they are explored--(that faculty which quadruples all force, by concentrating it on one point)--once roused into action, gave purpose to every toil and quickness to each perception. But Norreys did not confine his pupil solely to the mute world of a library; he introduced him to some of the first minds in arts, science, and letters--and active life. "These," said he, "are the living ideas of the present, out of which books for the future will be written: study them; and here, as in the volumes of the past, diligently amass and deliberately compile."
By degrees Norreys led on that young ardent mind from the selection of ideas to their æsthetic analysis--from compilation to criticism; but criticism severe, close, and logical--a reason for each word of praise or of blame. Led in this stage of his career to examine into the laws of beauty, a new light broke upon his mind; from amidst the masses of marble he had piled around him, rose the vision of the statue.
And so, suddenly one day Norreys said to him, "I need a compiler no longer--maintain yourself by your own creations." And Leonard wrote, and a work flowered up from the seed deep buried, and the soil well cleared to the rays of the sun and the healthful influence of expanded air.
That first work did not penetrate to a very wide circle of readers, not from any perceptible fault of its own--there is luck in these things, the first anonymous work of an original genius is rarely at once eminently successful. But the more experienced recognized the promise of the book. Publishers, who have an instinct in the discovery of available talent, which often forestalls the appreciation of the public, volunteered liberal offers. "Be fully successful this time," said Norreys; "think not of models nor of style. Strike at once at the common human heart--throw away the corks--swim out boldly. One word more--never write a page till you have walked from your room to Temple Bar, and, mingling with men, and reading the human face, learn why great poets have mostly passed their lives in cities."