give to crude and imperfect works, to third-rate and fourth-rate
works, a great advantage over the highest productions of genius.
It is impossible to account for the facts which I have laid
before you by attributing them to mere accident. Their number is
too great, their character too uniform. We must seek for some
other explanation; and we shall easily find one.

It is the law of our nature that the mind shall attain its full
power by slow degrees; and this is especially true of the most
vigorous minds. Young men, no doubt, have often produced works
of great merit; but it would be impossible to name any writer of
the first order whose juvenile performances were his best. That
all the most valuable books of history, of philology, of physical
and metaphysical science, of divinity, of political economy, have
been produced by men of mature years will hardly be disputed.
The case may not be quite so clear as respects works of the
imagination. And yet I know no work of the imagination of the
very highest class that was ever, in any age or country, produced
by a man under thirty-five. Whatever powers a youth may have
received from nature, it is impossible that his taste and
judgment can be ripe, that his mind can be richly stored with
images, that he can have observed the vicissitudes of life, that
he can have studied the nicer shades of character. How, as
Marmontel very sensibly said, is a person to paint portraits who
has never seen faces? On the whole, I believe that I may,
without fear of contradiction, affirm this, that of the good
books now extant in the world more than nineteen-twentieths were
published after the writers had attained the age of forty. If
this be so, it is evident that the plan of my noble friend is
framed on a vicious principle. For, while he gives to juvenile