any art or science." This is his dilution of, or proposed substitute for, the word he consigns to an Index Expurgatorius. The mooted difference between talent and genius should no longer distress "poor little authorlings." Genius is the Maelstrom of literary chartmongers. The Norwegian Maelstrom within the memory of middle-aged men "existed in the belief of the geographers, but we now get on perfectly well without it." With the timidity of an old graduate who tries to quote Horace before those trained in the latest Roman pronunciation, I confess myself not wholly free from the superstition: the scales have not quite dropped from my own eyes. I have a certain respect for inherited, confirmed proverbs, phrases, and terms; and it is hard to rid one's self of the feeling that there must be something in an idea, a judgment, accepted by the many and the few and from generation to generation, -there must be some mission for a word which, although it be "soiled with all ignoble use," I find taken into service, and in a sense differing from talent, or mastery, or aptitude, by every English writer from Dryden to Messrs. Gosse and Courthope. I plead guilty to the charge of having employed it more than once in consideration of Browning and Tennyson and Swinburne, of Poe and Emerson, of other exceptional singers in our time. Indeed, I do not see how we can get on without it until some apter term is proffered to embody what seems a distinct idea. Mr. Howells's paraphrase may serve for a definition, if you give it a superlative and intense force, a moral ictus a hundred times more impressive than that which it conveys to the unprepared reader. Natural aptitude, of a truth— but aptitude so unique, so compelling, as to have seemed supernatural to the ancients, preternatural to the common folk of all times, prenatal and culminative to the scientific observer of heredity, evolution, environment. Having progressed from the "wit" of our English forefathers to this expressive "genius," shall we go back to "natural aptitude" forsooth? If we must have a paraphrase, let us resort to the essential and basic salt rather than to a triturated and hyper-reduced solution. I would rather seek for it, at the other extreme, in some extravagant gloria of Carlyle's Past and Present: "Genius, Poet, do we know what these words mean? An inspired Soul once more vouchsafed to us, direct from Nature's own fire-heat, to see the Truth, and speak it and do it." "Genius is the 'inspired gift of God.' presence of God Most High in a man. It is the clearer So says in all men, in this man it has become actual. John Milton, who ought to be a judge; so answer him the Voices of all Ages and all Worlds."> I would not dispute about words, and am quite aware that Carlyle's other view may constitute a ground for appeal to Philip sober. And I am equally aware how far his "infinite capacity for taking trouble" has echoed and extended,-until it has become almost a cult with men less authoritative than its latest transmitter, and given what infinite comfort to steady plodders, men of system, industry, and-for once let us say-talent, to whom after all the world is diurnally indebted! Yet even the avowed promoters of this reform at times betray an unconscious or subjective distrust of it. I once heard a master of the art preservative of arts, as he scouted the popular notion of genius. With good mental and bodily powers, he said, it needs no special gift, nothing but industry and a fair chance, to put one at the head of any art or science-to produce the exact results which the lazy and credulous attribute to distinctive faculty. The company present questioned this, suggesting that the test be applied to specific cases. The painter, who in childhood drew with ease the likenesses of his playmates, and afterwards rose to greatness, had he not an innate gift that no industry and training could rival? The musician, seemingly born with musical ear and voice, or with instinctive mastery of instruments,-the inventor, the romancer, was there nothing unique and exceptional in their capabilities? No, our sturdy friend replied— he would not own that any man of general ability could not equally perfect his eye and hand, ear and voice, by thorough devotion and practice. To a man who so cheerfully disposed of these extreme illustrations there was really no reply. But within ten minutes, conversation having changed to the subject of typography and book-making, he gratified us with some account of his own experience while advancing an art in which he deservedly stands at the front. We expressed our admiration for his achievements, and for his natural taste; whereupon he modestly said that he believed he had a genius for printing, that he was born to be a printer,-not reflecting, until the phrases had slipped from him, that he inadvertently refuted his previous argument. We assured him that he was right—he had a genius for printing, and had not the art been in existence, his life would have been as imperfect as that of many a ne'er-do-well before the Civil War revealed that he was born to be a fighter and hero. Here we again reach the primal attribute of what the world, in its simplicity, denominates genius: it is inborn, not alone with respect to bodily dexterity and the fabric of the brain, but as appertaining to the power and bent of the soul itself. Channing went so far as to claim that Milton's command of harmony is not to be ascribed to his musical ear: "It belongs to the soul. It is a gift or exercise of genius, which has power to impress itself on whatever it touches, and finds or frames, in sounds, notions, and material forms, correspondences and harmonies with its own fervid thoughts and feelings." This does not conflict with a scientific diagnosis, as we shall presently see. Remove the investigation to the domain of psychology, and the law is still there; we declare to the most plain-spoken realist that there is nothing out of nature in it, although our psychology may as yet be too defective to formulate it. But as nothing can restrict the liberty of the soul, Channing recognized the freedom of genius to choose its own language and its own working-law. A debate once arose, in my hearing, upon the ques tion: Which of two virtuous men is the better, he whose virtue is ingrained and natural, or he who, born with evil traits, has educated and disciplined himself to virtue? A youth spoke up for the latter as having the higher order of goodness. But he was rebuked by an elderly man, who said that the latter in truth might be the more praiseworthy for self-control, but asked if it was to be supposed that man could excel the Creator in fashioning character? He added that a person made good at the outset by the Master Workman, and thus good by nature, is not liable to decline; that his goodness is a constant, selfdependent factor, while the goodness attained by effort is variable, and must be watched incessantly and maintained by fresh effort, and, as in the case of Doctor Dodd, whose over-acquisitiveness at last got the better of him, is liable to give way at any moment of relaxed vigilance. Thus it may be, I should think, that genius demands and gains an admiration not excited by mere aptness strengthened through "taking trouble” and 66 the hardest study." Like beauty, it is its own excuse for being. Its claim to special honor is all the more indisputable if Florus was sound in his maxim-Poeta nascitur, non fit. It would seem, furthermore, that there is genius, and genius. First, the puissant union of divers forces that has made rare "excepted souls" great in various directions, foremost and creative in every work to which they set themselves. Names of these, the world's few, are ever repeated-such as Cæsar, Peter the Great, Michael Angelo, Bacon, Goethe-men of com |