Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/462

446 4. Activity and Rapidity.—Let us now consider some of the dominant characteristics of this wonderful genius, as manifested in its slowly developed, long-enduring maturity.

First, one cannot help remarking the restless activity and almost unique rapidity of his intellect. Swift and keen as are his perceptions, his thoughts are swifter and keener yet. We ordinary readers are soon breathless in trying to keep up with them, and must be content to travel with relays, by easy stages, the journeys he makes at a single rush. As Mr. Swinburne excellently puts it, "He never thinks but at full speed; and the rate of his thought is to that of another man's as the speed of a railway to that of a waggon, or the speed of a telegraph to that of a railway." As I have had occasion to remark elsewhere, these analogies are peculiarly felicitous, inasmuch as the railway train not only runs ten times faster than the waggon, but also carries more than ten times the weight; the telegraph is not only incomparably swifter than the railway, but also incomparably more subtle and pregnant with intellect and emotion. The restless activity and rapidity and subtlety of intellect which confound the "general reader" (who has been termed the laziest and haziest of human animals), accustomed to the too-easy sauntering through popular novels and periodicals, are apt at first to perplex even the student, as perturbing the exquisite calm of the simply idyllic conceptions with which he has been familiarised by less intellectual poets. As our French neighbours say, "one must have the defect of one's qualities;" and in Browning these mental