Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/485

 "THE RING AND THE BOOK" 469 world most proper to develop it to the uttermost, and in four brief years it had grown prodigiously, into this vivified cathedral, this immense perennial forest, abounding and superabounding with innumer- ably manifold life. Pondering this, we can better appreciate one sentence I have quoted from Mr. Swinburne : " 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." And it should be noted that these analogies, like all that are genuine, imply more truths than the naked terms express; imply more than the mere statements of comparative rates of mental speed. In ordinary cases we are apt to judge, and judge correctly, that tongue or pen runs the more swiftly the less weight it carries; and our common phrases of "gift of the gab*' or "gabble," "itch of scribbling" or "scrawl- ing," mark our contempt for such worse than worth- less fluency. But there are supereminent commanding exceptions. 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 in- comparably more subtile and pregnant with intellect and emotion ; and thus it is with certain men of superlative genius in comparison, first, with us com- mon plodders ; and, secondly, with men of genius, lofty indeed, but not supreme. Their intellects are as the eyes of Friedrich pictured by Carlyle : " Such a pair of eyes as no man or lynx, or lion of that century bore elsewhere, according to all the testimony