Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/170

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS invention, imagination, passion, has gone into its making? The method is nothing—nothing—compared with the quality of the practitioner. All methods, as time and fashion change, become the servants of genius: it does great things with all and in spite of any.

In these days of training and opportunity, moreover, there is a notion that most things can be effected by toil and culture; whereas, in all art, that which is significant is the result of a special gift—call it what you will. It comes with the uncommon touch, the sensitive ear and eye,—with that sixth sense, the vision which sees "what's under lock and key, man's soul." Mrs. Stoddard's novels appeal to us through a quality of their own. Written, I think, without much early practice, yet with experience of life, their strong original style—unmistakable as a human voice—is that of one with a gift, and the writer's instinct produces effects which a mere artist tries for in vain. Style, insight, originality, make books like Two Men and Temple House additions not merely to the bulk of reading, but to literature itself; as distinct in their kind as Wuthering Heights and Margaret, or even as Père Goriot or Richard Feverel. They express an individuality: many will like it, others may not, but it is here. The latter class must be blind, I think, to certain excellences. If we love nature, who sees its broad and minute features like this woman, or puts them in with more sure and brief touches,—rarely, and as a background to her groups and action, and through that innate knowledge of their subordinate use which belongs to the true dramatic faculty? [156]