Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/32

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS powers, and among them we always class Shakespeare—poet, manager, citizen—because his writings reflect mankind at large and we justly call him the myriad-minded. If our Franklin had possessed more ideality, he clearly, despite the counter-assumption of Mr. Howells, would rank with the second order of this class. The more limited kind of genius, and that most speedily and easily recognized by the world, is the specific. Its possessor is born with an irrepressible faculty for some distinctive labor, art, or science. It belongs to your poets, romancers, artists, inventors, etc.—Æschylus, Pheidias, Dante, Cervantes, Rabelais, Newton, Haller, Pitt, Hannibal, Nelson; to Keats and Burns and Byron, Thackeray and Dickens; to Kean, Rachel, Bernhardt; to the Ericssons and Edisons, even to the Zerah Colburns, Morphys, and other representatives of special and more or less abnormal powers. In one case a single point of light requires all the dynamic force of its displayer to sustain it; others reach a good average development in many ways. Again, the genius of each class has its subdivisions—this poet or painter is sublime—this other notable for beauty, or pathos, or delicacy. Thus the element of personality is to be considered; the product of special genius always having distinct and individual flavor. Nothing before or after exactly fills its place. De Quincey says, with regard to Milton, that "if the man had failed, the power would have failed. In that mode of power which he wielded, the function was exhausted in the man—species was identified with the individual—the poetry was incarnated in the poet." [18]