Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/33

GENIUS In high potencies of this specific genius, the function is as clearly differentiated as that which marks the greyhound for speed, the bloodhound for scent, the bull-dog for grip and combativeness.

Of course it is by an extreme instance that the existence of such a thing as innate and special genius can be most easily, yet no less fairly, illustrated. Take the case of that born musician—if there ever is one—of whom it has been said that "the whole of music created since Guido d'Arezzo, who invented the musical signs, up to the end of the last century, had only one aim—to create Mozart." From his letters, and from the collected anecdotes of his radiant career, a wealth of undisputable evidence is at hand, almost justifying this high-flown statement. It has a scientific countenance in certain facts—that his father was a musician; that Mozart was bred in the service of a cathedral choir; that he came just at the time when Gluck "had given impulse and reform to opera," and Handel and Bach had advanced music to the stage required for the fit exercise of his transcendent gift. But the gift itself! So transcendent, so inborn, that the child must have seemed a changeling, first cradled in the shell of Apollo's lyre. We are told that when Wolfgang was three years old he searched out thirds on the piano; when four, he began playing,—at five, composing,—at six, he was a celebrity. His Opus I., four sonatas for piano and violin, was produced when he was seven. A biographer, describing his fourth year, says that his faculty was intuitive, "for in learning to play he learned to compose at the same [19]