Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/46

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS female, versifiers and prosers, whose genius is of that sort which Mr. Bronson Howard has defined as "Talent, in the first person singular," These are they who distress their cockney brother with pleas and commissions such as no proud, self-respecting striver ever yet stooped to make. They spare him not in his luck or disaster, health or sickness, leisure or overwork. Often the scant time which he hopes to devote to his own vintage is wasted, even if he does no more than to acknowledge their demands that he shall market, or at least sample, their too often insipid and watered grape-juice. Yet the world has always got on after this fashion. The laureate's reflection on nature, that of fifty seeds she often brings but one to bear, is an under-statement. She summons a thousand talesmen to get even a petty juror. Doubtless an artist, orator, novelist, or poet, with never so little of the sang asur, belongs to the blood—a trying and unconscionable poor relation, but still not a commoner—most likely not so good as a commoner, but let the underlings flout at him, not the knights and nobles. If such considerations weigh not with the justly prosperous master of an Editor's Study, he nevertheless will forbear, on second thought, to wish out of existence this breed of ready subjects for his merry humor. What adequate relief to toil, what break to official monotony, if one cannot occasionally lay down the sword of argument and lance of fellowship, and throw clubs at the stock butts of one's profession! So thought the great Dean, in his discourse to prove that "The abolishing of Christianity" might be attended with [32]