Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/51

GENIUS It is just as unwise for an inventive author, even in a mood of self-analysis, to toy with a theoretical paradox, for literary methods grow by what they feed on. It is not for this, as I have said, that his admirers (and none more than the present writer) are grateful to him; it is for the pleasure derived from very original works, the product of something more creative than even his indomitable labor, and conscientious study of the novelist's craft and properties. One is apt to set too little value upon the gift which is his alone—the faculty that makes so light to him that portion of his work which his fellows cannot master by praying or fasting. He is just as prone, moreover, to regard that as most essential which is hardest for himself, yet necessary to the perfect work, thus setting the labor, wherewith he procures and mixes components, above the one drop of an elixir solely his own, that adds the transmuting spirit to their mass. Our deft student and painter of New England life still has his fairy spectacles—they are not lost, but on his own forehead. Finally, it is a trait of genius, in its method of expression, to discover and avail itself of the spirit of its time. My avowal that Mr. Howells had done this betrayed no savor of the charge of time-serving. It seemed to me, on the contrary, that consciously or unconsciously he had obeyed the ancient oracle, and that the admonition Follow thy Genius had left its impress upon his whole career. [37]