, the will! Since I have
been sitting here taking stock of my intellects, I have come to believe
that I have the material for a hundred masterpieces. But my hand is
paralysed now, and they will never be painted. I never began! I waited
and waited to be worthier to begin, and wasted my life in preparation.
While I fancied my creation was growing it was dying. I have taken it
all too hard! Michael Angelo didn't, when he went at the Lorenzo! He
did his best at a venture, and his venture is immortal. _That's_ mine!"
And he pointed with a gesture I shall never forget at the empty canvas.
"I suppose we are a genus by ourselves in the providential scheme--we
talents that can't act, that can't do nor dare! We take it out in talk,
in plans and promises, in study, in visions! But our visions, let me
tell you," he cried, with a toss of his head, "have a way of being
brilliant, and a man has not lived in vain who has seen the things I have
seen! Of course you will not believe in them when that bit of worm-eaten
cloth is all I have to show for them; but to convince you, to enchant and
astound the world, I need only the hand of Raphael. His brain I already
have. A pity, you will say, that I haven't his modesty! Ah, let me
boast and babble now; it's all I have left! I am the half of a genius!
Where in the wide world is my other half? Lodged perhaps in the vulgar
soul, the cunning, ready fingers of some dull copyist or some trivial
artisan, who turns out by the dozen his easy prodigies of touch! But
it's not for me to sneer at him; he at least does something. He's not a
dawdler! Well for me if I had been vulgar and clever and reckless, if I
could have shut my eyes and taken my leap."

What to say to the poor fellow, what to do for him, seemed hard to
determine; I chiefly felt that I must break the spell of his present
inaction, and remove him from the haunted atmosphere of the little room
it was such a cruel irony to call a studio. I cannot say I persuaded him
to come out with me; he simply suffered himself to be led, and when we
began to walk in the open air I was able to appreciate his pitifully
weakened condition. Nevertheless, he seemed in a certain way to revive,
and murmured at last that he should like to go to the Pitti Gallery. I
shall never forget our melancholy stroll through those gorgeous halls,
every picture on whose walls seemed, even to my own sympathetic vision,
to glow with a sort of insolent renew