ode of warfare.
GUIBERT, in his great work, "Histoire de la Milice Francaise," or rather
the History of the Art of War, adopted Folard's system of charging by
columns, and breaking the centre of the enemy, which seems to be the
famous plan of our Rodney and Nelson in their maritime battles. But this
favourite plan became the ridicule of the military; and the boldness of
his pen, with the high confidence of the author, only excited adversaries
to mortify his pretensions, and to treat him as a dreamer. From this
perpetual opposition to his plans, and the neglect he incurred, GUIBEBT
died of "vexation of spirit;" and the last words on the death-bed of this
man of genius were, "One day they will know me!" FOLARD and GUIBERT
created a BUONAPARTE, who studied them on the field of battle; and he who
would trace the military genius who so long held in suspense the fate of
the world, may discover all that he performed in the neglected inventions
of preceding genius.

Hence also may we deduce the natural gradations of genius. Many men of
genius must arise before a particular man of genius can appear. Before
HOMER there were other epic poets; a catalogue of their names and their
works has come down to us. CORNEILLE could not have been the chief
dramatist of France had not the founders of the French drama preceded him,
and POPE could not have preceded DRYDEN. It was in the nature of things
that a GIOTTO and a CIMABUE should have preceded a RAPHAEL and a MICHAEL
ANGELO.

Even the writings of such extravagant geniuses as BRUNO and CAEDAN gave
indications of the progress of the human mind; and had RAMUS not shaken
the authority of the _Organon_ of Aristotle we might not have had the
_Novum Organon_ of BACON. Men slide into their degree in the scale of
genius often by the exercise of a single quality which their predecessors
did not possess, or by completing what at first was left imperfect. Truth
is a single point in knowledge, as beauty is in art: ages revolve till a
NEWTON and a LOCKE accomplish what an ARISTOTLE and a DESCARTES began. The
old theory of animal spirits, observes Professor Dugald Stewart, was
applied by DESCARTES to explain the mental phenomena which led NEWTON into
that train of thinking, which served as the groundwork of HARTLEY'S theory
of vibrations. The learning of one man makes others learned, and the
influence of genius is in nothing more remarkable than in its effects on
its brothers. SELDEN'S treatise on the