One very ugly superstition, nevertheless, we must mention, of which
these two men have been, in England at least, the great hierophants;
namely, the right of "genius" to be "eccentric." Doubtless there are
excuses for such a notion; but it is one against which every wise man
must set his face like a flint; and at the risk of being called a
"Philister" and a "flunky," take part boldly with respectability and
this wicked world, and declare them to be for once utterly in the
right. Still there are excuses for it. A poet, especially one who
wishes to be not merely a describer of pretty things, but a "Vates"
and seer of new truth, must often say things which other people do
not like to say, and do things which others do not like to do. And,
moreover, he will be generally gifted, for the very purpose of
enabling him to say and do these strange things, with a sensibility
more delicate than common, often painful enough to himself. How easy
for such a man to think that he has a right not to be as other men
are; to despise little conventionalities, courtesies, even decencies;
to offend boldly and carelessly, conscious that he has something
right and valuable within himself which not only atones for such
defects, but allows him to indulge in them, as badges of his own
superiority! This has been the notion of artistic genius which has
spread among us of late years, just in proportion as the real amount
of artistic genius has diminished; till we see men, on the mere
ground of being literary men, too refined to keep accounts, or pay
their butchers' bills; affecting the pettiest absurdities in dress,
in manner, in food; giving themselves credit for being unable to bear
a noise, keep their temper, educate their own children, associate
with their fellow-men; and a thousand other paltry weaknesses,
morosenesses, self-indulgences, fastidiousnesses, vulgarities--for
all this is essentially vulgar, and demands, not honour and sympathy,
but a chapter in Mr. Thackeray's "Book of Snobs." Non sic itur ad
astra. Self-indulgence and exclusiveness can only be a proof of
weakness. It may accompany talent, but it proves that talent to be
partial and defective. The brain may be large, but the manhood, the
"virtus," is small, where such things are allowed, much more where
they are gloried in. A poet such a man may be, but a world poet
never. He is sectarian, a poetical Quaker, a Puritan, who,
forgetting that the truth which he possesses is