rs and I are at war, for here am I,
glibly talking of genius, without precisely knowing what it is, as one
may talk of art, or love, without being able to define those things; all
one can do is to point out genius when one sees it. Carlyle was much
laughed at for saying that genius was an infinite capacity for taking
pains. That does not sound like genius; one imagines genius as ravelling
its hair, whatever ravelling may be, and producing the immortal Word to
the accompaniment of epileptic fits; absinthe also goes with genius very
well. But in reality genius, I suspect, is a tamer affair, and arises
easily enough in men like Rembrandt, who painted pictures because he
liked doing it and because the sitters paid him for their portraits;
more satisfactorily to Carlyle it arises in men like Flaubert, who
revealed much of his attitude in one phrase of his correspondence:
'To-day I have worked sixteen hours and have at last finished my page.'
Therein lies the difference between Flaubert and de Maupassant; it may
be, too, that Boileau was right in advising the poet a hundred times to
replace his work upon the bench, endlessly polish it, and polish it
again, but many instances of almost spontaneous creation confront us; it
is enough to quote that in six years, between 1602 and 1608, Shakespeare
appears to have written eleven plays, among them _Julius Caesar_,
_Hamlet_, _Othello_, _Macbeth_, and _King Lear_. What shall we say then
of that vague thing, genius, which is to mankind what the thing some
call soul is to man? For my part, I believe it to be volcanic rather
than sedimentary. It is as if the spirit of the race had accumulated in
a creature, the spirit of life claiming to be born. Genius will out, but
it is most frequent in certain periods of human history, such as the
Elizabethan or Medician, in certain places, such as France, Italy, and
the Low Countries, under certain influences, such as oppression, war,
revolution, or social decay. That is an interesting catalogue, and if
history repeats itself, the future for genius, as evidenced particularly
in art, would be black, for there has been no period where comfort, ease
and security bred genius. It is as if the plant needed something to
push against. Every day life becomes more secure, justice more certain,
property more assured; humanity grows fat, and the grease of its comfort
collects round its heart. It is difficult to imagine genius flourishing
in a world perfectly admi