fittest. Alas! that the wheat and tares must grow together till
the harvest. It is the syrup of phosphorus by which weakly mediocrity
develops into sturdiness, a sturdy coarseness that else might have died
down and been spared us. But, thanks to that or some other artificial
fertiliser, it grows up with the idea that the duty which lies nearest to
it is to write weary books, paint monotonous pictures, persevere in
'd----d bad acting'; and it fulfils that duty with an energy known only to
mediocrity. The literary variety, probably, has the characteristics of the
type most fully developed. No one takes himself with more touching
seriousness. Day by day he grows in conceit, neglects his temper,
especially at home, with a wife who is worth ten of him and all his
'works,' and generally behaves, as the phrase goes, 'as if anything
becomes him.' If you visit him _en famille_, you will find him especially
characteristic at meals, during which he is wont to sit absorbed, with an
air of 'I cannot shake off the god'; and when they are over he goes off,
moodily chewing a toothpick, to his den, where, maybe, the genius finds
vent in a dissertation on 'Peg-Tops,' for _The Boy's Own_, or 'The Noses
of Great Men,' for _Chambers' Journal_.

But if such genius as this be chiefly comic, its work cannot but awaken in
one a deep sense of the pathetic. To stand before the poor little picture
that has been so much to its painter, and yet holds no spark of vitality
or touch of distinction; to take up the poor little book into which all
the toil of so many wasted days could breathe no breath of life, formless,
uninspired, unnecessary. Think of the pathos of the illusion that has
waved 'its purple wings' around these lifeless products, endowing with
sensitive expression the wooden lineaments that have really been dead and
unexpressive all the time, never glowed at all save to the wistful
yearning eye of their befooled creator. Yet if nature be thus cruel to
afflict, she is no less kind to console: for the victim of this species of
hallucination seldom wakens from the dream. That essay on Self-Reliance is
with him to the end.

Yet no less pathetic is it to reflect how his whole development has
suffered for this mistake, all his life-blood gone to feed this abortive
thing. The gentler charities of life have been neglected, fine qualities
atrophied, the man has grown narrow and selfish, all the real things have
been lost for this shadow: that he mi