CHAPTER XXIII

THE METHOD OF GENIUS

OSALIND had been so absorbed in reading Mr. Lowell's essay on Gray that she had not noted the slow sinking of the fire; it was only when she had finished that noble piece of criticism and laid aside the volume that she became suddenly conscious of her lapse of duty, and began to make vigorous reparation for her oversight. For a moment the flame crept cautiously along the edges of the wood; and then, taking heart from glowing fellowship, suddenly burst into full blaze and answered the roaring wind without with its own note of defiance. I sat quietly behind my desk, enjoying the various charming pictures, framed in mingled light and shadow, which Rosalind's struggle with the fire seemed to

project into the room. I am sure that the charm is in her, and that the illusive play of imagination, the soft and wandering glow touching now a book and now a picture, the genial warmth which pervades the place, are really a subtle materialisation of her qualities. For me at least, the fire loses its gentle monotone of consolation when her face is not transfigured by it, and I enjoy it most when I feel most deeply that it is but a symbol of that which she has added to my life.

I was saying that Rosalind had been reading Mr. Lowell's essay on Gray. When she had stirred the smouldering flame into a blaze, she opened the book again and read aloud here and there a luminous criticism, or one of those perfect felicities of style which thrill one as with a sudden music. When she had finished she said, with a half-sigh: "I am sure there can be but one pleasure greater than the reading of such a piece of work, and that is the writing of it. Why does it kindle my imagination so powerfully? why does it make everything I have read lately seem thin and cold?”

There is a soft glow on her face as she asks this question, which I cannot help thinking is the most charming tribute ever paid even to Mr. Lowell, a writer fortunate beyond most men of genius in the recognition of his contemporaries. The question and the face tempt me away from desk and

my task, and invite me to the easy-chair from whence I have so often studied the vagaries of the restless fire. Rosalind's question goes to the very heart of the greatest of the arts, and has a personal interest because she takes as her text one of the best known and best loved of the friends whose silent speech make this room eloquent. The second series of " "Among My Books" lies on the desk at my hand, and as I open it at random the falls on eye these words from the essay on Dante: "The man behind the verse is far greater than the verse itself, and the impulse he gives to what is deepest and most sacred in us, though we cannot always explain it, is none the less real and lasting. Some men always seem to remain outside their work; others make their individuality felt in every part of it - their very life vibrates in every verse, and we do not wonder that it has made them lean for many years.' The virtue that has gone out of them abides in what they do. The book such a man makes is indeed, as Milton called it, 'the precious life-blood of a master spirit.' Theirs is a true immortality, for it is their

soul, and not their talent, that survives in their work."

"There," I said, "is the answer to your question from the only person who can speak with authority on that matter. -What you feel in that essay on Gray, and what I always feel in reading Lowell, is not the skill of a marvellously trained hand, but the movement of a large, rich nature to whom life speaks through the whole range of experience, and who has met that constant inflow of truth with a a quiet nobleness of mind and heart. Mr. Lowell seems to me pre-eminently the man of genius as distinguished from the man of talent; the man, that is, who holds heart and mind in close, unconscious fellowship with the whole movement of life, as opposed to the man who attempts to get at the heart of these things by intellectual dexterity. The great mass of writing is done by men of talent, and that is the reason why this account of Gray makes what you have been reading lately seem cold and thin. There is in this essay a vein of gold of which Mr. Lowell is perhaps unconscious; it is the presence of his own