Genius claims kindred with the very workings of Nature herself, so
that a sunset shall seem like a quotation from Dante or Milton, and if
Shakespeare be read in the very presence of the sea itself, his verses
shall but seem nobler for the sublime criticism of ocean. Talent may
make friends for itself, but only genius can give to its creations the
divine power of winning love and veneration. Enthusiasm cannot cling to
what itself is unenthusiastic, nor will he ever have disciples who has
not himself impulsive zeal enough to be a disciple. Great wits are
allied to madness only inasmuch as they are possessed and carried away
by their demon, while talent keeps him, as Paracelsus did, securely
prisoned in the pommel of its sword. To the eye of genius, the veil of
the spiritual world is ever rent asunder, that it may perceive the
ministers of good and evil who throng continually around it. No man of
mere talent ever flung his inkstand at the devil.
When we say that Mr. Poe had genius, we do not mean to say that he has
produced evidence of the highest. But to say that he possesses it at all
is to say that he needs only zeal, industry, and a reverence for the
trust reposed in him, to achieve the proudest triumphs and the greenest
laurels. If we may believe the Longinuses and Aristotles of our
newspapers, we have quite too many geniuses of the loftiest order to
render a place among them at all desirable, whether for its hardness of
attainment or its seclusion.
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