342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mesoteric worshipers of the exalted Genius that their patron is 

 indeed a very jealous god ; that he bears, like the Turk, no rival 

 next his throne ; and that he harbors in his breast a special grudge 

 against that inferior and groveling, but somewhat similar, deity, 

 mere commonplace Talent. He is known to regard himself, with 

 Hebrew exclusiveness, as the original and only genuine divine 

 entity, all others being spurious imitations. 



Now, it is the misfortune of the world in this matter that the 

 lions have chiefly painted themselves ; and as the lion in the fable 

 justly anticipated, they have invariably represented themselves as 

 having very much the best of it. Genius, especially self-conscious 

 Genius, has brought copious ghee to its own image ; it has erected 

 an altar to itself, like the Divus Csesar, and has insisted strongly 

 upon the need for public recognition of its own glorious and 

 divine attributes. " Fall down and worship ! " says Genius, in the 

 imperative mood ; and forthwith a slavish world falls down and 

 worships. Byron, Victor Hugo, Lytton, Disraeli, have all told 

 us, with extreme frankness, what we ought to say and think about 

 them. We have been politely requested, in exquisite verse, to vex 

 not the poet's mind with our shallow wit, on the concise if not 

 very flattering ground that we can not fathom it. Genius, secure 

 of its own Olympic supremacy, has looked down from its airy 

 throne upon the blind and battling multitude below — meaning us, 

 of course, who are not geniuses — with a sardonic smile of mingled 

 contempt, beneficence, and pity. And the world, which is very 

 apt to accept men in the long run at their own valuation (so much 

 the worse for the modest), bows down in the end to self-assertive 

 Genius, and sees in its face all those splendid qualities which Gen- 

 ius itself bids it look and find there. For indeed the world is by 

 nature prone, after all, to the attitude of worship. It kneels read- 

 ily. Though it chooses the objects of its adoration in strange 

 places, yet it bends ^\:illing knees to the golden calf ; and to the 

 golden calf of success and public approbation none the less than 

 to those other assorted golden calves which we know as wealth, 

 rank, title, and position. It may cast mud at its deities when they 

 are young and unrecognized, to be sure — for who can see divinity 

 in a tweed suit ? — but as soon as the voice of the people, which is 

 the voice of God, has decreed them the laurel wreath of common 

 .praise and a guinea a line, it will immediately start a Browning 

 Society or a Shelley Society, or, for ought I know, a Ouida So- 

 ciety, too, to give the new cult its appropriate hierarchy. And, 

 above all, where the object of their worship is quite safely dead 

 and buried (for live gods at times inconveniently disclaim their 

 noisiest votaries), the admirers will swarm around with conta- 

 gious enthusiasm in their wrath against the prophets of all newer 

 cults, and cry aloud for the space of two hours together, " Great 



