VII 
BEFORE GENIUS 
F there did not something else go to the making 
of literature besides mere literary parts, even 
the best of them, how long ago the old bards and 
Biblical writers would have been superseded by the 
learned professors and gentlemanly versifiers of later 
times! Is there to-day a popular poet, using the 
English language, who does not, in technical acquire- 
ments and in the artificial adjuncts of poetry,— 
thyme, metre, melody, and especially sweet, dainty 
fancies, — surpass Europe’s and Asia’s loftiest and 
oldest? Indeed, so marked is the success of the 
latter-day poets in this respect, that any ordinary 
reader may well be puzzled, and ask, if the shaggy 
old antique masters are poets, what are the refined 
and euphonious producers of our own day ? 
If we were to inquire what this something else is 
which is prerequisite to any deep and lasting suc- 
cess in literature, we should undoubtedly find that 
it is the man behind the book. It is the fashion 
of the day to attribute all splendid results to genius 
and culture. But genius and culture are not enough. 
** All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not 
the science of honesty and goodness,” says Mons 
