His Life and Genius 145 



unlamed his gift to look through the show into the 

 very heart of things, to disregard the fetters of 

 conventional rules and unities, to grow in living 

 touch with Nature, to feel freshly, see directly 

 and utter sincerely that which he saw and 

 thought. 



Inevitably, therefore, was he somewhat out of 

 tune with conventional thought and art ; his pre- 

 eminence above his fellows not recognised by his 

 contemporaries, perceived perhaps by a few dis- 

 cerning persons only, not one of whom probably 

 ever dreamed that he was destined to be counted 

 through the ages as the foremost poet of all time. 

 Had there been in England such a self-recruiting 

 academy as the French Academy it is not in the 

 least likely that he would have been elected one 

 of the forty ; like Balzac, Diderot and some other 

 great French writers, he would too surely have 

 violated the susceptibilities of mediocrity by his 

 originality, offended its tender taste by his direct 

 sincerity, exasperated its vanity by his superiority. 



After all is said of his extraordinary genius, it 

 has taken the world two or three hundred years 

 to discover and appreciate it properly. Now, 

 too, the admiration has become such a caked and 

 sacred custom that there is often small intelli- 

 gence in it, loud-mouthed homage and tongue- 

 rooted adulation only. It is the old story : 

 admiration, adulation, adoration — in other words, 

 wonder, worship, prayer— such are the rising- 

 steps of man's retrospective man-worship in quest 

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