312 GENIUS AND TALENT. 



great result except by taking commensurate 

 trouble. 



But is it so in art and in literature ? Surely 

 there, at least, the genius is born with all his gifts 

 already instinctively bound up in him, and he 

 brings them forth in due time, without even an 

 effort, before the eyes of an admiring world ! Not 

 a bit of it. The greatest painters have toiled late 

 and early over the profound mysteries of perspec- 

 tive and light and shade and local color and 

 anatomy and the chemistry of pigments; they 

 have studied ceaselessly from models and drapery, 

 they have striven to perfect themselves in all the 

 technique of a peculiarly difficult and complicated 

 art. Michael Angelo and Leonardo and the other 

 giants of the Italian Renaissance thought no 

 detail of anatomy or of physics beneath their 

 notice ; they studied the human frame as if they 

 were going to be doctors, the laws of matter as if 

 they were going to be mechanical engineers, and 

 the principles of optics as if they were going to be 

 manufacturers of telescopes and magnifying- 

 glasses. Literature bears on its face to a less 

 degree the marks of study ; but even here every 

 great poet is known to have spent hours and 

 hours in polishing and repolishing his every line, 

 while a single essay of Macaulay's or a single 

 chapter of John Stuart Mill's often bears on each 

 page the stamp of days or weeks of reading. 



