184 LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PERCIVAL. 



its own divine society, — the same wilted sentiment, tho 

 same feeling about for topics of verse in which he may 

 possibly find that inspiration from without which the 

 true poet cannot flee from in himself. These tedious 

 wailings about heavenly powers suffocating in the heavy 

 atmosphere of an uncongenial, unrecognizing world, and 

 Percival is profuse of them, are simply an advertisement 

 to whoever has ears of some innate disability in the man 

 who utters them. Heavenly powers know very well how 

 to take care of themselves. The poor " World," meaning 

 thereby that small fraction of society which has any 

 personal knowledge of an author or his affairs, has had 

 great wrong done it in such matters. It is not, and 

 never was, the powers of a man that it neglects, — it 

 could not if it would, — but his weaknesses, and espe- 

 cially the publication of them, of which it grows weary. 

 It can never supply any man with what is wanting 

 in himself, and the attempt to do it only makes bad 

 worse. If a man can find the proof of his own genius 

 only in public appreciation, still worse, if his vanity con- 

 sole itself with taking it as an evidence of rare qualities 

 in himself that his fellow-mortals are unable to see them, 

 it is all up with him. The " World " resolutely refused 

 to find Wordsworth entertaining, and it refuses still, on 

 good grounds ; but the genius that was in him bore up 

 unflinchingly, would take no denial, got its claim admit- 

 ted on all hands, and impregnated at last the literature 

 of an entire generation, though hahitans in sicco, if ever 

 genius did. But Percival seems to have satisfied him- 

 self with a syllogism something like this : Men of genius 

 are neglected ; the more neglect, the more genius ; I am 

 altogether neglected, — ergo, wholly made up of that 

 priceless material. 



The truth was that he suffered rather from over- 

 appreciation ; and " when," says a nameless old French 



