BRIEF ESSAYS 241 



escape the general lift of th.e age in whicli he lives ; 

 he shares in the momentum, moral and intellectual, 

 of his contemporaries. In a certain sense, also, he 

 inherits, as an available personal fund, what others 

 have done before him. It is the common mind 

 which has been refined and enlarged, and of this 

 advantage he partakes. Literature is an investment 

 of genius which pays dividends to all subsequent 

 times. 



If nature were guilty of endless repetition in 

 turning out men of exceptional powers, of course 

 every new man would find his task already done in 

 the world; but nature forever varies the pattern so 

 that the new man has a new standpoint and sees 

 things in new combinations and discovers new val- 

 ues, and he is never forestalled by those who have 

 gone before him. Every new genius is an impossi- 

 bility until he appears ; we cannot forecast his type. 

 He is a revelation, and through his eyes we shall 

 see undreamed-of effects. It is doubtful if contem- 

 porary writers of original power ever stand in each 

 other's way. There is always room and demand 

 for any number of original men. The lesser poets 

 of course suffer in competition with the greater; 

 the large stars draw our eyes away from the smaller ; 

 we should make more of Bayard Taylor, for in- 

 stance, if he were our only poet; but is it probable 

 that Longfellow or Whittier or Bryant or Emerson 

 ever intercepted any portion of the fame due and 

 within reach of the other? Have Tennyson or 

 Browning in any sense ever been rivals ? Literary 



