VII 



BEFORE GENIUS 



"TF 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 hards 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 Biblical writers would have been superseded by the 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, — 

 rhyme, 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 Mon- 



