Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), October 11, 1845, vol. 2, no. 14, p. ???, col. ?

[page 210, column 2, continued:]

Wiley & Putnam's Library of Choice Reading. No. XXV. Table-Talk. By William Hazlitt. Second Series Part I.

Of the first series of the Table-Talk we spoke so fully in a previous number, that it will be needless to say anything of the second — which is, of course, a continuation. In lieu of any comments from ourselves, therefore, we make a quotation of some length, on a topic of deep interest treated as only Hazlitt could treat it:

Capacity is not the same thing as genius. Capacity may be described to relate to the quantity of knowledge, however acquired; genius to its quality and the mode of acquiring it. Capacity is a power over given ideas or combinations of ideas; genius is the power over those which are not given, and for which no obvious or precise rule can be laid down. Or capacity is power of any sort: genius is power of a different sort from what has yet been shown. A retentive memory, a clear understanding is capacity, but it is not genius. The admirable Crichton was a person of prodigious capacity; but there is no proof (that I know of) that he had an atom of genius. His verses that remain are dull and sterile. He could learn all that was known or any subject; he could do anything if others could show him the way to do it. This was very wonderful; but that is all you can say of it. It requires a good capacity to play well at chess; but alter all, it is a game of skill, and not of genius. Know what you will of it, the understanding still moves in certain tracks in which others have trod before it, quicker or slower, with more or less comprehension and presence of mind. The greatest skill strikes out nothing for itself, from its own peculiar resources; the nature of the game is a thing determinate and fixed; there is no royal or poetical road to checkmate your adversary. There is no place for genius but in the indefinite and unknown. The discovery of the binomial theorem was an effort of genius: but there was none shown in Jedediah Buxton's being able to multiply 9 figures by 9 in his head. If he could have multiplied 90 figures by 90 instead of nine, it would [page 211:] have been equally useless toil and trouble.* He is a man of capacity who possesses considerable intellectual riches: he is a man of genius who finds out a vein of new ore. Originality is the seeing nature different from all others, and yet as it is in itself. It is not singularity or affectation, but the discovery of new and valuable truth. All the world do not see the whole meaning of any object they have been looking at. Habit blinds them to some things; short-sightedness to others. Every mind is not a guage and measure of truth. Nature has her surface and her dark recesses. She is deep, obscure, and infinite. It is only minds on whom she makes her fullest impressions that can penetrate her shrine or unveil her Holy of Holies. It is only those whom she has filled with her spirit that have the boldness or the power to reveal her mysteries to others. But nature has a thousand aspects, and one man can only draw out one of them. Whoever does this, is a man of genius. One displays her force, another her refinement, one her power of harmony, another her suddenness of contrast, one her beauty of form, another her splendor of color. Each does that for which he is best fitted by his particular genius, that is to say, by some quality of mind into which the quality of the object sinks deepest, where it finds the most cordial welcome, is perceived to its utmost extent, and where again it forces its way out from the fulness with which it has taken possession of the mind of the student. The imagination gives out what it has first absorbed by congeniality of temperament, what it has attracted and moulded into itself by elective affinity, as the loadstone draws and impregnates iron. A little originality is more esteemed and sought for than the greatest acquired talent, because it throws a new light upon things, and is peculiar to the individual. The other is common; and may be had for the asking, to any amount.

The value of any work is to be judged of by the quantity of originality contained in it. A very ltttle of this will go a great way. If Goldsmith had never written anything but the two or three first chapters of the Vicar of Wakefield, or the character of a Village Schoolmaster, they would have stamped him a man of genius. The Editors of Encyclopedias are not usually reckoned the first literary characters of the age. The works, of which they have the management, contain a great deal of knowledge, like chests or warehouses, but the goods are not their own. We should as soon think of admiring the shelves of a library; but the shelves of a library are both useful and respectable. I was once applied to in a delicate emergency, to write an article on a difficult subject for an Encyclopedia, and was advised to take time and give it a systematic and scientific form, to avail myself of all the knowledge that was to be obtained on the subject, and arrange it with clearness and method. I made answer that as to the first, I had taken time to do all that I ever pretended to do, as I had thought incessantly on difierent matters for twenty years of my life;† that I had no particular knowledge of the subject in question, and no head for arrangement; and that the utmost I could do in such a case would be, when a systematic and scientific article was prepared, to write marginal notes upon it, to insert a remark or illustration of ray own (not to be found in former Encyclopedias) or to suggest a better definition than had been offered in the text. There are two sorts of writing. The first is compilation; and consists in collecting and stating all that is already known of any question in the best possible manner, for the benefit of the uninformed [column 2:] reader. An author of this class is a very learned amanuensis of other people's thoughts. The second sort proceeds on an entirely different principle. Instead of bringing down the account of knowledge to the point at which it has already arrived, it professes to start from that point on the strength of the writer's individual reflections; and supposing the reader in possession of what is already known, supplies deficiencies, fills up certain blanks, and quits the beaten road in search of new tracts of observation or sources of feeling. It is in vain to object to this last style that it is disjointed, disproportioned, and irregular: It is merely a set of additions and corrections to other men's works, or to the common stock of human knowledge, printed separately. You might as well expect reasoning in the notes to a book. It skips all the trite, intermediate, level common-places of the subject, and only stops at the difficult passages of the human mind, or touches on some striking point that has been overlooked in previous editions. A view of a subject, to be connected and regular, cannot be all new. A writer will always be liable to be charged either with paradox or common-place, either with dulness or affectation. But we have no right to demand from any one more than he pretends to. There is indeed a medium in all things, but to unite opposite excellences is a task ordinarily too hard for mortality. The man who succeeds in what he aims at, or who takes the lead in any one mode or path of excellence, may think himself very well off. It would not be fair to complain of the style of an Encyclopedia as dull, as wanting volatile salt; nor of the style of an Essay because it is too light and sparkling, because it is not a caput mortuum. So it is rather an odd objection to a work that it is made up entirely of “brilliant passages” — at least it is a fault that can be found with few works, and the book might be pardoned for its singularity. The censure might indeed seem like adroit flattery, if it were not passed on an author whom any objection is sufficient to render unpopular and ridiculous. I grant it is best to unite solidity with show, general information with particular ingenuity. This is the pattern of a perfect style; but I myself do not pretend to be a perfect writer. In fine, we do not banish light French wines from our tables, or refuse to taste sparkling Champagne when we can get it, because it has not the body of Old Port. Besides, I do not know that dulness is strength, or that an observation is slight, because it is striking. Mediocrity, insipidity, want of character, is the great fault. Mediocribus esse poctis non Dii, non homines, non concessére columna. Neither is this privilege allowed to prose-writers in our time, any more than to poets formerly.

It is not then acuteness of organs or extent of capacity that constitutes rare genius, or produces the most exquisite models of art, but an intense sympathy with some one beauty or distinguished characteristic in nature. Irritability alone, or the interest taken in certain things, may supply the place of genius in weak and otherwise ordinary minds. As there are certain instruments fitted to perform certain kinds of labor, there arc certain minds so framed as to produce certain chêf-d’œvres in art and literature, which is surely the best use they can be put to. If a man had all sorts of instruments in his shop, and wanted one, he would rather have that one than be supplied with a double set of all the others. It he had them all twice over, he could only do what he can do as it is, whereas without that one perhaps he cannot finish any one work he has in hand. So if a man can do one thing better than any body else, the value of this one thing is what he must stand or fall by, and his being able to do a hundred other things merely as well as any body else, would not alter the sentence or add to his respectability; on the contrary, his being able to do so many other things well would probably interfere with and encumber him in the execution of the only thing that others cannot do as well as he, and so far be a drawback and a disadvantage. More people in fact fail from a multiplicity of talents and pretensions, than from an absolute poverty of resources. I have given instances of this elsewhere Perhaps Shakspeare's tragedies would in some respects have been better, if he had never written comedies at all; and in that case his comedies might well have been spared, though they might have cost us some regret. Racine, it is said, might have rivalled Molière in comedy; but he gave up the cultivation of his comic talents to devote himself wholly to the tragic Muse. — [page 212:] If, as the French tell us, he in consequence attained to the perfection of tragic composition, this was better than writing comedies as well as Molière and tragedies as well as Crebrillon. Yet I count those persons tools, who think it a pity that Hogarth did not succeed better in serious subjects. The division of labor is an excellent principle in taste as well as mechanics. Without this, I find by Adam Smith, we could not have a pin made to the degree of perfection it is. We do not, on any rational scheme of criticism, inquire into the variety of a man's excellences, or the number of his works, or his facility of production. Venice Preserved is sufficient tor Otway's fame. I hate all those nonsensical stories about Lopez de Vega, and his writing a play in the morning before breakfast. He had time enough to do it alter. If a man leaves behind him any work which is a model in its kind, we have no right to ask whether he could do any thing else, or how he did it, or how long he was about it. All that talent which is not necessary to the actual quantity of excellence existing in the world, loses its object, is so much waste talent, or talent to let. I heard a sensible man say, he should like to do some one thing better than all the rest of the world. Why should a man do more than his part? The rest is vanity and vexation of spirit. We look with jealous and grudging eye at all those qualifications which are not essential; first because they are superfluous, and next, because we suspect they will be prejudicial. Why does Mr. Kean play all those harlequin tricks of singing, dancing, fencing, &c.? They say, “It is for his benefit.” It is not for his reputation. Garrick, indeed, shone equally as well in comedy and tragedy. But he was first, not second-rate in both. There is not a greater impertinence than to ask if a man is clever out of his profession. I have heard of people trying to cross examine Mrs. Siddons. I would as soon try to entrap one of the Elgin Marbles into an argument. Good nature and common sense are required from all people; but one proud distinction is enough for any one individual to possess or to aspire to!

Of course we admire all this — it is pointedly put — but we assent to only about one half of it.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 211, column 1:]

* The only good thing I ever heard come of this singular man's faculty of memory was the following. A gentleman was mentioning his having been sent up to London from where he lived to see Garrick act. When he went back into the country, he was asked what he thought of the player and the play. “Oh!” he said, “he did not know; he had only seen a little man strut about the stage, and repeat 19 words.” We all laughed at this, but a person in one corner of the room, holding one hand to his forehead, and seemingly mightily delighted, called out, “Ay, indeed! And pray, was he found to be correct?” This was the supererogation of literal matter-of-fact curiosity. Jedediah Buxton's counting the number of words was idle enough; but here was a fellow who Wanted some one to count them over again to see that he was correct.

“The force of dulness could no farther go!’

† Sir Joshua Reynolds being asked how long it had taken him to do a certain picture, made answer, “ All his life.”