Iron County register., 1886-04-22
TALENT AND GENIUS.
The Capacity to Do Things Well and the
Capacity to Do Them Perfectly.

The Capacity to Do Things Well and the
Capacity to Do Them Perfectly.
AS education tends to become uni
versal, the field of talent widens and
many come to believe that the man of
talent is more capable than the
man of genius, as regards the neces-
sary and unceasing work of the world.
Genius has many an idiosyncrasy which
jars upon the sensibilities of prac-
teal and prosaic age; talent is inva-
riably the creature of it's surroundings
The man of talent is, in the main, more
companionable than the man of genius,
and is more capable of the sustained
exertion which is not to be despised in
a time when cheapness is more sought
after than intrinsic worth. Anthony
Trollope tells us, in his autobiography,
how he disciplined himself until he
could count upon completing a certain
number of pages of a new novel per
diem as surely as he could count upon
his ability to walk certain number of
miles. SO good a writer, with such a
system, must have been source of un-
failing delight to his publisher; but fu-
ture generations will know Trollope
merely as one of Il host of clever men
who helped to make English fiction the
fine art it has now become. The utmost
efforts of men like Trollope, Black and
Henry James can never decrease the
awful distance that finally separates
them from Dickens, George Eliot and
Thackeray. Genius can not work by
talents method, but produces, by its
erratic process, something that will last
as long as men continue to care for the
good, the beautiful, the true.
The difference between talent and
genius is often extremely subtle-so
subtle, indeed, that a man of talent is
not infrequently mistaken by his con-
temporaries for man of genius. Time,
however. corrects all errors of that
sort and places the man of genius in
his true position. Talent would appear
to be the capacity to do things well,
while genius is the capacity to do them
perfectly. Therefore, it would seem
that talent must do the everyday work
of the world, while genius alone will
suffice for the really great occasions
when decisive battle is to be fought, a
school of painting is to be exemplitied,
or a poem, breathing the passions and
aspirations of a race, is to be written.
At such times the man of talent
who usurps the place of the man
of genius receives the unmeasured con-
tempt of all men, but he deserves their
infinite pity as we'll The least work of
genius will outlive all that talent can do.
If Shelley had written nothing save his
lode to Sky-Lark," he would have
stood higher among the poets than
Scott, despite the latter's many thousand
lines of admirable verse. Ten pages
would comprise the verses on which the
of Keats now rests, yet all of
SoutheY's elaborate and conscientious
work has left him in the dim shadow
of mediocrity when compared with the
marvellous boy who gave us the eS-
quisite odes ITO Grecian Urn and
.To a Nightingale One great pas
sage of Shakespeare is worth more
than all the trash which chiefly makes
up the drama of the day. In an age
which shows mighty tendency toward
the worship of the commonplace. the
claims of genius can not be too often or
too clearly set forth. The difference
between talent and genius is the differ
ence between excellence and perfection, |
between the placid lake and the tumul- |
tuous ocean, between mortality and inn !
1t is not of much moment |
to know the thoughts and deeds of the |
worlds mediocrities; but it is of the last i
Importance TO study the personality of |
.he few men who may truly be said to
have shaped the destinieS of the race.-I
N. o. Times Democrat.