The Arizona sentinel., 1886-05-08
TALENT AND GENIUS.
The Capacity to Do Things Well and tn
 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 a prac- tical and prosaic age; talent is inva- riably the creature of its 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
 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 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 a source of un- failing delight to his publisher; but fu- ture generations will know Trollope merely as one of a 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 cratic 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 man of talent is not infrequently mistaken by his con- temporaries for a 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, school of painting is to be eXempliied, or poem, breathing the passions and aspirations of 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 well. The least work of genius will outlive all that talent can do. If Shelley had written nothing save his "Ode 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 reputation 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 ex- quisite odes "To Grecian Urn," and ITO 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 mortality. It is not of much moment to know the thoughts and deeds of the worlds mediocrities; but it is of the last importance to study the personality of the few men who may truly be said to have shaped the destinies of the race,- ~ o. Tunes Democrat.