The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-10-06
THE ADVENT OF GENIUS.
Llppincott's Magazine.

Lippincott's Magazine.
 The opinions of friends and neigh bors as to a mans powers are rarely of any value. Sometimes they ridicu- lously overrate him and push some donkey forward into conspicuous po- sition, where the length of his ears as defined against the background of the horizon may be accurately and pub licly ascertained. But more frequently and especially in the case of man of real genius-they are inclined to undervalue one whom they have come to regard as one of themselves. That there should suddenly be great boom- ing of cannon and flying of colors in honor of Tompkins, for example, is quite in the ordinary course of nature, because Tompkins is a part of the great unknown outside world from which heroes are constantly emerging. But when your friend Jones, let us say, whom you thought you had fully weighed and measured, and whose mental tonnage you placed rather be- low your own-when Jones suddenly slips out of the narrow and crowded channels of everyday life into the wide, lonely sea of genius, you are likely to be surprised, you may be even little displeased. "The advent of genius," says the wise and witty autocrat of the breakfast table, "is like what florists style the breaking of a seedling tulip into what we may call high caste colors-ten thousand dingy flowers, then one with the divine streak; or, if you prefer it, like the coming up in old Jacobs garden of that most gentlemanly little fruit, the seckel pear, which l have sometimes seen in shop windows. It is a sur- prise there is nothing to account for it." Montague tells us in his Essays" that his attempt to become an author was laughed at in his own province, and even after he had won his fame he found that "at home he was obliged to purchase printers, while at dis tance printers purchased him." Bal zac's family was sarcastically indig- nant at his presuming that he could write, and visited his first three fail ures with the usual exasperatipg "I told-you-so." When Swift intro- duced Parnell to Bolinbroke and to the world, he made this entry in his jour- nal: "It is pleasant to see one who hardly passes for anything in Ireland make his way here with a little friendly forwarding" Daniel Web- ster, in the very height of his fame, just after his famous Bunker Hill speech, took run down to his native village, which he had not visited in SO many years that he found himself quite unrecognized by his former cro- nies. Accosting an old friend of the Websters, he gradually, after due dis cussion of the weather and the crops, turned the conversation on his own family. Thereupon his companion burst out into enthusiastic ecomiums upon the virtues and abilities of Dan- iePs elder brother, Ebenezer, who had died young and whose early death he fittingly deplored. Daniel slipped in modest query as to whether there was not brother named Dan. "He never was much account" said the old gentleman, with a shake of the head. "I believe he went up to Boston and became some kind of lawye Anderson has allegorized his own for lorn and unappreciated youth in the story of the ugly duckling which turned out to be a swan. This story is s favorite with Bismarck "I was an ugly duckling myself" he once told friend; "my poor old mother never would believe that there was any good in me-" Isaac Barrow's par ents conceived so mean an opinion of his temper and parts when he was 8 boy at the Charterhouse school, that his father used to say, if it pleased God to take from him any of his children, he hoped it might be Isaac, the least promising. Adam Clarke's father was equally uncomplimentary to his own flesh and blood when he proclaimed his son to be "a grievous dunce." Poe at West Point was laughing stock to his school-mates. Byron at Har- row was in no wise distinguished above his fellows. Napoleon and Well liDgton in their school-days were dis tinguished only for dullness.