Is it intended to put men
on their guard against being geniuses? That is scarcely called for till
those who yield to the temptation become more numerous. Do they mean,
We, too, might have been geniuses, but we chose rather to be good and
dull? Self-denial is always praiseworthy, and we reconcile ourselves to
the Ovid lost in consideration of the Deacon gained. But if it be meant
that the danger was in the genius, we deny it altogether. Burns's genius
was the one good thing he had, and it was always, as it always must be,
good, and only good, the leaven of uncontaminate heaven in him that
would not let him sink contentedly into the sty of oblivion with the
million other tipplers and loose-livers of his century. It was his
weakness of character, and not his strength or pride of intellect, that
betrayed him; and to call his faults errors of genius is a mischievous
fallacy. If they were, then they were no lesson for the rest of us; if
they were not, to call them so is to encourage certain gin-and-water
philosophers who would fain extenuate their unpleasant vices by the plea
that they are the necessary complement of unusual powers,--as if the
path to immortality were through the kennel, and fine verses were to be
written only at the painful sacrifice of bilking your washerwoman.
We are over-fond of drawing monitory morals from the lives of gifted
persons, tacking together our little ten-by-twelve pinfolds to impound
breachy human nature in, but it is only because we know more than we
have any business to know of the private concerns of such persons
that we have the opportunity.
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