Say that a dozen times in his life a man
has a complete sculpturesque vision--a vision in which the imagination
recognizes a subject and the subject kindles the imagination. It is a
remunerative rate of work, and the intervals are comfortable!"
One morning, as the two young men were lounging on the sun-warmed
grass at the foot of one of the slanting pines of the Villa Mondragone,
Roderick delivered himself of a tissue of lugubrious speculations as to
the possible mischances of one's genius. "What if the watch should run
down," he asked, "and you should lose the key? What if you should wake
up some morning and find it stopped, inexorably, appallingly stopped?
Such things have been, and the poor devils to whom they happened have
had to grin and bear it. The whole matter of genius is a mystery. It
bloweth where it listeth and we know nothing of its mechanism. If it
gets out of order we can't mend it; if it breaks down altogether we
can't set it going again. We must let it choose its own pace, and hold
our breath lest it should lose its balance. It 's dealt out in different
doses, in big cups and little, and when you have consumed your portion
it 's as naif to ask for more as it was for Oliver Twist to ask for more
porridge.
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