diversified surface, the endless decorations of the earth itself,
the other hangs on high, like a lone, clear star--small but
intense--flashing upon us through the night of ages, invested with
circumstances of divinity not less unquestionable than those which
attend the venerable majesty of the Ancient of Song. The rich and
roseate light that shines around the name of Mimnermus, is shed
from some dozen or twenty lines: the immortality of Tyrtaeus rests
upon a stanza or two, which have floated to us with their precious
freight, over the sea of centuries, and will float on unsubmergible
by all the waves of Time. The soul of Simonides lives to us in
a single couplet; but that is the very stuff of Eternity, which
neither fire will assoil, nor tempest peril, nor the wrath of years
impair. The Infinite has no degrees; wherever the world sees in
any human being the fire of the Everlasting, it bows with equal
awe, whether that fire is displayed by only an occasional flash,
or by a prolonged and diffusive blaze. There is a certain tone
which, hear it when we may, and where we may, we know to be the
accents of the gods; and whether its quality be shown in a single
utterance, or its volume displayed in a thousand bursts of music,
we surround the band of spirits whom we there detect in their mortal
disguise, with equal ceremonies of respect and worship, hailing
them alike as seraphs of a brighter sphere--sons of the morning.
This is natural, and it is reasonable. Genius is not a degree of
other qualities, nor is it a particular way or extent of displaying
such qualities; it is a faculty by itself; it is a manner, of which
we may judge with the same certainty from one exhibition, as from
many. The praise of a poet, therefore, is to be determined not
by the nature of the work which he undertakes, but by the kind of
mastery which he shows; not by the breadth of surface over which
he toils, but by the perfectness of the result which he attains.