schoolboy? Wherever you mention his genius, do you not hear an appendix
on his vanity?"

"Yet without that vanity, that desire for a name with posterity, would he
have been equally great--would he equally have cultivated his genius?"

"Probably, my Lord, he would not have equally cultivated his genius, but
in reality he might have been equally great. A man often injures his mind
by the means that increase his genius. You think this, my Lord, a
paradox, but examine it. How many men of genius have been but ordinary
men, take them from the particular objects in which they shine. Why is
this, but that in cultivating one branch of intellect they neglect the
rest? Nay, the very torpor of the reasoning faculty has often kindled the
imaginative. Lucretius composed his sublime poem under the influence of a
delirium. The susceptibilities that we create or refine by the pursuit of
one object, weaken our general reason; and I may compare with some
justice the powers of the mind to the faculties of the body, in which
squinting is occasioned by an inequality of strength in the eyes, and
discordance of voice by the same inequality in the ears."

"I believe you are right," said the Earl; "yet I own I willingly forgive
Cicero for his vanity, if it contributed to the production of his
orations and his essays; and he is a greater man, even with his vanity
unconquered, than if he had conquered his foible, and in doing so taken
away the incitements to his genius."

"A greater man in the world's eye, my Lord, but scarcely in reality. Had
Homer written his Iliad and then burnt it, would his genius have been
less? The world would have known nothing of him, but would he have been a
less extraordinary man on that account? We are too apt, my Lord, to