ey
would not expect poets to be very different from other people when not
under the influence of this excitement. Now, we may take the word
"poet," in this connection, in the very largest sense. All men who have
the gift of invention are poets. The inventive ideas come to them at
unforeseen moments, and have to be seized when they come, so that the
true inventor works sometimes with vertiginous rapidity, and afterwards
remains for days or weeks without exercising the inventive faculty at
all. The question is, can you make an inventive mind work on the
principle of measured and regular advance. Is such counsel as that in my
former letter applicable to inventors?

Scott said, that although he had known many men of ordinary abilities
who were capable of perfect regularity in their habits, he had never
known a man of genius who was so. The popular impression concerning men
of genius is very strong in the same sense, but it is well not to attach
too much importance to popular impressions concerning men of genius, for
the obvious reason that such men come very little under popular
observation. When they work it is usually in the most perfect solitude,
and even people who live in the same house know very little, really, of
their intellectual habits.

The truth seems to be, first, that the moments of high excitement, of
noblest invention, are rare, and not to be commanded by the will; but,
on the other hand, that in order to make the gift of invention produce
its full effect in any department of human effort, vast labors of
preparation are necessary, and these labors may be pursued as steadily
as you like Napoleon I. used to say that battles were won by the sudden
flashing of an idea through the brain of the commander at a certain
critical instant. The capacity for generating this sudden electric spark
was military genius. The spark flashed independently of the will; the
General could not win that vivid illumination by labor or by prayer; it
came only in the brain of genius from the intense anxiety and excitement
of the actual conflict. Napoleon seems always to have counted upon it,
always to have believed that when the critical instant arrived the wild
confusion of the battle-field would be illuminated for him by that burst
of sudden flame. But if Napoleon had been ignorant of the prosaic
business of his profession, to which he attended more closely than any
other commander, what would these moments of supreme clearness have