manuscripts
of the Vatican. Sacrifice nothing of what you know to be the substantial
interest of your piece, to what these critics call the _colour_ of the
age, which, after all, is nothing better than one guess amongst many at
historic truth. Schiller fell a victim, in one or two instances, to this
sort of criticism, and, in obedience to it, contradicted the natural
bias of his genius. In his _Wilhelm Tell_, instead of the hero of
liberty and of Switzerland, he has given us little more than a sturdy
peasant, who, in destroying Gessler, follows only a personal revenge,
and feels the remorse of a common assassin. If this were historic truth,
it was not the part of the poet to be the first to discover and proclaim
it. Was he to degrade the character below the rank which ordinary
historians assigned to it? We do not want a drama to frame the portrait
of a Lincolnshire farmer; it is the place, if place there is, for the
representation of the higher forms of humanity.

After taking note of the distinctive qualities of the drama and the
novel, it were well--O author that will be!--to take note of thyself,
and observe what manner of talent is strongest within thee. There are
two descriptions of men of genius. The one are men of genius in virtue
of their own quick feelings and intense reflection; they have
imagination, but it is chiefly kindled by their own personal emotions:
they write from the inspiration of their own hearts; they see the world
in the height of their own joys and afflictions. These amiable egotists
fill all nature with the voice of their own plaints, and they have ever
a tangled skein of their own peculiar thoughts to unravel and to ravel
again. The second order of men of genius, albeit they are not deficient
in keen susceptibility or profound reflection, see the world
outstretched before them, as it lies beneath the impartial light of
heaven; they understand, they master it; they turn the great globe round
under the sun; they make their own mimic variations after its strange
and varied pattern. Now you must take rank, high or low, amongst this
second order of men of genius, if you are to prosper in the land of
fiction and romance. Pray, do you--as I half suspect--do you, when
sitting down to sketch out some budding romance, find that you have
filled your paper with the analysis of a character or a sentiment, and
that you have risen from your desk without relating a single incident,
or advancing your story b