oincidence between reason
and the phenomena, we are surprised. Beauty should be the dowry of
every man and woman, as invariably as sensation; but it is rare.
Health or sound organization should be universal. Genius should be the
child of genius, and every child should be inspired; but now it is not
to be predicted of any child, and nowhere is it pure. We call partial
half lights, by courtesy, genius; talent which converts itself to
money; talent which glitters to-day that it may dine and sleep well
to-morrow; and society is officered by _men of parts_,[674] as they
are properly called, and not by divine men. These use their gifts to
refine luxury, not to abolish it. Genius is always ascetic; and piety,
and love. Appetite shows to the finer souls as a disease, and they
find beauty in rites and bounds that resist it.

We have found out[675] fine names to cover our sensuality withal, but
no gifts can raise intemperance. The man of talent affects to call his
transgressions of the laws of the senses trivial and to count them
nothing considered with his devotion to his art. His art rebukes him.
That never taught him lewdness, nor the love of wine, nor the wish to
reap where he had not sowed. His art is less for every deduction from
his holiness, and less for every defect of common sense. On him who
scorned the world, as he said, the scorned world wreaks its revenge.
He that despiseth small things will perish by little and little.
Goethe's Tasso[676] is very likely to be a pretty fair historical
portrait, and that is true tragedy. It does not seem to me so genuine
grief when some tyrannous Richard III.[677] oppresses and slays a
score of innocent persons, as when Antonio and Tasso, both apparently
right, wrong each other. One living after the maxims of this world and
consistent and true to them, the other fired with all divine
sentiments, yet grasping also at the pleasures of sense, without
submitting to their law. That is a grief we all feel, a knot we cannot
untie. Tasso's is no infrequent case in modern biography. A man of
genius, of an ardent temperament, reckless of physical laws,
self-indulgent, becomes presently unfortunate, querulous, a
"discomfortable cousin," a thorn to himself and to others.

The scholar shames us by his bifold[678] life. Whilst something higher
than prudence is active, he is admirable; when common sense is wanted,
he is an encumbrance. Yesterday, Caesar[679] was not so great; to-day,
Job[680] not