Chapter the Second.-Authors.

SHAKSPEARE.-SPENSER. JOHNSON.-GIFFORD.

GIBBON.

CREATIVE genius is popularly held to be dependent on faculties widely diverse from those required by the mere man of learning. The linguist is usually regarded as a traveller on a beaten track; the poet as a discoverer of new regions. Success for the man of learning is considered to depend on diligence in the exercise of the memory and judgment; while obedience to impulse seems to be the mental law popularly allotted to poets. Let the young reader enquire for himself whether there is not something of fallacy in this popular notion.

Chapter the Second.-Authors.

SHAKSPEARE.-SPENSER.-JOHNSON.-GIFFORD.

GIBBON.

CREATIVE genius is popularly held to be dependent on faculties widely diverse from those required by the mere man of learning. The linguist is usually regarded as a traveller on a beaten track; the poet as a discoverer of new regions. Success for the man of learning is considered to depend on diligence in the exercise of the memory and judgment; while obedience to impulse seems to be the mental law popularly allotted to poets. Let the young reader enquire for himself whether there is not something of fallacy in this popular notion.