The Physiology of Authorship

The man of talent is the ancestor of the man of genius, but the man of genius is the ancestor either of nobodies or of nobody. Descendants of great authors, painters, and musicians, who lived two or three generations ago, are hardly to be found. While the families of great soldiers and statesmen swarm, there is scarcely a man in Europe who can boast of a great poet or other artist in the direct line of his pedigree: probably there is not even one who can boast of two such forefathers. The rough stem runs into the leaf, the leaf to the flower, and the flower to the fruit of good work, or—to seed. To pursue the analogy to its end, the full beauty and productiveness of imaginative genius correspond to the effect of decaying vitality.