in whom Horace acknowledged a master and a model; their renown is not in
their works, it is but in their names. And, after all, the names of
singers and actors last perhaps as long. Greece retains the name of
Polus, Rome of Roscius, England of Garrick, France of Talma, Italy of
Pasta, more lastingly than posterity is likely to retain mine. You
address to me a question, which I have often put to myself,--"What is the
distinction between the writer and the reader, when the reader says,
'These are my thoughts, these are my feelings; the writer has stolen
them, and clothed them in his own words'?" And the more the reader says
this, the more wide is the audience, the more genuine the renown, and,
paradox though it seems, the more consummate the originality, of the
writer. But no, it is not the mere gift of expression, it is not the
mere craft of the pen, it is not the mere taste in arrangement of word
and cadence, which thus enables the one to interpret the mind, the heart,
the soul of the many. It is a power breathed into him as he lay in his
cradle, and a power that gathered around itself, as he grew up, all the
influences he acquired, whether from observation of external nature, or
from study of men and books, or from that experience of daily life which
varies with every human being. No education could make two intellects
exactly alike, as no culture can make two leaves exactly alike. How
truly you describe the sense of dissatisfaction which every writer of
superior genius communicates to his admirers! how truly do you feel that
the greater is the dissatisfaction in proportion to the writer's genius,
and the admirer's conception of it! But that is the mystery which makes
--let me borrow a German phrase--the cloud-land between the finite and
the infinite. The greatest philosopher, intent on the secrets of Nature,
feels that dissatisfaction in Nature herself. The finite cannot reduce
into logic and criticism the infinite.

Let us dismiss these matters, which perplex the reason, and approach that