HAS GENIUS A CHANCE?

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 799, 23 April 1910, Page 9

HAS GENIUS A CHANCE?

Probably one generation is not much better than another in the matter of its recognition of genius. "We look upon ourselves as a tolerably open-minded ago of readers, and consider that, with our thousand lynx-eyed scouts on the look-out for literary ability, we are much more likely to welcome eccentricity as if it wero genuine individuality than to ignoro original talent. Nevertheless, the uphill fight of Meredith ought to suggest another lesson," and there is a dish of bumble pie for whoever will eat it in the fact that only now are peoplo beginning to look upon Lafcadio Hearn as one of the most graceful and delicate prose-masters of his generation. \ Indeed,.to the' ordinary causes.; which have always prevailed to blind people to ■contemporary ;■ genius there is added one peculiar to our owu time.: This is the fact that there are such heaps or inferior matter published that true worth is in danger "of being overlooked. For almost twenty years the output of inferior work-has gone on, and it cannot but be that, beneath the accumulated mass of mediocrity, there are lying-.works worthjrof-preservation, like the.living• soldier, in" Baudelaire's poem, under , tho heap of slain. One may reasonably hone "that work: of /absolute genius will always attain.favourable recognition oi some sort, but between such work and. work of average merit there are many .books that'are merely excellent of. their kind. What will> become -of them ? Well, chance, as someone has'been saying, may bring them to light, and even if it does not they will have a resurrection. It will bo'when some Charles Lamb of the future arises. 'He will'pry as carefully into the shelves': of early :tweiifiethcentury, fiction as' his' ; predecessor did into the collections of old plays, and reinstate reputations which have 'been eclipsed for a time and raise up. poets that have hitherto sung their, songs, and novelists that have told. their stories, to , deaf ears.—"Manchester Guardian." .