The other disadvantage under which Walking Stewart labored, was
this: he was a man of genius, but not a man of talents; at least his
genius was out of all proportion to his talents, and wanted an organ as it
were for manifesting itself; so that his most original thoughts were
delivered in a crude state--imperfect, obscure, half developed, and not
producible to a popular audience. He was aware of this himself; and,
though he claims everywhere the faculty of profound intuition into human
nature, yet with equal candor he accuses himself of asinine stupidity,
dulness, and want of talent. He was a disproportioned intellect, and so
far a monster: and he must be added to the long list of original-minded
men who have been looked down upon with pity and contempt by commonplace
men of talent, whose powers of mind--though a thousand times inferior--
were yet more manageable, and ran in channels more suited to common uses
and common understandings.
FOOTNOTES
[1] In Bath, he was surnamed 'the Child of Nature;'--which arose from his
contrasting on every occasion the existing man of our present experience
with the ideal or Stewartian man that might be expected to emerge in some
myriads of ages; to which latter man he gave the name of the Child of
Nature.
[2] I was not aware until the moment of writing this passage that Walking
Stewart had publicly made this request three years after making it to
myself: opening the 'Harp of Apollo,' I have just now accidentally
stumbled on the following passage, 'This Stupendous work is destined, I
fear, to meet a worse fate than the Aloe, which as soon as it blossoms
loses its stalk.
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