“‘So,’ said he, ‘did I.’
“I then said: ‘Do you ever, sir, hear from her mother?’
“‘No,’ cried he, ‘nor write to her. I drive her quite from my mind. If I meet with one of her letters, I burn it instantly. I have burnt all I can find. I never speak of her, and I desire never to hear of her more. I drive her, as I said, wholly from my mind.’
“Yet, wholly to change this discourse, I gave him a history of the Bristol milk-woman,[milk-woman,][[59]] and told him the tales I had heard of her writing so wonderfully, though she had read nothing but Young and Milton; ‘though those,’ I continued, ‘could never possibly, I should think, be the first authors with anybody. Would children understand them? and grown people who have not read are children in literature.’
“‘Doubtless,’ said he; ‘but there is nothing so little comprehended among mankind as what is genius. They give to it all, when it can be but a part. Genius is nothing more than knowing the use of tools; but there must be tools for it to use: a man who has spent all his life in this room will give a very poor account of what is contained in the next.’
“‘Certainly, sir; yet there is such a thing as invention; Shakespeare could never have seen a Caliban.’
“‘No; but he had seen a man, and knew, therefore, how to vary him to a monster. A man who would draw a monstrous cow, must first know what a cow commonly is; or how can he tell that to give her an ass’s head or an elephant’s tusk will make her monstrous? Suppose you show me a man who is a very expert carpenter; another will say he was born to be a carpenter—but what if he had never seen any wood? Let two men, one with genius, the other with none, look at an overturned waggon:—he who has no genius, will think of the waggon only as he sees it, overturned, and walk on; he who has genius, will paint it to himself before it was overturned,—standing still, and moving on, and heavy loaded, and empty; but both must see the waggon, to think of it at all.’
“How just and true all this, my dear Susy! He then grew animated, and talked on, upon this milk-woman, upon a once as famous shoemaker, and upon our immortal Shakespeare, with as much fire, spirit, wit, and truth of criticism and judgment, as ever yet I have heard him. How delightfully bright are his faculties, though the poor and infirm machine that contains them seems alarmingly giving way.
“Yet, all brilliant as he was, I saw him growing worse, and offered to go, which, for the first time I ever remember, he did not oppose; but, most kindly pressing both my hands:
“‘Be not,’ he said, in a voice of even tenderness, ‘be not longer in coming again for my letting you go now.’