And what holds good of verse holds infinitely better in respect to prose.  The enormous improvement in our prose writers (I am not speaking of geniuses, remember, but of the generality), and their great superiority over writers of the same class half a century ago, is mainly due to use.  Sir Walter Scott, who, like most men of genuine power, had great generosity, once observed to a brother author, ’You and I came just in the nick of time.’  He foresaw the formidable competition that was about to take place, though he had no cause to fear it.  I think in these days he would have had cause; not that I disbelieve in his genius, but that I venture to think he diffused it over too large an area.  In such cases genius is overpassed by the talent which husbands its resources; in other words, Nature succumbs to second nature, as the wife in the patriarchal days (when she grew patriarchal) succumbed to the handmaid.  And after all, though we talk so glibly about genius, and profess to feel, though we cannot express, in what it differs from talent, are we quite so sure about this as we would fain persuade ourselves?  At all events, it cannot surely be contended that a man of genius always writes like one; and when he does not, his work is often inferior to the first-rate production of a man of talent.  For my own part, I am not sure whether (with the exception, perhaps, of the highest gifts of song) the whole distinction is not fanciful.

We are ready enough in ordinary matters to allow that ’practice makes perfect,’ and the limit of that principle is yet to be found.  Moreover, the vast importance of exclusive application is almost unknown.  We see it, indeed, in men of science and in lawyers, but without recognition; nay, socially, it is even quoted against them.  The mathematician may be very eminent, but we find him dry; the lawyer may be at the head of his profession, but we find him dull; and it is observed on all sides how very little great A and great B, notwithstanding the high position they have earned for themselves in their calling, know of matters out of their own line.  On the other hand, the man of whom it was said that ‘science was his forte and omniscience his foible,’ has left no enduring monument behind him; and so it must always be with mortals who have only fifty years of thought allotted to them at the very most, and who diffuse it.  Everyone admits the value of application, but very few are aware how its force is wasted by diffusion:  it is like a volatile essence in a bottle without a cork.  When, on the other hand, it is concentrated—­you may call it ‘narrowed’ if you please—­there is hardly anything within its own sphere of action of which it is not capable.  So many high motives (though also some mean ones) prompt us to make broad the bases of education, that any proposal to contract them must needs be thankless and unpopular; but it is certain that, among the upper classes at least, the reason why so many men are unable to make their way in the world, is because, thanks to a too liberal education, they are Jacks of all trades and masters of none; and even as Jacks they cut a very poor figure.