CHAPTER VI

   “Knowledge for them unlocks her useful page,
   And virtue blossoms for a better age.”—­BARBAULD.

A few days after Madame de Fleury had told Victoire the fable of the lion and the mouse, she was informed by Sister Frances that Victoire had put the fable into verse.  It was wonderfully well done for a child of nine years old, and Madame de Fleury was tempted to praise the lines; but, checking the enthusiasm of the moment, she considered whether it would be advantageous to cultivate her pupil’s talent for poetry.  Excellence in the poetic art cannot be obtained without a degree of application for which a girl in her situation could not have leisure.  To encourage her to become a mere rhyming scribbler, without any chance of obtaining celebrity or securing subsistence, would be folly and cruelty.  Early prodigies in the lower ranks of life are seldom permanently successful; they are cried up one day, and cried down the next.  Their productions rarely have that superiority which secures a fair preference in the great literary market.  Their performances are, perhaps, said to be wonderful, all things considered, &c.  Charitable allowances are made; the books are purchased by associations of complaisant friends or opulent patrons; a kind of forced demand is raised, but this can be only temporary and delusive.  In spite of bounties and of all the arts of protection, nothing but what is intrinsically good will long be preferred, when it must be purchased.  But granting that positive excellence is attained, there is always danger that for works of fancy the taste of the public may suddenly vary:  there is a fashion in these things; and when the mode changes, the mere literary manufacturer is thrown out of employment; he is unable to turn his hand to another trade, or to any but his own peculiar branch of the business.  The powers of the mind are often partially cultivated in these self-taught geniuses.  We often see that one part of their understanding is nourished to the prejudice of the rest—­the imagination, for instance, at the expense of the judgment:  so that whilst they have acquired talents for show they have none for use.  In the affairs of common life they are utterly ignorant and imbecile—­or worse than imbecile.  Early called into public notice, probably before their moral habits are formed, they are extolled for some play of fancy or of wit, as Bacon calls it, some juggler’s trick of the intellect; they immediately take an aversion to plodding labour, they feel raised above their situation; possessed by the notion that genius exempts them not only from labour, but from vulgar rules of prudence, they soon disgrace themselves by their conduct, are deserted by their patrons, and sink into despair or plunge into profligacy.