By JAMES KERR, M.A.

Intense ardor in the pursuit of its object seems to be one of the leading characteristics of genius. This quality of the mind, this enthusiasm, impels to persevering study, to sustained application and constant effort.

In most men of genius it is found that they are fully engrossed with the subject, and, as it were, possessed by it, while it is before the mind. When they have anything important in hand, they are so absorbed in that one thing that it occupies all their thoughts. They can not attend to less important matters, and every inferior object withers in its presence.

The perfection of any literary work seems to arise in a great degree from the author having deeply meditated on the subject, brooding over it with unremitting attention, allowing no other thoughts to intrude, until it stands before his imagination a picture complete in every part. When this is done, he can sit down and commit it to paper off-hand.

Such was the case with the poet Burns. Intense meditation, deep all-absorbing thought, seems first to have moulded the subject in his mind, and then, when that was done, he could write it down rapidly. We have minute details of the moments when he composed two of his most celebrated pieces—“Bruce’s Address” to his soldiers, and “Mary in Heaven.” On both occasions he was so rapt in thought, and so possessed by the subject, as to be unconscious of what was passing around him.

It is said of Sir Walter Scott that, after choosing a subject on which to write, he carefully brooded over it, until the outline of the story had taken a distinct shape before his imagination. After being thus moulded in his mind, he would seize the pen and throw off page after page with amazing rapidity.

This also seems to have been the case with Mozart, the great musical composer. When engaged in one of his compositions he would meditate on the subject with intense ardor, until it stood before him complete in all its parts, and then he would write it down easily in the midst of company, and when people were conversing and laughing around him.

We have an instance of this characteristic of genius in Rousseau. Every study he took up he pursued with intense ardor. A friend shows him how to play at chess. He suddenly becomes wholly engrossed by it, shuts himself up in his room, and spends days and nights in studying all the varieties of the game. The same ardor and intense application he threw into everything he undertook. He brought it to bear on his botanical studies, his musical compositions, and his literary pursuits. He tells us that he composed the greater part of some of his works in bed, in the hours of the night when sleep deserted him. “I meditated,” says he, “in my bed with my eyes closed, and in my mind turned over and over again my periods with incredible labor and care. The moment they were finished to my satisfaction I deposited them in my memory until I had an opportunity of committing them to paper.” Such was his ardor in pursuit of knowledge that he used always to carry books about with him, and while at work in the garden he was constantly conning pieces over and getting them by heart.

This ardor, this intense application to the subject in hand, which is characteristic of men of genius, may account for their liability to what is called absence of mind. They are notoriously subject to this infirmity. Hence it is that a Sir Isaac Newton, lost in thought, sits still while his boot is burning before the fire, and after a while calls in the servant remove the fire, instead of himself removing his foot. Hence it is that an Adam Smith, absorbed in his own thoughts, sallies forth in his dressing-gown, and walks miles and miles into the country, unconscious of his strange attire and of the ridiculous figure he cuts. This is called absence of mind, but it implies great activity of mind.

Some writers there are who can shift lightly from one subject to another, attending to various studies at various hours of the day. There are such men, and men too of no mean capacity, though not, it would seem, of the most ardent genius. Macaulay somewhere speaks of Southey as having an aptitude for applying his mind to several subjects in succession—a piece of poetry in the morning, history in the forenoon, a review in the evening. He confesses that for himself he had no such power. Whatever he took up he must apply his whole mind to until he finished it. That one subject was for the time all-absorbing; and who knows but to this he may have owed much of his success as a brilliant writer!