What is the thing called Genius? One has said
’Tis general ability directed
Into a special channel. One, instead,
Proffers a definition much respected
By toiling dullards: genius, he explains,
Is infinite capacity for taking pains.
Max Nordau, seeing he has not the thing,
Has solemnly decided, with Lombroso,
That genius is degeneracy. Ring
The curtain down—the show is only so-so;
I’d rather see a dog-fight than sit out
This inconclusive definition-bout.
What, then, is genius? Faith, I’m only sure
That I am deep in doubt about the matter;
But this I think : of two in literature
He is the greater genius who’s the fatter.
’Twas in an age less prosperous that those
Were kings of thought who starved by verse and prose.
Lo! the lean rhapsodist whose soul surveys,
Ecstatic, his unprofitable vision,
Interprets it in cleanly speech; arrays
His jeweled words with scholarly precision!
Faith, he’s a dunce or he would never lack
The means to wedge his belly from his back.
’Twere passing easy to allay his pang
Had he the genius—that’s to say, the insight
Commercial. If he would but sing in slang
He’d earn the wherewithal to make his skin tight.
Genius (let’s now define the word afresh)
Is the capacity to take on flesh.
Spirit of Letters, hail! Thy reign is Now;
Thy ministers are gentlemen that waddle—
Children of light and leading who avow
They swap, for tallow, speech that’s not a model—
For laminated kidney-suet trade
Unsavory words. You must be stout, George Ade.