"No," said Johnson, shaking his head violently and speaking
suddenly in an excited tone. "No. Those who are disappointed are
such as are possessed of imagination without judgment; but a man
whose imagination does not outrun his judgment is seldom deceived
in the realisation of his hopes. I suspect that the same thing is
true in the art of poetry, of which Herr Heine is at once a master
and a judge. For the qualities that constitute genius are
invention, imagination and judgment; invention, by which new trains
of events are formed, and new scenes of imagery displayed;
imagination, which strongly impresses on the writer's mind, and
enables him to convey to the reader the various form of nature,
incidents of life and energies of passion; and judgment, which
selects from life or nature what the present purpose requires, and
by separating the essence of things from its concomitants, often
makes the representation more powerful than the reality. A man who
possesses invention and imagination can invent and imagine a
thousand beauties, gifts of mind and virtues of character; but
unless he have judgment which enables him to discern the bounds of
possibility and to detect the real nature of the woman he has
chosen as the representative of his self-formed ideal, he runs
great risk of being deceived. As a general rule, however, it has
pleased Providence to endow man with much more judgment than
imagination; and to this cause we may attribute the small number of
poets who have flourished in the world, and the great number of
happy marriages among civilised mankind."
"It appears that I must have possessed imagination after all," said
Francis.
"If you will allow me to say it," said Cæsar in his most suave
tones, and turning his heavy black eyes upon the king's face, "you
had too much. Had you possessed less imagination and more judgment,
you might many times have destroyed the Emperor Charles. To
challenge him to fight a duel was a gratuitous and very imaginative
piece of civility; to let him escape as you did more than once when
you could easily have forced an engagement on terms advantageous to
yourself, was unpardonable."
"I know it," said Francis, bitterly. "I was not Cæsar."
"No, sir," said Johnson in loud, harsh tones, "nor were you happy
in your marriages--"
"I adore learned men," whispered Francis to Lady Brenda. He had at
once recovered his good humour.
"A fact that proves what I was saying, that the element of judgment
is necessary in the selection of a wife," continued the doctor.
"I think it is intuition which makes the right people fall in love
with each other," said Lady Brenda.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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