“So that there was, perhaps, more profit, as there was certainly more effort, in my secret labours at home. Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I knew it; and tried again, and was again unsuccessful, and always unsuccessful; but at least in these vain bouts I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction, and the coordination of parts.” Balzac, the greatest novelist that France has ever produced, similarly exemplifies the laborious industry of the man of genius in providing his subconsciousness with material for future use, and training it to respond more fully to the demands of the upper consciousness. It was Balzac’s habit to wander for days among the people, inquiring into their customs, manners, motives, and ways of thinking; and he would travel a hundred miles to get the data for a few lines of description. The result, when his genius began to show itself, after a long and painful period of incubation, was the creation of a series of works that will be read and reread as long as books are printed. Of Dante, Boccaccio tells us that “taken by the sweetness of knowing the truth of the things concealed in Heaven, and finding no other pleasure dearer to him in life, he left all other worldly care and gave himself to this alone; and, that no part of philosophy might remain unseen by him, he plunged with acute intellect into the deepest recesses of theology, and so far succeeded in his design that, caring nothing for heat or cold, or watchings or fastings, or any other bodily discomforts, by assiduous study he came to know of the divine essence and of the other separate intelligences that the human intellect can comprehend.” Napoleon is known to have occupied his mind almost incessantly with problems of military strategy. Even at the opera he would forget the music in wrestling with such questions as, “I have ten thousand men at Strassburg, fifteen thousand at Magdeburg, twenty thousand at Würzburg. By what stages must they march so as to reach Ratisbon on three successive days?” Mozart, on the contrary, thought, lived, and moved in an atmosphere of music. He could not so much as go for a walk or play a game of billiards without humming to himself over and over again airs that he was striving to develop to his satisfaction. “Nobody,” he once declared, “takes so much pains in the study of composition as I. You could not easily name a famous master in music whom I have not industriously studied, often going through his works several times.”