THE EDUCATION OF GENIUS.

By JAMES SULLY.
IOGRAPHERS of great men have been accustomed to dwell on the
early surroundings of their heroes, with a view to discover what
special forces acted most powerfully on their unfolding genius.
Such an inquiry is of peculiar interest, for we all like to watch a
colossal mind in process of making, and to know what persons in
its human entourage have left their impress on it and helped to give
it its final shape. The subject has, too, its scientific significance ;
for if we can find out how much or how little the well-recognized
apparatus of education has commonly effected in the case of the preternaturally gifted
boy or girl we may be able to gain clearer ideas respecting both the nature of genius
and the scope of education.
In following out this line of inquiry it may be well to limit ourselves to men and
women of letters. With the making of these the recognized systems of instruction
appear to be specially concerned, seeing that scholarship or book-lore forms so
important an ingredient in the penman's craft, even in its lighter branches. In the
case of the musician or the painter, on the other hand, there is no such obvious
relation between professional competence and the common learning of the schools ;
and the same holds good in the case of the man of active enterprise, as the politician
and the soldier.
In tracing the action on the gifted child of his human instructors our eye is arrested
at the outset by the parent. How much, one naturally asks, has the mother, the
father, or other natural guardian of the future hero contributed to the development of
his extraordinary powers ? It must be confessed that the sources of our knowledge
are here very scanty We have to depend almost exclusively on the great man's
late recollection of his parents. And it is evident that with respect to the influence
of the mother more particularly, which is greatest in the first years, even the most
tenacious memory is likely to keep but a faulty record. Let us however turn to
such facts as we can gather.
That a great man's mother has in many cases had something to do with directing
and forming his intelligence and character is known to all readers. The name of
Goethe will at once occur to the student of literature. Biographers are agreed that
this favourite of the gods was indulged at the outset with the very perfection of a
poet's mother. Her bright companionship and her cultivated taste for fiction must
have had a powerful effect in directing the first movements of the boy's imagination.
Scott received a somewhat similar benefit from a mother whose richly stored and active
memory familiarized the frail child with the picturesque traditions of his country.
Lamartine, Kotzebue, and others, dwell lovingly on the first years spent at the feet of
a revered mother. Others who are known to have had a mother of more than
ordinary intelligence and refinement are Bacon, Schiller, Heine, De Quincey, Macaulay,
Lytton, Grote, and Victor Hugo.
At the same time, while no doubt mothers of gifted children have frequently exerted