Major Jacobs rode over to see me this afternoon, and we had not long enjoyed the repose of deckchairs and cigarettes under the medlar-tree, and the songs of birds which have begun nesting very early this year, and the quiet rumbling of heavy wagons that pass sometimes in the highroad beyond the garden, when the Reading Society in a body joined us from the house, and I heard my sister give directions for tea to be brought out on to the lawn. The other day I heard Palestrina tell a friend of hers that she nearly always contrived to have some one to tea, or to sit with Hugo in the afternoon, and my sister's satisfaction increases in direct proportion to the number of people who come.
We had hardly finished tea when Frances Taylor said suddenly, yet with the manner of one who has risen to make a speech on a platform, "Was Coleridge a genius or a crank?"
Eliza, assuming the deep frown of learning which is quite common amongst us nowadays, was upon her in a moment, and said emphatically, "How would you define a genius?" The Socratic habit of asking for a definition is one that is always adopted during our discussions, and it is generally demanded in the tone of voice in which one says "check" when playing chess. Frances Taylor was quite ready for Eliza, and said, "Genius, I think, is like some star----"
"Analogy is not argument!" Eliza pounced upon her in the voice that said, "I take your pawn."
It will be noticed, I fear, that in Stowel we are not altogether original in our arguments--many of them can be traced, alas! to the "Encyclopædia Britannica," and they are not often the outcome of original thought.
Frances Taylor's king was once more in check, and she became a little nervous and irritable. "I do not think we need go into definitions," she said; but Eliza had gone indoors to "look it up." She returned presently with a dictionary, walking across the lawn towards us with its pages held close to her near-sighted eyes. "A genius," she began, and then she glanced disparagingly at the title of the book, and said, "according to Webster, that is--but I do not know if we ought to accept him as a final authority--is explained as being 'a peculiar structure of mind which is given by Nature to an individual which qualifies him for a particular employment; a strength of mind, uncommon powers of intellect, particularly the power of invention.' A crank," she went on, "in its modern meaning, seems hardly to have been known to the writer of this dictionary; the word is rendered literally, as meaning 'a bend or turn.'"