Whenever any particular faculty is highly active, while the others are languid, the work, as a work of genius, may be very deficient.

Hence the faculties, in whatever degree they exist, are unquestionably enlarged by _meditation_.

It seems trivial to observe that meditation should precede composition, but we are not always aware of its importance; the truth is, that it is a difficulty unless it be a habit.

We write, and we find we have written ill; we re-write, and feel we have written well: in the second act of composition we have acquired the necessary meditation.

Still we rarely carry on our meditation so far as its practice would enable us.