In a resounding answer to the abiding question of whether genius is born or made, Emerson writes:
There is no choice to genius. A great man does not wake up on some fine morning, and say, “I am full of life, I will go to sea, and find an Antarctic continent: to-day I will square the circle: I will ransack botany, and find a new food for man: I have a new architecture in my mind: I foresee a new mechanic power:” no, but he finds himself in the river of the thoughts and events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities of his contemporaries.
In a sentiment James Baldwin would echo in his own superb meditation on Shakespeare, in which he observed that “the greatest poet in the English language found his poetry where poetry is found: in the lives of the people,”