@Randal'Thor She's one of those Restoration authors who have been on my radar screen for decades but whose works I haven't read, just like John Dryden, John Bunyan, William Congreve and William Wycherley.

@Bookworm Migrate to ELL?

@Tsundoku The use of quotation marks in Abe's story suggests that it is quoting (or parodying) some well-known definition of genius, and identifying the allusion would probably help us appreciate the passage, which makes me think it well suited for Literature

@GarethRees Whether Abe is quoting or parodying a definition of genius would be a valid question here, but I don't see that in the current question.

@Tsundoku The question asks for an interpretation of the sentence in bold, which is the very sentence that might be a quotation or parody

But in any case I don't agree that we should be bound by the rigid parameters of the question. As I argued on meta, when someone asks about the meaning of a passage, there are often literary aspects that contribute to the meaning, but we can't expect the OP to spot these aspects for us: if they could do that, they probably wouldn't need to ask the question