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LITERARY CHARACTER OF MEN OF GENIUS
Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions
by
ISAAC DISRAELI
A New Edition
Edited by His Son
THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD.
London:
Frederick Warne and Co.,
Bedford Street, Strand.
London:
Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., Printers, Whitefriars.
1850
PREFACE.
The following Preface is of interest for the expression of the author's
own view of these works.
This volume comprises my writings on subjects chiefly of our vernacular
literature. Now collected together, they offer an unity of design, and
afford to the general reader and to the student of classical antiquity
some initiation into our national Literature. It is presumed also, that
they present materials for thinking not solely on literary topics; authors
and books are not alone here treated of,--a comprehensive view of human
nature necessarily enters into the subject from the diversity of the
characters portrayed, through the gradations of their faculties, the
influence of their tastes, and those incidents of their lives prompted by
their fortunes or their passions. This present volume, with its brother
"CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE," now constitute a body of reading which may
awaken knowledge in minds only seeking amusement, and refresh the deeper
studies of the learned by matters not unworthy of their curiosity.
The LITERARY CHARACTER has been an old favourite with many of my
contemporaries departed or now living, who have found it respond to their
own emotions.
THE MISCELLANIES are literary amenities, should they be found to deserve
the title, constructed on that principle early adopted by me, of
interspersing facts with speculation.
THE INQUIRY INTO THE LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST
has surely corrected some general misconceptions, and thrown light on some
obscure points in the history of that anomalous personage. It is a
satisfaction to me to observe, since the publication of this tract, that
while some competent judges have considered the "evidence irresistible," a
material change has occurred in the tone of most writers. The subject
presented an occasion to exhibit a minute picture of that age of
transition in our national history.
The titles of CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS and QUARRELS OF AUTHORS do not wholly
designate the works, which include a considerable portion of literary
history.
Public favour has encouraged the republication of these various works,
which often referred to, have long been difficult to procure. It has been
deferred from time to time with the intention of giving the subjects a
more enlarged investigation; but I have delayed the task till it cannot be
performed. One of the Calamities of Authors falls to my lot, the delicate
organ of vision with me has suffered a singular disorder,[A]--a disorder
which no oculist by his touch can heal, and no physician by his experience
can expound; so much remains concerning the frame of man unrevealed to
man!
In the midst of my library I am as it were distant from it. My unfinished
labours, frustrated designs, remain paralysed. In a joyous heat I wander
no longer through the wide circuit before me. The "strucken deer" has the
sad privilege to weep when he lies down, perhaps no more to course amid
those far-distant woods where once he sought to range.
[Footnote A: I record my literary calamity as a warning to my sedentary
brothers. When my eyes dwell on any object, or whenever they are closed,
there appear on a bluish film a number of mathematical squares, which are
the reflection of the fine network of the retina, succeeded by blotches
which subside into printed characters, apparently forming distinct words,
arranged in straight lines as in a printed book; the monosyllables are
often legible. This is the process of a few seconds. It is remarkable that
the usual power of the eye is not injured or diminished for distant
objects, while those near are clouded over.]
Although thus compelled to refrain in a great measure from all mental
labour, and incapacitated from the use of the pen and the book, these
works, notwithstanding, have received many important corrections, having
been read over to me with critical precision.
Amid this partial darkness I am not left without a distant hope, nor a
present consolation; and to HER who has so often lent to me the light of
her eyes, the intelligence of her voice, and the careful work of her hand,
the author must ever owe "the debt immense" of paternal gratitude.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 3
CHAPTER I.
Of literary characters, and of the lovers of literature and art. 11
CHAPTER II.
Of the adversaries of literary men among themselves.--Matter-of-fact
men, and men of wit.--The political economists.--Of those who
abandon their studies.--Men in office.--The arbiters of public
opinion.--Those who treat the pursuits of literature with levity. 14
CHAPTER III.
Of artists, in the history of men of literary genius.--Their habits
and pursuits analogous.--The nature of their genius is similar in
their distinct works.--Shown by their parallel areas, and by a
common end pursued by both. 20
CHAPTER IV.
Of natural genius.--Minds constitutionally different cannot have an
equal aptitude.--Genius not the result of habit and education.--
Originates in peculiar qualities of the mind.--The predisposition
of genius.--A substitution for the white paper of Locke. 24
CHAPTER V.
Youth of genius.--Its first impulses may be illustrated by its
subsequent actions.--Parents have another association of the man
of genius than we.--Of genius, its first habits.--Its melancholy.
--Its reveries.--Its love of solitude.--Its disposition to repose.
--Of a youth distinguished by his equals.--Feebleness of its first
attempts.--Of genius not discoverable even in manhood.--The
education of the youth may not be that of his genius.--An unsettled
impulse, querulous till it finds its true occupation.--With some,
curiosity as intense a faculty as invention.--What the youth first
applies to is commonly his delight afterwards.--Facts of the
decisive character of genius. 31
CHAPTER VI.
The first studies.--The self-educated are marked by stubborn
peculiarities.--Their errors.--Their improvement from the neglect
or contempt they incur.--The history of self-education in Moses
Mendelssohn.--Friends usually prejudicial in the youth of genius.
--A remarkable interview between Petrarch in his first studies,
and his literary adviser.--Exhortation. 55
CHAPTER VII.
Of the irritability of genius.--Genius in society often in a state
of suffering.--Equality of temper more prevalent among men of
letters.--Of the occupation of making a great name.--Anxieties of
the most successful.--Of the inventors.--Writers of learning.--
Writers of taste. --Artists. 69
CHAPTER VIII.
The spirit of literature and the spirit of society.--The inventors.
--Society offers seduction and not reward to men of genius.--The
notions of persons of fashion of men of genius.--The habitudes of
the man of genius distinct from those of the man of society.--
Study, meditation, and enthusiasm, the progress of genius.--The
disagreement between the men of the world and the literary
character. 89
CHAPTER IX.
Conversations of men of genius.--Their deficient agreeableness may
result from qualities which conduce to their greatness.--Slow-minded
men not the dullest.--The conversationists not the ablest writers.
--Their true excellence in conversation consists of associations
with their pursuits. 99
CHAPTER X.
Literary solitude.--Its necessity.--Its pleasures.--Of visitors
by profession.--Its inconveniences. 109
CHAPTER XI.
The meditations of Genius.--A work on the Art of Meditation not yet
produced.--Predisposing the mind.--Imagination awakens imagination.
--Generating feelings by music.--Slight habits.--Darkness and
silence, by suspending the exercise of our senses, increase the
vivacity of our conceptions.--The arts of memory.--Memory the
foundation of genius.--Inventions by several to preserve their own
moral and literary character.--And to assist their studies.--The
meditations of genius depend on habit.--Of the night-time.--A
day of meditation should precede a day of composition.--Works of
magnitude from slight conceptions.--Of thoughts never written.--The
art of meditation exercised at all hours and places.--Continuity of
attention the source of philosophical discoveries. --Stillness of
meditation the first state of existence in genius. 116
CHAPTER XII.
The enthusiasm of genius.--A state of mind resembling a waking
dream distinct from reverie.--The ideal presence distinguished
from the real presence.--The senses are really affected in the
ideal world, proved by a variety of instances.--Of the rapture
or sensation of deep study in art, science, and literature.
--Of perturbed feelings, in delirium.--In extreme endurance
of attention.--And in visionary illusions.--Enthusiasts in
literature and art.--Of their self-immolations. 136
CHAPTER XIII.
Of the jealousy of genius.--Jealousy often proportioned to the
degree of genius.--A perpetual fever among authors and artists.
--Instances of its incredible excess among brothers and
benefactors.--Of a peculiar species, where the fever consumes
the sufferer without its malignancy. 154
CHAPTER XIV.
Want of mutual esteem among men of genius often originates in
a deficiency of analogous ideas.--It is not always envy or
jealousy which induces men of genius to undervalue each other. 159
CHAPTER XV.
Self-praise of genius.--The love of praise instinctive in the
nature of genius.--A high opinion of themselves necessary for
their great designs.--The ancients openly claimed their own
praise.--And several moderns.--An author knows more of his merits
than his readers.--And less of his defects.--Authors versatile
in their admiration and their malignity. 162
CHAPTER XVI.
The domestic life of genius.--Defects of great compositions
attributed to domestic infelicities.--The home of the literary
character should be the abode of repose and silence.--Of the
father.--Of the mother.--Of family genius.--Men of genius not
more respected than other men in their domestic circle.--The
cultivators of science and art do not meet on equal terms with
others, in domestic life.--Their neglect of those around them.
--Often accused of imaginary crimes. 173
CHAPTER XVII.
The poverty of literary men.--Poverty, a relative quality.--Of
the poverty of literary men in what degree desirable.--Extreme
poverty.--Task-work.--Of gratuitous works.--A project to provide
against the worst state of poverty among literary men. 186
CHAPTER XVIII.
The matrimonial state of literature.--Matrimony said not to be
well-suited to the domestic life of genius.--Celibacy a concealed
cause of the early querulousness of men of genius.--Of unhappy
unions.--Not absolutely necessary that the wife should be a
literary woman.--Of the docility and susceptibility of the higher
female character.--A picture of a literary wife. 198
CHAPTER XIX.
Literary friendships.--In early life.--Different from those of
men of the world.--They suffer in unrestrained communication of
their ideas, and bear reprimands and exhortations.--Unity of
feelings.--A sympathy not of manners but of feelings.--Admit of
dissimilar characters.--Their peculiar glory.--Their sorrow. 209
CHAPTER XX.
The literary and the personal character.--The personal
dispositions of an author may be the reverse of those which
appear in his writings.--Erroneous conceptions of the character
of distant authors.--Paradoxical appearances in the history of
genius.--Why the character of the man may be opposite to that
of his writings. 217
CHAPTER XXI.
The man of letters.--Occupies an intermediate station between
authors and readers.--His solitude described.--Often the father
of genius.--Atticus, a man of letters of antiquity.--The perfect
character of a modern man of letters exhibited in Peiresc.--
Their utility to authors and artists. 226
CHAPTER XXII.
Literary old age still learning.--Influence of late studies in
life.--Occupations in advanced age of the literary character.
--Of literary men who have died at their studies. 238
CHAPTER XXIII.
Universality of genius.--Limited notion of genius entertained
by the ancients.--Opposite faculties act with diminished force.
--Men of genius excel only in a single art. 244
CHAPTER XXIV.
Literature an avenue to glory.--An intellectual nobility not
chimerical, but created by public opinion.--Literary honours
of various nations.--Local associations with the memory of the
man of genius. 248
CHAPTER XXV.
Influence of authors on society, and of society on authors.
--National tastes a source of literary prejudices.--True
genius always the organ of its nation.--Master-writers preserve
the distinct national character.--Genius the organ of the state
of the age.--Causes of its suppression in a people.--Often
invented, but neglected.--The natural gradations of genius.--Men
of genius produce their usefulness in privacy--The public mind
is now the creation of the public writer.--Politicians affect to
deny this principle.--Authors stand between the governors and
the governed.--A view of the solitary author in his study.--They
create an epoch in history.--Influence of popular authors.--The
immortality of thought.--The family of genius illustrated by
their genealogy. 258
LITERARY MISCELLANIES.
Miscellanists 281
Prefaces 286
Style 291
Goldsmith and Johnson 294
Self-characters 295
On reading 298
On habituating ourselves to an individual pursuit 302
On novelty in literature 305
Vers de Societe 308
The genius of Moliere 310
The sensibility of Racine 325
Of Sterne 332
Hume, Robertson, and Birch 340
Of voluminous works incomplete by the deaths of the authors 350
Of domestic novelties at first condemned 355
Domesticity; or a dissertation on servants 364
Printed letters in the vernacular idiom 375
CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST.
Advertisement 383
Of the first modern assailants of the character of
James I., Burnet, Bolingbroke and Pope, Harris, Macaulay,
and Walpole 386
His pedantry 388
His polemical studies 389
--how these were political 392
The Hampton Court conference 393
Of some of his writings 398
Popular superstitions of the age 400
The King's habits of life those of a man of letters 402
Of the facility and copiousness of his composition 404
Of his eloquence 405
Of his wit 406
Specimens of his humour, and observations on human life 407
Some evidences of his sagacity in the discovery of truth 410
Of his "Basilicon Doron" 413
Of his idea of a tyrant and a king 414
Advice to Prince Henry in the choice of his servants
and associates 415
Describes the Revolutionists of his time 416
Of the nobility of Scotland 417
Of colonising _ib._
Of merchants 418
Regulations for the prince's manners and habits _ib._
Of his idea of the royal prerogative 421
The lawyers' idea of the same _ib._
Of his elevated conception of the kingly character 425
His design in issuing "The Book of Sports" for the Sabbath-day 426
The Sabbatarian controversy 428
The motives of his aversion to war 430
James acknowledges his dependence on the Commons; their conduct 431
Of certain scandalous chronicles 434
A picture of the age from a manuscript of the times 437
Anecdotes of the manners of the age 441
James I. discovers the disorders and discontents of a peace
of more than twenty years 449
The King's private life in his occasional retirements 450
A detection of the discrepancies of opinion among the
decriers of James I 451
Summary of his character 455
TO
ROBERT SOUTHEY, LL.D.,
&c. &c. &c.
In dedicating this Work to one of the most eminent literary characters of
the age, I am experiencing a peculiar gratification, in which few, perhaps
none, of my contemporaries can participate; for I am addressing him, whose
earliest effusions attracted my regard, near half a century past; and
during that awful interval of time--for fifty years is a trial of life of
whatever may be good in us--you have multiplied your talents, and have
never lost a virtue.
When I turn from the uninterrupted studies of your domestic solitude to
our metropolitan authors, the contrast, if not encouraging, is at least
extraordinary. You are not unaware that the revolutions of Society have
operated on our literature, and that new classes of readers have called
forth new classes of writers. The causes and the consequences of the
present state of this fugitive literature might form an inquiry which
would include some of the important topics which concern the PUBLIC MIND,
--but an inquiry which might be invidious shall not disturb a page
consecrated to the record of excellence. They who draw their inspiration
from the hour must not, however, complain if with that hour they pass
away.
I. DISRAELI.
INTRODUCTION.
For the fifth time I revise a subject which has occupied my inquiries from
early life, with feelings still delightful, and an enthusiasm not wholly
diminished.
Had not the principle upon which this work is constructed occurred to me
in my youth, the materials which illustrate the literary character could
never have been brought together. It was in early life that I conceived
the idea of pursuing the history of genius by the similar events which had
occurred to men of genius. Searching into literary history for the
literary character formed a course of experimental philosophy in which
every new essay verified a former trial, and confirmed a former truth. By
the great philosophical principle of induction, inferences were deduced
and results established, which, however vague and doubtful in speculation,
are irresistible when the appeal is made to facts as they relate to
others, and to feelings which must be decided on as they are passing in
our own breast.
It is not to be inferred from what I have here stated that I conceive that
any single man of genius will resemble every man of genius; for not only
man differs from man, but varies from himself in the different stages of
human life. All that I assert is, that every man of genius will discover,
sooner or later, that he belongs to the brotherhood of his class, and that
he cannot escape from certain habits, and feelings, and disorders, which
arise from the same temperament and sympathies, and are the necessary
consequence of occupying the same position, and passing through the same
moral existence. Whenever we compare men of genius with each other, the
history of those who are no more will serve as a perpetual commentary on
our contemporaries. There are, indeed, secret feelings which their
prudence conceals, or their fears obscure, or their modesty shrinks from,
or their pride rejects; but I have sometimes imagined that I have held
the clue as they have lost themselves in their own labyrinth. I know
that many, and some of great celebrity, have sympathised with the
feelings which inspired these volumes; nor, while I have elucidated the
idiosyncrasy of genius, have I less studied the habits and characteristics
of the lovers of literature.
It has been considered that the subject of this work might have been
treated with more depth of metaphysical disquisition; and there has since
appeared an attempt to combine with this investigation the medical
science. A work, however, should be judged by its design and its
execution, and not by any preconceived notion of what it ought to be
according to the critic, rather than the author. The nature of this work
is dramatic rather than metaphysical. It offers a narration or a
description; a conversation or a monologue; an incident or a scene.
Perhaps I have sometimes too warmly apologised for the infirmities of men
of genius. From others we may hourly learn to treat with levity the man of
genius because he is _only_ such. Perhaps also I may have been too fond of
the subject, which has been for me an old and a favourite one--I may have
exalted the literary character beyond the scale by which society is
willing to fix it. Yet what is this Society, so omnipotent, so all
judicial? The society of to-day was not the society of yesterday. Its
feelings, its thoughts, its manners, its rights, its wishes, and its
wants, are different and are changed: alike changed or alike created by
those very literary characters whom it rarely comprehends and often would
despise. Let us no longer look upon this retired and peculiar class as
useless members of our busy race. There are mental as well as material
labourers. The first are not less necessary; and as they are much rarer,
so are they more precious. These are they whose "published labours" have
benefited mankind--these are they whose thoughts can alone rear that
beautiful fabric of social life, which it is the object of all good men to
elevate or to support. To discover truth and to maintain it,--to develope
the powers, to regulate the passions, to ascertain the privileges of man,
--such have ever been, and such ever ought to be, the labours of AUTHORS!
Whatever we enjoy of political and private happiness, our most necessary
knowledge as well as our most refined pleasures, are alike owing to this
class of men; and of these, some for glory, and often from benevolence,
have shut themselves out from the very beings whom they love, and for whom
they labour.
Upwards of forty years have elapsed since, composed in a distant county,
and printed at a provincial press, I published "An Essay on the Manners
and Genius of the Literary Character." To my own habitual and inherent
defects were superadded those of my youth. The crude production was,
however, not ill received, for the edition disappeared, and the subject
was found more interesting than the writer.
During a long interval of twenty years, this little work was often
recalled to my recollection by several, and by some who have since
obtained celebrity. They imagined that their attachment to literary
pursuits had been strengthened even by so weak an effort. An extraordinary
circumstance concurred with these opinions. A copy accidentally fell into
my hands which had formerly belonged to the great poetical genius of our
times; and the singular fact, that it had been more than once read by him,
and twice in two subsequent years at Athens, in 1810 and 1811, instantly
convinced me that the volume deserved my renewed attention.
It was with these feelings that I was again strongly attracted to a
subject from which, indeed, during the course of a studious life, it
had never been long diverted. The consequence of my labours was the
publication, in 1818, of an octavo volume, under the title of "The
Literary Character, illustrated by the History of Men of Genius, drawn
from their own feelings and confessions."
In the preface to this edition, in mentioning the fact respecting Lord
Byron, which had been the immediate cause of its publication, I added
these words: "I tell this fact assuredly not from any little vanity which
it may appear to betray;--for the truth is, were I not as liberal and as
candid in respect to my own productions, as I hope I am to others, I could
not have been gratified by the present circumstance; for the marginal
notes of the noble author convey no flattery;--but amidst their pungency,
and sometimes their truth, the circumstance that a man of genius could
reperuse this slight effusion at two different periods of his life, was a
sufficient authority, at least for an author, to return it once more to
the anvil."
Some time after the publication of this edition of "The Literary
Character," which was in fact a new work, I was shown, through the
kindness of an English gentleman lately returned from Italy, a copy of it,
which had been given to him by Lord Byron, and which again contained
marginal notes by the noble author. These were peculiarly interesting, and
were chiefly occasioned by observations on his character, which appeared
in the work.
In 1822 I published a new edition of this work, greatly enlarged, and in
two volumes. I took this opportunity of inserting the manuscript Notes of
Lord Byron, with the exception of one, which, however characteristic of
the amiable feelings of the noble poet, and however gratifying to my own,
I had no wish to obtrude on the notice of the public.[A]
[Footnote A: As everything connected with the reading of a mind like Lord
BYRON'S interesting to the philosophical inquirer, this note may now be
preserved. On that passage of the Preface of the second Edition which I
have already quoted, his Lordship was thus pleased to write:
"I was wrong, but I was young and petulant, and probably wrote down
anything, little thinking that those observations would be betrayed to the
author, whose abilities I have always respected, and whose works in
general I have read oftener than perhaps those of any English author
whatever, except such as treat of Turkey."]
Soon after the publication of this third edition, I received
the following letter from his lordship:--
_"Montenero, Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, June 10, 1822._
"DEAR SIR,--If you will permit me to call you so,--I had some time ago
taken up my pen at Pisa, to thank you for the present of your new edition
of the 'Literary Character,' which has often been to me a consolation, and
always a pleasure. I was interrupted, however, partly by business, and
partly by vexation of different kinds,--for I have not very long ago lost
a child by fever, and I have had a good deal of petty trouble with the
laws of this lawless country, on account of the prosecution of a servant
for an attack upon a cowardly scoundrel of a dragoon, who drew his sword
upon some unarmed Englishmen, and whom I had done the honour to mistake
for an officer, and to treat like a gentleman. He turned out to be
neither,--like many other with medals, and in uniform; but he paid for his
brutality with a severe and dangerous wound, inflicted by nobody knows
whom, for, of three suspected, and two arrested, they have been able to
identify neither; which is strange, since he was wounded in the presence
of thousands, in a public street, during a feast-day and full promenade.
--But to return to things more analogous to the 'Literary Character,' I
wish to say, that had I known that the book was to fall into your hands,
or that the MS. notes you have thought worthy of publication would have
attracted your attention, I would have made them more copious, and perhaps
not so careless.
"I really cannot know whether I am, or am not, the genius you are pleased
to call me,--but I am very willing to put up with the mistake, if it be
one. It is a title dearly enough bought by most men, to render it
endurable, even when not quite clearly made out, which it never _can_ be,
till the Posterity, whose decisions are merely dreams to ourselves, have
sanctioned or denied it, while it can touch us no further.
"Mr. Murray is in possession of a MS. memoir of mine (not to be published
till I am in my grave), which, strange as it may seem, I never read over
since it was written, and have no desire to read over again. In it I have
told what, as far as I know, is the _truth_--_not the whole_ truth--for if
I had done so, I must have involved much private, and some dissipated
history: but, nevertheless, nothing but truth, as far as regard for others
permitted it to appear.
"I do not know whether you have seen those MSS.; but, as you are curious
in such things as relate to the human mind, I should feel gratified if you
had. I also sent him (Murray), a few days since, a Common-place Book, by
my friend Lord Clare, containing a few things, which may perhaps aid his
publication in case of his surviving me. If there are any questions which
you would like to ask me, as connected with your philosophy of the
literary mind (_if_ mine be a literary mind), I will answer them fairly,
or give a reason for _not_, good--bad--or indifferent. At present, I am
paying the penalty of having helped to spoil the public taste; for, as
long as I wrote in the false exaggerated style of youth and the times in
which we live, they applauded me to the very echo; and within these few
years, when I have endeavoured at better things, and written what I
suspect to have the principle of duration in it: the Church, the
Chancellor, and all men, even to my grand patron, Francis Jeffrey, Esq.,
of the _Edinburgh Review_, have risen up against me, and my later
publications. Such is Truth! men dare not look her in the face, except by
degrees; they mistake her for a Gorgon, instead of knowing her to be
Minerva. I do not mean to apply this mythological simile to my own
endeavours, but I have only to turn over a few pages of your volumes to
find innumerable and far more illustrious instances. It is lucky that I am
of a temper not to be easily turned aside, though by no means difficult to
irritate. But I am making a dissertation, instead of writing a letter. I
write to you from the Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, with the islands of Elba
and Corsica visible from my balcony, and my old friend the Mediterranean
rolling blue at my feet. As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for
Nature, I can partly soften or subdue my other passions, and resist or
endure those of others.
"I have the honour to be, truly,
"Your obliged and faithful servant,
"NOEL BYRON.
"To I. D'Israeli, Esq."
The ill-starred expedition to Greece followed this letter.
* * * * *
This work, conceived in youth, executed by the research of manhood, and
associated with the noblest feelings of our nature, is an humble but
fervent tribute, offered to the memory of those Master Spirits from whose
labours, as BURKE eloquently describes, "their country receives permanent
service: those who know how to make the silence of their closets more
beneficial to the world than all the noise and bustle of courts, senates,
and camps."
LITERARY CHARACTER.
CHAPTER I.
Of Literary Characters, and of the Lovers of Literature and Art.
Diffused over enlightened Europe, an order of men has arisen, who,
uninfluenced by the interests or the passions which give an impulse to the
other classes of society, are connected by the secret links of congenial
pursuits, and, insensibly to themselves, are combining in the same common
labours, and participating in the same divided glory. In the metropolitan
cities of Europe the same authors are now read, and the same opinions
become established: the Englishman is familiar with Machiavel and
Montesquieu; the Italian and the Frenchman with Bacon and Locke; and the
same smiles and tears are awakened on the banks of the Thames, of the
Seine, or of the Guadalquivir, by Shakspeare, Moliere, and Cervantes--
Contemporains de tous les hommes,
Et citoyens de tous les lieux.
A khan of Tartary admired the wit of Moliere, and discovered the Tartuffe
in the Crimea; and had this ingenious sovereign survived the translation
which he ordered, the immortal labour of the comic satirist of France
might have laid the foundation of good taste even among the Turks and the
Tartars. We see the Italian Pignotti referring to the opinion of an
English critic, Lord Bolingbroke, for decisive authority on the peculiar
characteristics of the historian Guicciardini: the German Schlegel writes
on our Shakspeare like a patriot; and while the Italians admire the noble
scenes which our Flaxman has drawn from their great poet, they have
rejected the feeble attempts of their native artists. Such is the wide and
the perpetual influence of this living intercourse of literary minds.
Scarcely have two centuries elapsed since the literature of every nation
was limited to its fatherland, and men of genius long could only hope for
the spread of their fame in the single language of ancient Rome; which for
them had ceased to be natural, and could never be popular. It was in the
intercourse of the wealth, the power, and the novel arts of the nations of
Europe, that they learned each other's languages; and they discovered
that, however their manners varied as they arose from their different
customs, they participated in the same intellectual faculties, suffered
from the same wants, and were alive to the same pleasures; they perceived
that there were no conventional fashions, nor national distinctions, in
abstract truths and fundamental knowledge. A new spirit seems to bring
them nearer to each other: and, as if literary Europe were intent to form
but one people out of the populace of mankind, they offer their reciprocal
labours; they pledge to each other the same opinions; and that knowledge
which, like a small river, takes its source from one spot, at length
mingles with the ocean-stream common to them all.
But those who stand connected with this literary community are not always
sensible of the kindred alliance; even a genius of the first order has not
always been aware that he is the founder of a society, and that there will
ever be a brotherhood where there is a father-genius.
These literary characters are partially, and with a melancholy colouring,
exhibited by JOHNSON. "To talk in private, to think in solitude, to
inquire or to answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar. He wanders
about the world without pomp or terror; and is neither known nor valued
but by men like himself." Thus thought this great writer during those sad
probationary years of genius when
Slow rises worth, by _poverty_ depress'd;
not yet conscious that he himself was devoting his days to cast the minds
of his contemporaries and of the succeeding age in the mighty mould of his
own; JOHNSON was of that order of men whose individual genius becomes that
of a people. A prouder conception rose in the majestic mind of MILTON, of
"that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise which God and good men have
consented shall be the reward of those whose PUBLISHED LABOURS advanced
the good of mankind."
The LITERARY CHARACTER is a denomination which, however vague, defines the
pursuits of the individual, and separates him from other professions,
although it frequently occurs that he is himself a member of one.
Professional characters are modified by the change of manners, and are
usually national; while the literary character, from the objects in which
it concerns itself, retains a more permanent, and necessarily a more
independent nature.
Formed by the same habits, and influenced by the same motives,
notwithstanding the contrast of talents and tempers, and the remoteness of
times and places, the literary character has ever preserved among its
followers the most striking family resemblance. The passion for study, the
delight in books, the desire of solitude and celebrity, the obstructions
of human life, the character of their pursuits, the uniformity of their
habits, the triumphs and the disappointments of literary glory, were as
truly described by CICERO and the younger PLINY as by PETRARCH and
ERASMUS, and as they have been by HUME and GIBBON. And this similarity,
too, may equally be remarked with respect to that noble passion of the
lovers of literature and of art for collecting together their mingled
treasures; a thirst which was as insatiable in ATTICUS and PEIRESC as in
our CRACHERODE and TOWNLEY.[A] We trace the feelings of our literary
contemporaries in all ages, and among every people who have ranked with
nations far advanced in civilization; for among these may be equally
observed both the great artificers of knowledge and those who preserve
unbroken the vast chain of human acquisitions. The one have stamped the
images of their minds on their works, and the others have preserved the
circulation of this intellectual coinage, this
--Gold of the dead,
Which Time does still disperse, but not devour.
[Footnote A: The Rev. C.M. Cracherode bequeathed at his death, in 1799, to
the British Museum, the large collection of literature, art, and virtu he
had employed an industrious life in collecting. His books numbered nearly
4500 volumes, many of great rarity and value. His drawings, many by early
Italian masters, and all rare or curious, were deposited in the print-room
of the same establishment; his antiquities, &c. were in a similar way
added to the other departments. The "Townley Gallery" of classic sculpture
was purchased of his executors by Government for 28,200_l_. It had been
collected with singular taste and judgment, as well as some amount of good
fortune also; Townley resided at Rome during the researches on the site of
Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli; and he had for aids and advisers Sir William
Hamilton, Gavin Hamilton, and other active collectors; and was the friend
and correspondent of D'Haucarville and Winckelmann.--ED.]
CHAPTER II.
Of the Adversaries of Literary Men among themselves.--Matter-of-fact
Men, and Men of Wit.--The Political Economist.--Of those who abandon
their studies.--Men in office.--The arbiters of public opinion.--Those
who treat the pursuits of literature with levity.
The pursuits of literature have been openly or insidiously lowered by
those literary men who, from motives not always difficult to penetrate,
are eager to confound the ranks in the republic of letters, maliciously
conferring the honours of authorship on that "Ten Thousand" whose recent
list is not so much a muster-roll of heroes as a table of population.[A]
Matter-of-fact men, or men of knowledge, and men of wit and taste, were
long inimical to each other's pursuits.[B] The Royal Society in its origin
could hardly support itself against the ludicrous attacks of literary
men,[C] and the Antiquarian Society has afforded them amusement.[D] Such
partial views have ceased to contract the understanding. Science yields a
new substance to literature; literature combines new associations for the
votaries of knowledge. There is no subject in nature, and in the history
of man, which will not associate with our feelings and our curiosity,
whenever genius extends its awakening hand. The antiquary, the naturalist,
the architect, the chemist, and even writers on medical topics, have in
our days asserted their claims, and discovered their long-interrupted
relationship with the great family of genius and literature.
[Footnote A: We have a Dictionary of "Ten Thousand living Authors" of our
own nation. The alphabet is fatal by its juxtapositions. In France, before
the Revolution, they counted about twenty thousand writers. When David
would have his people numbered, Joab asked, "Why doth my lord delight in
this?" In political economy, the population returns may be useful,
provided they be correct; but in the literary republic, its numerical
force diminishes the strength of the empire. "There you are numbered, we
had rather you were weighed." Put aside the puling infants of literature,
of whom such a mortality occurs in its nurseries; such as the writers of
the single sermon, the single law-tract, the single medical dissertation,
&c.; all writers whose subject is single, without being singular; count
for nothing the inefficient mob of mediocrists; and strike out our
literary _charlatans_; and then our alphabet of men of genius will not
consist, as it now does, of the four-and-twenty letters.]
[Footnote B: The cause is developed in the chapter on "Want of Mutual
Esteem."]
[Footnote C: See BUTLER, in his "Elephant in the Moon." SOUTH, in his
oration at the opening of the theatre at Oxford, passed this bitter
sarcasm on the naturalists,--"_Mirantur nihil nisi pulices, pediculos--et
se ipsos_;"--nothing they admire but fleas, lice, and themselves! The
illustrious SLOANE endured a long persecution from the bantering humour of
Dr. KING. One of the most amusing declaimers against what he calls _les
Sciences des faux Scavans_ is Father MALEBRANCHE; he is far more severe
than Cornelius Agrippa, and he long preceded ROUSSEAU, so famous for his
invective against the sciences. The seventh chapter of his fourth book is
an inimitable satire. "The principal excuse," says he, "which engages men
in _false studies_, is, that they have attached the _idea of learned_
where they should not." Astronomy, antiquarianism, history, ancient
poetry, and natural history, are all mowed down by his metaphysical
scythe. When we become acquainted with the _idea_ Father Malebranche
attaches to the term _learned_, we understand him--and we smile.]
[Footnote D: See the chapter on "Puck the Commentator," in the
"Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii.; also p. 304 of the same volume.]
A new race of jargonists, the barbarous metaphysicians of political
economy, have struck at the essential existence of the productions of
genius in literature and art; for, appreciating them by their own
standard, they have miserably degraded the professors. Absorbed in the
contemplation of material objects, and rejecting whatever does not enter
into their own restricted notion of "utility," these cold arithmetical
seers, with nothing but millions in their imagination; and whose choicest
works of art are spinning-jennies, have valued the intellectual tasks of
the library and the studio by "the demand and the supply." They have sunk
these pursuits into the class of what they term "unproductive labour;" and
by another result of their line and level system, men of letters, with
some other important characters, are forced down into the class "of
buffoons, singers, opera-dancers, &c." In a system of political economy it
has been discovered that "that _unprosperous race_ of men, called _men of
letters_, must _necessarily_ occupy their present _forlorn state_ in
society much as formerly, when a scholar and a beggar seem to have been
terms very nearly synonymous."[A] In their commercial, agricultural, and
manufacturing view of human nature, addressing society by its most
pressing wants and its coarsest feelings, these theorists limit the moral
and physical existence of man by speculative tables of population, planing
and levelling society down in their carpentry of human nature. They would
yoke and harness the loftier spirits to one common and vulgar destination.
Man is considered only as he wheels on the wharf, or as he spins in the
factory; but man, as a recluse being of meditation, or impelled to action
by more generous passions, has been struck out of the system of our
political economists. It is, however, only among their "unproductive
labourers" that we shall find those men of leisure, whose habitual
pursuits are consumed in the development of thought and the gradual
accessions of knowledge; those men of whom the sage of Judea declares,
that "It is he who hath little business who shall become wise: how can he
get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and whose talk is of bullocks? But
THEY,"--the men of leisure and study,--"WILL MAINTAIN THE STATE OF THE
WORLD!" The prosperity and the happiness of a people include something
more evident and more permanent than "the Wealth of a Nation."[B]
[Footnote A: "Wealth of Nations," i. 182.]
[Footnote B: Since this murmur has been uttered against the degrading
views of some of those theorists, it afforded me pleasure to observe that
Mr. Malthus has fully sanctioned its justness. On this head, at least, Mr.
Malthus has amply confuted his stubborn and tasteless brothers. Alluding
to the productions of genius, this writer observes, that, "to estimate the
value of NEWTON'S discoveries, or the delight communicated by SHAKSPEAKE
and MILTON, by the _price_ at which their works have sold, would be but a
poor measure of the degree in which they have elevated and enchanted their
country."--_Principles of Pol. Econ._ p. 48. And hence he acknowledges,
that "_some unproductive labour is of much more use and importance_ than
productive labour, but is incapable of being the subject of the gross
calculations which relate to national wealth; contributing to _other
sources of happiness_ besides those which are derived from matter."
Political economists would have smiled with contempt on the querulous
PORSON, who once observed, that "it seemed to him very hard, that with all
his critical knowledge of Greek, he could not get a hundred pounds." They
would have demonstrated to the learned Grecian, that this was just as it
ought to be; the same occurrence had even happened to HOMER in his own
country, where Greek ought to have fetched a higher price than in England;
but, that both might have obtained this hundred pounds, had the Grecian
bard and the Greek professor been employed at the same stocking-frame
together, instead of the "Iliad."]
There is a more formidable class of men of genius who are heartless to the
interests of literature. Like CORNELIUS AGRIPPA, who wrote on "the vanity
of the arts and sciences," many of these are only tracing in the arts
which they have abandoned their own inconstant tempers, their feeble
tastes, and their disordered judgments. But, with others of this class,
study has usually served as the instrument, not as the object, of their
ascent; it was the ladder which they once climbed, but it was not the
eastern star which guided and inspired. Such literary characters were
WARBURTON,[A] WATSON, and WILKES, who abandoned their studies when their
studies had served a purpose.
[Footnote A: For a full disquisition of the character and career of
Warburton, see the essay in "Quarrels of Authors."]
WATSON gave up his pursuits in chemistry the instant he obtained their
limited reward, and the laboratory closed when the professorship was
instituted. Such was the penurious love he bore for the science which he
had adopted, that the extraordinary discoveries of thirty years subsequent
to his own first essays could never excite even an idle inquiry. He tells
us that he preferred "his larches to his laurels:" the wretched jingle
expressed the mere worldliness that dictated it. In the same spirit of
calculation with which he had at first embraced science and literature, he
abandoned them; and his ingenuous confession is a memorable example of
that egotistic pride which betrayed in the literary character the creature
of selfism and political ambition.
We are accustomed to consider WILKES merely as a political adventurer, and
it may surprise to find this "city chamberlain" ranked among professed
literary characters: yet in his variable life there was a period when he
cherished the aspirations of a votary. Once he desired Lloyd to announce
the edition of Churchill, which he designed to enrich by a commentary; and
his correspondence on this subject, which has never appeared, would, as he
himself tells us, afford a variety of hints and communications. Wilkes was
then warmed by literary glory; for on his retirement into Italy, he
declared, "I mean to give myself entirely to our friend's work, and to my
History of England. I wish to equal the dignity of Livy: I am sure the
greatness and majesty of our nation demand an historian equal to him."
They who have only heard of the intriguing demagogue, and witnessed the
last days of the used voluptuary, may hardly imagine that Wilkes had ever
cherished such elevated projects; but mob-politics made this adventurer's
fortune, which fell to the lot of an epicurean: and the literary glory he
once sought he lived to ridicule, in the immortal diligence of Lord
Chatham and of Gibbon. Dissolving life away, and consuming all his
feelings on himself, Wilkes left his nearest relatives what he left the
world--the memory of an anti-social being! This wit, who has bequeathed to
us no wit; this man of genius, who has formed no work of genius; this
bold advocate for popular freedom, who sunk his patriotism in the
chamberlainship; was indeed desirous of leaving behind him some trace of
the life of an _escroc_ in a piece of autobiography, which, for the
benefit of the world, has been thrown to the flames.
Men who have ascended into office through its gradations, or have been
thrown upwards by accident, are apt to view others in a cloud of passions
and politics. They who once commanded us by their eloquence, come at
length to suspect the eloquent; and in their "pride of office" would now
drive us by that single force of despotism which is the corruption of
political power. Our late great Minister, Pitt, has been reproached even
by his friends for the contemptuous indifference with which he treated
literary men. Perhaps BURKE himself, long a literary character, might
incur some portion of this censure, by involving the character itself in
the odium of a monstrous political sect. These political characters
resemble Adrian VI., who, obtaining the tiara as the reward of his
studies, afterwards persecuted literary men, and, say the Italians,
dreaded lest his brothers might shake the Pontificate itself.[A]
Worst fares it with authors when minds of this cast become the arbiters of
public opinion; for the greatest of writers may unquestionably be forced
into ridiculous attitudes by the well-known artifices practised by modern
criticism. The elephant, no longer in his forest struggling with his
hunters, but falling entrapped by a paltry snare, comes at length, in the
height of ill-fortune, to dance on heated iron at the bidding of the
pantaloon of a fair. Whatever such critics may plead to mortify the
vanity of authors, at least it requires as much vanity to give effect to
their own polished effrontery.[B] Scorn, sarcasm, and invective, the
egotism of the vain, and the irascibility of the petulant, where they
succeed in debilitating genius of the consciousness of its powers, are
practising the witchery of that ancient superstition of "tying the knot,"
which threw the youthful bridegroom into utter despair by its ideal
forcefulness.[C]
[Footnote A: It has been suspected that Adrian VI. has been calumniated,
for that this pontiff was only too sudden to begin the reform he
meditated. But Adrian VI. was a scholastic whose austerity turned away
with contempt from all ancient art, and was no brother to contemporary
genius. He was one of the _cui bono_ race, a branch of our political
economists. When they showed him the Laocooen, Adrian silenced their
raptures by the frigid observation, that all such things were _idola
antiquorum_: and ridiculed the _amena letteratura_ till every man of
genius retreated from his court. Had Adrian's reign extended beyond its
brief period, men of taste in their panic imagined that in his zeal the
Pontiff would have calcined the fine statues of ancient art, to expedite
the edifice of St. Peter.]
[Footnote B: Listen to a confession and a recantation of an illustrious
sinner; the Coryphaeus of the amusing and new-found art, or artifice, of
modern criticism. In the character of BURNS, the Edinburgh Reviewer, with
his peculiar felicity of manner, attacked the character of the man of
genius; but when Mr. Campbell vindicated his immortal brother with all the
inspiration of the family feeling, our critic, who is one of those great
artists who acquire at length the utmost indifference even for their own
works, generously avowed that, "a certain tone of exaggeration is
incidental _we fear to the sort of writing in which we are engaged_.
Reckoning a little too much on the dulness of our readers, we are often
led to _overstate our sentiments_: when a little _controversial warmth_ is
added to a little _love of effect_, an excess of colouring steals over the
canvas, which ultimately offends no eye so much as our own." But what if
this _love of effect_ in the critic has been too often obtained at the
entire cost of the literary characters, the fruits of whose studious days
at this moment lie withering in oblivion, or whose genius the critic has
deterred from pursuing the career it had opened for itself! To have
silenced the learned, and to have terrified the modest, is the barbarous
triumph of a Hun or a Vandal; and the vaunted freedom of the literary
republic departed from us when the vacillating public blindly consecrated
the edicts of the demagogues of literature, whoever they may be.
A reaction appears in the burlesque or bantering spirit. While one faction
drives out another, the abuse of extraordinary powers is equally fatal.
Thus we are consoled while we are afflicted, and we are protected while we
are degraded.]
[Footnote C: _Nouer l'aiguillette_, of which the extraordinary effect is
described by Montaigne, is an Oriental custom still practised.--_Mr.
Hobhouse's Journey through Albania_, p. 528.]
That spirit of levity which would shake the columns of society, by
detracting from or burlesquing the elevating principles which have
produced so many illustrious men, has recently attempted to reduce the
labours of literature to a mere curious amusement: a finished composition
is likened to a skilful game of billiards, or a piece of music finely
executed; and curious researches, to charades and other insignificant
puzzles. With such, an author is an idler who will not be idle, amusing or
fatiguing others who are completely so. The result of a work of genius
is contracted to the art of writing; but this art is only its last
perfection. Inspiration is drawn from a deeper source; enthusiasm is
diffused through contagious pages; and without these movements of the
soul, how poor and artificial a thing is that sparkling composition which
flashes with the cold vibrations of mere art or artifice! We have been
recently told, on critical authority, that "a great genius should never
allow himself to be sensible to his own celebrity, nor deem his pursuits
of much consequence, however important or successful." A sort of catholic
doctrine, to mortify an author into a saint, extinguishing the glorious
appetite of fame by one Lent all the year, and self-flagellation every
day! BUFFON and GIBBON, VOLTAIRE and POPE,[A] who gave to literature
all the cares, the industry, and the glory of their lives, assuredly
were too "sensible to their celebrity, and deemed their pursuits of
much consequence," particularly when "important and successful." The
self-possession of great authors sustains their own genius by a sense of
their own glory.
Such, then, are some of the domestic treasons of the literary character
against literature--"Et tu, Brute!" But the hero of literature outlives
his assassins, and might address them in that language of poetry
and affection with which a Mexican king reproached his traitorous
counsellors:--"You were the feathers of my wings, and the eyelids of my
eyes."
[Footnote A: The claims of Pope to the title of a great poet were denied
in the days of Byron; and occasioned a warm and noble defence of him by
that poet. It has since been found necessary to do the same for Byron,
whom some transcendentalists have attacked.--ED.]
CHAPTER III.
Of artists, in the history of men of literary genius.--Their habits and
pursuits analogous.--The nature of their genius is similar in their
distinct works.--Shown by their parallel eras, and by a common end pursued
by both.
Artists and literary men, alike insulated in their studies, pass through
the same permanent discipline; and thus it has happened that the same
habits and feelings, and the same fortunes, have accompanied men who have
sometimes unhappily imagined their pursuits not to be analogous.
Let the artist share
The palm; he shares the peril, and dejected
Faints o'er the labour unapproved--alas!
Despair and genius!--
The congenial histories of literature and art describe the same periodical
revolutions and parallel eras. After the golden age of Latinity, we
gradually slide into the silver, and at length precipitately descend into
the iron. In the history of painting, after the splendid epoch of Raphael,
Titian, and Correggio, we meet with pleasure the Oarraccis, Domenichino,
Guido, and Albano; as we read Paterculus, Quintilian, Seneca, Juvenal, and
Silius Italicus, after their immortal masters, Cicero, Livy, Virgil, and
Horace.
It is evident that MILTON, MICHAEL ANGELO, and HANDEL, belong to the same
order of minds; the same imaginative powers, and the same sensibility, are
only operating with different materials. LANZI, the delightful historian
of the _Storia Pittorica_, is prodigal of his comparisons of the painters
with the poets; his delicacy of perception discerned the refined analogies
which for ever unite the two sisters, and he fondly dwelt on the
transplanted flowers of the two arts: "_Chi sente che sia Tibullo nel
poetare sente chi sia Andrea (del Sarto) nel dipingere_;" he who feels
what TIBULLUS is in poetry, feels what ANDREA is in painting. MICHAEL
ANGELO, from his profound conception of the terrible and the difficult in
art, was called its DANTE; from the Italian poet the Italian sculptor
derived the grandeur of his ideas; and indeed the visions of the bard had
deeply nourished the artist's imagination; for once he had poured about
the margins of his own copy their ethereal inventions, in the rapid
designs of his pen. And so Bellori informs us of a very curious volume in
manuscript, composed by RUBENS, which contained, among other topics
concerning art, descriptions of the passions and actions of men, drawn
from the poets, and demonstrated to the eye by the painters. Here were
battles, shipwrecks, sports, groups, and other incidents, which were
transcribed from Virgil and other poets, and by their side RUBENS had
copied what he had met with on those subjects from Raphael and the
antique.[A]
The poet and the painter are only truly great by the mutual influences of
their studies, and the jealousy of glory has only produced an idle
contest. This old family-quarrel for precedence was renewed by our
estimable President, in his brilliant "Rhymes on Art;" where he maintains
that "the narrative of an action is not comparable to the action itself
before the eyes;" while the enthusiast BARRY considers painting "as poetry
realised."[B] This error of genius, perhaps first caught from Richardson's
bewildering pages, was strengthened by the extravagant principle adopted
by Darwin, who, to exalt his solitary talent of descriptive poetry,
asserted that "the essence of poetry was picture." The philosophical
critic will find no difficulty in assigning to each, sister-art her
distinct province; and it is only a pleasing delirium, in the enthusiasm
of artists, which has confused the boundaries of these arts. The dread
pathetic story of Dante's "Ugolino," under the plastic hand of Michael
Angelo, formed the subject of a basso-relievo; and Reynolds, with his
highest effort, embodied the terrific conception of the poet as much as
his art permitted: but assuredly both these great artists would never have
claimed the precedence of the Dantesc genius, and might have hesitated at
the rivalry.
[Footnote A: Rubens was an ardent collector of works of antique art; and
in the "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 398, will be found an
interesting account of his museum at Antwerp.--ED.]
[Footnote B: The late Sir Martin Archer Shee, P.R.A. This accomplished
artist, who possessed a large amount of poetical and literary power, asks,
"What is there of _intellectual_ in the operations of the poet which the
painter does not equal? What is there of _mechanical_ which he does not
surpass? The advantage which poetry possesses over painting in continued
narration and successive impression, cannot be advanced as a peculiar
merit of the poet, since it results from the nature of language, and is
common to prose." Poetry he values as the earliest of arts, painting as
the latest and most refined.--ED.]
Who has not heard of that one common principle which unites the
intellectual arts, and who has not felt that the nature of their genius is
similar in their distinct works? Hence curious inquiries could never
decide whether the group of the Laocooen in sculpture preceded or was
borrowed from that in poetry. Lessing conjectures that the sculptor copied
the poet. It is evident that the agony of Laocooen was the common end where
the sculptor and the poet were to meet; and we may observe that the
artists in marble and in verse skilfully adapted their variations to their
respective art: the one having to prefer the _nude_, rejected the veiling
fillet from the forehead, that he might not conceal its deep expression,
and the drapery of the sacrificial robe, that he might display the human
form in visible agony; but the other, by the charm of verse, could invest
the priest with the pomp of the pontifical robe without hiding from us the
interior sufferings of the human victim. We see they obtained by different
means, adapted to their respective arts, that common end which each
designed; but who will decide which invention preceded the other, or who
was the greater artist?
This approximation of men apparently of opposite pursuits is so natural,
that when Gesner, in his inspiring letter on landscape-painting,[A]
recommends to the young painter a constant study of poetry and literature,
the impatient artist is made to exclaim, "Must we combine with so many
other studies those which belong to literary men? Must we read as well as
paint?" "It is useless to reply to this question; for some important
truths must be instinctively felt, perhaps the fundamental ones in the
arts." A truly imaginative artist, whose enthusiasm was never absent when
he meditated on the art he loved, BARRY, thus vehemently broke forth: "Go
home from the academy, light up your lamps, and exercise yourselves in the
creative part of your art, with Homer, with Livy, and all the great
characters, ancient and modern, for your companions and counsellors." This
genial intercourse of literature with art may be proved by painters who
have suggested subjects to poets, and poets who have selected them for
painters. GOLDSMITH suggested the subject of the tragic and pathetic
picture of Ugolino to the pencil of REYNOLDS.
All the classes of men in society have their peculiar sorrows and
enjoyments, as they have their peculiar habits and characteristics. In
the history of men of genius we may often open the secret story of their
minds, for they have above others the privilege of communicating their
own feelings; and every life of a man of genius, composed by himself,
presents us with the experimental philosophy of the mind. By living with
their brothers, and contemplating their masters, they will judge from
consciousness less erroneously than from discussion; and in forming
comparative views and parallel situations, they will discover certain
habits and feelings, and find these reflected in themselves.
SYDENHAM has beautifully said, "Whoever describes a violet exactly as to
its colour, taste, smell, form, and other properties, will find the
description agree in most particulars with all the violets in the
universe."
[Footnote A: Few writers were so competent to instruct in art as Gesner,
who was not only an author and a poet, but an artist who decorated his
poems by designs as graceful as their subject.--ED.]
CHAPTER IV.
Of natural genius.--Minds constitutionally different cannot have an equal
aptitude.--Genius not the result of habit and education.--Originates in
peculiar qualities of the mind.--The predisposition of genius.--A
substitution for the white paper of Locke.[A]
[Footnote A: In the second edition of this work in 1818, I touched on some
points of this inquiry in the second chapter: I almost despaired to find
any philosopher sympathise with the subject, so invulnerable, they
imagine, are the entrenchments of their theories. I was agreeably
surprised to find these ideas taken up in the _Edinburgh Review_ for
August, 1820, in an entertaining article on Reynolds. I have, no doubt,
profited by the perusal, though this chapter was prepared before I met
with that spirited vindication of "an inherent difference in the organs or
faculties to receive impressions of any kind."]
That faculty in art which individualises the artist, belonging to him and
to no other, and which in a work forms that creative part whose likeness
is not found in any other work--is it inherent in the constitutional
dispositions of the Creator, or can it be formed by patient acquisition?
Astonished at their own silent and obscure progress, some have imagined
that they have formed their genius solely by their own studies; when they
generated, they conceived that they had acquired; and, losing the
distinction between nature and habit, with fatal temerity the idolatry of
philosophy substituted something visible and palpable, yet shaped by the
most opposite fancies, called a Theory, for Nature herself! Men of genius,
whose great occupation is to be conversant with the inspirations of
Nature, made up a factitious one among themselves, and assumed that they
could operate without the intervention of the occult original. But Nature
would not be mocked; and whenever this race of idolaters have worked
without her agency, she has afflicted them with the most stubborn
sterility.
Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our own philosophical
times; ages of genius had passed away, and they left no other record than
their works; no preconcerted theory described the workings of the
imagination to be without imagination, nor did they venture to teach how
to invent invention.
The character of genius, viewed as the effect of habit and education, on
the principle of the equality of the human mind, infers that men have an
equal aptitude for the work of genius: a paradox which, with a more fatal
one, came from the French school, and arose probably from an equivocal
expression.
Locke employed the well-known comparison of the mind with "white paper
void of all characters," to free his famous "Inquiry" from that powerful
obstacle to his system, the absurd belief of "innate ideas," of notions of
objects before objects were presented to observation. Our philosopher
considered that this simple analogy sufficiently described the manner in
which he conceived the impressions of the senses write themselves on the
mind. His French pupils, the amusing Helvetius, or Diderot, for they
were equally concerned in the paradoxical "L'Esprit," inferred that this
blank paper served also as an evidence that men had _an equal aptitude for
genius_, just as the blank paper reflects to us whatever characters we
trace on it. This _equality of minds_ gave rise to the same monstrous
doctrine in the science of metaphysics which that of another verbal
misconception, _the equality of men_, did in that of politics. The
Scottish metaphysicians powerfully combined to illustrate the mechanism of
the mind,--an important and a curious truth; for as rules and principles
exist in the nature of things, and when discovered are only thence drawn
out, genius unconsciously conducts itself by a uniform process; and
when this process had been traced, they inferred that what was done by
some men, under the influence of fundamental laws which regulate the
march of the intellect, must also be in the reach of others, who, in the
same circumstances, apply themselves to the same study. But these
metaphysicians resemble anatomists, under whose knife all men are alike.
They know the structure of the bones, the movement of the muscles, and
where the connecting ligaments lie! but the invisible principle of life
flies from their touch. It is the practitioner on the living body who
studies in every individual that peculiarity of constitution which forms
the idiosyncrasy.
Under the influence of such novel theories of genius, JOHNSON defined it
as "A Mind of large general powers ACCIDENTALLY determined by some
_particular direction_." On this principle we must infer that the
reasoning LOCKE, or the arithmetical DE MOIVRE, could have been the
musical and fairy SPENSER.[A] This conception of the nature of genius
became prevalent. It induced the philosophical BECCARIA to assert that
every individual had an equal degree of genius for poetry and eloquence;
it runs through the philosophy of the elegant Dugald Stewart; and
REYNOLDS, the pupil of Johnson in literature, adopting the paradox,
constructed his automatic system on this principle of _equal aptitude_. He
says, "this excellence, however expressed by genius, taste, or the gift of
Heaven, I am confident may be _acquired_." Reynolds had the modesty to
fancy that so many rivals, unendowed by nature, might have equalled the
magic of his own pencil: but his theory of industry, so essential to
genius, yet so useless without it, too long stimulated the drudges of art,
and left us without a Correggio or a Raphael! Another man of genius caught
the fever of the new system. CURRIE, in his eloquent "Life of Burns,"
swells out the scene of genius to a startling magnificence; for he asserts
that, "the talents necessary to the construction of an 'Iliad,' under
different discipline and application, might have led armies to victory or
kingdoms to prosperity; might have wielded the thunder of eloquence, or
discovered and enlarged the sciences." All this we find in the _text_; but
in the clear intellect of this man of genius a vast number of intervening
difficulties started up, and in a copious _note_ the numerous exceptions
show that the assumed theory requires no other refutation than what the
theorist has himself so abundantly and so judiciously supplied. There is
something ludicrous in the result of a theory of genius which would
place HOBBES and ERASMUS, those timid and learned recluses, to open a
campaign with the military invention and physical intrepidity of a
Marlborough; or conclude that the romantic bard of the "Fairy Queen,"
amidst the quickly-shifting scenes of his visionary reveries, could have
deduced, by slow and patient watchings of the mind, the system and the
demonstrations of Newton.
[Footnote A: It is more dangerous to define than to describe: a dry
definition excludes so much, an ardent description at once appeals to our
sympathies. How much more comprehensible our great critic becomes when he
nobly describes genius, "as the power of mind that collects, combines,
amplifies, and animates; the energy without which judgment is cold, and
knowledge is inert!" And it is this POWER OF MIND, this primary faculty
and native aptitude, which we deem may exist separately from education and
habit, since these are often found unaccompanied by genius.]
Such theorists deduce the faculty called genius from a variety of exterior
or secondary causes: zealously rejecting the notion that genius may
originate in constitutional dispositions, and be only a mode of the
individual's existence, they deny that minds are differently constituted.
Habit and education, being more palpable and visible in their operations,
and progressive in the development of the intellectual faculties, have
been imagined fully sufficient to make the creative faculty a subject of
acquirement.
But when these theorists had discovered the curious fact, that we have
owed to _accident_ several men of genius, and when they laid open some
sources which influenced genius in its progress, they did not go one step
further, they did not inquire whether such sources and such accidents had
ever supplied the _want of genius_ in the individual. Effects were here
again mistaken for causes. Could Spenser have kindled a poet in Cowley,
Richardson a painter in Reynolds, and Descartes a metaphysician in
Malebranche, if those master-minds, pointed out as having been such from
_accident_, had not first received the indelible mint-stamp struck by the
hand of Nature, and which, to give it a name, we may be allowed to call
the _predisposition_ of genius? The _accidents_ so triumphantly held
forth, which are imagined to have created the genius of these men, have
occurred to a thousand who have run the same career; but how does it
happen that the multitude remain a multitude, and the man of genius
arrives alone at the goal?
This theory, which long dazzled its beholders, was in time found to stand
in contradiction with itself, and perpetually with their own experience.
Reynolds pared down his decision in the progress of his lectures, often
wavered, often altered, and grew more confused as he lived longer to look
about him.[A] The infirm votaries of the new philosophy, with all their
sources of genius open before them, went on multiplying mediocrity, while
inherent genius, true to nature, still continued rare in its solitary
independence.
[Footnote A: I transcribe the last opinions of Mr. Edgeworth. "As to
original genius, and the effect of education in forming taste or directing
talent, the last revisal of his opinions was given by himself, in the
introduction to the second edition of 'Professional Education.' He was
strengthened in his belief, that many of the great differences of
intellect which appear in men, depend more upon the early cultivating the
habit of attention than upon any disparity between the powers of one
individual and another. Perhaps, he latterly allowed that there is more
difference than he had formerly admitted between the _natural powers_ of
different persons; but not so great as is generally supposed."--
_Edgeworth's Memoirs_, ii. 388.]
Others have strenuously denied that we are born with any peculiar species
of mind, and resolve the mysterious problem into _capacity_, of which men
only differ in the degree. They can perceive no distinction between the
poetical and the mathematical genius; and they conclude that a man of
genius, possessing a general capacity, may become whatever he chooses, but
is determined by his first acquired habit to be what he is.[A]
In substituting the term _capacity_ for that of _genius_, the origin or
nature remains equally occult. How is it acquired, or how is it inherent?
To assert that any man of genius may become what he wills, those most
fervently protest against who feel that the character of genius is such
that it cannot be other than it is; that there is an identity of minds,
and that there exists an interior conformity as marked and as perfect as
the exterior physiognomy. A Scotch metaphysician has recently declared
that "Locke or Newton might have been as eminent poets as Homer or Milton,
had they given themselves early to the study of poetry." It is well to
know how far this taste will go. We believe that had these philosophers
obstinately, against nature, persisted in the attempt, as some have
unluckily for themselves, we should have lost two great philosophers, and
have obtained two supernumerary poets.[B]
It would be more useful to discover another source of genius for
philosophers and poets, less fallible than the gratuitous assumptions of
these theorists. An adequate origin for peculiar qualities in the mind may
be found in that constitutional or secret propensity which adapts some for
particular pursuits, and forms the _predisposition_ of genius.
[Footnote A: Johnson once asserted, that "the supposition of one man
having more imagination, another more judgment, is not true; it is only
one man has _more mind_ than another. He who has vigour may walk to the
east as well as the west, if he happens to turn his head that way." Godwin
was persuaded that all genius is a mere _acquisition_, for he hints at
"infusing it," and making it a thing "heritable." A reversion which has
been missed by the many respectable dunces who have been sons of men of
genius.]
[Footnote B: This very Scotch metaphysician, at the instant he lays down
this postulate, acknowledges that "Dr. Beattie had talents for a _poet_,
but apparently not for a _philosopher_." It is amusing to learn another
result of his ungenial metaphysics. This sage demonstrates and concludes
in these words, "It will therefore be found, with little exception, that
_a great poet is but an ordinary genius_." Let this sturdy Scotch
metaphysician never approach Pegasus--he has to fear, not his wings, but
his heels. If some have written on genius with a great deal too much,
others have written without any.]
Not that we are bound to demonstrate what our adversaries have failed
in proving; we may still remain ignorant of the nature of genius, and
yet be convinced that they have not revealed it. The phenomena of
_predisposition_ in the mind are not more obscure and ambiguous than
those which have been assigned as the sources of genius in certain
individuals. For is it more difficult to conceive that a person bears in
his constitutional disposition a germ of native aptitude which is
developing itself to a predominant character of genius, which breaks forth
in the temperament and moulds the habits, than to conjecture that these
men of genius could not have been such but from _accident_, or that they
differ only in their _capacity_?
Every class of men of genius has distinct habits; all poets resemble one
another, as all painters and all mathematicians. There is a conformity in
the cast of their minds, and the quality of each is distinct from the
other, and the very faculty which fits them for one particular pursuit, is
just the reverse required for another. If these are truisms, as they may
appear, we need not demonstrate that from which we only wish to draw our
conclusion. Why does this remarkable similarity prevail through the
classes of genius? Because each, in their favourite production, is working
with the same appropriate organ. The poetical eye is early busied with
imagery; as early will the reveries of the poetical mind be busied with
the passions; as early will the painter's hand be copying forms and
colours; as early will the young musician's ear wander in the creation of
sounds, and the philosopher's head mature its meditations. It is then the
aptitude of the appropriate organ, however it varies in its character, in
which genius seems most concerned, and which is connatural and connate
with the individual, and, as it was expressed in old days, is _born_ with
him. There seems no other source of genius; for whenever this has been
refused by nature, as it is so often, no theory of genius, neither habit
nor education, have ever supplied its want. To discriminate between the
_habit_ and the _predisposition_ is quite impossible; because whenever
great genius discovers itself, as it can only do by continuity, it has
become a habit with the individual; it is the fatal notion of habit having
the power of generating genius, which has so long served to delude the
numerous votaries of mediocrity. Natural or native power is enlarged by
art; but the most perfect art has but narrow limits, deprived of natural
disposition.
A curious decision on this obscure subject may be drawn from an admirable
judge of the nature of genius. AKENSIDE, in that fine poem which forms its
history, tracing its source, sang,
From Heaven my strains begin, from Heaven descends
The flame of genius to _the human breast_.
But in the final revision of that poem, which he left many years after,
the bard has vindicated the solitary and independent origin of genius, by
the mysterious epithet,
THE CHOSEN BREAST.
The veteran poet was, perhaps, schooled by the vicissitudes of his own
poetical life, and those of some of his brothers.
Metaphors are but imperfect illustrations in metaphysical inquiries:
usually they include too little or take in too much. Yet fanciful
analogies are not willingly abandoned. The iconologists describe Genius as
a winged child with a flame above its head; the wings and the flame
express more than some metaphysical conclusions. Let me substitute
for "the white paper" of Locke, which served the philosopher in his
description of the operations of the senses on the mind, a less artificial
substance. In the soils of the earth we may discover that variety of
primary qualities which we believe to exist in human minds. The botanist
and the geologist always find the nature of the strata indicative of its
productions; the meagre light herbage announces the poverty of the soil it
covers, while the luxuriant growth of plants betrays the richness of the
matrix in which the roots are fixed. It is scarcely reasoning by analogy
to apply this operating principle of nature to the faculties of men.
But while the origin and nature of that faculty which we understand by the
term Genius remain still wrapt up in its mysterious bud, may we not trace
its history in its votaries? If Nature overshadow with her wings her first
causes, still the effects lie open before us, and experience and
observation will often deduce from consciousness what we cannot from
demonstration. If Nature, in some of her great operations, has kept back
her last secrets; if Newton, even in the result of his reasonings, has
religiously abstained from penetrating into her occult connexions, is it
nothing to be her historian, although we cannot be her legislator?
CHAPTER V.
Youth of genius.--Its first impulses may be illustrated by its subsequent
actions.--Parents have another association of the man of genius than
we.--Of genius, its first habits.--Its melancholy.--Its reveries.--Its
love of solitude.--Its disposition to repose.--Of a youth distinguished
by his equals.--Feebleness of its first attempts.--Of genius not
discoverable even in manhood.--The education of the youth may not be
that of his genius.--An unsettled impulse, querulous till it finds its
true occupation.--With some, curiosity as intense a faculty as invention.
--What the youth first applies to is commonly his delight afterwards.
--Facts of the decisive character of genius.
We are entering into a fairy land, touching only shadows, and chasing the
most changeable lights; many stories we shall hear, and many scenes will
open on us; yet though realities are but dimly to be traced in this
twilight of imagination and tradition, we think that the first impulses of
genius may be often illustrated by the subsequent actions of the
individual; and whenever we find these in perfect harmony, it will be
difficult to convince us that there does not exist a secret connexion
between those first impulses and these last actions.
Can we then trace in the faint lines of his youth an unsteady outline of
the man? In the temperament of genius may we not reasonably look for
certain indications or predispositions, announcing the permanent
character? Is not great sensibility born with its irritable fibres? Will
not the deep retired character cling to its musings? And the unalterable
being of intrepidity and fortitude, will he not, commanding even amidst
his sports, lead on his equals? The boyhood of Cato was marked by the
sternness of the man, observable in his speech, his countenance, and his
puerile amusements; and BACON, DESCARTES, HOBBES, GRAY, and others,
betrayed the same early appearance of their intellectual vigour and
precocity of character.
The virtuous and contemplative BOYLE imagined that he had discovered in
childhood that disposition of mind which indicated an instinctive
ingenuousness. An incident which he relates, evinced, as he thought, that
even then he preferred to aggravate his fault rather than consent to
suppress any part of the truth, an effort which had been unnatural to his
mind. His fanciful, yet striking illustration may open our inquiry. "This
trivial passage," the little story alluded to, "I have mentioned now, not
that I think that in itself it deserves a relation, but because as the sun
is seen best at his rising and his setting, so men's native dispositions
are clearliest perceived whilst they are children, and when they are
dying. These little sudden actions are the greatest discoverers of men's
true humours."
ALFIERI, that historian of the literary mind, was conscious that even in
his childhood the peculiarity and the melancholy of his character
prevailed: a boyhood passed in domestic solitude fed the interior feelings
of his impassioned character; and in noticing some incidents of a childish
nature, this man of genius observes, "Whoever will reflect on these inept
circumstances, and explore into the seeds of the passions of man, possibly
may find these neither so laughable nor so puerile as they may appear."
His native genius, or by whatever other term we may describe it, betrayed
the wayward predispositions of some of his poetical brothers: "Taciturn
and placid for the most part, but at times loquacious and most vivacious,
and usually in the most opposite extremes; stubborn and impatient against
force, but most open to kindness, more restrained by the dread of
reprimand than by anything else, susceptible of shame to excess, but
inflexible if violently opposed." Such is the portrait of a child of seven
years old, a portrait which induced the great tragic bard to deduce this
result from his own self-experience, that "_man_ is a continuation of the
_child_."[A]
[Footnote A: See in his Life, chap. iv., entitled _Sviluppo dell' indole
indicato da vari fattarelli_. "Development of genius, or natural
inclination, indicated by various little matters."]
That the dispositions of genius in early life presage its future
character, was long the feeling of antiquity. CICERO, in his "Dialogue on
Old Age," employs a beautiful analogy drawn from Nature, marking her
secret conformity in all things which have life and come from her hands;
and the human mind is one of her plants. "Youth is the vernal season of
life, and the blossoms it then puts forth are indications of those future
fruits which are to be gathered in the succeeding periods." One of the
masters of the human mind, after much previous observation of those who
attended his lectures, would advise one to engage in political studies,
then exhorted another to compose history, elected these to be poets, and
those to be orators; for ISOCRATES believed that Nature had some concern
in forming a man of genius, and endeavoured to guess at her secret by
detecting the first energetic inclination of the mind. This also was the
principle which guided the Jesuits, those other great masters in the art
of education. They studied the characteristics of their pupils with such
singular care, as to keep a secret register in their colleges, descriptive
of their talents, and the natural turn of their dispositions. In some
cases they guessed with remarkable felicity. They described Fontenelle,
_adolescens omnibus numeris absolutus et inter discipulos princeps_, "a
youth accomplished in every respect, and the model for his companions;"
but when they describe the elder Crebillon, _puer ingeniosus sed insignis
nebulo_, "a shrewd boy, but a great rascal," they might not have erred so
much as they appear to have done; for an impetuous boyhood showed the
decision of a character which might not have merely and misanthropically
settled in imaginary scenes of horror, and the invention of characters of
unparalleled atrocity.
In the old romance of King Arthur, when a cowherd comes to the king to
request he would make his son a knight--"It is a great thing thou askest,"
said Arthur, who inquired whether this entreaty proceeded from him or his
son. The old man's answer is remarkable--"Of my son, not of me; for I have
thirteen sons, and all these will fall to that labour I put them; but this
child will not labour for me, for anything that I and my wife will do; but
always he will be shooting and casting darts, and glad for to see battles,
and to behold knights, and always day and night he desireth of me to be
made a knight." The king commanded the cowherd to fetch all his sons;
"they were all shapen much like the poor man; but Tor was not like none of
them in shape and in countenance, for he was much more than any of them.
And so Arthur knighted him." This simple tale is the history of genius--
the cowherd's twelve sons were like himself, but the unhappy genius in the
family, who perplexed and plagued the cowherd and his wife and his twelve
brothers, was the youth averse to the common labour, and dreaming of
chivalry amidst a herd of cows.
A man of genius is thus dropped among the people, and has first to
encounter the difficulties of ordinary men, unassisted by that feeble
ductility which adapts itself to the common destination. Parents are too
often the victims of the decided propensity of a son to a Virgil or a
Euclid; and the first step into life of a man of genius is disobedience
and grief. LILLY, our famous astrologer, has described the frequent
situation of such a youth, like the cowherd's son who would be a knight.
Lilly proposed to his father that he should try his fortune in the
metropolis, where he expected that his learning and his talents would
prove serviceable to him; the father, quite incapable of discovering the
latent genius of his son in his studious disposition, very willingly
consented to get rid of him, for, as Lilly proceeds, "I could not work,
drive the plough, or endure any country labour; my father oft would say I
was _good for nothing_,"--words which the fathers of so many men of genius
have repeated.[A]
[Footnote A: The father of Sir Joshua Reynolds reproached him frequently
in his boyish days for his constant attention to drawing, and wrote on the
back of one of his sketches the condemnatory words, "Done by Joshua out of
pure idleness." Mignard distressed his father the surgeon, by sketching
the expressive faces of his patients instead of attending to their
diseases; and our own Opie, when a boy, and working with his father at his
business as a carpenter, used frequently to excite his anger by drawing
with red chalk on the deal boards he had carefully planed for his trade.
--ED.]
In reading the memoirs of a man of genius, we often reprobate the domestic
persecutions of those who opposed his inclinations. No poet but is moved
with indignation at the recollection of the tutor at the Port Royal thrice
burning the romance which RACINE at length got by heart; no geometrician
but bitterly inveighs against the father of PASCAL for not suffering him
to study Euclid, which he at length understood without studying. The
father of PETRARCH cast to the flames the poetical library of his son,
amidst the shrieks, the groans, and the tears of the youth. Yet this
burnt-offering neither converted Petrarch into a sober lawyer, nor
deprived him of the Roman laurel. The uncle of ALFIERI for more than
twenty years suppressed the poetical character of this noble bard; he was
a poet without knowing how to write a verse, and Nature, like a hard
creditor, exacted, with redoubled interest, all the genius which the uncle
had so long kept from her. These are the men whose inherent impulse no
human opposition, and even no adverse education, can deter from proving
them to be great men.
Let us, however, be just to the parents of a man of genius; they have
another association of ideas respecting him than ourselves. We see a great
man, they a disobedient child; we track him through his glory, they are
wearied by the sullen resistance of one who is obscure and seems useless.
The career of genius is rarely that of fortune or happiness; and the
father, who himself may not be insensible to glory, dreads lest his
son be found among that obscure multitude, that populace of mean artists,
self-deluded yet self-dissatisfied, who must expire at the barriers of
mediocrity.
If the youth of genius be struggling with a concealed impulse, he will
often be thrown into a train of secret instruction which no master can
impart. Hippocrates profoundly observed, that "our _natures_ have not been
taught us by any master." The faculty which the youth of genius displays
in after-life may exist long ere it is perceived; and it will only make
its own what is homogeneous with itself. We may often observe how the mind
of this youth stubbornly rejects whatever is contrary to its habits, and
alien to its affections. Of a solitary character, for solitariness is the
wild nurse of his contemplations, he is fancifully described by one of the
race--and here fancies are facts:
He is retired as noon-tide dew,
Or fountain in a noon-day grove.
The romantic SIDNEY exclaimed, "Eagles fly alone, and they are but sheep
which always herd together."
As yet this being, in the first rudiments of his sensations, is touched by
rapid emotions, and disturbed by a vague restlessness; for him the images
of nature are yet dim, and he feels before he thinks; for imagination
precedes reflection. One truly inspired unfolds the secret story--
Endow'd with all that Nature can bestow,
The child of fancy oft in silence bends
O'er the mixt treasures of his pregnant breast
With conscious pride. From thence he oft resolves
To frame he knows not what excelling things;
And win he knows not what sublime reward
Of praise and wonder!
But the solitude of the youth of genius has a local influence; it is full
of his own creations, of his unmarked passions, and his uncertain
thoughts. The titles which he gives his favourite haunts often intimate
the bent of his mind--its employment, or its purpose; as PETRARCH called
his retreat _Linternum_, after that of his hero Scipio; and a young poet,
from some favourite description in Cowley, called a spot he loved to muse
in, "Cowley's Walk."
A temperament of this kind has been often mistaken for melancholy.[A]
"When the intermission of my studies allowed me leisure for recreation,"
says BOYLE of his early life, "I would very often steal away from all
company, and spend four or five hours alone in the fields, and think at
random; making my delighted imagination the busy scene where some romance
or other was daily acted." This circumstance alarmed his friends, who
concluded that he was overcome with a growing melancholy. ALFIERI found
himself in this precise situation, and experienced these undefinable
emotions, when, in his first travels at Marseilles, his lonely spirit only
haunted the theatre and the seashore: the tragic drama was then casting
its influences over his unconscious genius. Almost every evening, after
bathing in the sea, it delighted him to retreat to a little recess where
the land jutted out; there would he sit, leaning his hack against a high
rock, which he tells us, "concealed from my sight every part of the land
behind me, while before and around me I beheld nothing but the sea and the
heavens: the sun, sinking into the waves, was lighting up and embellishing
these two immensities; there would I pass a delicious hour of fantastic
ruminations, and there I should have composed many a poem, had I then
known to write either in verse or prose in any language whatever."
[Footnote A: This solemnity of manner was aped in the days of Elizabeth
and James I. by such as affected scholar-like habits, and is frequently
alluded to by the satirists of the time. BEN JONSON, in his "Every Man in
his Humour," delineates the "country gull," Master Stephen, as affecting
"to be mightily given to melancholy," and receiving the assurance, "It's
your only fine humour, sir; your true melancholy breeds your perfect fine
wit, sir."--ED.]
An incident of this nature is revealed to us by the other noble and mighty
spirit of our times, who could most truly exhibit the history of the youth
of genius, and he has painted forth the enthusiasm of the boy TASSO:--
--From my very birth
My soul was drunk with love, which did pervade
And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth;
Of objects all inanimate I made
Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers
And rocks whereby they grew, a paradise,
Where I did lay me down within the shade
Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours,
Though I was chid for wandering.
The youth of genius will be apt to retire from the active sports of his
mates. BEATTIE paints himself in his own Minstrel:
Concourse, and noise, and toil he ever fled,
Nor cared to mingle in the clamorous fray
Of squabbling imps; but to the forest sped.
BOSSUET would not join his young companions, and flew to his solitary
task, while the classical boys avenged themselves by a schoolboy's
villanous pun: stigmatising the studious application of Bossuet by the
_bos suetus aratro_ which frequent flogging had made them classical enough
to quote.
The learned HUET has given an amusing detail of the inventive persecutions
of his schoolmates, to divert him from his obstinate love of study. "At
length, in order to indulge my own taste, I would rise with the sun, while
they were buried in sleep, and hide myself in the woods, that I might read
and study in quiet;" but they beat the bushes, and started in his burrow
the future man of erudition. Sir WILLIAM JONES was rarely a partaker in
the active sports of Harrow; it was said of GRAY that he was never a boy;
the unhappy CHATTERTON and BURNS were singularly serious in youth;[A] as
were HOBBES and BACON. MILTON has preserved for us, in solemn numbers, his
school-life--
When I was yet a child, no childish play
To me was pleasing: all my mind was set
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do
What might be public good: myself I thought
Born to that end, born to promote all truth,
All righteous things.
[Footnote A: Dr. Gregory says of Chatterton, "Instead of the thoughtless
levity of childhood, he possessed the pensiveness, gravity, and melancholy
of maturer life. He was frequently so lost in contemplation, that for many
days together he would say but very little, and that apparently by
constraint. His intimates in the school were few, and those of the most
serious cast." Of Burns, his schoolmaster, Mr. Murdoch, says--"Robert's
countenance was generally grave, and expressive of a serious,
contemplative, and thoughtful mind:"--Ed.]
It is remarkable that this love of repose and musing is retained
throughout life. A man of fine genius is rarely enamoured of common
amusements or of robust exercises; and he is usually unadroit where
dexterity of hand or eye, or trivial elegances, are required. This
characteristic of genius was discovered by HORACE in that Ode which
schoolboys often versify. BEATTIE has expressly told us of his Minstrel,
The exploit of strength, dexterity or speed
To him nor vanity nor joy could bring.
ALFIERI said he could never be taught by a French dancing-master, whose
art made him at once shudder and laugh. HORACE, by his own confession, was
a very awkward rider, and the poet could not always secure a seat on his
mule: METASTASIO humorously complains of his gun; the poetical sportsman
could only frighten the hares and partridges; the, truth was, as an elder
poet sings,
Instead of hounds that make the wooded hills
Talk in a hundred voices to the rills,
I, like the pleasing cadence of a line,
Struck by the concert of the sacred Nine.
And we discover the true "humour" of the indolent contemplative race in
their great representatives VIRGIL and HORACE. When they accompanied
Mecaenas into the country, while the minister amused himself at tennis,
the two bards reposed on a vernal bank amidst the freshness of the shade.
The younger Pliny, who was so perfect a literary character, was charmed by
the Roman mode of hunting, or rather fowling by nets, which admitted him
to sit a whole day with his tablets and stylus; so, says he, "should I
return with empty nets, my tablets may at least be full." THOMSON was the
hero of his own "Castle of Indolence;" and the elegant WALLER infuses into
his luxurious verses the true feeling:
Oh, low I long my careless limbs to lay
Under the plantane shade, and all the day
Invoke the Muses and improve my vein.
The youth of genius, whom Beattie has drawn after himself, and I after
observation, a poet of great genius, as I understand, has declared to be
"too effeminate and timid, and too much troubled with delicate nerves. The
_greatest poets_ of all countries," he continues, "have been men eminently
endowed with _bodily powers_, and rejoiced and excelled in all _manly
exercises_." May not our critic of northern habits have often mistaken
the art of the great poets in _describing_ such "manly exercises or bodily
powers," for the proof of their "rejoicing and excelling in them?" Poets
and artists, from their habits, are not usually muscular and robust.[A]
Continuity of thought, absorbing reverie, and sedentary habits, will not
combine with corporeal skill and activity. There is also a constitutional
delicacy which is too often the accompaniment of a fine intellect.
The inconveniences attached to the inferior sedentary labourers are
participated in by men of genius; the analogy is obvious, and their fate
is common. Literary men may be included in Ramazzini's "Treatise on the
Diseases of Artizans." ROSSEAU has described the labours of the closet as
enervating men, and weakening the constitution, while study wears the
whole machinery of man, exhausts the spirits, destroys his strength, and
renders him pusillanimous.[B] But there is a higher principle which guides
us to declare, that men of genius should not _excel_ in "all manly
exercises." SENECA, whose habits were completely literary, admonishes the
man of letters that "Whatever amusement he chooses, he should not slowly
return from those of the body to the mind, while he should be exercising
the latter night and day." Seneca was aware that "to rejoice and excel in
all manly exercises," would in some cases intrude into the habits of a
literary man, and sometimes be even ridiculous. MORTIMER, once a
celebrated artist, was tempted by his athletic frame to indulge in
frequent violent exercises; and it is not without reason suspected, that
habits so unfavourable to thought and study precluded that promising
genius from attaining to the maturity of his talents, however he might
have succeeded in invigorating his physical powers.
[Footnote A: Dr. Currie, in his "Life of Burns," has a passage which may
be quoted here: "Though by nature of an athletic form, Burns had in his
constitution the peculiarities and the delicacies that belong to the
temperament of genius. He was liable, from a very early period of life, to
that interruption in the process of digestion which arises from deep and
anxious thought, and which is sometimes the effect, and sometimes the
cause, of depression of spirits."--ED.]
[Footnote B: In the Preface to the "Narcisse."]
But to our solitude. So true is it that this love of loneliness is an
early passion, that two men of genius of very opposite characters, the one
a French wit and the other a French philosopher, have acknowledged that
they have felt its influence, and even imagined that they had discovered
its cause. The Abbe DE ST. PIERRE, in his political annals, tells us, "I
remember to have heard old SEGRAIS remark, that most young people of both
sexes had at one time of their lives, generally about seventeen or
eighteen years of age, an inclination to retire from the world. He
maintained this to be a species of melancholy, and humorously called it
the small-pox of the mind, because scarce one in a thousand escaped the
attack. I myself have had this distemper, but am not much marked with it."
But if the youth of genius be apt to retire from the ordinary sports of
his mates, he will often substitute for them others, which are the
reflections of those favourite studies which are haunting his young
imagination, as men in their dreams repeat the conceptions which have
habitually interested them. The amusements of such an idler have often
been analogous to his later pursuits. ARIOSTO, while yet a schoolboy,
seems to have been very susceptible of poetry, for he composed a sort of
tragedy from the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, to be represented by his
brothers and sisters, and at this time also delighted himself in
translating the old French and Spanish romances. Sir WILLIAM JONES, at
Harrow, divided the fields according to a map of Greece, and to each
schoolfellow portioned out a dominion; and when wanting a copy of the
_Tempest_ to act from, he supplied it from his memory; we must confess
that the boy Jones was reflecting in his amusements the cast of mind he
displayed in his after-life, and evincing that felicity of memory and
taste so prevalent in his literary character. FLORIAN'S earliest years
were passed in shooting birds all day, and reading every evening an old
translation of the Iliad: whenever he got a bird remarkable for its size
or its plumage, he personified it by one of the names of his heroes, and
raising a funeral pyre, consumed the body: collecting the ashes in an
urn, he presented them to his grandfather, with a narrative of his
Patroclus or Sarpedon. We seem here to detect, reflected in his boyish
sports, the pleasing genius of the author of Numa Pompilius, Gonsalvo of
Cordova, and William Tell. BACON, when a child, was so remarkable for
thoughtful observation, that Queen Elizabeth used to call him "the young
lord-keeper." The boy made a remarkable reply, when her Majesty,
inquiring of him his age, he said, that "He was two years younger than
her Majesty's happy reign." The boy may have been tutored; but this
mixture of gravity, and ingenuity, and political courtiership,
undoubtedly caught from his father's habits, afterwards characterised
Lord Bacon's manhood. I once read the letter of a contemporary of HOBBES,
where I found that this great philosopher, when a lad, used to ride on
packs of skins to market, to sell them for his father, who was a
fellmonger; and that in the market-place he thus early began to vent his
private opinions, which long afterwards so fully appeared in his
writings.
For a youth to be distinguished by his equals is perhaps a criterion of
talent. At that moment of life, with no flattery on the one side, and no
artifice on the other, all emotion and no reflection, the boy who has
obtained a predominance has acquired this merely by native powers. The
boyhood of NELSON was characterised by events congenial with those of his
after-days; and his father understood his character when he declared that,
"in whatever station he might be placed, he would climb, if possible, to
the top of the tree." Some puerile anecdotes which FRANKLIN remembered of
himself, betray the invention and the firm intrepidity of his character,
and even perhaps his carelessness of means to obtain a purpose. In boyhood
he felt a desire for adventure; but as his father would not consent to a
sea life, he made the river near him represent the ocean: he lived on the
water, and was the daring Columbus of a schoolboy's boat. A part where he
and his mates stood to angle, in time became a quagmire: in the course of
one day, the infant projector thought of a wharf for them to stand on, and
raised it with a heap of stones deposited there for the building of a
house. With that sort of practical wisdom, or Ulyssean cunning, which
marked his mature character, Franklin raised his wharf at the expense of
another's house. His contrivances to aid his puny labourers, with his
resolution not to quit the great work till it was effected, seem to strike
out to us the invention and decision of his future character. But the
qualities which would attract the companions of a schoolboy may not be
those which are essential to fine genius. The captain or leader of his
schoolmates is not to be disregarded; but it is the sequestered boy who
may chance to be the artist or the literary character. Some facts which
have been recorded of men of genius at this period are remarkable. We are
told by Miss Stewart that JOHNSON, when a boy at the free-school, appeared
"a huge overgrown, misshapen stripling;" but was considered as a
stupendous stripling: "for even at that early period of life, Johnson
maintained his opinions with the same sturdy, dogmatical, and arrogant
fierceness." The puerile characters of Lord BOLINGBROKE and Sir ROBERT
WALPOLE, schoolfellows and rivals, were observed to prevail through their
after-life; the liveliness and brilliancy of Bolingbroke appeared in his
attacks on Walpole, whose solid and industrious qualities triumphed by
resistance. A parallel instance might be pointed out in two great
statesmen of our own days; in the wisdom of the one, and the wit of the
other--men whom nature made rivals, and time made friends or enemies, as
it happened. A curious observer, in looking over a collection of the
Cambridge poems, which were formerly composed by its students, has
remarked that "Cowley from the first was quaint, Milton sublime, and
Barrow copious." If then the characteristic disposition may reveal itself
thus early, it affords a principle which ought not to be neglected at this
obscure period of youth.
Is there then a period in youth which yields decisive marks of the
character of genius? The natures of men are as various as their fortunes.
Some, like diamonds, must wait to receive their splendour from the slow
touches of the polisher, while others, resembling pearls, appear at once
born with their beauteous lustre.
Among the inauspicious circumstances is the feebleness of the first
attempts; and we must not decide on the talents of a young man by his
first works. DRYDEN and SWIFT might have been deterred from authorship had
their earliest pieces decided their fate. SMOLLETT, before he knew which
way his genius would conduct him, had early conceived a high notion of his
talents for dramatic poetry: his tragedy of the _Regicide_ was refused by
Garrick, whom for a long time he could not forgive, but continued to abuse
our Roscius, through his works of genius, for having discountenanced his
first work, which had none. RACINE'S earliest composition, as we may judge
by some fragments his son has preserved, remarkably contrasts with his
writings; for these fragments abound with those points and conceits which
he afterwards abhorred. The tender author of "Andromache" could not have
been discovered while exhausting himself in running after _concetti_ as
surprising as the worst parts of Cowley, in whose spirit alone he could
have hit on this perplexing _concetto_, descriptive of Aurora: "Fille du
Jour, qui nais devant ton pere!"--"Daughter of Day, but born before thy
father!" GIBBON betrayed none of the force and magnitude of his powers in
his "Essay on Literature," or his attempted "History of Switzerland,"
JOHNSON'S cadenced prose is not recognisable in the humbler simplicity of
his earliest years. Many authors have begun unsuccessfully the walk they
afterwards excelled in. RAPHAEL, when he first drew his meagre forms under
Perugino, had not yet conceived one line of that ideal beauty which one
day he of all men could alone execute. Who could have imagined, in
examining the _Dream_ of Raphael, that the same pencil could hereafter
have poured out the miraculous _Transfiguration?_ Or that, in the
imitative pupil of Hudson, our country was at length to pride herself on
another Raphael?[A]
[Footnote A: Hudson was the fashionable portrait-painter who succeeded
Kneller, and made a great reputation and fortune; but he was a very mean
artist, who merely copied the peculiarities of his predecessor without his
genius. His stiff hard style was formality itself; but was approved in an
age of formalism; the earlier half of the last century.--ED.]
Even the manhood of genius may pass unobserved by his companions, and,
like. AEneas, he may be hidden in a cloud amidst his associates. The
celebrated FABIUS MAXIMUS in his boyhood was called in derision "the
little sheep," from the meekness and gravity of his disposition. His
sedateness and taciturnity, his indifference to juvenile amusements, his
slowness and difficulty in learning, and his ready submission to his
equals, induced them to consider him as one irrecoverably stupid. The
greatness of mind, unalterable courage, and invincible character, which
Fabius afterwards displayed, they then imagined had lain concealed under
the apparent contrary qualities. The boy of genius may indeed seem slow
and dull even to the phlegmatic; for thoughtful and observing dispositions
conceal themselves in timorous silent characters, who have not yet
experienced their strength; and that assiduous love, which cannot tear
itself away from the secret instruction it is perpetually imbibing, cannot
be easily distinguished from the pertinacity of the mere plodder. We often
hear, from the early companions of a man of genius, that at school he
appeared heavy and unpromising. Rousseau imagined that the childhood of
some men is accompanied by this seeming and deceitful dulness, which is
the sign of a profound genius; and Roger Ascham has placed among "the best
natures for learning, the sad-natured and hard-witted child;" that is, the
thoughtful, or the melancholic, and the slow. The young painters, to
ridicule the persevering labours of DOMENICHINO, which were at first heavy
and unpromising, called him "the great ox;" and Passeri, while he has
happily expressed the still labours of his concealed genius, _sua
taciturna lentezza_, his silent slowness, expresses his surprise at the
accounts he received of the early life of this great artist. "It is
difficult to believe, what many assert, that, from the beginning, this
great painter had a ruggedness about him which entirely incapacitated him
from learning his profession; and they have heard from himself that he
quite despaired of success. Yet I cannot comprehend how such vivacious
talents, with a mind so finely organised, and accompanied with such
favourable dispositions for the art, would show such signs of utter
incapacity; I rather think that it is a mistake in the proper knowledge of
genius, which some imagine indicates itself most decisively by its sudden
vehemence, showing itself like lightning, and like lightning passing
away."
A parallel case we find in GOLDSMITH, who passed through an unpromising
youth; he declared that he was never attached to literature till he
was thirty; that poetry had no peculiar charms for him till that age;[A]
and, indeed, to his latest hour he was surprising his friends by
productions which they had imagined he was incapable of composing. HUME
was considered, for his sobriety and assiduity, as competent to become a
steady merchant; and it was said of BOILEAU that he had no great
understanding, but would speak ill of no one. This circumstance of the
character in youth being entirely mistaken, or entirely opposite to the
subsequent one of maturer life, has been noticed of many. Even a
discerning parent or master has entirely failed to develope the genius of
the youth, who has afterwards ranked among eminent men; we ought as little
to decide from early unfavourable appearances, as from inequality of
talent. The great ISAAC BARROW'S father used to say, that if it pleased
God to take from him any of his children, he hoped it might be Isaac, as
the least promising; and during the three years Barrow passed at the
Charter-house, he was remarkable only for the utter negligence of his
studies and of his person. The mother of SHERIDAN, herself a literary
female, pronounced early that he was the dullest and most hopeless of her
sons. BODMER, at the head of the literary class in Switzerland, who had so
frequently discovered and animated the literary youths of his country,
could never detect the latent genius of GESNER: after a repeated
examination of the young man, he put his parents in despair with the
hopeless award that a mind of so ordinary a cast must confine itself to
mere writing and accompts. One fact, however, Bodmer had overlooked when
he pronounced the fate of our poet and artist--the dull youth, who could
not retain barren words, discovered an active fancy in the image of
things. While at his grammar lessons, as it happened to Lucian, he was
employing tedious hours in modelling in wax, groups of men, animals, and
other figures, the rod of the pedagogue often interrupted the fingers of
our infant moulder, who never ceased working to amuse his little sisters
with his waxen creatures, which constituted all his happiness. Those arts
of imitation were already possessing the soul of the boy Gesner, to which
afterwards it became so entirely devoted.
[Footnote A: This is a remarkable expression from Goldsmith: but it is
much more so when we hear it from Lord Byron. See a note in the following
chapter, on "The First Studies," p. 56.]
Thus it happens that in the first years of life the education of the youth
may not be the education of his genius; he lives unknown to himself and
others. In all these cases nature had dropped the seeds in the soil: but
even a happy disposition must be concealed amidst adverse circumstances: I
repeat, that genius can only make that its own which is homogeneous with
its nature. It has happened to some men of genius during a long period of
their lives, that an unsettled impulse, unable to discover the object of
its aptitude, a thirst and fever in the temperament of too sentient a
being, which cannot find the occupation to which only it can attach
itself, has sunk into a melancholy and querulous spirit, weary with the
burthen of existence; but the instant the latent talent had declared
itself, his first work, the eager offspring of desire and love, has
astonished the world at once with the birth and the maturity of genius.
We are told that PELEGRINO TIBALDI, who afterwards obtained the glorious
title of "the reformed Michael Angelo," long felt the strongest internal
dissatisfaction at his own proficiency, and that one day, in melancholy
and despair, he had retired from the city, resolved to starve himself to
death: his friend discovered him, and having persuaded him to change his
pursuits from painting to architecture, he soon rose to eminence. This
story D'Argenville throws some doubt over; but as Tibaldi during twenty
years abstained from his pencil, a singular circumstance seems explained
by an extraordinary occurrence. TASSO, with feverish anxiety pondered on
five different subjects before he could decide in the choice of his epic;
the same embarrassment was long the fate of GIBBON on the subject of his
history. Some have sunk into a deplorable state of utter languishment,
from the circumstance of being deprived of the means of pursuing their
beloved study, as in the case of the chemist BERGMAN. His friends, to gain
him over to the more lucrative professions, deprived him of his books of
natural history; a plan which nearly proved fatal to the youth, who with
declining health quitted the university. At length ceasing to struggle
with the conflicting desire within him, his renewed enthusiasm for his
favourite science restored the health he had lost in abandoning it.
It was the view of the tomb of Virgil which so powerfully influenced the
innate genius of BOCCACCIO, and fixed his instant decision. As yet young,
and in the neighbourhood of Naples, wandering for recreation, he reached
the tomb of the Mantuan. Pausing before it, his youthful mind began to
meditate. Struck by the universal glory of that great name, he lamented
his own fortune to be occupied by the obscure details of merchandise;
already he sighed to emulate the fame of the Roman, and as Villani tells
us, from that day he abandoned for ever the occupations of commerce,
dedicating himself to literature. PROCTOR, the lost Phidias of our
country, would often say, that he should never have quitted his mercantile
situation, but for the accidental sight of Barry's picture of "Venus
rising from the Sea;" a picture which produced so immediate an effect on
his mind, that it determined him to quit a lucrative occupation. Surely we
cannot account for such sudden effusions of the mind, and such instant
decisions, but by the principle of that predisposition which only waits
for an occasion to declare itself.
Abundant facts exhibit genius unequivocally discovering itself in youth.
In general, perhaps, a master-mind exhibits precocity. "Whatever a young
man at first applies himself to, is commonly his delight afterwards." This
remark was made by HARTLEY, who has related an anecdote of the infancy of
his genius, which indicated the manhood. He declared to his daughter that
the intention of writing a book upon the nature of man, was conceived in
his mind when he was a very little boy--when swinging backwards and
forwards upon a gate, not more than nine or ten years old; he was then
meditating upon the nature of his own mind, how man was made, and for what
future end. Such was the true origin, in a boy of ten years old, of his
celebrated book on "The Frame, the Duty, and the Expectation of Man." JOHN
HUNTER conceived his notion of the principle of life, which to his last
day formed the subject of his inquiries and experiments, when he was very
young; for at that period of life, Mr. Abernethy tells us, he began his
observations on the incubated egg, which suggested or corroborated his
opinions.
A learned friend, and an observer of men of science, has supplied me with
a remark highly deserving notice. It is an observation that will generally
hold good, that the most important systems of theory, however late they
may be published, have been formed at a very early period of life. This
important observation may be verified by some striking facts. A most
curious one will be found in Lord BACON'S letter to Father Fulgentio,
where he gives an account of his projecting his philosophy thirty years
before, during his youth. MILTON from early youth mused on the composition
of an epic. DE THOU has himself told us, that from his tender youth his
mind was full of the idea of composing a history of his own times; and his
whole life was passed in preparation, and in a continued accession of
materials for a future period. From the age of twenty, MONTESQUIEU was
preparing the materials of _L'Esprit des Loix_, by extracts from the
immense volumes of civil law. TILLEMONT'S vast labours were traced out in
his mind at the early age of nineteen, on reading Baronius; and some of
the finest passages in RACINE'S tragedies were composed while a pupil,
wandering in the woods of the Port-Royal. So true is it that the seeds of
many of our great literary and scientific works were lying, for many years
antecedent to their being given to the world, in a latent state of
germination.[A]
[Footnote A: I need not to be reminded, that I am not worth mentioning
among the illustrious men who have long formed the familiar subjects of my
delightful researches. But with the middling as well as with the great,
the same habits must operate. Early in life, I was struck by the inductive
philosophy of Bacon, and sought after a Moral Experimental Philosophy; and
I had then in my mind an observation of Lord Bolingbroke's, for I see I
quoted it thirty years ago, that "Abstract or general propositions, though
never so true, appear obscure or doubtful to us very often till they are
explained by examples." So far back as in 1793 I published "A Dissertation
on Anecdotes," with the simplicity of a young votary; there I deduced
results, and threw out a magnificent project not very practicable. From
that time to the hour I am now writing, my metal has been running in this
mould, and I still keep casting philosophy into anecdotes, and anecdotes
into philosophy. As I began I fear I shall end.]
The predisposition of genius has declared itself in painters and poets,
who were such before they understood the nature of colours and the arts of
verse; and this vehement propensity, so mysteriously constitutional, may
be traced in other intellectual characters besides those which belong to
the class of imagination. It was said that PITT was _born_ a minister; the
late Dr. SHAW I always considered as one _born_ a naturalist, and I know a
great literary antiquary who seems to me to have been also _born_ such;
for the passion of _curiosity_ is as intense a faculty, or instinct, with
some casts of mind, as is that of _invention_ with poets and painters: I
confess that to me it is _genius_ in a form in which genius has not yet
been suspected to appear. One of the biographers of Sir HANS SLOANE
expresses himself in this manner:--"Our author's _thirst_ for knowledge
seems to have been _born_ with him, so that his _Cabinet of Rarities_ may
be said to have commenced with _his being_." This strange metaphorical
style has only confused an obscure truth. SLOANE, early in life, felt an
irresistible impulse which inspired him with the most enlarged views of
the productions of nature, and he exulted in their accomplishment; for in
his will he has solemnly recorded, that his collections were the fruits of
his early devotion, _having had from my youth a strong inclination to the
study of plants and all other productions of nature_. The vehement passion
of PEIRESC for knowledge, according to accounts which Gassendi received
from old men who had known him as a child, broke out as soon as he had
been taught his alphabet; for then his delight was to be handling books
and papers, and his perpetual inquiries after their contents obliged
them to invent something to quiet the child's insatiable curiosity,
who was hurt when told that he had not the capacity to understand them. He
did not study as an ordinary scholar, for he never read but with
perpetual researches. At ten years of age, his passion for the studies of
antiquity was kindled at the sight of some ancient coins dug up in his
neighbourhood; then that vehement passion for knowledge "began to burn
like fire in a forest," as Gassendi happily describes the fervour and
amplitude of the mind of this man of vast learning. Bayle, who was an
experienced judge in the history of genius, observes on two friars, one of
whom was haunted by a strong disposition to _genealogical_, and the other
to _geographical_ pursuits, that, "let a man do what he will, if nature
incline us to certain things, there is no preventing the gratification of
our desire, though it lies hid under a monk's frock." It is not,
therefore, as the world is apt to imagine, only poets and painters for
whom is reserved this restless and impetuous propensity for their
particular pursuits; I claim it for the man of science as well as for the
man of imagination. And I confess that I consider this strong bent of the
mind in men eminent in pursuits in which imagination is little concerned,
and whom men of genius have chosen to remove so far from their class, as
another gifted aptitude. They, too, share in the glorious fever of genius,
and we feel how just was the expression formerly used, of "their _thirst_
for knowledge."
But to return to the men of genius who answer more strictly to the popular
notion of inventors. We have BOCCACCIO'S own words for a proof of his
early natural tendency to tale-writing, in a passage of his genealogy of
the gods:--"Before seven years of age, when as yet I had met with no
stories, was without a master, and hardly knew my letters, I had a natural
talent for fiction, and produced some little tales." Thus the "Decamerone"
was appearing much earlier than we suppose. DESCARTES, while yet a boy,
indulged such habits of deep meditation, that he was nicknamed by his
companions "The Philosopher," always questioning, and ever settling the
cause and the effect. He was twenty-five years of age before he left the
army, but the propensity for meditation had been early formed; and he has
himself given an account of the pursuits which occupied his youth, and of
the progress of his genius; of the secret struggle which he so long
maintained with his own mind, wandering in concealment over the world for
more than twenty years, and, as he says of himself, like the statuary
labouring to draw out a Minerva from the marble block. MICHAEL ANGELO, as
yet a child, wherever he went, busied himself in drawing; and when his
noble parents, hurt that a man of genius was disturbing the line of their
ancestry, forced him to relinquish the pencil, the infant artist flew to
the chisel: the art which was in his soul would not allow of idle hands.
LOPE DE VEGA, VELASQUEZ, ARIOSTO, and TASSO, are all said to have betrayed
at their school-tasks the most marked indications of their subsequent
characteristics.
This decision of the impulse of genius is apparent in MURILLO. This young
artist was undistinguished at the place of his birth. A brother artist
returning home from London, where he had studied under Van Dyk, surprised
MURILLO by a chaste, and to him hitherto unknown, manner. Instantly he
conceived the project of quitting his native Seville and flying to Italy
--the fever of genius broke forth with all its restlessness. But he was
destitute of the most ordinary means to pursue a journey, and forced to an
expedient, he purchased a piece of canvas, which dividing into parts, he
painted on each figures of saints, landscapes, and flowers--an humble
merchandise of art adapted to the taste and devout feelings of the times,
and which were readily sold to the adventurers to the Indies. With these
small means he departed, having communicated his project to no one except
to a beloved sister, whose tears could not prevail to keep the lad at
home; the impetuous impulse had blinded him to the perils and the
impracticability of his wild project. He reached Madrid, where the great
VELASQUEZ, his countryman, was struck by the ingenuous simplicity of the
youth, who urgently requested letters for Rome; but when that noble genius
understood the purport of this romantic journey, VELASQUEZ assured him
that he need not proceed to Italy to learn the art he loved. The great
master opened the royal galleries to the youth, and cherished his studies.
MURILLO returned to his native city, where, from his obscurity, he had
never been missed, having ever lived a retired life of silent labour; but
this painter of nature returned to make the city which had not noticed his
absence the theatre of his glory.
The same imperious impulse drove CALLOT, at the age of twelve years, from
his father's roof. His parents, from prejudices of birth, had conceived
that the art of engraving was one beneath the studies of their son; but
the boy had listened to stories of the miracles of Italian art, and with a
curiosity predominant over any self-consideration, one morning the genius
flew away. Many days had not elapsed, when finding himself in the utmost
distress, with a gang of gipsies he arrived at Florence. A merchant of
Nancy discovered him, and returned the reluctant boy of genius to his
home. Again he flies to Italy, and again his brother discovers him, and
reconducts him to his parents. The father, whose patience and forgiveness
were now exhausted, permitted his son to become the most original genius
of French art--one who, in his vivacious groups, the touch of his graver,
and the natural expression of his figures, anticipated the creations of
Hogarth.
Facts of this decisive character are abundant. See the boy NANTEUIL biding
himself in a tree to pursue the delightful exercise of his pencil, while
his parents are averse to their son practising his young art! See
HANDEL, intended for a doctor of the civil laws, and whom no parental
discouragement could deprive of his enthusiasm, for ever touching
harpsichords, and having secretly conveyed a musical instrument to a
retired apartment, listen to him when, sitting through the night, he
awakens his harmonious spirit! Observe FERGUSON, the child of a peasant,
acquiring the art of reading without any one suspecting it, by listening
to his father teaching his brother; observe him making a wooden watch
without the slightest knowledge of mechanism; and while a shepherd,
studying, like an ancient Chaldean, the phenomena of the heavens, on a
celestial globe formed by his own hand. That great mechanic, SMEATON, when
a child, disdained the ordinary playthings of his age; he collected the
tools of workmen, observed them at their work, and asked questions till he
could work himself. One day, having watched some millwrights, the child
was shortly after, to the distress of the family, discovered in a
situation of extreme danger, fixing up at the top of a barn a rude
windmill. Many circumstances of this nature occurred before his sixth
year. His father, an attorney, sent him up to London to be brought up to
the same profession; but he declared that "the study of the law did not
suit the _bent of his genius_"--a term he frequently used. He addressed a
strong memorial to his father, to show his utter incompetency to study
law; and the good sense of the father abandoned Smeaton "to the bent of
his genius in his own way." Such is the history of the man who raised the
Eddystone Lighthouse, in the midst of the waves, like the rock on which it
stands.
Can we hesitate to believe that in such minds there was a resistless and
mysterious propensity, "growing with the growth" of these youths, who seem
to have been placed out of the influence of that casual excitement, or any
other of those sources of genius, so frequently assigned for its
production?
Yet these cases are not more striking than one related of the Abbe LA
CAILLE, who ranked among the first astronomers of the age. La Caille was
the son of the parish clerk of a village. At the age of ten years his
father sent him every evening to ring the church bell, but the boy always
returned home late: his father was angry, and beat him, and still the boy
returned an hour after he had rung the bell. The father, suspecting
something mysterious in his conduct, one evening watched him. He saw his
son ascend the steeple, ring the bell as usual, and remain there during an
hour. When the unlucky boy descended, he trembled like one caught in the
fact, and on his knees confessed that the pleasure he took in watching the
stars from the steeple was the real cause which detained him from home. As
the father was not born to be an astronomer, he flogged his son severely.
The youth was found weeping in the streets by a man of science, who, when
he discovered in a boy of ten years of age a passion for contemplating
the stars at night, and one, too, who had discovered an observatory
in a steeple, decided that the seal of Nature had impressed itself
on the genius of that boy. Relieving the parent from the son, and the son
from the parent, he assisted the young LA CAILLE in his passionate
pursuit, and the event completely justified the prediction. How children
feel a predisposition for the studies of astronomy, or mechanics, or
architecture, or natural history, is that secret in nature we have not
guessed. There may be a virgin thought as well as a virgin habit--nature
before education--which first opens the mind, and ever afterwards is
shaping its tender folds. Accidents may occur to call it forth, but
thousands of youths have found themselves in parallel situations with
SMEATON, FERGUSON, and LA CAILLE, without experiencing their energies.
The case of CLAIRON, the great French tragic actress, who seems to have
been an actress before she saw a theatre, deserves attention. This female,
destined to be a sublime tragedian, was of the lowest extraction; the
daughter of a violent and illiterate woman, who, with blows and menaces,
was driving about the child all day to manual labour. "I know not," says
Clairon, "whence I derive my disgust, but I could not bear the idea to be
a mere workwoman, or to remain inactive in a corner." In her eleventh
year, being locked up in a room as a punishment, with the windows
fastened, she climbed upon a chair to look about her. A new object
instantly absorbed her attention. In the house opposite she observed a
celebrated actress amidst her family; her daughter was performing her
dancing lesson: the girl Clairon, the future Melpomene, was struck by the
influence of this graceful and affectionate scene. "All my little being
collected itself into my eyes; I lost not a single motion; as soon as the
lesson ended, all the family applauded, and the mother embraced the
daughter. The difference of her fate and mine filled me with profound
grief; my tears hindered me from seeing any longer, and when the
palpitations of my heart allowed me to re-ascend the chair, all had
disappeared." This scene was a discovery; from that moment Clairon knew no
rest, and rejoiced when she could get her mother to confine her in that
room. The happy girl was a divinity to the unhappy one, whose susceptible
genius imitated her in every gesture and every motion; and Clairon soon
showed the effect of her ardent studies. She betrayed in the common
intercourse of life, all the graces she had taught herself; she charmed
her friends, and even softened her barbarous mother; in a word, the
enthusiastic girl was an actress without knowing what an actress was.
In this case of the youth of genius, are we to conclude that the
accidental view of a young actress practising her studies imparted the
character of Clairon? Could a mere chance occurrence have given birth to
those faculties which produced a sublime tragedian? In all arts there are
talents which may be acquired by imitation and reflection,--and thus far
may genius be educated; but there are others which are entirely the result
of native sensibility, which often secretly torment the possessor, and
which may even be lost from the want of development, dissolved into a
state of languor from which many have not recovered. Clairon, before she
saw the young actress, and having yet no conception of a theatre--for she
had never entered one--had in her soul that latent faculty which creates a
dramatic genius. "Had I not felt like Dido," she once exclaimed, "I could
not have thus personified her!"
The force of impressions received in the warm susceptibility of the
childhood of genius, is probably little known to us; but we may perceive
them also working in the _moral character_, which frequently discovers
itself in childhood, and which manhood cannot always conceal, however it
may alter. The intellectual and the moral character are unquestionably
closely allied. ERASMUS acquaints us, that Sir THOMAS MORE had something
ludicrous in his aspect, tending to a smile,--a feature which his
portraits preserve; and that he was more inclined to pleasantry and
jesting, than to the gravity of the chancellor. This circumstance he
imputes to Sir Thomas More "being from a child so delighted with humour,
that he seemed to be even born for it." And we know that he died as he had
lived, with a jest on his lips. The hero, who came at length to regret
that he had but one world to conquer, betrayed the majesty of his restless
genius when but a youth. Had Aristotle been nigh when, solicited to join
in the course, the princely boy replied, that "He would run in no career
where kings were not the competitors," the prescient tutor might have
recognised in his pupil the future and successful rival of Darius and
Porus.
A narrative of the earliest years of Prince Henry, by one of his
attendants, forms an authentic collection of juvenile anecdotes, which
made me feel very forcibly that there are some children who deserve to
have a biographer at their side; but anecdotes of children are the rarest
of biographies, and I deemed it a singular piece of good fortune to have
recovered such a remarkable evidence of the precocity of character.[A]
Professor Dugald Stewart has noticed a fact in ARNAULD'S infancy, which,
considered in connexion with his subsequent life, affords a good
illustration of the force of impressions received in the first dawn of
reason. ARNAULD, who, to his eightieth year, passed through a life of
theological controversy, when a child, amusing himself in the library of
the Cardinal Du Perron, requested to have a pen given to him. "For what
purpose?" inquired the cardinal. "To write books, like you, against the
Huguenots." The cardinal, then aged and infirm, could not conceal his joy
at the prospect of so hopeful a successor; and placing the pen in his
hand, said, "I give it you as the dying shepherd, Damcetas, bequeathed his
pipe to the little Corydon." Other children might have asked for a pen--
but to write against the Huguenots evinced a deeper feeling and a wider
association of ideas, indicating the future polemic.
[Footnote A: I have preserved this manuscript narrative in "Curiosities of
Literature," vol. ii.]
Some of these facts, we conceive, afford decisive evidence of that
instinct in genius, that primary quality of mind, sometimes called
organization, which has inflamed a war of words by an equivocal term. We
repeat that this faculty of genius can exist independent of education, and
where it is wanting, education can never confer it: it is an impulse, an
instinct always working in the character of "the chosen mind;"
One with our feelings and our powers,
And rather part of us, than ours.
In the history of genius there are unquestionably many secondary causes of
considerable influence in developing, or even crushing the germ--these
have been of late often detected, and sometimes carried to a ridiculous
extreme; but among them none seem more remarkable than the first studies
and the first habits.
CHAPTER VI.
The first studies.--The self-educated are marked by stubborn
peculiarities.--Their errors.--Their improvement from the neglect or
contempt they incur.--The history of self-education in Moses Mendelssohn.
--Friends usually prejudicial in the youth of genius.--A remarkable
interview between Petrarch in his first studies, and his literary
adviser.--Exhortation.
The first studies form an epoch in the history of genius, and
unquestionably have sensibly influenced its productions. Often have the
first impressions stamped a character on the mind adapted to receive one,
as the first step into life has often determined its walk. But this, for
ourselves, is a far distant period in our existence, which is lost in the
horizon of our own recollections, and is usually unobserved by others.
Many of those peculiarities of men of genius which are not fortunate, and
some which have hardened the character in its mould, may, however, be
traced to this period. Physicians tell us that there is a certain point in
youth at which the constitution is formed, and on which the sanity of life
revolves; the character of genius experiences a similar dangerous period.
Early bad tastes, early peculiar habits, early defective instructions, all
the egotistical pride of an untamed intellect, are those evil spirits
which will dog genius to its grave. An early attachment to the works of
Sir Thomas Browne produced in JOHNSON an excessive admiration of that
Latinised English, which violated the native graces of the language; and
the peculiar style of Gibbon is traced by himself "to the constant habit
of speaking one language, and writing another." The first studies of
REMBRANDT affected his after-labours. The peculiarity of shadow which
marks all his pictures, originated in the circumstance of his father's
mill receiving light from an aperture at the top, which habituated the
artist afterwards to view all objects as if seen in that magical light.
The intellectual POUSSIN, as Nicholas has been called, could never, from
an early devotion to the fine statues of antiquity, extricate his genius
on the canvas from the hard forms of marble: he sculptured with his
pencil; and that cold austerity of tone, still more remarkable in his last
pictures, as it became mannered, chills the spectator on a first glance.
When POPE was a child, he found in his mother's closet a small library of
mystical devotion; but it was not suspected, till the fact was discovered,
that the effusions of love and religion poured forth in his "Eloisa" were
caught from the seraphic raptures of those erotic mystics, who to the last
retained a place in his library among the classical bards of antiquity.
The accidental perusal of Quintus Curtius first made BOYLE, to use his own
words, "in love with other than pedantic books, and conjured up in him an
unsatisfied appetite of knowledge; so that he thought he owed more to
Quintus Curtius than did Alexander." From the perusal of Rycaut's folio of
Turkish history in childhood, the noble and impassioned bard of our times
retained those indelible impressions which gave life and motion to the
"Giaour," "the Corsair," and "Alp." A voyage to the country produced the
scenery. Rycaut only communicated the impulse to a mind susceptible of the
poetical character; and without this Turkish history we should still have
had the poet.[A]
[Footnote A: The following manuscript note by Lord Byron on this passage,
cannot fail to interest the lovers of poetry, as well as the inquirers
into the history of the human mind. His lordship's recollections of his
first readings will not alter the tendency of my conjecture; it only
proves that he had read much more of Eastern history and manners than
Rycaut's folio, which probably led to this class of books:
"Knolles--Cantemir--De Tott--Lady M.W. Montagu--Hawkins's translation from
Mignot's History of the Turks--the Arabian Nights--all travels or
histories or books upon the East I could meet with, I had read, as well as
Rycaut, before I was _ten years old_. I think the Arabian Nights first.
After these I preferred the history of naval actions, Don Quixote, and
Smollett's novels, particularly Roderick Random, and I was passionate for
the Roman History.
"When a boy I could never bear to read any poetry whatever without
disgust and reluctance."--_MS. note by Lord Byron._ Latterly Lord Byron
acknowledged in a conversation held in Greece with Count Gamba, not long
before he died, "The Turkish History was one of the first books that gave
me pleasure when a child; and I believe it had much influence on my
subsequent wishes to visit the Levant; and gave perhaps the Oriental
colouring which is observed in my poetry."
I omitted the following note in my last edition, but I shall now preserve
it, as it may enter into the history of his lordship's character:
"When I was in Turkey I was oftener tempted to turn Mussulman than poet,
and have often regretted since that I did not. 1818."]
The influence of first studies in the formation of the character of genius
is a moral phenomenon which has not sufficiently attracted our notice.
FRANKLIN acquaints us that, when young and wanting books, he accidentally
found De Foe's "Essay on Projects," from which work impressions were
derived which afterwards influenced some of the principal events of his
life. The lectures of REYNOLDS probably originated in the essays of
Richardson. It is acknowledged that these first made him a painter, and
not long afterwards an author; and it is said that many of the principles
in his lectures may be traced in those first studies. Many were the
indelible and glowing impressions caught by the ardent Reynolds from those
bewildering pages of enthusiasm! Sir WALTER RAWLEIGH, according to a
family tradition, when a young man, was perpetually reading and conversing
on the discoveries of Columbus, and the conquests of Cortez and Pizarro.
His character, as well as the great events of his life, seem to have been
inspired by his favourite histories; to pass beyond the discoveries of the
Spaniards became a passion, and the vision of his life. It is formally
testified that, from a copy of Vegetius _de Re Militari_, in the school
library of St. Paul's, MARLBOROUGH imbibed his passion for a military
life. If he could not understand the text, the prints were, in such a
mind, sufficient to awaken the passion for military glory. ROUSSEAU in
early youth, full of his Plutarch, while he was also devouring the trash
of romances, could only conceive human nature in the colossal forms, or be
affected by the infirm sensibility of an imagination mastering all his
faculties; thinking like a Roman, and feeling like a Sybarite. The same
circumstance happened to CATHERINE MACAULEY, who herself has told us how
she owed the bent of her character to the early reading of the Roman
historians; but combining Roman admiration with English faction, she
violated truth in English characters, and exaggerated romance in her
Roman. But the permanent effect of a solitary bias in the youth of genius,
impelling the whole current of his after-life, is strikingly displayed in
the remarkable character of Archdeacon BLACKBURNE, the author of the
famous "Confessional," and the curious "Memoirs of Hollis," written with
such a republican fierceness.
I had long considered the character of our archdeacon as a _lusus
politicus et theologicus_. Having subscribed to the Articles, and enjoying
the archdeaconry, he was writing against subscription and the whole
hierarchy, with a spirit so irascible and caustic, that one would have
suspected that, like Prynne and Bastwick, the archdeacon had already lost
both his ears; while his antipathy to monarchy might have done honour to a
Roundhead of the Rota Club. The secret of these volcanic explosions was
only revealed in a letter accidentally preserved. In the youth of our
spirited archdeacon, when fox-hunting was his deepest study, it happened
at the house of a relation, that on a rainy day he fell, among other
garret lumber, on some worm-eaten volumes which had once been the careful
collections of his great-grandfather, an Oliverian justice. "These," says
he, "I conveyed to my lodging-room, and there became acquainted with the
manners and principles of many excellent old Puritans, and then laid the
foundation of my own." The enigma is now solved! Archdeacon BLACKBURNE, in
his seclusion in Yorkshire amidst the Oliverian justice's library, shows
that we are in want of a Cervantes but not of a Quixote, and Yorkshire
might yet be as renowned a country as La Mancha; for political romances,
it is presumed, may be as fertile of ridicule as any of the folios of
chivalry.
We may thus mark the influence through life of those first unobserved
impressions on the character of genius, which every author has not
recorded.
Education, however indispensable in a cultivated age, produces nothing on
the side of genius. Where education ends, genius often begins. GRAY was
asked if he recollected when he first felt the strong predilection to
poetry; he replied that, "he believed it was when he began to read Virgil
for his own amusement, and not in school hours as a task." Such is the
force of self-education in genius, that the celebrated physiologist, JOHN
HUNTER, who was entirely self-educated, evinced such penetration in his
anatomical discoveries, that he has brought into notice passages from
writers he was unable to read, and which had been overlooked by profound
scholars.[A]
[Footnote A: Life of John Hunter, by Dr. Adams, p. 59, where the case is
curiously illustrated. [The writer therein defends Hunter from a charge of
plagiarism from the Greek writers, who had studied accurately certain
phases of disease, which had afterwards been "overlooked by the most
profound scholars for nearly two thousand years," until John Hunter by his
own close observation had assumed similar conclusions.]]
That the education of genius must be its own work, we may appeal to every
one of the family. It is not always fortunate, for many die amidst a waste
of talents and the wreck of mind.
Many a soul sublime
Has felt the influence of malignant star.
An unfavourable position in society is a usual obstruction in the
course of this self-education; and a man of genius, through half his
life, has held a contest with a bad, or with no education. There is a race
of the late-taught, who, with a capacity of leading in the first
rank, are mortified to discover themselves only on a level with their
contemporaries. WINCKELMANN, who passed his youth in obscure misery as a
village schoolmaster, paints feelings which strikingly contrast with his
avocations. "I formerly filled the office of a schoolmaster with the
greatest punctuality; and I taught the A, B, C, to children with filthy
heads, at the moment I was aspiring after the knowledge of the beautiful,
and meditating, low to myself, on the similes of Homer; then I said to
myself, as I still say, 'Peace, my soul, thy strength shall surmount thy
cares.'" The obstructions of so unhappy a self-education essentially
injured his ardent genius, and long he secretly sorrowed at this want of
early patronage, and these habits of life so discordant with the habits of
his mind. "I am unfortunately one of those whom the Greeks named [Greek:
opsimatheis], _sero sapientes_, the late-learned, for I have appeared too
late in the world and in Italy. To have done something, it was necessary
that I should have had an education analogous to my pursuits, and at your
age." This class of the _late-learned_ is a useful distinction. It is so
with a sister-art; one of the greatest musicians of our country assures
me that the ear is as latent with many; there are the late-learned even
in the musical world. BUDAEUS declared that he was both "self-taught and
late-taught."
The SELF-EDUCATED are marked by stubborn peculiarities. Often abounding
with talent, but rarely with talent in its place, their native prodigality
has to dread a plethora of genius and a delirium of wit: or else, hard but
irregular students rich in acquisition, they find how their huddled
knowledge, like corn heaped in a granary, for want of ventilation and
stirring, perishes in its own masses. Not having attended to the process
of their own minds, and little acquainted with that of other men, they
cannot throw out their intractable knowledge, nor with sympathy awaken by
its softening touches the thoughts of others. To conduct their native
impulse, which had all along driven them, is a secret not always
discovered, or else discovered late in life. Hence it has happened with
some of this race, that their first work has not announced genius, and
their last is stamped with it. Some are often judged by their first
work, and when they have surpassed themselves, it is long ere it is
acknowledged. They have improved themselves by the very neglect or even
contempt which their unfortunate efforts were doomed to meet; and when
once they have learned what is beautiful, they discover a living but
unsuspected source in their own wild but unregarded originality. Glorying
in their strength at the time that they are betraying their weakness, yet
are they still mighty in that enthusiasm which is only disciplined by its
own fierce habits. Never can the native faculty of genius with its
creative warmth be crushed out of the human soul; it will work itself out
beneath the encumbrance of the most uncultivated minds, even amidst the
deep perplexed feelings and the tumultuous thoughts of the most visionary
enthusiast, who is often only a man of genius misplaced.[A] We may find a
whole race of these self-taught among the unknown writers of the old
romances, and the ancient ballads of European nations; there sleep many a
Homer and Virgil--legitimate heirs of their genius, though possessors of
decayed estates. BUNYAN is the Spenser of the people. The fire burned
towards Heaven, although the altar was rude and rustic.
[Footnote A: "One assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my own
experience, that there exist folios on the human understanding and the
nature of man which would have a far juster claim to their high rank and
celebrity, if in the whole huge volume there could be found as much
fulness of heart and intellect as burst forth in many a simple page of
George Fox and Jacob Behmen."--_Mr. Coleridge's Biographia Litteraria_, i.
143.]
BARRY, the painter, has left behind him works not to be turned over by
the connoisseur by rote, nor the artist who dares not be just. That
enthusiast, with a temper of mind resembling Rousseau's, but with coarser
feelings, was the same creature of untamed imagination consumed by
the same passions, with the same fine intellect disordered, and the
same fortitude of soul; but he found his self-taught pen, like his
pencil, betray his genius.[B] A vehement enthusiasm breaks through his
ill-composed works, throwing the sparks of his bold conceptions into the
soul of the youth of genius. When, in his character of professor, he
delivered his lectures at the academy, at every pause his auditors rose in
a tumult, and at every close their hands returned to him the proud
feelings he adored. This gifted but self-educated man, once listening to
the children of genius whom he had created about him, exclaimed, "Go it,
go it, my boys! they did so at Athens." This self-formed genius could
throw up his native mud into the very heaven of his invention!
[Footnote B: Like Hogarth, when he attempted to engrave his own works, his
originality of style made them differ from the tamer and more mechanical
labours of the professional engraver. They have consequently less beauty,
but greater vigour.--ED.]
But even such pages as those of BARRY'S are the aliment of young genius.
Before we can discern the beautiful, must we not be endowed with the
susceptibility of love? Must not the disposition be formed before even the
object appears? I have witnessed the young artist of genius glow and start
over the reveries of the uneducated BARRY, but pause and meditate, and
inquire over the mature elegance of REYNOLDS; in the one he caught the
passion for beauty, and in the other he discovered the beautiful; with the
one he was warm and restless, and with the other calm and satisfied.
Of the difficulties overcome in the self-education of genius, we have a
remarkable instance in the character of MOSES MENDELSSOHN, on whom
literary Germany has bestowed the honourable title of "the Jewish
Socrates."[A] So great apparently were the invincible obstructions which
barred out Mendelssohn from the world of literature and philosophy, that,
in the history of men of genius, it is something like taking in the
history of man the savage of Aveyron from his woods--who, destitute of a
human language, should at length create a model of eloquence; who, without
the faculty of conceiving a figure, should at length be capable of adding
to the demonstrations of Euclid; and who, without a complex idea and with
few sensations, should at length, in the sublimest strain of metaphysics,
open to the world a new view of the immortality of the soul!
[Footnote A: I composed the life of MENDELSSOHN so far back as in 1798, in
a periodical publication, whence our late biographers have drawn their
notices; a juvenile production, which happened to excite the attention of
the late BARRY, then not personally known to me; and he gave all the
immortality his poetical pencil could bestow on this man of genius, by
immediately placing in his Elysium of Genius MENDELSSOHN shaking hands
with ADDISON, who wrote on the truth of the Christian religion, and near
LOCKE, the English master of MENDELSSOHN'S mind.]
Mendelssohn, the son of a poor rabbin, in a village in Germany, received
an education completely rabbinical, and its nature must be comprehended,
or the term of _education_ would be misunderstood. The Israelites in
Poland and Germany live with all the restrictions of their ceremonial law
in an insulated state, and are not always instructed in the language of
the country of their birth. They employ for their common intercourse a
barbarous or _patois_ Hebrew; while the sole studies of the young rabbins
are strictly confined to the Talmud, of which the fundamental principle,
like the Sonna of the Turks, is a pious rejection of every species of
profane learning. This ancient jealous spirit, which walls in the
understanding and the faith of man, was to shut out what the imitative
Catholics afterwards called heresy. It is, then, these numerous folios of
the Talmud which the true Hebraic student contemplates through all the
seasons of life, as the Patuecos in their low valley imagine their
surrounding mountains to be the confines of the universe.
Of such a nature was the plan of Mendelssohn's first studies; but even in
his boyhood this conflict of study occasioned an agitation of his spirits,
which affected his life ever after. Rejecting the Talmudical dreamers, he
caught a nobler spirit from the celebrated Maimonides; and his native
sagacity was already clearing up the surrounding darkness. An enemy not
less hostile to the enlargement of mind than voluminous legends, presented
itself in the indigence of his father, who was compelled to send away the
youth on foot to Berlin, to find labour and bread.
At Berlin, Mendelssohn becomes an amanuensis to another poor rabbin, who
could only still initiate him into the theology, the jurisprudence, and
the scholastic philosophy of his people. Thus, he was as yet no farther
advanced in that philosophy of the mind in which he was one day to be the
rival of Plato and Locke, nor in that knowledge of literature which was
finally to place him among the first polished critics of Germany.
Some unexpected event occurs which gives the first great impulse to the
mind of genius. Mendelssohn received this from the companion of his misery
and his studies, a man of congenial but maturer powers. He was a Polish
Jew, expelled from the communion of the orthodox, and the calumniated
student was now a vagrant, with more sensibility than fortitude. But this
vagrant was a philosopher, a poet, a naturalist, and a mathematician.
Mendelssohn, at a distant day, never alluded to him without tears. Thrown
together into the same situation, they approached each other by the same
sympathies, and communicating in the only language which Mendelssohn could
speak, the Polander voluntarily undertook his literary education.
Then was seen one of the most extraordinary spectacles in the history of
modern literature. Two houseless Hebrew youths might be discovered, in the
moonlit streets of Berlin, sitting in retired corners, or on the steps of
some porch, the one instructing the other, with a Euclid in his hand; but
what is more extraordinary, it was a Hebrew version, composed by the
master for a pupil who knew no other language. Who could then have
imagined that the future Plato of Germany was sitting on those steps!
The Polander, whose deep melancholy had settled on his heart, died--yet he
had not lived in vain, since the electric spark that lighted up the soul
of Mendelssohn had fallen from his own.
Mendelssohn was now left alone; his mind teeming with its chaos, and still
master of no other language than that barren idiom which was incapable of
expressing the ideas he was meditating on. He had scarcely made a step
into the philosophy of his age, and the genius of Mendelssohn had probably
been lost to Germany, had not the singularity of his studies and the cast
of his mind been detected by the sagacity of Dr. Kisch. The aid of this
physician was momentous; for he devoted several hours every day to the
instruction of a poor youth, whose strong capacity he had the discernment
to perceive, and the generous temper to aid. Mendelssohn was soon enabled
to read Locke in a Latin version; but with such extreme pain, that,
compelled to search for every word, and to arrange their Latin order, and
at the same time to combine metaphysical ideas, it was observed that he
did not so much translate, as guess by the force of meditation.
This prodigious effort of his intellect retarded his progress, but
invigorated his habit, as the racer, by running against the hill, at
length courses with facility.
A succeeding effort was to master the living languages, and chiefly the
English, that he might read his favourite Locke in his own idiom. Thus a
great genius for metaphysics and languages was forming itself alone,
without aid.
It is curious to detect, in the character of genius, the effects of local
and moral influences. There resulted from Mendelssohn's early situation
certain defects in his Jewish education, and numerous impediments in his
studies. Inheriting but one language, too obsolete and naked to serve the
purposes of modern philosophy, he perhaps overvalued his new acquisitions,
and in his delight of knowing many languages, he with difficulty escaped
from remaining a mere philologist; while in his philosophy, having adopted
the prevailing principles of Wolf and Baumgarten, his genius was long
without the courage or the skill to emancipate itself from their rusty
chains. It was more than a step which had brought him into their circle,
but a step was yet wanting to escape from it.
At length the mind of Mendelssohn enlarged in literary intercourse: he
became a great and original thinker in many beautiful speculations in
moral and critical philosophy; while he had gradually been creating a
style which the critics of Germany have declared to be their first
luminous model of precision and elegance. Thus a Hebrew vagrant, first
perplexed in the voluminous labyrinth of Judaical learning, in his middle
age oppressed by indigence and malady, and in his mature life wrestling
with that commercial station whence he derived his humble independence,
became one of the master-writers in the literature of his country. The
history of the mind of Mendelssohn is one of the noblest pictures of the
self-education of genius.
Friends, whose prudential counsels in the business of life are valuable in
our youth, are usually prejudicial in the youth of genius. The multitude
of authors and artists originates in the ignorant admiration of their
early friends; while the real genius has often been disconcerted and
thrown into despair by the false judgments of his domestic circle. The
productions of taste are more unfortunate than those which depend on a
chain of reasoning, or the detail of facts; these are more palpable to the
common judgments of men; but taste is of such rarity, that a long life may
be passed by some without once obtaining a familiar acquaintance with a
mind so cultivated by knowledge, so tried by experience, and so practised
by converse with the literary world, that its prophetic feeling can
anticipate the public opinion. When a young writer's first essay is shown,
some, through mere inability of censure, see nothing but beauties; others,
from mere imbecility, can see none; and others, out of pure malice, see
nothing but faults. "I was soon disgusted," says Gibbon, "with the modest
practice of reading the manuscript to my friends. Of such friends some
will praise for politeness, and some will criticise for vanity." Had
several of our first writers set their fortunes on the cast of their
friends' opinions, we might have lost some precious compositions.
The friends of Thompson discovered nothing but faults in his early
productions, one of which happened to be his noblest, the "Winter;" they
just could discern that these abounded with luxuriances, without being
aware that, they were the luxuriances of a poet. He had created a new
school in art--and appealed from his circle to the public. From a
manuscript letter of our poet's, written when employed on his "Summer," I
transcribe his sentiments on his former literary friends in Scotland--he
is writing to Mallet: "Far from defending these two lines, I damn them to
the lowest depth of the poetical Tophet, prepared of old for Mitchell,
Morrice, Rook, Cook, Beckingham, and a long &c. Wherever I have evidence,
or think I have evidence, which is the same thing, I'll be as obstinate as
all the mules in Persia." This poet of warm affections felt so irritably
the perverse criticisms of his learned friends, that they were to share
alike a poetic Hell--probably a sort of _Dunciad_, or lampoons. One of
these "blasts" broke out in a vindictive epigram on Mitchell, whom he
describes with a "blasted eye;" but this critic literally having one, the
poet, to avoid a personal reflection, could only consent to make the
blemish more active--
Why all not faults, injurious Mitchell! why
Appears one beauty to thy _blasting_ eye?
He again calls him "the planet-blasted Mitchell." Of another of these
critical friends he speaks with more sedateness, but with a strong
conviction that the critic, a very sensible man, had no sympathy with the
poet. "Aikman's reflections on my writings are very good, but he does not
in them regard the turn of my genius enough; should I alter my way, I
would write poorly. I must choose what appears to me the most significant
epithet, or I cannot with any heart proceed." The "Mirror,"[A] when
periodically published in Edinburgh, was "fastidiously" received, as all
"home-productions" are: but London avenged the cause of the author. When
SWIFT introduced PARNELL to Lord Bolingbroke, and to the world, he
observes, in his Journal, "it is pleasant to see one who hardly passed for
anything in Ireland, make his way here with a little friendly forwarding."
MONTAIGNE has honestly told us that in his own province they considered
that for him to attempt to become an author was perfectly ludicrous: at
home, says he, "I am compelled to purchase printers; while at a distance,
printers purchase me." There is nothing more trying to the judgment of the
friends of a young man of genius than the invention of a new manner:
without a standard to appeal to, without bladders to swim, the ordinary
critic sinks into irretrievable distress; but usually pronounces against
novelty. When REYNOLDS returned from Italy, warm with all the excellence
of his art, and painted a portrait, his old master, Hudson, viewing it,
and perceiving no trace of his own manner, exclaimed that he did not paint
so well as when he left England; while another, who conceived no higher
excellence than Kneller, treated with signal contempt the future Raphael
of England.
[Footnote A: This weekly journal was chiefly supported by the abilities of
the rising young men of the Scottish Bar. Henry Mackenzie, the author of
the "Man of Feeling," was the principal contributor. The publication was
commenced in January, 1779, and concluded May, 1790.--ED.]
If it be dangerous for a young writer to resign himself to the opinions of
his friends, he also incurs some peril in passing them with inattention.
He wants a Quintilian. One mode to obtain such an invaluable critic is the
cultivation of his own judgment in a round of reading and meditation. Let
him at once supply the marble and be himself the sculptor: let the
great authors of the world be his gospels, and the best critics their
expounders; from the one he will draw inspiration, and from the others he
will supply those tardy discoveries in art which he who solely depends on
his own experience may obtain too late. Those who do not read criticism
will rarely merit to be criticised; their progress is like those who
travel without a map of the country. The more extensive an author's
knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his powers in knowing
what to do. To obtain originality, and effect discovery, sometimes
requires but a single step, if we only know from what point to set
forwards. This important event in the life of genius has too often
depended on chance and good fortune, and many have gone down to their
graves without having discovered their unsuspected talent. CURRAN'S
predominant faculty was an exuberance of imagination when excited by
passion; but when young he gave no evidence of this peculiar faculty, nor
for several years, while a candidate for public distinction, was he aware
of his particular powers, so slowly his imagination had developed itself.
It was when assured of the secret of his strength that his confidence, his
ambition, and his industry were excited.
Let the youth preserve his juvenile compositions, whatever these may be;
they are the spontaneous growth, and like the plants of the Alps, not
always found in other soils; they are his virgin fancies. By contemplating
them, he may detect some of his predominant habits, resume a former manner
more happily, invent novelty from an old subject he had rudely designed,
and often may steal from himself some inventive touches, which, thrown
into his most finished compositions, may seem a happiness rather than an
art. It was in contemplating on some of their earliest and unfinished
productions, that more than one artist discovered with WEST that "there
were inventive touches of art in his first and juvenile essay, which, with
all his subsequent knowledge and experience, he had not been able to
surpass." A young writer, in the progress of his studies, should often
recollect a fanciful simile of Dryden--
As those who unripe veins in mines explore
On the rich bed again the warm turf lay,
Till time digests the yet imperfect ore;
And know it will be gold another day.
The youth of genius is that "age of admiration" as sings the poet of
"Human Life," when the spell breathed into our ear by our genius,
fortunate or unfortunate, is--"Aspire!" Then we adore art and the artists.
It was RICHARDSON'S enthusiasm which gave REYNOLDS the raptures he caught
in meditating on the description of a great painter; and REYNOLDS thought
RAPHAEL the most extraordinary man the world had ever produced. WEST, when
a youth, exclaimed that "A painter is a companion for kings and emperors!"
This was the feeling which rendered the thoughts of obscurity painful and
insupportable to their young minds.
But this sunshine of rapture is not always spread over the spring of the
youthful year. There is a season of self-contest, a period of tremors, and
doubts, and darkness. These frequent returns of melancholy, sometimes of
despondence, which is the lot of inexperienced genius, is a secret history
of the heart, which has been finely conveyed to us by Petrarch, in a
conversation with John of Florence, to whom the young poet often resorted
when dejected, to reanimate his failing powers, to confess his faults, and
to confide to him his dark and wavering resolves. It was a question with
Petrarch, whether he should not turn away from the pursuit of literary
fame, by giving another direction to his life.
"I went one day to John of Florence in one of those ague-fits of
faint-heartedness which often happened to me; he received me with his
accustomed kindness. 'What ails you?' said he, 'you seem oppressed with
thought: if I am not deceived, something has happened to you.' 'You do not
deceive yourself, my father (for thus I used to call him), and yet nothing
newly has happened to me; but I come to confide to you that my old
melancholy torments me more than usual. You know its nature, for my heart
has always been opened to you; you know all which I have done to draw
myself out of the crowd, and to acquire a name; and surely not without
some success, since I have your testimony in my favour. Are you not the
truest man, and the best of critics, who have never ceased to bestow on me
your praise--and what need I more? Have you not often told me that I am
answerable to God for the talents he has endowed me with, if I neglected
to cultivate them? Your praises were to me as a sharp spur: I applied
myself to study with more ardour, insatiable even of my moments.
Disdaining the beaten paths, I opened a new road; and I flattered myself
that assiduous labour would lead to something great; but I know not how,
when I thought myself highest, I feel myself fallen; the spring of my mind
has dried up; what seemed easy once, now appears to me above my strength;
I stumble at every step, and am ready to sink for ever into despair. I
return to you to teach me, or at least advise me. Shall I for ever quit my
studies? Shall I strike into some new course of life? My father, have pity
on me! draw me out of the frightful state in which I am lost.' I could
proceed no farther without shedding tears. 'Cease to afflict yourself, my
son,' said that good man; 'your condition is not so bad as you think: the
truth is, you knew little at the time you imagined you knew much. The
discovery of your ignorance is the first great step you have made towards
true knowledge. The veil is lifted up, and you now view those deep shades
of the soul which were concealed from you by excessive presumption. In
ascending an elevated spot, we gradually discover many things whose
existence before was not suspected by us. Persevere in the career which
you entered with my advice; feel confident that God will not abandon you:
there are maladies which the patient does not perceive; but to be aware of
the disease, is the first step towards the cure.'"
This remarkable literary interview is here given, that it may perchance
meet the eye of some kindred youth at one of those lonely moments when a
Shakspeare may have thought himself no poet, and a Raphael believed
himself no painter. Then may the tender wisdom of a John of Florence, in
the cloudy despondency of art, lighten up the vision of its glory!
INGENUOUS YOUTH! if, in a constant perusal of the master-writers, you see
your own sentiments anticipated--if, in the tumult of your mind, as it
comes in contact with theirs, new sentiments arise--if, sometimes, looking
on the public favourite of the hour, you feel that within which prompts
you to imagine that you could rival or surpass him--if, in meditating
on the confessions of every man of genius, for they all have their
confessions, you find you have experienced the same sensations from the
same circumstances, encountered the same difficulties and overcome them by
the same means; then let not your courage be lost in your admiration, but
listen to that "still small voice" in your heart which cries with
CORREGGIO and with MONTESQUIEU, "Ed io anche son pittore!"
CHAPTER VII.
Of the irritability of genius.--Genius in society often in a state of
suffering.--Equality of temper more prevalent among men of letters.--Of
the occupation of making a great name.--Anxieties of the most successful.
--Of the inventors.--Writers of learning.--Writers of taste.--Artists.
The modes of life of a man of genius, often tinctured by eccentricity and
enthusiasm, maintain an eternal conflict with the monotonous and imitative
habits of society, as society is carried on in a great metropolis, where
men are necessarily alike, and where, in perpetual intercourse, they shape
themselves to one another.
The occupations, the amusements, and the ardour of the man of genius are
at discord with the artificial habits of life: in the vortexes of
business, or the world of pleasure, crowds of human beings are only
treading in one another's steps. The pleasures and the sorrows of this
active multitude are not his, while his are not obvious to them; and his
favourite occupations strengthen his peculiarities, and increase his
sensibility. Genius in society is often in a state of suffering.
Professional characters, who are themselves so often literary, yielding to
their predominant interests, conform to that assumed urbanity which levels
them with ordinary minds; but the man of genius cannot leave himself
behind in the cabinet he quits; the train of his thoughts is not stopped
at will, and in the range of conversation the habits of his mind will
prevail: the poet will sometimes muse till he modulates a verse; the
artist is sketching what a moment presents, and a moment changes; the
philosophical historian is suddenly absorbed by a new combination of
thought, and, placing his hands over his eyes, is thrown back into the
Middle Ages. Thus it happens that an excited imagination, a high-toned
feeling, a wandering reverie, a restlessness of temper, are perpetually
carrying the man of genius out of the processional line of the mere
conversationists. Like all solitary beings, he is much too sentient, and
prepares for defence even at a random touch or a chance hit. His
generalising views take things only in masses, while in his rapid emotions
he interrogates, and doubts, and is caustic; in a word, he thinks he
converses while he is at his studies. Sometimes, apparently a complacent
listener, we are mortified by detecting the absent man: now he appears
humbled and spiritless, ruminating over some failure which probably may be
only known to himself; and now haughty and hardy for a triumph he has
obtained, which yet remains a secret to the world. No man is so apt to
indulge the extremes of the most opposite feelings: he is sometimes
insolent, and sometimes querulous; now the soul of tenderness and
tranquillity,--then stung by jealousy, or writhing in aversion! A fever
shakes his spirit; a fever which has sometimes generated a disease, and
has even produced a slight perturbation of the faculties.[A] In one of
those manuscript notes by Lord BYRON on this work, which I have wished to
preserve, I find his lordship observing on the feelings of genius, that
"the depreciation of the lowest of mankind is more painful than the
applause of the highest is pleasing." Such is the confession of genius,
and such its liability to hourly pain.
[Footnote A: I have given a history of _literary quarrels from personal
motives_, in "Quarrels of Authors," p. 529. There we find how many
controversies, in which the public get involved, have sprung from some
sudden squabbles, some neglect of petty civility, some unlucky epithet, or
some casual observation dropped without much consideration, which
mortified or enraged the _genus irritabile_; a title which from ancient
days has been assigned to every description of authors. The late Dr.
WELLS, who had some experience in his intercourse with many literary
characters, observed, that "in whatever regards the fruits of their mental
labours, this is universally acknowledged to be true. Some of the
malevolent passions indeed frequently become in learned men more than
ordinarily strong, from want of that restraint upon their excitement which
society imposes." A puerile critic has reproached me for having drawn my
description entirely from my own fancy:--I have taken it from life!
See further symptoms of this disease at the close of the chapter on
_Self-praise_ in the present work.]
Once we were nearly receiving from the hand of genius the most curious
sketches of the temper, the irascible humours, the delicacy of soul, even
to its shadowiness, from the warm _sbozzos_ of BURNS, when he began a
diary of the heart,--a narrative of characters and events, and a
chronology of his emotions. It was natural for such a creature of
sensation and passion to project such a regular task, but quite impossible
for him to get through it. The paper-book that he conceived would have
recorded all these things turns out, therefore, but a very imperfect
document. Imperfect as it was, it has been thought proper not to give it
entire. Yet there we view a warm original mind, when he first stepped
into the polished circles of society, discovering that he could no
longer "pour out his bosom, his every thought and floating fancy, his very
inmost soul, with unreserved confidence to another, without hazard of
losing part of that respect which man deserves from man; or, from the
unavoidable imperfections attending human nature, of one day repenting his
confidence." This was the first lesson he learned at Edinburgh, and it was
as a substitute for such a human being that he bought a paper-book to keep
under lock and key: "a security at least equal," says he, "to the bosom of
any friend whatever." Let the man of genius pause over the fragments of
this "paper-book;"--it will instruct as much as any open confession of a
criminal at the moment he is about to suffer. No man was more afflicted
with that miserable pride, the infirmity of men of imagination, which is
so jealously alive, even among their best friends, as to exact a perpetual
acknowledgment of their powers. Our poet, with all his gratitude and
veneration for "the noble Glencairn," was "wounded to the soul" because
his lordship showed "so much attention, engrossing attention, to the only
blockhead at table; the whole company consisted of his lordship,
Dunderpate, and myself." This Dunderpate, who dined with Lord Glencairn,
might have been a useful citizen, who in some points is of more value than
an irritable bard. Burns was equally offended with another patron, who was
also a literary brother, Dr. Blair. At the moment, he too appeared to be
neglecting the irritable poet "for the mere carcass of greatness, or when
his eye measured the difference of their point of elevation; I say to
myself, with scarcely any emotion," (he might have added, except a good
deal of painful contempt,) "what do I care for him or his pomp either?"
--"Dr. Blair's vanity is proverbially known among his acquaintance," adds
Burns, at the moment that the solitary haughtiness of his own genius had
entirely escaped his self-observation.
This character of genius is not singular. Grimm tells of MARIVAUX, that
though a good man, there was something dark and suspicious in his
character, which made it difficult to keep on terms with him; the most
innocent word would wound him, and he was always inclined to think that
there was an intention to mortify him; this disposition made him unhappy,
and rendered his acquaintance too painful to endure.
What a moral paradox, but what an unquestionable fact, is the wayward
irritability of some of the finest geniuses, which is often weak to
effeminacy, and capricious to childishness! while minds of a less delicate
texture are not frayed and fretted by casual frictions; and plain sense
with a coarser grain, is sufficient to keep down these aberrations of
their feelings. How mortifying is the list of--
Fears of the brave and follies of the wise!
Many have been sore and implacable on an allusion to some personal defect
--on the obscurity of their birth--on some peculiarity of habit; and have
suffered themselves to be governed in life by nervous whims and chimeras,
equally fantastic and trivial. This morbid sensibility lurks in the
temperament of genius, and the infection is often discovered where it is
not always suspected. Cumberland declared that the sensibility of some men
of genius is so quick and captious, that you must first consider whom they
can be happy with, before you can promise yourself any happiness with
them: if you bring uncongenial humours into contact with each other, all
the objects of society will be frustrated by inattention to the proper
grouping of the guests. Look round on our contemporaries; every day
furnishes facts which confirm our principle. Among the vexations of POPE
was the libel of "the pictured shape;"[A] and even the robust mind of
JOHNSON could not suffer to be exhibited as "blinking Sam."[B] MILTON must
have delighted in contemplating his own person; and the engraver not
having reached our sublime bard's ideal grace, he has pointed his
indignation in four iambics. The praise of a skipping ape raised the
feeling of envy in that child of nature and genius, GOLDSMITH. VOITURE,
the son of a vintner, like our PRIOR, was so mortified whenever reminded
of his original occupation, that it was bitterly said, that wine, which
cheered the hearts of all men, sickened the heart of Voiture. AKENSIDE
ever considered his lameness as an unsupportable misfortune, for it
continually reminded him of the fall of the cleaver from one of his
father's blocks. BECCARIA, invited to Paris by the literati, arrived
melancholy and silent, and abruptly returned home. At that moment this
great man was most miserable from a fit of jealousy: a young female had
extinguished all his philosophy. The poet ROUSSEAU was the son of a
cobbler; and when his honest parent waited at the door of the theatre to
embrace his son on the success of his first piece, genius, whose
sensibility is not always virtuous, repulsed the venerable father with
insult and contempt. But I will no longer proceed from folly to crime.
[Footnote A: He was represented as an ill-made monkey in the frontispiece
to a satire noted in "Quarrels of Authors," p. 286 (last edition).--ED.]
[Footnote B: Johnson was displeased at the portrait Reynolds painted of
him which dwelt on his nearsightedness; declaring that "a man's defects
should never be painted." The same defect was made the subject of a
caricature particularly allusive to critical prejudices in his "Lives of
the Poets," in which he is pictured as an owl "blinking at the stars."
--ED.]
Those who give so many sensations to others must themselves possess an
excess and a variety of feelings. We find, indeed, that they are censured
for their extreme irritability; and that happy equality of temper so
prevalent among MEN OF LETTERS, and which is conveniently acquired by men
of the world, has been usually refused to great mental powers, or to
fervid dispositions--authors and artists. The man of wit becomes petulant,
the profound thinker morose, and the vivacious ridiculously thoughtless.
When ROUSSEAU once retired to a village, he had to learn to endure its
conversation; for this purpose he was compelled to invent an expedient to
get rid of his uneasy sensations. "Alone, I have never known ennui,
even when perfectly unoccupied: my imagination, filling the void, was
sufficient to busy me. It is only the inactive chit-chat of the room, when
every one is seated face to face, and only moving their tongues, which I
never could support. There to be a fixture, nailed with one hand on the
other, to settle the state of the weather, or watch the flies about
one, or, what is worse, to be bandying compliments, this to me is not
bearable." He hit on the expedient of making lace-strings, carrying his
working cushion in his visits, to keep the peace with the country gossips.
Is the occupation of making a great name less anxious and precarious than
that of making a great fortune? the progress of a man's capital is
unequivocal to him, but that of the fame of authors and artists is for the
greater part of their lives of an ambiguous nature. They become whatever
the minds or knowledge of others make them; they are the creatures of the
prejudices and the predispositions of others, and must suffer from those
precipitate judgments which are the result of such prejudices and such
predispositions. Time only is the certain friend of literary worth, for
time makes the world disagree among themselves; and when those who condemn
discover that there are others who approve, the weaker party loses itself
in the stronger, and at length they learn that the author was far more
reasonable than their prejudices had allowed them to conceive. It is thus,
however, that the regard which men of genius find in one place they lose
in another. We may often smile at the local gradations of genius; the
fervid esteem in which an author is held here, and the cold indifference,
if not contempt, he encounters in another place; here the man of learning
is condemned as a heavy drone, and there the man of wit annoys the unwitty
listener.
And are not the anxieties of even the most successful men of genius
renewed at every work--often quitted in despair, often returned to with
rapture? the same agitation of the spirits, the same poignant delight, the
same weariness, the same dissatisfaction, the same querulous languishment
after excellence? Is the man of genius an INVENTOR? the discovery is
contested, or it is not comprehended for ten years after, perhaps not
during his whole life; even men of science are as children before him. Sir
Thomas Bodley wrote to Lord Bacon, remonstrating with him on his _new mode
of philosophising_. It seems the fate of all originality of thinking to be
immediately opposed; a contemporary is not prepared for its comprehension,
and too often cautiously avoids it, from the prudential motive which turns
away from a new and solitary path. BACON was not at all understood at home
in his own day; his reputation--for it was not celebrity--was confined to
his history of Henry VII., and his Essays; it was long after his death
before English writers ventured to quote Bacon as an authority; and with
equal simplicity and grandeur, BACON called himself "the servant of
posterity." MONTESQUIEU gave his _Esprit des Loix_ to be read by that man
in France, whom he conceived to be the best judge, and in return received
the most mortifying remarks. The great philosopher exclaimed in despair,
"I see my own age is not ripe enough to understand my work; however, it
shall be published!" When KEPLER published the first rational work on
comets, it was condemned, even by the learned, as a wild dream. COPERNICUS
so much dreaded the prejudice of mankind against his treatise on "The
Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies," that, by a species of continence of
all others most difficult to a philosopher, says Adam Smith, he detained
it in his closet for thirty years together. LINNAEUS once in despair
abandoned his beloved studies, from a too irritable feeling of the
ridicule in which, as it appeared to him, a professor Siegesbeck had
involved his famous system. Penury, neglect, and labour LINNAEUS could
endure, but that his botany should become the object of ridicule for all
Stockholm, shook the nerves of this great inventor in his science. Let him
speak for himself. "No one cared how many sleepless nights and toilsome
hours I had passed, while all with one voice declared, that Siegesbeck had
annihilated me. I took my leave of Flora, who bestows on me nothing but
Siegesbecks; and condemned my too numerous observations a thousand times
over to eternal oblivion. What a fool have I been to waste so much time,
to spend my days in a study which yields no better fruit, and makes me the
laughing stock of the world." Such are the cries of the irritability of
genius, and such are often the causes. The world was in danger of losing a
new science, had not LINNAEUS returned to the discoveries which he had
forsaken in the madness of the mind! The great SYDENHAM, who, like our
HARVEY and our HUNTER, effected a revolution in the science of medicine,
and led on alone by the independence of his genius, attacked the most
prevailing prejudices, so highly provoked the malignant emulation of his
rivals, that a conspiracy was raised against the father of our modern
practice to banish him out of the college, as "guilty of medical heresy."
JOHN HUNTER was a great discoverer in his own science; but one who well
knew him has told us, that few of his contemporaries perceived the
ultimate object of his pursuits; and his strong and solitary genius
laboured to perfect his designs without the solace of sympathy, without
one cheering approbation. "We bees do not provide honey for ourselves,"
exclaimed VAN HELMONT, when worn out by the toils of chemistry, and still
contemplating, amidst tribulation and persecution, and approaching death,
his "Tree of Life," which he imagined he had discovered in the cedar. But
with a sublime melancholy his spirit breaks out; "My mind breathes some
unheard-of thing within; though I, as unprofitable for this life, shall be
buried!" Such were the mighty but indistinct anticipations of this
visionary inventor, the father of modern chemistry!
I cannot quit this short record of the fates of the inventors in science,
without adverting to another cause of that irritability of genius which is
so closely connected with their pursuits. If we look into the history of
theories, we shall be surprised at the vast number which have "not left a
rack behind." And do we suppose that the inventors themselves were not at
times alarmed by secret doubts of their soundness and stability? They
felt, too often for their repose, that the noble architecture which they
had raised might be built on moveable sands, and be found only in the dust
of libraries; a cloudy day, or a fit of indigestion, would deprive an
inventor of his theory all at once; and as one of them said, "after
dinner, all that I have written in the morning appears to me dark,
incongruous, nonsensical." At such moments we should find this man of
genius in no pleasant mood. The true cause of this nervous state cannot,
nay, must not, be confided to the world: the honour of his darling theory
will always be dearer to his pride than the confession of even slight
doubts which may shake its truth. It is a curious fact which we have
but recently discovered, that ROUSSEAU was disturbed by a terror he
experienced, and which we well know was not unfounded, that his theories
of education were false and absurd. He could not endure to read a page in
his own "Emile"[A] without disgust after the work had been published! He
acknowledged that there were more suffrages against his notions than for
them. "I am not displeased," says he, "with myself on the style and
eloquence, but I still dread that my writings are good for nothing at the
bottom, and that all my theories are full of extravagance." [_Je crains
toujours que je peche par le fond, et que tous mes systemes ne sont que
des extravagances._] HARTLEY with his "Vibrations and Vibrationeles,"
LEIBNITZ with his "Monads," CUDWORTH with his "Plastic Natures,"
MALEBRANCHE with his paradoxical doctrine of "Seeing all things in God,"
and BURNET with his heretical "Theory of the Earth," must unquestionably
at times have betrayed an irritability which those about them may have
attributed to temper, rather than to genius.
[Footnote A: In a letter by Hume to Blair, written in 1766, apparently
first published in the _Literary Gazette_, Nov. 17, 1821.]
Is our man of genius--not the victim of fancy, but the slave of truth--a
learned author? Of the living waters of human knowledge it cannot be said
that "If a man drink thereof, he shall never thirst again." What volumes
remain to open! what manuscript but makes his heart palpitate! There is no
term in researches which new facts may not alter, and a single date may
not dissolve. Truth! thou fascinating, but severe mistress, thy adorers
are often broken down in thy servitude, performing a thousand unregarded
task-works! Now winding thee through thy labyrinth with a single thread,
often unravelling--now feeling their way in darkness, doubtful if it be
thyself they are touching. How much of the real labour of genius and
erudition must remain concealed from the world, and never be reached by
their penetration! MONTESQUIEU has described this feeling after its agony:
"I thought I should have killed myself these three months to finish a
_morceau_ (for his great work), which I wished to insert, on the origin
and revolutions of the civil laws in France. You will read it in three
hours; but I do assure you that it cost me so much labour that it has
whitened my hair." Mr. Hallam, stopping to admire the genius of GIBBON,
exclaims, "In this, as in many other places, the masterly boldness and
precision of his outline, which astonish those who have trodden parts of
the same field, is apt to escape an uninformed reader." Thrice has my
learned friend, SHARON TURNER, recomposed, with renewed researches, the
history of our ancestors, of which Milton and Hume had despaired--thrice,
amidst the self-contests of ill-health and professional duties!
The man of erudition in closing his elaborate work is still exposed to the
fatal omissions of wearied vigilance, or the accidental knowledge of some
inferior mind, and always to the reigning taste, whatever it chance to be,
of the public. Burnet criticised VARILLAS unsparingly;[A] but when he
wrote history himself, Harmer's "Specimen of Errors in Burnet's History,"
returned Burnet the pangs which he had inflicted on another. NEWTON'S
favourite work was his "Chronology," which he had written over fifteen
times, yet he desisted from its publication during his life-time, from the
ill-usage of which he complained. Even the "Optics" of Newton had no
character at home till noticed in France. The calm temper of our great
philosopher was of so fearful a nature in regard to criticism, that
Whiston declares that he would not publish his attack on the "Chronology,"
lest it might have killed our philosopher; and thus Bishop STILLINGFLEET'S
end was hastened by LOCKE's confutation of his metaphysics. The feelings
of Sir JOHN MARSHAM could hardly be less irritable when he found his great
work tainted by an accusation that it was not friendly to revelation.[B]
When the learned POCOCK published a specimen of his translation of
Abulpharagias, an Arabian historian, in 1649, it excited great interest;
but in 1663, when he gave the world the complete version, it met with no
encouragement: in the course of those thirteen years, the genius of the
times had changed, and Oriental studies were no longer in request.
[Footnote A: For an account of this work, and Burnet's _expose_ of it, see
"Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 132.--ED.]
[Footnote B: This great work the _Canon Chronicus_, was published in 1672,
and was the first attempt to make the Egyptian chronology clear and
intelligible, and to reconcile the whole to the Scripture chronology; a
labour he had commenced in _Diatriba Chronologica_, published in 1649.
--ED.]
The great VERULAM profoundly felt the retardment of his fame; for he has
pathetically expressed this sentiment in his testament, where he bequeaths
his name to posterity, AFTER SOME GENERATIONS SHALL BE past. BRUCE sunk
into his grave defrauded of that just fame which his pride and vivacity
perhaps too keenly prized, at least for his happiness, and which he
authoritatively exacted from an unwilling public. Mortified and indignant
at the reception of his great labour by the cold-hearted scepticism of
little minds, and the maliciousness of idling wits, he, whose fortitude
had toiled through a life of difficulty and danger, could not endure the
laugh and scorn of public opinion; for BRUCE there was a simoon more
dreadful than the Arabian, and from which genius cannot hide its head. Yet
BRUCE only met with the fate which MARCO POLO had before encountered;
whose faithful narrative had been contemned by his contemporaries, and who
was long thrown aside among legendary writers.[A]
[Footnote A: His stories of the wealth and population of China, which he
described as consisting of _millions_ obtained for him the nickname of
_Marco Milione_ among the Venetians and other small Italian states, who
were unable to comprehend the greatness of his truthful narratives of
Eastern travel. Upon his death-bed he was adjured by his friends to
retract his statements, which he indignantly refused. It was long after
ere his truthfulness was established by other travellers; the Venetian
populace gave his house the name _La Corte di Milioni_: and a vulgar
caricature of the great traveller was always introduced in their
carnivals, who was termed _Marco Milione_; and delighted them with the
most absurd stories, in, which everything was computed by millions.--ED.]
HARVEY, though his life was prolonged to his eightieth year, hardly lived
to see his great discovery of the circulation of the blood established: no
physician adopted it; and when at length it was received, one party
attempted to rob Harvey of the honour of the discovery, while another
asserted that it was so obvious, that they could only express their
astonishment that it had ever escaped observation. Incredulity and envy
are the evil spirits which have often dogged great inventors to their
tomb, and there only have vanished.--But I seem writing the "calamities of
authors," and have only begun the catalogue.
The reputation of a writer of taste is subject to more difficulties than
any other. Similar was the fate of the finest ode-writers in our poetry.
On their publication, the odes of COLLINS could find no readers; and those
of GRAY, though ushered into the reading world by the fashionable press of
Walpole, were condemned as failures. When RACINE produced his "Athalie,"
it was not at all relished: Boileau indeed declared that he understood
these matters better than the public, and prophesied that the public would
return to it: they did so; but it was sixty years afterwards; and Racine
died without suspecting that "Athalie" was his masterpiece. I have heard
one of our great poets regret that he had devoted so much of his life to
the cultivation of his art, which arose from a project made in the golden
vision of his youth: "at a time," said he, "when I thought that the
fountain could never be dried up."--"Your baggage will reach posterity,"
was observed.--"There is much to spare," was the answer.
Every day we may observe, of a work of genius, that those parts which have
all the raciness of the soil, and as such are most liked by its admirers,
are those which are the most criticised. Modest critics shelter themselves
under that general amnesty too freely granted, that tastes are allowed to
differ; but we should approximate much nearer to the truth, if we were to
say, that but few of mankind are prepared to relish the beautiful with
that enlarged taste which comprehends all the forms of feeling which
genius may assume; forms which may be necessarily associated with defects.
A man of genius composes in a state of intellectual emotion, and the magic
of his style consists in the movements of his soul; but the art of
conveying those movements is far separated from the feeling which inspires
them. The idea in the mind is not always found under the pen, any more
than the artist's conception can always breathe in his pencil. Like
FIAMINGO'S image, which he kept polishing till his friend exclaimed, "What
perfection would you have?"--"Alas!" exclaimed the sculptor, "the original
I am labouring to come up to is in my head, but not yet in my hand."
The writer toils, and repeatedly toils, to throw into our minds that
sympathy with which we hang over the illusion of his pages, and become
himself. ARIOSTO wrote sixteen different ways the celebrated stanza
descriptive of a tempest, as appears by his MSS. at Ferrara; and the
version he preferred was the last of the sixteen. We know that PETRARCH
made forty-four alterations of a single verse: "whether for the thought,
the expression, or the harmony, it is evident that as many operations in
the heart, the head, or the ear of the poet occurred," observes a man of
genius, Ugo Foscolo. Quintilian and Horace dread the over-fondness of an
author for his compositions: alteration is not always improvement. A
picture over-finished fails in its effect. If the hand of the artist
cannot leave it, how much beauty may it undo! yet still he is lingering,
still strengthening the weak, still subduing the daring, still searching
for that single idea which awakens so many in the minds of others, while
often, as it once happened, the dash of despair hangs the foam on the
horse's nostrils. I have known a great sculptor, who for twenty years
delighted himself with forming in his mind the nymph his hand was always
creating. How rapturously he beheld her! what inspiration! what illusion!
Alas! the last five years spoiled the beautiful which he had once reached,
and could not stop and finish!
The art of composition, indeed, is of such slow attainment, that a man of
genius, late in life, may discover how its secret conceals itself in the
habit; how discipline consists in exercise, how perfection comes from
experience, and how unity is the last effort of judgment. When Fox
meditated on a history which should last with the language, he met his
evil genius in this new province. The rapidity and the fire of his
elocution were extinguished by a pen unconsecrated by long and previous
study; he saw that he could not class with the great historians of every
great people; he complained, while he mourned over the fragment of genius
which, after such zealous preparation, he dared not complete. CURRAN, an
orator of vehement eloquence, often strikingly original, when late in life
he was desirous of cultivating literary composition, unaccustomed to its
more gradual march, found a pen cold, and destitute of every grace.
ROUSSEAU has glowingly described the ceaseless inquietude by which he
obtained the seductive eloquence of his style; and has said, that with
whatever talent a man may be born, the art of writing is not easily
obtained. The existing manuscripts of ROUSSEAU display as many erasures as
those of Ariosto or Petrarch; they show his eagerness to dash down his
first thoughts, and the art by which he raised them to the impassioned
style of his imagination. The memoir of GIBBON was composed seven or nine
times, and, after all, was left unfinished; and BUFFON tells us that he
wrote his "Epoques de la Nature" eighteen times before it satisfied his
taste. BURNS'S anxiety in finishing his poems was great; "all my poetry,"
said he, "is the effect of easy composition, but of laborious correction."
POPE, when employed on the _Iliad_, found it not only occupy his thoughts
by day, but haunting his dreams by night, and once wished himself hanged,
to get rid of Homer: and that he experienced often such literary agonies,
witness his description of the depressions and elevations of genius:
Who pants for glory, finds but short repose;
A breath revives him, or a breath o'erthrows!
When ROMNEY undertook to commence the first subject for the Shakspeare
Gallery, in the rapture of enthusiasm, amidst the sublime and pathetic
labouring in his whole mind, arose the terror of failure. The subject
chosen was "The Tempest;" and, as Hayley truly observes, it created many a
tempest in the fluctuating spirits of Romney. The vehement desire of that
perfection which genius conceives, and cannot always execute, held a
perpetual contest with that dejection of spirits which degrades the
unhappy sufferer, and casts him, grovelling among the mean of his class.
In a national work, a man of genius pledges his honour to the world for
its performance; but to redeem that pledge, there is a darkness in the
uncertain issue, and he is risking his honour for ever. By that work he
will always be judged, for public failures are never forgotten, and it is
not then a party, but the public itself, who become his adversaries. With
ROMNEY it was "a fever of the mad;" and his friends could scarcely inspire
him with sufficient courage to proceed with his arduous picture, which
exercised his imagination and his pencil for several years. I have heard
that he built a painting-room purposely for this picture; and never did an
anchorite pour fourth a more fervent orison to Heaven, than Romney when
this labour was complete. He had a fine genius, with all its solitary
feelings, but he was uneducated, and incompetent even to write a letter;
yet on this occasion, relieved from his intense anxiety under so long a
work, he wrote one of the most eloquent. It is a document in the history
of genius, and reveals all those feelings which are here too faintly
described.[A] I once heard an amiable author, whose literary career has
perhaps not answered the fond hopes of his youth, half in anger and in
love, declare that he would retire to some solitude, where, if any
one would follow him, he would found a new order--the order of THE
DISAPPOINTED.
[Footnote A: "My DEAR FRIEND,--Your kindness in rejoicing so heartily at
the birth of my picture has given me great satisfaction.
"There has been an anxiety labouring in my mind the greater part of the
last twelvemonth. At times it had nearly overwhelmed me. I thought I
should absolutely have sunk into despair. O! what a kind friend is in
those times! I thank God, whatever my picture may be, I can say thus much,
I am a greater philosopher and a better Christian."]
Thus the days of a man of genius are passed in labours as unremitting and
exhausting as those of the artisan. The world is not always aware, that to
some, meditation, composition, and even conversation, may inflict pains
undetected by the eye and the tenderness of friendship. Whenever ROUSSEAU
passed a morning in society, it was observed, that in the evening he was
dissatisfied and distressed; and JOHN HUNTER, in a mixed company, found
that conversation fatigued, instead of amusing him. HAWKESWORTH, in the
second paper of the "Adventurer," has drawn, from his own feelings, an
eloquent comparative estimate of intellectual with corporeal labour; it
may console the humble mechanic; and Plato, in his work on "Laws," seems
to have been aware of this analogy, for he consecrates all working men or
artisans to Vulcan and Minerva, because both those deities alike are hard
labourers. Yet with genius all does not terminate, even with the most
skilful labour. What the toiling Vulcan and the thoughtful Minerva may
want, will too often be absent--the presence of the Graces. In the
allegorical picture of the School of Design, by Carlo Maratti, where the
students are led through their various studies, in the opening clouds
above the academy are seen the Graces, hovering over their pupils, with an
inscription they must often recollect--_Senza di noi ogni fatica e vana_.
The anxious uncertainty of an author for his compositions resembles the
anxiety of a lover when he has written to a mistress who has not yet
decided on his claims; he repents his labour, for he thinks he has written
too much, while he is mortified at recollecting that he had omitted some
things which he imagines would have secured the object of his wishes.
Madame DE STAEL, who has often entered into feelings familiar to a
literary and political family, in a parallel between ambition and genius,
has distinguished them in this; that while "ambition _perseveres_ in the
desire of acquiring power, genius _flags_ of itself. Genius in the midst
of society is a pain, an internal fever which would require to be treated
as a real disease, if the records of glory did not soften the sufferings
it produces."--"Athenians! what troubles have you not cost me," exclaimed
DEMOSTHENES, "that I may be talked of by you!"
These moments of anxiety often darken the brightest hours of genius.
RACINE had extreme sensibility; the pain inflicted by a severe criticism
outweighed all the applause he received. He seems to have felt, what he
was often reproached with, that his Greeks, his Jews, and his Turks, were
all inmates of Versailles. He had two critics, who, like our Dennis with
Pope and Addison, regularly dogged his pieces as they appeared[A].
Corneille's objections he would attribute to jealousy--at his pieces when
burlesqued at the Italian theatre[B] he would smile outwardly, though sick
at heart; but his son informs us, that a stroke of raillery from his witty
friend Chapelle, whose pleasantry hardly sheathed its bitterness, sunk
more deeply into his heart than the burlesques at the Italian theatre, the
protest of Corneille, and the iteration of the two Dennises. More than
once MOLIERE and Racine, in vexation of spirit, resolved to abandon their
dramatic career; it was BOILEAU who ceaselessly animated their languor:
"Posterity," he cried, "will avenge the injustice of our age!" And
CONGREVE'S comedies met with such moderate success, that it appears the
author was extremely mortified, and on the ill reception of _The Way of
the World_, determined to write no more for the stage. When he told
Voltaire, on the French wit's visit, that Voltaire must consider him as a
private gentleman, and not as an author,--which apparent affectation
called down on Congreve the sarcastic severity of the French author,[C]
--more of mortification and humility might have been in Congreve's
language than of affectation or pride.
[Footnote A: See the article "On the Influence of a bad temper in
Criticism" in "Calamities of Authors," for a notice of Dennis and his
career.--ED.]
[Footnote B: See the article on "The Sensibility of Racine" in "Literary
Miscellanies," (in the present volume) and that on "Parody," in
"Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p. 459.--ED.]
[Footnote C: Voltaire quietly said he should not have troubled himself to
visit him if he had been merely a private gentleman.--ED.]
The life of TASSO abounds with pictures of a complete exhaustion of this
kind. His contradictory critics had perplexed him with the most intricate
literary discussions, and either occasioned or increased a mental
alienation. In one of his letters, we find that he repents the composition
of his great poem, for although his own taste approved of that marvellous,
which still forms a noble part of its creation, yet he confesses that his
cold reasoning critics have decided that the history of his hero, Godfrey,
required another species of conduct. "Hence," cries the unhappy bard,
"doubts torment me; but for the past, and what is done, I know of no
remedy;" and he longs to precipitate the publication, that "he may be
delivered from misery and agony." He solemnly swears--"Did not the
circumstances of my situation compel me, I would not print it, even
perhaps during my life, I so much doubt of its success." Such was the
painful state of fear and doubt experienced by the author of the
"Jerusalem Delivered," when he gave it to the world; a state of suspense,
among the children of imagination, in which none are more liable to
participate than the true sensitive artist. We may now inspect the severe
correction of Tasso's muse, in the fac-simile of a page of his manuscripts
in Mr. Dibdin's late "Tour." She seems to have inflicted tortures on his
pen, surpassing even those which may be seen in the fac-simile page which,
thirty years ago, I gave of Pope's Homer.[A] At Florence may still be
viewed the many works begun and abandoned by the genius of MICHAEL ANGELO;
they are preserved inviolate--"so sacred is the terror of Michael Angelo's
genius!" exclaims Forsyth. These works are not always to be considered as
failures of the chisel; they appear rather to have been rejected for
coming short of the artist's first conceptions: yet, in a strain
of sublime poetry, he has preserved his sentiments on the force of
intellectual labour; he thought that there was nothing which the
imagination conceived, that could not be made visible in marble, if the
hand were made to obey the mind:--
Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto,
Ch' un marmo solo in se non circoseriva
Col suo soverchio, e solo a quello arriva
La man che obbedisce all' intelletto.
IMITATED.
The sculptor never yet conceived a thought
That yielding marble has refused to aid;
But never with a mastery he wrought--
Save when the hand the intellect obeyed.
[Footnote A: It now forms the frontispiece to vol. ii. of the last edition
of the "Curiosities of Literature."--ED.]
An interesting domestic story has been preserved of GESNER, who so
zealously devoted his graver and his pencil to the arts. His sensibility
was ever struggling after that ideal excellence which he could not attain.
Often he sunk into fits of melancholy, and, gentle as he was, the
tenderness of his wife and friends could not soothe his distempered
feelings; it was necessary to abandon him to his own thoughts, till, after
a long abstinence from his neglected works, in a lucid moment, some
accident occasioned him to return to them. In one of these hypochondria of
genius, after a long interval of despair, one morning at breakfast with
his wife, his eye fixed on one of his pictures: it was a group of fauns
with young shepherds dancing at the entrance of a cavern shaded with
vines; his eye appeared at length to glisten; and a sudden return
to good humour broke out in this lively apostrophe--"Ah! see those
playful children, they always dance!" This was the moment of gaiety and
inspiration, and he flew to his forsaken easel.
La Harpe, an author by profession, observes, that as it has been shown
that there are some maladies peculiar to artisans[A]--there are also some
sorrows peculiar to them, and which the world can neither pity nor soften,
because they do not enter into their experience. The querulous language of
so many men of genius has been sometimes attributed to causes very
different from the real ones--the most fortunate live to see their talents
contested and their best works decried. Assuredly many an author has sunk
into his grave without the consciousness of having obtained that fame for
which he had sacrificed an arduous life. The too feeling SMOLLETT has left
this testimony to posterity:--"Had some of those, who are pleased to call
themselves my friends, been at any pains to deserve the character, and
told me ingenuously what I had to expect in the capacity of an _author_, I
should, in all probability, have spared myself the _incredible labour_ and
_chagrin_ I have since undergone." And Smollett was a popular writer!
POPE'S solemn declaration in the preface to his collected works comes by
no means short of Smollett's avowal. HUME'S philosophical indifference
could often suppress that irritability which Pope and Smollett fully
indulged.
[Footnote A: See Ramazini, "De Morbis Artificium Diatriba," which Dr.
James translated in 1750. It is a sad reflection, resulting from this
curious treatise, that the arts entail no small mischief upon their
respective workmen; so that the means by which they live are too often the
occasion of their being hurried out of the world.]
But were the feelings of HUME more obtuse, or did his temper, gentle as it
was by constitution, bear, with a saintly patience, the mortifications his
literary life so long endured? After recomposing two of his works, which
incurred the same neglect in their altered form, he raised the most
sanguine hopes of his History, but he tells us, "miserable was my
disappointment!" Although he never deigned to reply to his opponents, yet
they haunted him; and an eye-witness has thus described the irritated
author discovering in conversation his suppressed resentment--"His
forcible mode of expression, the brilliant quick movements of his eyes,
and the gestures of his body," these betrayed the pangs of contempt, or of
aversion! HOGARTH, in a fit of the spleen, advertised that he had
determined not to give the world any more original works, and intended to
pass the rest of his days in painting portraits. The same advertisement is
marked by farther irritability. He contemptuously offers the purchasers of
his "Analysis of Beauty," to present them _gratis_ with "an eighteenpenny
pamphlet," published by Ramsay the painter, written in opposition to
Hogarth's principles. So untameable was the irritability of this great
inventor in art, that he attempts to conceal his irritation by offering to
dispose gratuitously of the criticism which had disturbed his nights.[A]
[Footnote A: Hogarth was not without reason for exasperation. He was
severely attacked for his theories about the curved line of beauty, which
was branded as a foolish attempt to prove crookedness elegant, and himself
vulgarly caricatured. It was even asserted that the theory was stolen from
Lomazzo. ED.]
Parties confederate against a man of genius,--as happened to Corneille, to
D'Avenant,[A] and Milton; and a Pradon and a Settle carry away the meed of
a Racine and a Dryden. It was to support the drooping spirit of his friend
Racine on the opposition raised against Phaedra, that Boileau addressed to
him an epistle "On the Utility to be drawn from the Jealousy of the
Envious." The calm dignity of the historian DE THOU, amidst the passions
of his times, confidently expected that justice from posterity which his
own age refused to his early and his late labour. That great man was,
however, compelled by his injured feelings, to compose a poem under the
name of another, to serve as his apology against the intolerant court of
Rome, and the factious politicians of France; it was a noble subterfuge to
which a great genius was forced. The acquaintances of the poet COLLINS
probably complained of his wayward humours and irritability; but how could
they sympathise with the secret mortification of the poet, who imagined
that he had composed his Pastorals on wrong principles, or when, in the
agony of his soul, he consigned to the flames with his own hands his
unsold, but immortal odes? Can we forget the dignified complaint of the
Rambler, with which he awfully closes his work, appealing to posterity?
[Footnote A: See "Quarrels of Authors," p. 403, on the confederacy of
several wits against D'Avenant, a great genius; where I discovered that a
volume of poems, said "to be written by the author's friends," which had
hitherto been referred to as a volume of panegyrics, contains nothing but
irony and satire, which had escaped the discovery of so many transcribers
of title-pages, frequently miscalled literary historians.]
Genius contracts those peculiarities of which it is so loudly accused
in its solitary occupations--that loftiness of spirit, those quick
jealousies, those excessive affections and aversions which view everything
as it passes in its own ideal world, and rarely as it exists in the
mediocrity of reality. If this irritability of genius be a malady which
has raged even among philosophers, we must not be surprised at the
temperament of poets. These last have abandoned their country; they have
changed their name; they have punished themselves with exile in the rage
of their disorder. No! not poets only. DESCARTES sought in vain, even in
his secreted life, for a refuge for his genius; he thought himself
persecuted in France, he thought himself calumniated among strangers, and
he went and died in Sweden; and little did that man of genius think that
his countrymen would beg to have his ashes restored to them. Even the
reasoning HUME once proposed to change his name and his country; and I
believe did. The great poetical genius of our own times has openly
alienated himself from the land of his brothers. He becomes immortal in
the language of a people whom he would contemn.[A] Does he accept with
ingratitude the fame he loves more than life?
[Footnote A: I shall preserve a manuscript note of Lord BYRON on this
passage; not without a hope that we shall never receive from him the
genius of Italian poetry, otherwise than in the language of his "_father
land_"; an expressive term, which I adopted from the Dutch language some
years past, and which I have seen since sanctioned by the pens of Lord
Byron and of Mr. Southey.
His lordship has here observed, "It is not my fault that I am obliged to
write in English. If I understood my present language equally well, I
would write in it; but this will require ten years at least to form a
style: no tongue so easy to acquire a little of, or so difficult to master
thoroughly, as Italian." On the same page I find the following note: "What
was rumoured of me in that language? If true, I was unfit for England: if
false, England was unfit for me:--'There is a world elsewhere.' I have
never regretted for a moment that country, but often that I ever returned
to it at all."]
Such, then, is that state of irritability in which men of genius
participate, whether they be inventors, men of learning, fine writers, or
artists. It is a state not friendly to equality of temper. In the various
humours incidental to it, when they are often deeply affected, the cause
escapes all perception of sympathy. The intellectual malady eludes even
the tenderness of friendship. At those moments, the lightest injury to the
feelings, which at another time would make no impression, may produce a
perturbed state of feeling in the warm temper, or the corroding chagrin of
a self-wounded spirit. These are moments which claim the encouragements of
a friendship animated by a high esteem for the intellectual excellence of
the man of genius; not the general intercourse of society; not the
insensibility of the dull, nor the levity of the volatile.
Men of genius are often reverenced only where they are known by their
writings--intellectual beings in the romance of life; in its history, they
are men! ERASMUS compared them to the great figures in tapestry-work,
which lose their effect when not seen at a distance. Their foibles and
their infirmities are obvious to their associates, often only capable of
discerning these qualities. The defects of great men are the consolation
of the dunces.
CHAPTER VIII.
The spirit of literature and the spirit of society.--The Inventors.
--Society offers seduction and not reward to men of genius.--The notions
of persons of fashion of men of genius.--The habitudes of the man of
genius distinct from those of the man of society.--Study, meditation, and
enthusiasm, the progress of genius.--The disagreement between the men of
the world and the literary character.
The Inventors, who inherited little or nothing from their predecessors,
appear to have pursued their insulated studies in the full independence of
their mind and development of their inventive faculty; they stood apart,
in seclusion, the solitary lights of their age. Such were the founders of
our literature--Bacon and Hobbes, Newton and Milton. Even so late as the
days of Dryden, Addison, and Pope, the man of genius drew his circle round
his intimates; his day was uniform, his habits unbroken; and he was never
too far removed, nor too long estranged from meditation and reverie: his
works were the sources of his pleasure ere they became the labours of his
pride.
But when a more uniform light of knowledge illuminates from all sides, the
genius of society, made up of so many sorts of genius, becomes greater
than the genius of the individual who has entirely yielded himself up
to his solitary art. Hence the character of a man of genius becomes
subordinate. A conversation age succeeds a studious one; and the family of
genius, the poet, the painter, and the student, are no longer recluses.
They mix with their rivals, who are jealous of equality, or with others
who, incapable of valuing them for themselves alone, rate them but as
parts of an integral.
The man of genius is now trammelled with the artificial and mechanical
forms of life; and in too close an intercourse with society, the
loneliness and raciness of thinking is modified away in its seductive
conventions. An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life
constitutes the great interests of a luxuriant and opulent age; but of
late, while the arts of assembling in large societies have been practised,
varied by all forms, and pushed on to all excesses, it may become a
question whether by them our happiness is as much improved, or our
individual character as well formed as in a society not so heterogeneous
and unsocial as that crowd termed, with the sort of modesty peculiar to
our times, "a small party:" the simplicity of parade, the humility of
pride engendered by the egotism which multiplies itself in proportion to
the numbers it assembles.
It may, too, be a question whether the literary man and the artist are not
immolating their genius to society when, in the shadowiness of assumed
talents--that counterfeiting of all shapes--they lose their real form,
with the mockery of Proteus. But nets of roses catch their feet, and a
path, where all the senses are flattered, is now opened to win an
Epictetus from his hut. The art of multiplying the enjoyments of society
is discovered in the morning lounge, the evening dinner, and the midnight
coterie. In frivolous fatigues, and vigils without meditation, perish the
unvalued hours which, true genius knows, are always too brief for art, and
too rare to catch its inspirations. Hence so many of our contemporaries,
whose card-racks are crowded, have produced only flashy fragments.
Efforts, but not works--they seem to be effects without causes; and as a
great author, who is not one of them, once observed to me, "They waste a
barrel of gunpowder in squibs."
And yet it is seduction, and not reward, which mere fashionable society
offers the man of true genius. He will be sought for with enthusiasm, but
he cannot escape from his certain fate--that of becoming tiresome to his
pretended admirers.
At first the idol--shortly he is changed into a victim. He forms,
indeed, a figure in their little pageant, and is invited as a sort of
_improvisatore_; but the esteem they concede to him is only a part of the
system of politeness; and should he be dull in discovering the favourite
quality of their self-love, or in participating in their volatile tastes,
he will find frequent opportunities of observing, with the sage at the
court of Cyprus, that "what he knows is not proper for this place, and
what is proper for this place he knows not." This society takes little
personal interest in the literary character. HORACE WALPOLE lets us into
this secret when writing to another man of fashion, on such a man of
genius as GRAY--"I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about
Gray; he is the worst company in the world. From a melancholy turn, from
living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses
easily; all his words are measured and chosen, and formed into sentences:
his writings are admirable--he himself is not agreeable." This volatile
being in himself personified the quintessence of that society which is
called "the world," and could not endure that equality of intellect which
genius exacts. He rejected Chatterton, and quarrelled with every literary
man and every artist whom he first invited to familiarity--and then hated.
Witness the fates of Bentley, of Muntz, of Gray, of Cole, and others. Such
a mind was incapable of appreciating the literary glory on which the
mighty mind of BURKE was meditating. WALPOLE knew BURKE at a critical
moment of his life, and he has recorded his own feelings:--"There was a
young Mr. BURKE who wrote a book, in the style of Lord Bolingbroke, that
was much admired. He is a sensible man, but has not _worn off his
authorism yet_, and thinks there is nothing so charming as writers, and to
be one: _he will know better one of these days_" GRAY and BURKE! What
mighty men must be submitted to the petrifying sneer--that indifference of
selfism for great sympathies--of this volatile and heartless man of
literature and rank!
That thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk!
The confidential confession of RACINE to his son is remarkable:--"Do not
think that I am sought after by the great for my dramas; Corneille
composes nobler verses than mine, but no one notices him, and he only
pleases by the mouth of the actors. I never allude to my works when with
men of the world, but I amuse them about matters they like to hear. My
talent with them consists, not in making them feel that I have any, but in
showing them that they have." Racine treated the great like the children
of society; CORNEILLE would not compromise for the tribute he exacted, but
he consoled himself when, at his entrance into the theatre, the audience
usually rose to salute him. The great comic genius of France, who indeed
was a very thoughtful and serious man, addressed a poem to the painter
MIONARD, expressing his conviction that "the court," by which a Frenchman
of the court of Louis XIV. meant the society we call "fashionable," is
fatal to the perfection of art--
Qui se donne a la cour se derobe a son art;
Un esprit partage rarement se consomme,
Et les emplois de feu demandent tout l'homme.
Has not the fate in society of our reigning literary favourites been
uniform? Their mayoralty hardly exceeds the year: they are pushed aside to
put in their place another, who, in his turn, must descend. Such is the
history of the literary character encountering the perpetual difficulty of
appearing what he really is not, while he sacrifices to a few, in a
certain corner of the metropolis, who have long fantastically styled
themselves "the world," that more dignified celebrity which makes an
author's name more familiar than his person. To one who appeared
astonished at the extensive celebrity of BUFFON, the modern Pliny replied,
"I have passed fifty years at my desk." HAYDN would not yield up to
society more than those hours which were not devoted to study. These were
indeed but few: and such were the uniformity and retiredness of his life,
that "He was for a long time the only musical man in Europe who was
ignorant of the celebrity of Joseph Haydn." And has not one, the most
sublime of the race, sung,
--che seggendo in piuma,
In Fama non si vien, ne sotto coltre;
Sanza la qual chi sua vita consuma
Cotal vestigio in terra di se lascia
Qual fummo in aere, ed in acqua la schiuma
For not on downy plumes, nor under shade
Of canopy reposing, Fame is won:
Without which, whosoe'er consumes his days,
Leaveth such vestige of himself on earth
As smoke in air, or foam upon the wave.[A]
[Footnote A: Cary's Dante, Canto xxiv.]
But men of genius, in their intercourse with persons of fashion, have a
secret inducement to court that circle. They feel a perpetual want of
having the reality of their talents confirmed to themselves, and they
often step into society to observe in what degree they are objects of
attention; for, though ever accused of vanity, the greater part of men of
genius feel that their existence, as such, must depend on the opinion of
others. This standard is in truth always problematical and variable; yet
they cannot hope to find a more certain one among their rivals, who at all
times are adroitly depreciating their brothers, and "dusking" their
lustre. They discover among those cultivators of literature and the arts
who have recourse to them for their pleasure, impassioned admirers, rather
than unmerciful judges--judges who have only time to acquire that degree
of illumination which is just sufficient to set at ease the fears of these
claimants of genius.
When literary men assemble together, what mimetic friendships, in their
mutual corruption! Creatures of intrigue, they borrow other men's eyes,
and act by feelings often even contrary to their own: they wear a mask on
their face, and only sing a tune they have caught. Some hierophant in
their mysteries proclaims their elect whom they have to initiate, and
their profane who are to stand apart under their ban. They bend to the
spirit of the age, but they do not elevate the public to them; they care
not for truth, but only study to produce effect, and they do nothing for
fame but what obtains an instant purpose. Yet their fame is not therefore
the more real, for everything connected with fashion becomes obsolete. Her
ear has a great susceptibility of weariness, and her eye rolls for
incessant novelty. Never was she earnest for anything. Men's minds with
her become tarnished and old-fashioned as furniture. But the steams of
rich dinners, the eye which sparkles with the wines of France, the
luxurious night which flames with more heat and brilliancy than God has
made the day, this is the world the man of coterie-celebrity has chosen;
and the Epicurean, as long as his senses do not cease to act, laughs at
the few who retire to the solitary midnight lamp. Posthumous fame is--a
nothing! Such men live like unbelievers in a future state, and their
narrow calculating spirit coldly dies in their artificial world: but true
genius looks at a nobler source of its existence; it catches inspiration
in its insulated studies; and to the great genius, who feels how his
present is necessarily connected with his future celebrity, posthumous
fame is a reality, for the sense acts upon him!
The habitudes of genius, before genius loses its freshness in this
society, are the mould in which the character is cast; and these, in spite
of all the disguise of the man, will make him a distinct being from the
man of society. Those who have assumed the literary character often for
purposes very distinct from literary ones, imagine that their circle is
the public; but in this factitious public all their interests, their
opinions, and even their passions, are temporary, and the admirers with
the admired pass away with their season. "It is not sufficient that we
speak the same language," says a witty philosopher, "but we must learn
their dialect; we must think as they think, and we must echo their
opinions, as we act by imitation." Let the man of genius then dread to
level himself to the mediocrity of feeling and talent required in such
circles of society, lest he become one of themselves; he will soon find
that to think like them will in time become to act like them. But he who
in solitude adopts no transient feelings, and reflects no artificial
lights, who is only himself, possesses an immense advantage: he has not
attached importance to what is merely local and fugitive, but listens to
interior truths, and fixes on the immutable nature of things. He is the
man of every age. Malebranche has observed, that "It is not indeed thought
to be charitable to disturb common opinions, because it is not truth which
unites society as it exists so much as opinion and custom:" a principle
which the world would not, I think, disagree with; but which tends to
render folly wisdom itself, and to make error immortal.
Ridicule is the light scourge of society, and the terror of genius.
Ridicule surrounds him with her chimeras, which, like the shadowy monsters
opposing aeneas, are impalpable to his strokes: but remember when the sibyl
bade the hero proceed without noticing them, he found these airy nothings
as harmless as they were unreal. The habits of the literary character
will, however, be tried by the men and women of the world by their own
standard: they have no other; the salt of ridicule gives a poignancy to
their deficient comprehension, and their perfect ignorance, of the persons
or things which are the subjects of their ingenious animadversions. The
habits of the literary character seem inevitably repulsive to persons of
the world. VOLTAIRE, and his companion, the scientific Madame DE CHATELET,
she who introduced Newton to the French nation, lived entirely devoted to
literary pursuits, and their habits were strictly literary. It happened
once that this learned pair dropped unexpectedly into a fashionable circle
in the _chateau_ of a French nobleman. A Madame de Stael, the _persifleur_
in office of Madame Du Deffand, has copiously narrated the whole affair.
They arrived at midnight like two famished spectres, and there was some
trouble to put them to supper and bed. They are called apparitions,
because they were never visible by day, only at ten at night; for the one
is busied in describing great deeds, and the other in commenting on
Newton. Like other apparitions, they are uneasy companions: they will
neither play nor walk; they will not dissipate their mornings with the
charming circle about them, nor allow the charming circle to break into
their studies. Voltaire and Madame de Chatelet would have suffered the
same pain in being forced to an abstinence of their regular studies, as
this circle of "agreables" would have at the loss of their meals and their
airings. However, the _persifleur_ declares they were ciphers "en
societe," adding no value to the number, and to which their learned
writings bear no reference.
But if this literary couple would not play, what was worse, Voltaire
poured out a vehement declamation against a fashionable species of
gambling, which appears to have made them all stare. But Madame de
Chatelet is the more frequent victim of our _persifleur_. The learned lady
would change her apartment--for it was too noisy, and it had smoke without
fire--which last was her emblem. "She is reviewing her _Principia_; an
exercise she repeats every year, without which precaution they might
escape from her, and get so far away that she might never find them again.
I believe that her head in respect to them is a house of imprisonment
rather than the place of their birth; so that she is right to watch them
closely; and she prefers the fresh air of this occupation to our
amusements, and persists in her invisibility till night-time. She has six
or seven tables in her apartments, for she wants them of all sizes;
immense ones to spread out her papers, solid ones to hold her instruments,
lighter ones, &c. Yet with all this she could not escape from the accident
which happened to Philip II., after passing the night in writing, when a
bottle of ink fell over the despatches; but the lady did not imitate the
moderation of the prince; indeed, she had not written on State affairs,
and what was spoilt in her room was algebra, much more difficult to
copy out." Here is a pair of portraits of a great poet and a great
mathematician, whose habits were discordant with the fashionable circle in
which they resided--the representation is just, for it is by one of the
coterie itself.
Study, meditation, and enthusiasm,--this is the progress of genius, and
these cannot be the habits of him who lingers till he can only live among
polished crowds; who, if he bear about him the consciousness of genius,
will still be acting under their influences. And perhaps there never was
one of this class of men who had not either first entirely formed himself
in solitude, or who amidst society will not be often breaking out to seek
for himself. WILKES, no longer touched by the fervours of literary and
patriotic glory, suffered life to melt away as a domestic voluptuary; and
then it was that he observed with some surprise of the great Earl of
CHATHAM, that he sacrificed every pleasure of social life, even in youth,
to his great pursuit of eloquence. That ardent character studied Barrow's
Sermons so often as to repeat them from memory, and could even read twice
from beginning to end Bailey's Dictionary; these are little facts which
belong only to great minds! The earl himself acknowledged an artifice he
practised in his intercourse with society, for he said, "when he was
young, he always came late into company, and left it early." VITTORIO
ALFIERI, and a brother-spirit, our own noble poet, were rarely seen amidst
the brilliant circle in which they were born. The workings of their
imagination were perpetually emancipating them, and one deep loneliness of
feeling proudly insulated them among the unimpassioned triflers of their
rank. They preserved unbroken the unity of their character, in constantly
escaping from the processional _spectacle_ of society.[A] It is no trivial
observation of another noble writer, Lord SHAFTESBURY, that "it may happen
that a person may be so much the worse author, for being the finer
gentleman."
[Footnote A: In a note which Lord BYRON has written in a copy of this work
his lordship says, "I fear this was not the case; I have been but too much
in that circle, especially in 1812-13-14."
To the expression of "one deep loneliness of feeling," his lordship has
marked in the margin "True." I am gratified to confirm the theory of my
ideas of the man of genius, by the practical experience of the greatest of
our age.]
An extraordinary instance of this disagreement between the man of the
world and the literary character, we find in a philosopher seated on a
throne. The celebrated JULIAN stained the imperial purple with an author's
ink; and when he resided among the Antiochians, his unalterable character
shocked that volatile and luxurious race. He slighted the plaudits of
their theatre, he abhorred their dances and their horse-races, he was
abstinent even at a festival, and incorrupt himself, perpetually
admonished the dissipated citizens of their impious abandonment of the
laws of their country. The Antiochians libelled their emperor, and
petulantly lampooned his beard, which the philosopher carelessly wore
neither perfumed nor curled. Julian, scorning to inflict a sharper
punishment, pointed at them his satire of "the Misopogon, or the
Antiochian; the Enemy of the Beard," where, amidst irony and invective,
the literary monarch bestows on himself many exquisite and characteristic
touches. All that the persons of fashion alleged against the literary
character, Julian unreservedly confesses--his undressed beard and
awkwardness, his obstinacy, his unsociable habits, his deficient tastes,
while at the same time he represents his good qualities as so many
extravagances. But, in this Cervantic pleasantry of self-reprehension, the
imperial philosopher has not failed to show this light and corrupt people
that the reason he could not possibly resemble them, existed in the
unhappy circumstance of having been subject to too strict an education
under a family tutor, who had never suffered him to swerve from the one
right way, and who (additional misfortune!) had inspired him with such a
silly reverence for Plato and Socrates, Aristotle and Theophrastus, that
he had been induced to make them his models. "Whatever manners," says the
emperor, "I may have previously contracted, whether gentle or boorish, it
is impossible for me now to alter or unlearn. Habit is said to be a second
nature; to oppose it is irksome, but to counteract _the study of more than
thirty years_ is extremely difficult, especially when it has been imbibed
with so much attention."
And what if men of genius, relinquishing their habits, could do this
violence to their nature, should we not lose the original for a factitious
genius, and spoil one race without improving the other? If nature and
habit, that second nature which prevails even over the first, have created
two beings distinctly different, what mode of existence shall ever
assimilate them? Antipathies and sympathies, those still occult causes,
however concealed, will break forth at an unguarded moment. Clip the wings
of an eagle that he may roost among domestic fowls,--at some unforeseen
moment his pinions will overshadow and terrify his tiny associates, for
"the feathered king" will be still musing on the rock and the cloud.
The man of genius will be restive even in his trammelled paces. Too
impatient amidst the heartless courtesies of society, and little practised
in the minuter attentions, he has rarely sacrificed to the unlaughing
graces of Lord Chesterfield. Plato ingeniously compares Socrates to the
gallipots of the Athenian apothecaries; the grotesque figures of owls and
apes were painted on their exterior, but they contained within precious
balsams. The man of genius amidst many a circle may exclaim with
Themistocles, "I cannot fiddle, but I can make a little village a great
city;" and with Corneille, he may be allowed to smile at his own
deficiencies, and even disdain to please in certain conventional manners,
asserting that "wanting all these things, he was not the less Corneille."
But with the great thinkers and students, their character is still more
obdurate. ADAM SMITH could never free himself from the embarrassed manners
of a recluse; he was often absent, and his grave and formal conversation
made him seem distant and reserved, when in fact no man had warmer
feelings for his intimates. One who knew Sir ISAAC NEWTON tells us, that
"he would sometimes be silent and thoughtful, and look all the while as if
he were saying his prayers." A French princess, desirous of seeing the
great moralist NICOLLE, experienced an inconceivable disappointment when
the moral instructor, entering with the most perplexing bow imaginable,
silently sank into his chair. The interview promoted no conversation, and
the retired student, whose elevated spirit might have endured martyrdom,
shrunk with timidity in the unaccustomed honour of conversing with a
princess and having nothing to say. Observe Hume thrown into a most
ridiculous attitude by a woman of talents and coterie celebrity. Our
philosopher was called on to perform his part in one of those inventions
of the hour to which the fashionable, like children in society, have
sometimes resorted to attract their world by the rumour of some new
extravagance. In the present, poor HUME was to represent a sultan on a
sofa, sitting between two slaves, who were the prettiest and most
vivacious of Parisians. Much was anticipated from this literary
exhibition. The two slaves were ready at repartee, but the utter
simplicity of the sultan displayed a blockishness which blunted all edge.
The phlegmatic metaphysician and historian only gave a sign of life by
repeating the same awkward gesture, and the same ridiculous exclamation,
without end. One of the fair slaves soon discovered the unchangeable
nature of the forlorn philosopher, impatiently exclaiming, "I guessed as
much, never was there such a calf of a man!"--"Since this affair," adds
Madame d'Epinay, "Hume is at present banished to the class of spectators."
The philosopher, indeed, had formed a more correct conception of his own
character than the volatile sylphs of the Parisian circle, for in writing
to the Countess de Boufflers, on an invitation to Paris, he said, "I have
rusted on amid books and study; have been little engaged in the active,
and not much in the pleasurable, scenes of life; and am more accustomed to
a select society than to general companies." If Hume made a ridiculous
figure in these circles, the error did not lie on the side of that
cheerful and profound philosopher.--This subject leads our inquiries to
the nature of _the conversations of men of genius_.
CHAPTER IX.
Conversations of men of genius.--Their deficient agreeableness may result
from qualities which conduce to their greatness.--Slow-minded men not the
dullest.--The conversationists not the ablest writers.--Their true
excellence in conversation consists of associations with their pursuits.
In conversation the sublime DANTE was taciturn or satirical; BUTLER sullen
or caustic; GRAY and ALFIERI seldom talked or smiled; DESCARTES, whose
habits had formed him for solitude and meditation, was silent; ROUSSEAU
was remarkably trite in conversation, not an idea, not a word of fancy or
eloquence warmed him; ADDISON and MOLIERE in society were only observers;
and DRYDEN has very honestly told us, "My conversation is slow and dull,
my humour saturnine and reserved; in short, I am none of those who
endeavour to break jests in company, or make repartees." POPE had lived
among "the great," not only in rank but in intellect, the most delightful
conversationists; but the poet felt that he could not contribute to these
seductive pleasures, and at last confessed that he could amuse and
instruct himself much more by another means: "As much company as I have
kept, and as much as I love it, I love reading better, and would rather be
employed in reading, than in the most agreeable conversation." Pope's
conversation, as preserved by Spence, was sensible; and it would seem that
he had never said but one witty thing in his whole life, for only one has
been recorded. It was ingeniously said of VAUCANSON, that he was as much
an automaton as any which he made. HOGARTH and SWIFT, who looked on the
circles of society with eyes of inspiration, were absent in company; but
their grossness and asperity did not prevent the one from being the
greatest of comic painters, nor the other as much a creator of manners in
his way. Genius, even in society, is pursuing its own operations, and it
would cease to be itself were it always to act like others.
Men of genius who are habitually eloquent, who have practised conversation
as an art, for some, even sacrifice their higher pursuits to this
perishable art of acting, have indeed excelled, and in the most opposite
manner. HORNE TOOKE finely discriminates the wit in conversation of
SHERIDAN and CURRAN, after having passed an evening in their company.
"Sheridan's wit was like steel highly polished and sharpened for display
and use; Curran's was a mine of virgin gold, incessantly crumbling away
from its own richness." CHARLES BUTLER, whose reminiscences of his
illustrious contemporaries are derived from personal intercourse, has
correctly described the familiar conversations of PITT, FOX, and BURKE:
"The most intimate friends of Mr. Fox complained of his too frequent
ruminating silence. Mr. Pitt talked, and his talk was fascinating. Mr.
Burke's conversation was rambling, but splendid and instructive beyond
comparison." Let me add, that the finest genius of our times, is also the
most delightful man; he is that rarest among the rare of human beings,
whom to have known is nearly to adore; whom to have seen, to have heard,
forms an era in our life; whom youth remembers with enthusiasm, and whose
presence the men and women of "the world" feel like a dream from which
they would not awaken. His _bonhomie_ attaches our hearts to him by its
simplicity; his legendary conversation makes us, for a moment, poets like
himself.[A]
[Footnote A: This was written under the inspiration of a night's
conversation, or rather listening to Sir WALTER SCOTT.--I cannot bring
myself to erase what now, alas! has closed in the silence of a swift
termination of his glorious existence.]
But that deficient agreeableness in social life with which men of genius
have been often reproached, may really result from the nature of those
qualities which conduce to the greatness of their public character. A
thinker whose mind is saturated with knowledge on a particular subject,
will be apt to deliver himself authoritatively; but he will then pass for
a dogmatist: should he hesitate, that he may correct an equivocal
expression, or bring nearer a remote idea, he is in danger of sinking
into pedantry or rising into genius. Even the fulness of knowledge
has its tediousness. "It is rare," said MALEBRANCHE, "that those who
meditate profoundly can explain well the objects they have meditated on;
for they hesitate when they have to speak; they are scrupulous to convey
false ideas or use inaccurate terms. They do not choose to speak, like
others, merely for the sake of talking." A vivid and sudden perception of
truth, or a severe scrutiny after it, may elevate the voice, and burst
with an irruptive heat on the subdued tone of conversation. These men are
too much in earnest for the weak or the vain. Such seriousness kills their
feeble animal spirits. SMEATON, a creative genius of his class, had a
warmth of expression which seemed repulsive to many: it arose from an
intense application of mind, which impelled him to break out hastily when
anything was said that did not accord with his ideas. Persons who are
obstinate till they can give up their notions with a safe conscience, are
troublesome intimates. Often too the cold tardiness of decision is only
the strict balancing of scepticism or candour, while obscurity as
frequently may arise from the deficiency of previous knowledge in the
listener. It was said that NEWTON in conversation did not seem to
understand his own writings, and it was supposed that his memory had
decayed. The fact, however, was not so; and Pemberton makes a curious
distinction, which accounts for Newton _not always being ready to speak_
on subjects of which he was the sole master. "Inventors seem to treasure
up in their own minds what they have found out, after another manner than
those do the same things that have not this inventive faculty. The former,
when they have occasion to produce their knowledge, in some means are
obliged immediately to investigate part of what they want. For this they
are not equally fit at all times; and thus it has often happened, that
such as retain things chiefly by means of a very strong memory, have
appeared off-hand more expert than the discoverers themselves."
A peculiar characteristic in the conversations of men of genius, which has
often injured them when the listeners were not intimately acquainted with
the men, are those sports of a vacant mind, those sudden impulses to throw
out paradoxical opinions, and to take unexpected views of things in some
humour of the moment. These fanciful and capricious ideas are the
grotesque images of a playful mind, and are at least as frequently
misrepresented as they are misunderstood. But thus the cunning Philistines
are enabled to triumph over the strong and gifted man, because in the hour
of confidence, and in the abandonment of the mind, he had laid his head in
the lap of wantonness, and taught them how he might be shorn of his
strength. Dr. JOHNSON appears often to have indulged this amusement, both
in good and ill humour. Even such a calm philosopher as ADAM SMITH, as
well as such a child of imagination as BURNS, were remarked for this
ordinary habit of men of genius; which, perhaps, as often originates in a
gentle feeling of contempt for their auditors, as from any other cause.
Many years after having written the above, I discovered two recent
confessions which confirm the principle. A literary character, the late
Dr. LEYDEN, acknowledged, that "in conversation I often verge so nearly on
absurdity, that I know it is perfectly easy to misconceive me, as well as
to misrepresent me." And Miss Edgeworth, in describing her father's
conversation, observes that, "his openness went too far, almost to
imprudence; exposing him not only to be misrepresented, but to be
misunderstood. Those who did not know him intimately, often took literally
what was either said in sport, or spoken with the intention of making a
strong impression for some good purpose." CUMBERLAND, whose conversation
was delightful, happily describes the species I have noticed. "Nonsense
talked by men of wit and understanding in the hour of relaxation is of the
very finest essence of conviviality, and a treat delicious to those who
have the sense to comprehend it; but it implies a trust in the company not
always to be risked." The truth is, that many, eminent for their genius,
have been remarkable in society for a simplicity and playfulness almost
infantine. Such was the gaiety of Hume, such the _bonhomie_ of Fox; and
one who had long lived in a circle of men of genius in the last age, was
disposed to consider this infantine simplicity as characteristic of
genius. It is a solitary grace, which can never lend its charm to a man of
the world, whose purity of mind has long been lost in a hacknied
intercourse with everything exterior to himself.
But above all, what most offends, is that freedom of opinion which a man
of genius can no more divest himself of, than of the features of his face.
But what if this intractable obstinacy be only resistance of character?
Burns never could account to himself why, "though when he had a mind he
was pretty generally beloved, he could never get the art of commanding
respect," and imagined it was owing to his deficiency in what Sterne calls
"that understrapping virtue of discretion;" "I am so apt to a _lapsus
linguae_" says this honest sinner. Amidst the stupidity of a formal
circle, and the inanity of triflers, however such men may conceal their
impatience, one of them has forcibly described the reaction of this
suppressed feeling: "The force with which it burst out when the pressure
was taken off, gave the measure of the constraint which had been endured."
Erasmus, that learned and charming writer, who was blessed with the genius
which could enliven a folio, has well described himself, _sum natura
propensior ad jocos quam fortasse deceat_:--more constitutionally inclined
to pleasantry than, as he is pleased to add, perhaps became him. We know
in his intimacy with Sir Thomas More, that Erasmus was a most exhilarating
companion; yet in his intercourse with the great he was not fortunate. At
the first glance he saw through affectation and parade, his praise of
folly was too ironical, and his freedom carried with it no pleasantry for
those who knew not to prize a laughing sage.
In conversation the operations of the intellect with some are habitually
slow, but there will be found no difference between the result of
their perceptions and those of a quicker nature; and hence it is that
slow-minded men are not, as men of the world imagine, always the dullest.
NICOLLE said of a scintillant wit, "He vanquishes me in the drawing-room,
but surrenders to me at discretion on the stairs." Many a great wit has
thought the wit it was too late to speak, and many a great reasoner has
only reasoned when his opponent has disappeared. Conversation with such
men is a losing game; and it is often lamentable to observe how men of
genius are reduced to a state of helplessness from not commanding their
attention, while inferior intellects habitually are found to possess what
is called "a ready mind." For this reason some, as it were in despair,
have shut themselves up in silence. A lively Frenchman, in describing the
distinct sorts of conversation of his literary friends, among whom was Dr.
Franklin, energetically hits off that close observer and thinker, wary,
even in society, by noting down "the silence of the celebrated Franklin."
We learn from Cumberland that Lord Mansfield did not promote that
conversation which gave him any pains to carry on. He resorted to
society for simple relaxation, and could even find a pleasure in dulness
when accompanied with placidity. "It was a kind of cushion to his
understanding," observes the wit. CHAUCER, like LA FONTAINE, was more
facetious in his tales than in his conversation; for the Countess of
Pembroke used to rally him, observing that his silence was more agreeable
to her than his talk. TASSO'S conversation, which his friend Manso has
attempted to preserve for us, was not agreeable. In company he sat
absorbed in thought, with a melancholy air; and it was on one of these
occasions that a person present observing that this conduct was indicative
of madness, that TASSO, who had heard him, looking on him without emotion,
asked whether he was ever acquainted with a madman who knew when to hold
his tongue! Malebranche tells us that one of these mere men of learning,
who can only venture to praise antiquity, once said, "I have seen
DESCARTES; I knew him, and frequently have conversed with him; he was a
good sort of man, and was not wanting in sense, but he had nothing
extraordinary in him." Had Aristotle spoken French instead of Greek, and
had this man frequently conversed with him, unquestionably he would not
have discovered, even in this idol of antiquity, anything extraordinary.
Two thousand years would have been wanting for our learned critic's
perceptions.
It is remarkable that the conversationists have rarely proved to be the
abler writers. He whose fancy is susceptible of excitement in the presence
of his auditors, making the minds of men run with his own, seizing on the
first impressions, and touching the shadows and outlines of things--with a
memory where all lies ready at hand, quickened by habitual associations,
and varying with all those extemporary changes and fugitive colours which
melt away in the rainbow of conversation; with that wit, which is only wit
in one place, and for a time; with that vivacity of animal spirits which
often exists separately from the more retired intellectual powers--this
man can strike out wit by habit, and pour forth a stream of phrase which
has sometimes been imagined to require only to be written down to be read
with the same delight with which it was heard; but he cannot print his
tone, nor his air and manner, nor the contagion of his hardihood. All the
while we were not sensible of the flutter of his ideas, the incoherence of
his transitions, his vague notions, his doubtful assertions, and his
meagre knowledge. A pen is the extinguisher of this luminary.
A curious contrast occurred between BUFFON and his friend MONTBELLIARD,
who was associated in his great work. The one possessed the reverse
qualities of the other: BUFFON, whose style in his composition is
elaborate and declamatory, was in conversation coarse and careless.
Pleading that conversation with him was only a relaxation, he rather
sought than avoided the idiom and slang of the mob, when these seemed
expressive and facetious; while MONTBELLIARD threw every charm of
animation over his delightful talk: but when he took his seat at the rival
desk of Buffon, an immense interval separated them; he whose tongue
dropped the honey and the music of the bee, handled a pen of iron; while
Buffon's was the soft pencil of the philosophical painter of nature.
COWLEY and KILLEGREW furnish another instance. COWLEY was embarrassed in
conversation, and had no quickness in argument or reply: a mind pensive
and elegant could not be struck at to catch fire: while with KILLEGREW the
sparkling bubbles of his fancy rose and dropped.[A] When the delightful
conversationist wrote, the deception ceased. Denham, who knew them both,
hit off the difference between them:
Had Cowley ne'er spoke, Killegrew ne'er writ,
Combined in one they had made a matchless wit.
[Footnote A: Killegrew's eight plays, upon which his character as an
author rests, have not been republished with one exception--_the Parson's
Wedding_--which is given in Dodsley's collection; and which is sufficient
to satisfy curiosity. He was a favourite with Charles the Second, and had
great influence with him. Some of his witty court jests are preserved, but
are too much imbued with the spirit of the age to be quoted here. He was
sometimes useful by devoting his satiric sallies to urge the king to his
duties.--ED.]
Not, however, that a man of genius does not throw out many things in
conversation which have only been found admirable when the public
possessed them. The public often widely differ from the individual, and a
century's opinion may intervene between them. The fate of genius is
sometimes that of the Athenian sculptor, who submitted his colossal
Minerva to a private party for inspection. Before the artist they trembled
for his daring chisel, and the man of genius smiled; behind him they
calumniated, and the man of genius forgave. Once fixed in a public place,
in the eyes of the whole city, the statue was the Divinity! There is a
certain distance at which opinions, as well as statues, must be viewed.
But enough of those defects of men of genius which often attend their
conversations. Must we then bow to authorial dignity, and kiss hands,
because they are inked? Must we bend to the artist, who considers us as
nothing unless we are canvas or marble under his hands? Are there not men
of genius the grace of society and the charm of their circle? Fortunate
men! more blest than their brothers; but for this, they are not the more
men of genius, nor the others less. To how many of the ordinary intimates
of a superior genius who complain of his defects might one say, "Do his
productions not delight and sometimes surprise you?--You are silent! I beg
your pardon; the _public_ has informed you of a great name; you would not
otherwise have perceived the precious talent of your neighbour: you know
little of your friend but his _name_." The personal familiarity of
ordinary minds with a man of genius has often produced a ludicrous
prejudice. A Scotchman, to whom the name of _a_ Dr. Robertson had
travelled down, was curious to know who he was.--"Your neighbour!"--But he
could not persuade himself that the man whom he conversed with was the
great historian of his country. Even a good man could not believe in the
announcement of the Messiah, from the same sort of prejudice: "Can there
anything good come out of Nazareth?"
Suffer a man of genius to be such as nature and habit have formed him, and
he will then be the most interesting companion; then will you see nothing
but his character. AKENSIDE, in conversation with select friends, often
touched by a romantic enthusiasm, would pass in review those eminent
ancients whom he loved; he imbued with his poetic faculty even the details
of their lives; and seemed another Plato while he poured libations to
their memory in the language of Plato, among those whose studies and
feelings were congenial with his own. ROMNEY, with a fancy entirely his
own, would give vent to his effusions, uttered in a hurried accent and
elevated tone, and often accompanied by tears, to which by constitution he
was prone; thus Cumberland, from personal intimacy, describes the
conversation of this man of genius. Even the temperate sensibility
of HUME was touched by the bursts of feeling of ROUSSEAU; who, he says,
"in conversation kindles often to a degree of heat which looks like
inspiration." BARRY, that unhappy genius! was the most repulsive of men in
his exterior. The vehemence of his language, the wildness of his glance,
his habit of introducing vulgar oaths, which, by some unlucky association
of habit, served him as expletives and interjections, communicated even a
horror to some. A pious and a learned lady, who had felt intolerable
uneasiness in his presence, did not, however, leave this man of genius
that very evening without an impression that she had never heard so divine
a man in her life. The conversation happening to turn on that principle of
benevolence which pervades Christianity, and on the meekness of the
Founder, it gave BARRY an opportunity of opening on the character of Jesus
with that copiousness of heart and mind which, once heard, could never be
forgotten. That artist indeed had long in his meditations an ideal head of
Christ, which he was always talking of executing: "It is here!" he would
cry, striking his head. That which baffled the invention, as we are told,
of Leonardo da Vinci, who left his Christ headless, having exhausted his
creative faculty among the apostles, this imaginative picture of the
mysterious union of a divine and human nature, never ceased, even when
conversing, to haunt the reveries of BARRY.
There are few authors and artists who are not eloquently instructive on
that class of knowledge or that department of art which reveals the
mastery of their life. Their conversations of this nature affect the mind
to a distant period of life. Who, having listened to such, has forgotten
what a man of genius has said at such moments? Who dwells not on the
single thought or the glowing expression, stamped in the heat of the
moment, which came from its source? Then the mind of genius rises as the
melody of the AEolian harp, when the winds suddenly sweep over the strings
--it comes and goes--and leaves a sweetness beyond the harmonies of art.
The _Miscellanea_ of POLITIAN are not only the result of his studies in
the rich library of Lorenzo de' Medici, but of conversations which had
passed in those rides which Lorenzo, accompanied by Politian, preferred to
the pomp of cavalcades. When the Cardinal de Cabassolle strayed with
PETRARCH about his valley in many a wandering discourse, they sometimes
extended their walks to such a distance, that the servant sought them in
vain to announce the dinner-hour, and found them returning in the evening.
When HELVETIUS enjoyed the social conversation of a literary friend, he
described it as "a chase of ideas." Such are the literary conversations
which HORNE TOOKE alluded to, when he said "I assure you, we find more
difficulty to finish than to begin our conversations."
The natural and congenial conversations of men of letters and of artists
must then be those which are associated with their pursuits, and these are
of a different complexion with the talk of men of the world, the objects
of which are drawn from the temporary passions of party-men, or the
variable _on dits_ of triflers--topics studiously rejected from these more
tranquillising conversations. Diamonds can only be polished by their own
dust, and are only shaped by the friction of other diamonds; and so it
happens with literary men and artists.
A meeting of this nature has been recorded by CICERO, which himself and
ATTICUS had with VARRO in the country. Varro arriving from Rome in their
neighbourhood somewhat fatigued, had sent a messenger to his friends. "As
soon as we had heard these tidings," says Cicero, "we could not delay
hastening to see one who was attached to us by the same pursuits and by
former friendship." They set off, but found Varro half way, urged by the
same eager desire to join them. They conducted him to Cicero's villa.
Here, while Cicero was inquiring after the news of Rome, Atticus
interrupted the political rival of Caesar, observing, "Let us leave off
inquiring after things which cannot be heard without pain. Rather ask
about what we know, for Varro's muses are longer silent than they used to
be, yet surely he has not forsaken them, but rather conceals what he
writes."--"By no means!" replied Varro, "for I deem him to be a whimsical
man to write what he wishes to suppress. I have indeed a great work in
hand (on the Latin language), long designed for Cicero." The conversation
then took its natural turn by Atticus having got rid of the political
anxiety of Cicero. Such, too, were the conversations which passed at the
literary residence of the Medici family, which was described, with as
much truth as fancy, as "the Lyceum of philosophy, the Arcadia of poets,
and the Academy of painters." We have a pleasing instance of such a
meeting of literary friends in those conversations which passed in POPE'S
garden, where there was often a remarkable union of nobility and literary
men. There Thomson, Mallet, Gay, Hooke, and Glover met Cobham, Bathurst,
Chesterfield, Lyttleton, and other lords; there some of these poets found
patrons, and POPE himself discovered critics. The contracted views of
Spence have unfortunately not preserved these literary conversations, but
a curious passage has dropped from the pen of Lord BOLINGBROKE, in what
his lordship calls "a letter to Pope," often probably passed over among
his political tracts. It breathes the spirit of those delightful
conversations. "My thoughts," writes his lordship, "in what order soever
they flow, shall be communicated to you just _as they pass through my
mind_--just as they used to be when _we conversed together_ on these or
any other subject; when _we sauntered alone_, or as we have often done
with good Arbuthnot, and the jocose Dean of St. Patrick, among the
_multiplied scenes of your little garden._ The theatre is large enough for
my ambition." Such a scene opens a beautiful subject for a curious
portrait-painter. These literary groups in the garden of Pope, sauntering,
or divided in confidential intercourse, would furnish a scene of literary
repose and enjoyment among some of the most illustrious names in our
literature.
CHAPTER X.
Literary solitude.--Its necessity.--Its pleasures.--Of visitors by
profession.--Its inconveniences.
The literary character is reproached with an extreme passion for
retirement, cultivating those insulating habits, which, while they are
great interruptions, and even weakeners, of domestic happiness, induce at
the same time in public life to a secession from its cares, and an
avoidance of its active duties. Yet the vacancies of retired men are
eagerly filled by the many unemployed men of the world happily framed for
its business. We do not hear these accusations raised against the painter
who wears away his days by his easel, or the musician by the side of his
instrument; and much less should we against the legal and the commercial
character; yet all these are as much withdrawn from public and private
life as the literary character. The desk is as insulating as the library.
Yet the man who is working for his individual interest is more highly
estimated than the retired student, whose disinterested pursuits are at
least more profitable to the world than to himself. La Bruyere discovered
the world's erroneous estimate of literary labour: "There requires a
better name," he says, "to be bestowed on the leisure (the idleness he
calls it) of the literary character,--to meditate, to compose, to read and
to be tranquil, should be called _working_." But so invisible is the
progress of intellectual pursuits and so rarely are the objects palpable
to the observers, that the literary character appears to be denied for his
pursuits, what cannot be refused to every other. That unremitting
application and unbroken series of their thoughts, admired in every
profession, is only complained of in that one whose professors with so
much sincerity mourn over the brevity of life, which has often closed on
them while sketching their works.
It is, however, only in solitude that the genius of eminent men has been
formed. There their first thoughts sprang, and there it will become them
to find their last: for the solitude of old age--and old age must be often
in solitude--may be found the happiest with the literary character.
Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the true parent of
genius. In all ages solitude has been called for--has been flown to. No
considerable work was ever composed till its author, like an ancient
magician, first retired to the grove, or to the closet, to invocate. When
genius languishes in an irksome solitude among crowds, that is the moment
to fly into seclusion and meditation. There is a society in the deepest
solitude; in all the men of genius of the past
First of your kind, Society divine!
and in themselves; for there only can they indulge in the romances of
their soul, and there only can they occupy themselves in their dreams and
their vigils, and, with the morning, fly without interruption to the
labour they had reluctantly quitted. If there be not periods when they
shall allow their days to melt harmoniously into each other, if they do
not pass whole weeks together in their study, without intervening
absences, they will not be admitted into the last recess of the Muses.
Whether their glory come from researches, or from enthusiasm, time, with
not a feather ruffled on his wings, time alone opens discoveries and
kindles meditation. This desert of solitude, so vast and so dreary to the
man of the world, to the man of genius is the magical garden of Armida,
whose enchantments arose amidst solitude, while solitude was everywhere
among those enchantments.
Whenever MICHAEL ANGELO, that "divine madman," as Richardson once wrote on
the back of one of his drawings, was meditating on some great design, he
closed himself up from the world, "Why do you lead so solitary a life?"
asked a friend. "Art," replied the sublime artist, "Art is a jealous god;
it requires the whole and entire man." During his mighty labour in the
Sistine Chapel, he refused to have any communication with any person even
at his own house. Such undisturbed and solitary attention is demanded even
by undoubted genius as the price of performance. How then shall we deem of
that feebler race who exult in occasional excellence, and who so often
deceive themselves by mistaking the evanescent flashes of genius for that
holier flame which burns on its altar, because the fuel is incessantly
supplied?
We observe men of genius, in public situations, sighing for this solitude.
Amidst the impediments of the world, they are doomed to view their
intellectual banquet often rising before them, like some fairy delusion,
never to taste it. The great VERULAM often complained of the disturbances
of his public life, and rejoiced in the occasional retirement he stole
from public affairs. "And now, because I am in the country, I will send
you some of my country fruits, which with me are good meditations; when I
am in the city, they are choked with business." Lord CLARENDON, whose life
so happily combined the contemplative with the active powers of man,
dwells on three periods of retirement which he enjoyed; he always took
pleasure in relating the great tranquillity of spirit experienced during
his solitude at Jersey, where for more than two years, employed on his
history, he daily wrote "one sheet of large paper with his own hand." At
the close of his life, his literary labours in his other retirements are
detailed with a proud satisfaction. Each of his solitudes occasioned a new
acquisition; to one he owed the Spanish, to another the French, and to a
third the Italian literature. The public are not yet acquainted with the
fertility of Lord Clarendon's literary labours. It was not vanity that
induced Scipio to declare of solitude, that it had no loneliness for him,
since he voluntarily retired amidst a glorious life to his Linternum.
CICERO was uneasy amid applauding Rome, and has distinguished his numerous
works by the titles of his various villas. AULUS GELLIUS marked his
solitude by his "Attic Nights." The "Golden Grove" of JEREMY TAYLOR is the
produce of his retreat at the Earl of Carberry's seat in Wales; and the
"Diversions of Purley" preserved a man of genius for posterity. VOLTAIRE
had talents well adapted for society; but at one period of his life he
passed five years in the most secret seclusion, and indeed usually lived
in retirement. MONTESQUIEU quitted the brilliant circles of Paris for his
books and his meditations, and was ridiculed by the gay triflers he
deserted; "but my great work," he observes in triumph, "avance a pas de
geant." Harrington, to compose his "Oceana," severed himself from the
society of his friends. DESCARTES, inflamed by genius, hires an obscure
house in an unfrequented quarter at Paris, and there he passes two years,
unknown to his acquaintance. ADAM SMITH, after the publication of his
first work, withdrew into a retirement that lasted ten years: even Hume
rallies him for separating himself from the world; but by this means the
great political inquirer satisfied the world by his great work. And thus
it was with men of genius long ere Petrarch withdrew to his Val chiusa.
The interruption of visitors by profession has been feelingly lamented by
men of letters. The mind, maturing its speculations, feels the unexpected
conversation of cold ceremony chilling as March winds over the blossoms of
the Spring. Those unhappy beings who wander from house to house,
privileged by the charter of society to obstruct the knowledge they cannot
impart, to weary because they are wearied, or to seek amusement at the
cost of others, belong to that class of society which have affixed no
other idea to time than that of getting rid of it. These are judges not
the best qualified to comprehend the nature and evil of their depredations
in the silent apartment of the studious, who may be often driven to
exclaim, in the words of the Psalmist, "Verily I have cleansed my heart in
vain, and washed my hands in innocency: _for all the day long have I been
plagued, and chastened every morning._"
When Montesquieu was deeply engaged in his great work, he writes to a
friend:--"The favour which your friend Mr. Hein, often does me to pass his
mornings with me, occasions great damage to my work as well by his impure
French as the length of his details."--"We are afraid," said some of those
visitors to BAXTER, "that we break in upon your time."--"To be sure you
do," replied the disturbed and blunt scholar. To hint as gently as he
could to his friends that he was avaricious of time, one of the learned
Italians had a prominent inscription over the door of his study,
intimating that whoever remained there must join in his labours. The
amiable MELANCTHON, incapable of a harsh expression, when he received
these idle visits, only noted down the time he had expended, that he might
reanimate his industry, and not lose a day. EVELYN, continually importuned
by morning visitors, or "taken up by other impertinencies of my life in
the country," stole his hours from his night rest "to redeem his losses."
The literary character has been driven to the most inventive shifts to
escape the irruption of a formidable party at a single rush, who enter,
without "besieging or beseeching," as Milton has it. The late Mr. Ellis, a
man of elegant tastes and poetical temperament, on one of these occasions,
at his country-house, assured a literary friend, that when driven to the
last, he usually made his escape by a leap out of the window; and Boileau
has noticed a similar dilemma when at the villa of the President
Lamoignon, while they were holding their delightful conversations in his
grounds.
Quelquefois de facheux arrivent trois volees,
Que du parc a l'instant assiegent les allees;
Alors sauve qui peut, et quatre fois heureux
Qui sait s'echapper, a quelque autre ignore d'eux.
BRAND HOLLIS endeavoured to hold out "the idea of singularity as a
shield;" and the great ROBERT BOYLE was compelled to advertise in a
newspaper that he must decline visits on certain days, that he might have
leisure to finish some of his works.[A]
[Footnote A: This curious advertisement is preserved in Dr. Birch's "Life
of Boyle," p. 272. Boyle's labours were so exhausting to his naturally
weak frame, and so continuous from his eager desire for investigation,
that this advertisement was concocted by the advice of his physician, "to
desire to be excused from receiving visits (unless upon occasions very
extraordinary) two days in the week, namely, on the forenoon of Tuesdays
and Fridays (both foreign post days), and on Wednesdays and Saturdays in
the afternoons, that he may have some time, both to recruit his spirits,
to range his papers, and fill up the _lacunae_ of them, and to take some
care of his affairs in Ireland, which are very much disordered and have
their face often changed by the public calamities there." He ordered
likewise a board to be placed over his door, with an inscription
signifying when he did, and when he did not receive visits.--ED.]
BOCCACCIO has given an interesting account of the mode of life of the
studious Petrarch, for on a visit he found that Petrarch would not suffer
his hours of study to be broken into even, by the person whom of all men
he loved most, and did not quit his morning studies for his guest, who
during that time occupied himself by reading or transcribing the works of
his master. At the decline of day, Petrarch quitted his study for his
garden, where he delighted to open his heart in mutual confidence.
But this solitude, at first a necessity, and then a pleasure, at length is
not borne without repining. To tame the fervid wildness of youth to the
strict regularities of study, is a sacrifice performed by the votary; but
even MILTON appears to have felt this irksome period of life; for in the
preface to "Smectymnuus" he says:--"It is but justice not to defraud of
due esteem the _wearisome labours_ and _studious watchings_ wherein I have
spent and _tired out_ almost a whole youth." COWLEY, that enthusiast for
seclusion, in his retirement calls himself "the Melancholy Cowley." I have
seen an original letter of this poet to Evelyn, where he expresses his
eagerness to see Sir George Mackenzie's "Essay on Solitude;" for a copy of
which he had sent over the town, without obtaining one, being "either all
bought up, or burnt in the fire of London."[A]--"I am the more desirous,"
he says, "because it is a subject in which I am most deeply interested."
Thus Cowley was requiring a book to confirm his predilection, and we know
he made the experiment, which did not prove a happy one. We find even
GIBBON, with all his fame about him, anticipating the dread he entertained
of solitude in advanced life. "I feel, and shall continue to feel, that
domestic solitude, however it may be alleviated by the world, by study,
and even by friendship, is a comfortless state, which will grow more
painful as I descend in the vale of years." And again:--"Your visit has
only served to remind me that man, however amused or occupied in his
closet, was not made to live alone."
[Footnote A: This event happening when London was the chief emporium of
books, occasioned many printed just before the time to be excessively
rare. The booksellers of Paternoster-row had removed their stock to the
vaults below St. Paul's for safety as the fire approached them. Among the
stock was Prynne's records, vol. iii., which were all burnt, except a few
copies which had been sent into the country, a perfect set has been valued
in consequence at one hundred pounds. The rarity of all books published
about the era of the great fire of London induced one curious collector,
Dr. Bliss, of Oxford, to especially devote himself to gathering such in
his library.--ED.]
Had the mistaken notions of Sprat not deprived us of Cowley's
correspondence, we doubtless had viewed the picture of lonely genius
touched by a tender pencil.[A] But we have SHENSTONE, and GRAY, and
SWIFT. The heart of Shenstone bleeds in the dead oblivion of solitude:
--"Now I am come from a visit, every little uneasiness is sufficient to
introduce my whole train of melancholy considerations, and to make me
utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life I foresee I
shall lead. I am angry, and envious, and dejected, and frantic, and
disregard all present things, as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely
pleased, though it is a gloomy joy, with the application of Dr. Swift's
complaint, that he is forced to die in a rage, like a rat in a poisoned
hole." Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture throughout the year,
in this stanza, by the same amiable but suffering poet:--
Tedious again to curse the drizzling day,
Again to trace the wintry tracks of snow,
Or, soothed by vernal airs, again survey
The self-same hawthorns bud, and cowslips blow.
Swift's letters paint with terrifying colours a picture of solitude;
and at length his despair closed with idiotism. Even the playful muse
of GRESSET throws a sombre querulousness over the solitude of men of
genius:--
--Je les vois, victimes du genie,
Au foible prix d'un eclat passager,
Vivre isoles, sans jouir de la vie!
Vingt ans d'ennuis pour quelques jours de gloire.
Such are the necessity, the pleasures, and the inconveniences of solitude!
It ceases to be a question whether men of genius should blend with the
masses of society; for whether in solitude, or in the world, of all others
they must learn to live with themselves. It is in the world that they
borrow the sparks of thought that fly upwards and perish but the flame of
genius can only be lighted in their own solitary breast.
[Footnote A: See the article on Cowley in "Calamities of Authors."]
CHAPTER XI.
The meditations of genius.--A work on the art of meditation not yet
produced.--Predisposing the mind.--Imagination awakens imagination.
--Generating feelings by music.--Slight habits.--Darkness and silence, by
suspending the exercise of our senses, increase the vivacity of our
conceptions.--The arts of memory.--Memory the foundation of genius.
--Inventions by several to preserve their own moral and literary
character.--And to assist their studies.--The meditations of genius depend
on habit.--Of the night-time.--A day of meditation should precede a day of
composition.--Works of magnitude from slight conceptions.--Of thoughts
never written.--The art of meditation exercised at all hours and places.
--Continuity of attention the source of philosophical discoveries.
--Stillness of meditation the first state of existence in genius.
A continuity of attention, a patient quietness of mind, forms one of the
characteristics of genius. To think, and to feel, constitute the two
grand divisions of men of genius--the men of reasoning and the men of
imagination. There is a thread in our thoughts, as there is a pulse in our
hearts; he who can hold the one, knows how to think; and he who can move
the other, knows how to feel.
A work on the art of meditation has not yet been produced; yet such a work
might prove of immense advantage to him who never happened to have more
than one solitary idea. The pursuit of a single principle has produced a
great system. Thus probably we owe ADAM SMITH to the French economists.
And a loose hint has conducted to a new discovery. Thus GIRARD, taking
advantage of an idea first started by Fenelon, produced his "Synonymes."
But while, in every manual art, every great workman improves on his
predecessor, of the art of the mind, notwithstanding the facility of
practice, and our incessant experience, millions are yet ignorant of the
first rudiments; and men of genius themselves are rarely acquainted with
the materials they are working on. Certain constituent principles of the
mind itself, which the study of metaphysics curiously developes, offer
many important regulations in this desirable art. We may even suspect,
since men of genius in the present age have confided to us the secrets of
their studies, that this art may be carried on by more obvious means than
at first would appear, and even by mechanical contrivances and practical
habits. A mind well organised may be regulated by a single contrivance, as
by a bit of lead we govern the fine machinery by which we track the flight
of time. Many secrets in this art of the mind yet remain as insulated
facts, which may hereafter enter into an experimental history.
Johnson has a curious observation on the Mind itself. He thinks it obtains
a stationary point, from whence it can never advance, occurring before the
middle of life. "When the powers of nature have attained their intended
energy, they can be no more advanced. The shrub can never become a tree.
Nothing then remains but _practice_ and _experience_; and perhaps _why
they do so little may be worth inquiry_."[A] The result of this inquiry
would probably lay a broader foundation for this art of the mind than we
have hitherto possessed, ADAM FERGUSON has expressed himself with
sublimity:--"The lustre which man casts around him, like the flame
of a meteor, shines only while his motion continues; the moments of rest
and of obscurity are the same." What is this art of meditation, but the
power of withdrawing ourselves from the world, to view that world moving
within ourselves, while we are in repose? As the artist, by an optical
instrument, reflects and concentrates the boundless landscape around him,
and patiently traces all nature in that small space.
[Footnote A: I recommend the reader to turn to the whole passage, in
Johnson's "Betters to Mrs. Thrale," vol. i. p. 296.]
There is a government of our thoughts. The mind of genius can be made to
take a particular disposition or train of ideas. It is a remarkable
circumstance in the studies of men of genius, that previous to composition
they have often awakened their imagination by the imagination of their
favourite masters. By touching a magnet, they become a magnet. A
circumstance has been, recorded of GRAY, by Mr. Mathias, "as worthy of all
acceptation among the higher votaries of the divine art, when they are
assured that Mr. Gray never sate down to compose any poetry without
previously, and for a considerable time, reading the works of Spenser."
But the circumstance was not unusual with Malherbe, Corneille, and Racine;
and the most fervid verses of Homer, and the most tender of Euripides,
were often repeated by Milton. Even antiquity exhibits the same exciting
intercourse of the mind of genius. Cicero informs us how his eloquence
caught inspiration from a constant study of the Latin and Grecian poetry;
and it has been recorded of Pompey, who was great even in his youth, that
he never undertook any considerable enterprise without animating his
genius by having read to him the character of Achilles in the first
_Iliad_; although he acknowledged that the enthusiasm he caught came
rather from the poet than the hero. When BOSSUET had to compose a funeral
oration, he was accustomed to retire for several days to his study, to
ruminate over the pages of Homer; and when asked the reason of this habit,
he exclaimed, in these lines--
--magnam mihi mentem, animumque
Delius inspiret Vates.
It is on the same principle of predisposing the mind, that many have first
generated their feelings by the symphonies of music. ALFIERI often before
he wrote prepared his mind by listening to music: "Almost all my tragedies
were sketched in my mind either in the act of hearing music, or a few
hours after"--a circumstance which has been recorded of many others. Lord
BACON had music often played in the room adjoining his study: MILTON
listened to his organ for his solemn inspiration, and music was even
necessary to WARBURTON. The symphonies which awoke in the poet sublime
emotions, might have composed the inventive mind of the great critic in
the visions of his theoretical mysteries. A celebrated French preacher,
Bourdaloue or Massillon, was once found playing on a violin, to screw his
mind up to the pitch, preparatory for his sermon, which within a short
interval he was to preach before the court. CURRAN'S favourite mode of
meditation was with his violin in his hand; for hours together would
he forget himself, running voluntaries over the strings, while his
imagination in collecting its tones was opening all his faculties for the
coming emergency at the bar. When LEONARDO DA VINCI was painting his
"Lisa," commonly called _La Joconde_, he had musicians constantly in
waiting, whose light harmonies, by their associations, inspired feelings
of
Tipsy dance and revelry.
There are slight habits which may be contracted by genius, which assist
the action of the mind; but these are of a nature so trivial, that they
seem ridiculous when they have not been experienced: but the imaginative
race exist by the acts of imagination. HAYDN would never sit down to
compose without being in full dress, with his great diamond ring, and the
finest paper to write down his musical compositions. ROUSSEAU has told
us, when occupied by his celebrated romance, of the influence of the
rose-coloured knots of ribbon which tied his portfolio, his fine paper,
his brilliant ink, and his gold sand. Similar facts are related of many.
Whenever APOSTOLO ZENO, the predecessor of Metastasio, prepared himself to
compose a new drama, he used to say to himself, "_Apostolo! recordati che
questa e la prima opera che dai in luce._"--"Apostolo! remember that this
is the first opera you are presenting to the public." We are scarcely
aware how we may govern our thoughts by means of our sensations: DE LUC
was subject to violent bursts of passion; but he calmed the interior
tumult by the artifice of filling his mouth with sweets and comfits. When
GOLDONI found his sleep disturbed by the obtrusive ideas still floating
from the studies of the day, he contrived to lull himself to rest by
conning in his mind a vocabulary of the Venetian dialect, translating some
word into Tuscan and French; which being a very uninteresting occupation,
at the third or fourth version this recipe never failed. This was an art
of withdrawing attention from the greater to the less emotion; by which,
as the interest weakened, the excitement ceased. MENDELSSOHN, whose feeble
and too sensitive frame was often reduced to the last stage of suffering
by intellectual exertion, when engaged in any point of difficulty, would
in an instant contrive a perfect cessation from thinking, by mechanically
going to the window, and counting the tiles upon the roof of his
neighbour's house. Such facts show how much art may be concerned in the
government of our thoughts.
It is an unquestionable fact that some profound thinkers cannot pursue
their intellectual operations amidst the distractions of light and noise.
With them, attention to what is passing within is interrupted by the
discordant impressions from objects pressing and obtruding on the
external senses. There are indeed instances, as in the case of Priestley
and others, of authors who have pursued their literary works amidst
conversation and their family; but such minds are not the most original
thinkers, and the most refined writers; or their subjects are of a nature
which requires little more than judgment and diligence. It is the mind
only in its fulness which can brood over thoughts till the incubation
produces vitality. Such is the feeling in this act of study. In Plutarch's
time they showed a subterraneous place of study built by Demosthenes, and
where he often continued for two or three months together. Malebranche,
Hobbes, Corneille, and others, darkened their apartment when they wrote,
to concentrate their thoughts, as Milton says of the mind, "in the
spacious circuits of her musing." It is in proportion as we can suspend
the exercise of all our other senses that the liveliness of our conception
increases--this is the observation of the most elegant metaphysician of
our times; and when Lord Chesterfield advised that his pupil--whose
attention wandered on every passing object, which unfitted him for study
--should be instructed in a darkened apartment, he was aware of this
principle; the boy would learn, and retain what he learned, ten times as
well. We close our eyes whenever we would collect our mind together, or
trace more distinctly an object which seems to have faded away in our
recollection. The study of an author or an artist would be ill placed in
the midst of a beautiful landscape; the "Penseroso" of Milton, "hid from
day's garish eye," is the man of genius. A secluded and naked apartment,
with nothing but a desk, a chair, and a single sheet of paper, was for
fifty years the study of BUFFON; the single ornament was a print of Newton
placed before his eyes--nothing broke into the unity of his reveries.
Cumberland's liveliest comedy, _The West Indian_, was written in an
unfurnished apartment, close in front of an Irish turf-stack; and our
comic writer was fully aware of the advantages of the situation. "In all
my hours of study," says that elegant writer, "it has been through life my
object so to locate myself as to have little or nothing to distract my
attention, and therefore brilliant rooms or pleasant prospects I have ever
avoided. A dead wall, or, as in the present case, an Irish turf-stack, are
not attractions that can call off the fancy from its pursuits; and whilst
in these pursuits it can find interest and occupation, it wants no outward
aid to cheer it. My father, I believe, rather wondered at my choice." The
principle ascertained, the consequences are obvious.
The arts of memory have at all times excited the attention of the
studious; they open a world of undivulged mysteries, where every one seems
to form some discovery of his own, rather exciting his astonishment than
enlarging his comprehension. LE SAGE, a modern philosopher, had a memory
singularly defective. Incapable of acquiring languages, and deficient in
all those studies which depend on the exercise of the memory, it became
the object of his subsequent exertions to supply this deficiency by the
order and method he observed in arranging every new fact or idea he
obtained; so that in reality with a very bad memory, it appears that he
was still enabled to recall at will any idea or any knowledge which he had
stored up. JOHN HUNTER happily illustrated the advantages which every one
derives from putting his thoughts in writing, "it resembles a tradesman
taking stock; without which he never knows either what he possesses, or in
what he is deficient." The late WILLIAM HUTTON, a man of an original cast
of mind, as an experiment in memory, opened a book which he had divided
into 365 columns, according to the days of the year: he resolved to try to
recollect an anecdote, for every column, as insignificant and remote as he
was able, rejecting all under ten years of age; and to his surprise, he
filled those spaces for small reminiscences, within ten columns; but till
this experiment had been made, he never conceived the extent of his
faculty. WOLF, the German metaphysician, relates of himself that he had,
by the most persevering habit, in bed and amidst darkness, resolved his
algebraic problems, and geometrically composed all his methods merely by
the aid of his imagination and memory; and when in the daytime he verified
the one and the other of these operations, he had always found them
true. Unquestionably, such astonishing instances of a well-regulated
memory depend on the practice of its art gradually formed by frequent
associations. When we reflect that whatever we know, and whatever we feel,
are the very smallest portions of all the knowledge we have been
acquiring, and all the feelings we have experienced through life, how
desirable would be that art which should again open the scenes which have
vanished, and revivify the emotions which other impressions have effaced?
But the faculty of memory, although perhaps the most manageable of all
others, is considered a subordinate one; it seems only a grasping and
accumulating power, and in the work of genius is imagined to produce
nothing of itself; yet is memory the foundation of Genius, whenever this
faculty is associated with imagination and passion; with men of genius it
is a chronology not merely of events, but of emotions; hence they remember
nothing that is not interesting to their feelings. Persons of inferior
capacity have imperfect recollections from feeble impressions. Are not the
incidents of the great novelist often founded on the common ones of life?
and the personages so admirably alive in his fictions, were they not
discovered among the crowd? The ancients have described the Muses as the
daughters of Memory; an elegant fiction, indicating the natural and
intimate connexion between imagination and reminiscence.
The arts of memory will form a saving-bank of genius, to which it may have
recourse, as a wealth which it can accumulate imperceptibly amidst the
ordinary expenditure. LOCKE taught us the first rudiments of this art,
when he showed us how he stored his thoughts and his facts, by an
artificial arrangement; and Addison, before he commenced his "Spectators,"
had amassed three folios of materials. But the higher step will be the
volume which shall give an account of a man to himself, in which a single
observation immediately becomes a clue of past knowledge, restoring to him
his lost studies, and his evanescent existence. Self-contemplation makes
the man more nearly entire: and to preserve the past, is half of
immortality.
The worth of the diary must depend on the diarist; but "Of the things
which concern himself," as MARCUS ANTONINUS entitles his celebrated work
--this volume, reserved for solitary contemplation, should be considered
as a future relic of ourselves. The late Sir SAMUEL ROMILLY commenced,
even in the most occupied period of his life, a diary of his last twelve
years; which he declares in his will, "I bequeath to my children, as it
may be serviceable to them." Perhaps in this Romilly bore in mind the
example of another eminent lawyer, the celebrated WHITELOCKE, who
had drawn up a great work, entitled "Remembrances of the Labours of
Whitelocke, in the Annals of his Life, for the Instruction of his
Children." That neither of these family books has appeared, is our common
loss. Such legacies from such men ought to become the inheritance of their
countrymen.
To register the transactions of the day, with observations on what, and on
whom, he had seen, was the advice of Lord KAIMES to the late Mr. CURWEN;
and for years his head never reached its pillow without performing a task
which habit had made easy. "Our best and surest road to knowledge," said
Lord Kaimes, "is by profiting from the labours of others, and making their
experience our own." In this manner Curwen tells us he acquired by habit
_the art of thinking_; and he is an able testimony of the practicability
and success of the plan, for he candidly tells us, "Though many would
sicken at the idea of imposing such a task upon themselves, yet the
attempt, persevered in for a short time, would soon become a custom more
irksome to omit than it was difficult to commence."
Could we look into the libraries of authors, the studios of artists, and
the laboratories of chemists, and view what they have only sketched, or
what lie scattered in fragments, and could we trace their first and last
thoughts, we might discover that we have lost more than we possess. There
we might view foundations without superstructures, once the monuments of
their hopes! A living architect recently exhibited to the public an
extraordinary picture of his mind, in his "Architectural Visions of Early
Fancy in the Gay Morning of Youth," and which now were "dreams in the
evening of life." In this picture he had thrown together all the
architectural designs his imagination had conceived, but which remained
unexecuted. The feeling is true, however whimsical such unaccomplished
fancies might appear when thrown together into one picture. In literary
history such instances have occurred but too frequently: the imagination
of youth, measuring neither time nor ability, creates what neither time
nor ability can execute. ADAM SMITH, in the preface to the first edition
of his "Theory of Sentiments," announced a large work on law and
government; and in a late edition he still repeated the promise, observing
that "Thirty years ago I entertained no doubt of being able to execute
everything which it announced." The "Wealth of Nations" was but a fragment
of this greater work. Surely men of genius, of all others, may mourn over
the length of art and the brevity of life!
Yet many glorious efforts, and even artificial inventions, have been
contrived to assist and save its moral and literary existence in that
perpetual race which genius holds with time. We trace its triumph in the
studious days of such men as GIBBON, Sir WILLIAM JONES, and PRIESTLEY. An
invention by which the moral qualities and the acquisitions of the
literary character were combined and advanced together, is what Sir
WILLIAM JONES ingeniously calls his "Andrometer." In that scale of human
attainments and enjoyments which ought to accompany the eras of human
life, it reminds us of what was to be learned, and what to be practised,
assigning to stated periods their appropriate pursuits. An occasional
recurrence, even to so fanciful a standard, would be like looking on a
clock to remind the student how he loiters, or how he advances in the
great day's work. Such romantic plans have been often invented by the
ardour of genius. There was no communication between Sir WILLIAM JONES and
Dr. FRANKLIN; yet, when young, the self-taught philosopher of America
pursued the same genial and generous devotion to his own moral and
literary excellence.
"It was about this time I conceived," says Franklin, "the bold and arduous
project of arriving at moral perfection," &c. He began a daily journal, in
which against thirteen virtues accompanied by seven columns to mark the
days of the week, he dotted down what he considered to be his failures; he
found himself fuller of faults than he had imagined, but at length his
blots diminished. This self-examination, or this "Faultbook," as Lord
Shaftesbury would have called it, was always carried about him. These
books still exist. An additional contrivance was that of journalising his
twenty-four hours, of which he has furnished us both with descriptions and
specimens of the method; and he closes with a solemn assurance, that "It
may be well my posterity should be informed, that to this _little
artifice_ their ancestor owes the constant felicity of his life." Thus we
see the fancy of Jones and the sense of Franklin, unconnected either by
character or communication, but acted on by the same glorious feeling to
create their own moral and literary character, inventing similar although
extraordinary methods.
The memorials of Gibbon and Priestley present us with the experience and
the habits of the literary character. "What I have known," says Dr.
Priestley, "with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my
admiration and my contempt of others. Could we have entered into the mind
of Sir Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by which he produced
his great works, we might see nothing very extraordinary in the process."
Our student, with an ingenuous simplicity, opens to us that "variety of
mechanical expedients by which he secured and arranged his thoughts," and
that discipline of the mind, by means of a peculiar arrangement of his
studies for the day and for the year, in which he rivalled the calm and
unalterable system pursued by Gibbon, Buffon, and Voltaire, who often only
combined the knowledge they obtained by humble methods. They knew what to
ask for; and where what is wanted may be found: they made use of an
intelligent secretary; aware, as Lord Bacon has expressed it, that some
books "may be read by deputy."
Buffon laid down an excellent rule to obtain originality, when he advised
the writer first to exhaust his own thoughts, before he attempted to
consult other writers; and Gibbon, the most experienced reader of all our
writers, offers the same important advice to an author. When engaged on a
particular subject, he tells us, "I suspended my perusal of any new book
on the subject, till I had reviewed all that I knew, or believed, or had
thought on it, that I might be qualified to discern how much the authors
added to my original stock." The advice of Lord Bacon, that we should
pursue our studies in whatever disposition the mind may be, is excellent.
If happily disposed, we shall gain a great step; and if indisposed, we
"shall work out the knots and strands of the mind, and make the middle
times the more pleasant." Some active lives have passed away in incessant
competition, like those of Mozart, Cicero, and Voltaire, who were
restless, perhaps unhappy, when their genius was quiescent. To such minds
the constant zeal they bring to their labour supplies the absence of that
inspiration which cannot always be the same, nor always at its height.
Industry is the feature by which the ancients so frequently describe an
eminent character; such phrases as "_incredibili industria; diligentia
singulars_" are usual. We of these days cannot conceive the industry of
Cicero; but he has himself told us that he suffered no moments of his
leisure to escape from him. Not only his spare hours were consecrated to
his books; but even on days of business he would take a few turns in his
walk, to meditate or to dictate; many of his letters are dated before
daylight, some from the senate, at his meals, and amid his morning levees.
The dawn of day was the summons of study to Sir William Jones. John
Hunter, who was constantly engaged in the search and consideration of
new facts, described what was passing in his mind by a remarkable
illustration:--he said to Abernethy, "My mind is like a bee-hive." A
simile which was singularly correct; "for," observes Abernethy, "in the
midst of buzz and apparent confusion there was great order, regularity of
structure, and abundant food, collected with incessant industry from the
choicest stores of nature." Thus one man of genius is the ablest
commentator on the thoughts and feelings of another. When we reflect on
the magnitude of the labours of Cicero and the elder Pliny, on those of
Erasmus, Petrarch, Baronius, Lord Bacon, Usher, and Bayle, we seem at the
base of these monuments of study, we seem scarcely awake to admire. These
were the laborious instructors of mankind; their age has closed.
Yet let not those other artists of the mind, who work in the airy looms of
fancy and wit, imagine that they are weaving their webs, without the
direction of a principle, and without a secret habit which they have
acquired, and which some have imagined, by its quickness and facility, to
be an instinct. "Habit," says Reid, "differs from instinct, not in its
nature, but in its origin; the last being natural, the first acquired."
What we are accustomed to do, gives a facility and proneness to do on like
occasions; and there may be even an art, unperceived by themselves, in
opening and pursuing a scene of pure invention, and even in the happiest
turns of wit. One who had all the experience of such an artist has
employed the very terms we have used, of "mechanical" and "habitual." "Be
assured," says Goldsmith, "that wit is in some measure mechanical; and
that a man long habituated to catch at even its resemblance, will at last
be happy enough to possess the substance. By a long habit of writing he
acquires a justness of thinking, and a mastery of manner which holiday
writers, even with ten times his genius, may vainly attempt to equal." The
wit of BUTLER was not extemporaneous, but painfully elaborated from notes
which he incessantly accumulated; and the familiar _rime_ of BERNT, the
burlesque poet, his existing manuscripts will prove, were produced by
perpetual re-touches. Even in the sublime efforts of imagination, this
art of meditation may be practised; and ALFIERI has shown us, that in
those energetic tragic dramas which were often produced in a state of
enthusiasm, he pursued a regulated process. "All my tragedies have been
composed three times;" and he describes the three stages of conception,
development, and versifying. "After these three operations, I proceed,
like other authors, to publish, correct, or amend."
"All is habit in mankind, even virtue itself!" exclaimed METASTASIO;
and we may add, even the meditations of genius. Some of its boldest
conceptions, are indeed fortuitous, starting up and vanishing almost in
the perception; like that giant form, sometimes seen amidst the glaciers,
afar from the opposite traveller, moving as he moves, stopping as he
stops, yet, in a moment lost, and perhaps never more seen, although but
his own reflection! Often in the still obscurity of the night, the ideas,
the studies, the whole history of the day, is acted over again. There are
probably few mathematicians who have not dreamed of an interesting
problem, observes Professor Dugald Stewart. In these vivid scenes we are
often so completely converted into spectators, that a great poetical
contemporary of our country thinks that even his dreams should not pass
away unnoticed, and keeps what he calls a register of nocturnals. TASSO
has recorded some of his poetical dreams, which were often disturbed by
waking himself in repeating a verse aloud. "This night I awaked with this
verse in my mouth--
"_E i duo che manda il nero adusto suolo_.
The two, the _dark_ and burning soil has sent."
He discovered that the epithet _black_ was not suitable; "I again fell
asleep, and in a dream I read in Strabo that the sand of Ethiopia and
Arabia is extremely _white_, and this morning I have found the place. You
see what learned dreams I have."
But incidents of this nature are not peculiar to this great bard. The
_improvvisatori_ poets, we are told, cannot sleep after an evening's
effusion; the rhymes are still ringing in their ears, and imagination, if
they have any, will still haunt them. Their previous state of excitement
breaks into the calm of sleep; for, like the ocean, when its swell is
subsiding, the waves still heave and beat. A poet, whether a Milton or a
Blackmore, will ever find that his muse will visit his "slumbers nightly."
His fate is much harder than that of the great minister, Sir Robert
Walpole, who on retiring to rest could throw aside his political intrigues
with his clothes; but Sir Robert, to judge by his portrait and anecdotes
of him, had a sleekiness and good-humour, and an unalterable equanimity of
countenance, not the portion of men of genius: indeed one of these has
regretted that his sleep was so profound as not to be interrupted by
dreams; from a throng of fantastic ideas he imagined that he could have
drawn new sources of poetic imagery. The historian DE THOU was one of
those great literary characters who, all his life, was preparing to write
the history which he afterwards composed; omitting nothing in his travels
and his embassies, which went to the formation of a great man. DE THOU has
given a very curious account of his dreams. Such was his passion for
study, and his ardent admiration of the great men whom he conversed with,
that he often imagined in his sleep that he was travelling in Italy,
Germany, and in England, where he saw and consulted the learned, and
examined their curious libraries. He had all his lifetime these literary
dreams, but more particularly in his travels they reflected these images
of the day.
If memory do not chain down these hurrying fading children of the
imagination, and
Snatch the faithless fugitives to light
with the beams of the morning, the mind suddenly finds itself forsaken and
solitary.[A] ROUSSEAU has uttered a complaint on this occasion. Full of
enthusiasm, he devoted to the subject of his thoughts, as was his custom,
the long sleepless intervals of his nights. Meditating in bed with his
eyes closed, he turned over his periods in a tumult of ideas; but when he
rose and had dressed, all was vanished; and when he sat down to his
breakfast he had nothing to write. Thus genius has its vespers and its
vigils, as well as its matins, which we have been so often told are the
true hours of its inspiration; but every hour may be full of inspiration
for him who knows to meditate. No man was more practised in this art of
the mind than POPE, and even the night was not an unregarded portion of
his poetical existence, not less than with LEONARDO DA VINCI, who tells us
how often he found the use of recollecting the ideas of what he had
considered in the day after he had retired to bed, encompassed by the
silence and obscurity of the night. Sleepless nights are the portion of
genius when engaged in its work; the train of reasoning is still pursued;
the images of fancy catch a fresh illumination; and even a happy
expression shall linger in the ear of him who turns about for the soft
composure to which his troubled spirit cannot settle.
[Footnote A: One of the most extraordinary instances of inspiration in
dreams is told of Tartini, the Italian musician, whose "Devil's Sonata" is
well known to musicians. He dreamed that the father of evil played this
piece to him, and upon waking he put it on paper. It is a strange wild
performance, possessing great originality and vigour.--ED.]
But while with genius so much seems fortuitous, in its great operations
the march of the mind appears regular, and requires preparation. The
intellectual faculties are not always co-existent, or do not always act
simultaneously. 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. Many works of mediocrity might have
approached to excellence, had this art of the mind been exercised. Many
volatile writers might have reached even to deep thinking, had they
bestowed a day of meditation before a day of composition, and thus
engendered their thoughts. Many productions of genius have originally been
enveloped in feebleness and obscurity, which have only been brought to
perfection by repeated acts of the mind. There is a maxim of Confucius,
which in the translation seems quaint, but which is pregnant with sense--
Labour, but slight not meditation;
Meditate, but slight not labour.
Few works of magnitude presented themselves at once, in their extent
and with their associations, to their authors. Two or three striking
circumstances, unobserved before, are perhaps all which the man of genius
perceives. It is in revolving the subject that the whole mind becomes
gradually agitated; as a summer landscape, at the break of day, is wrapped
in mist: at first, the sun strikes on a single object, but the light and
warmth increasing, the whole scene glows in the noonday of imagination.
How beautifully this state of the mind, in the progress of composition,
is described by DRYDEN, alluding to his work, "when it was only a confused
mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy
was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards
the light, there to be distinguished, and then either to be chosen or
rejected by the judgment!" At that moment, he adds, "I was in that
eagerness of imagination which, by over-pleasing fanciful men, flatters
them into the danger of writing." GIBBON tells us of his history, "At the
onset all was dark and doubtful; even the title of the work, the true era
of the decline and fall of the empire, &c. I was often tempted to cast
away the labour of seven years." WINCKELMANN was long lost in composing
his "History of Art;" a hundred fruitless attempts were made, before he
could discover a plan amidst the labyrinth. Slight conceptions kindle
finished works. A lady asking for a few verses on rural topics of the Abbe
de Lille, his specimens pleased, and sketches heaped on sketches produced
"Les Jardins." In writing the "Pleasures of Memory," as it happened with
"The Rape of the Lock," the poet at first proposed a simple description in
a few lines, till conducted by meditation the perfect composition of
several years closed in that fine poem. That still valuable work, _L'Art
de Penser_ of the Port-Royal, was originally projected to teach a young
nobleman all that was practically useful in the art of logic in a few
days, and was intended to have been written in one morning by the great
ARNAULD; but to that profound thinker so many new ideas crowded in that
slight task, that he was compelled to call in his friend NICOLLE; and thus
a few projected pages closed in a volume so excellent, that our elegant
metaphysician has recently declared, that "it is hardly possible to
estimate the merits too highly." Pemberton, who knew NEWTON intimately,
informs us that his Treatise on Natural Philosophy, full of a variety of
profound inventions, was composed by him from scarcely any other materials
than the _few propositions he had set down several years before_, and
which having resumed, occupied him in writing one year and a half. A
curious circumstance has been preserved in the life of the other immortal
man in philosophy, Lord BACON. When young, he wrote a letter to Father
Fulgentio concerning an Essay of his, to which he gave the title of "The
Greatest Birth of Time," a title which he censures as too pompous. The
Essay itself is lost, but it was the first outline of that great design
which he afterwards pursued and finished in his "Instauration of the
Sciences." LOCKE himself has informed us, that his great work on "The
Human Understanding," when he first put pen to paper, he thought "would
have been contained in one sheet, but that the farther he went on, the
larger prospect he had." In this manner it would be beautiful to trace the
history of the human mind, and observe how a NEWTON and a BACON and a
LOCKE were proceeding for thirty years together, in accumulating truth
upon truth, and finally building up these fabrics of their invention.
Were it possible to collect some thoughts of great thinkers, which were
never written, we should discover vivid conceptions, and an originality
they never dared to pursue in their works! Artists have this advantage
over authors, that their virgin fancies, their chance felicities, which
labour cannot afterwards produce, are constantly perpetuated; and those
"studies," as they are called, are as precious to posterity as their more
complete designs. In literature we possess one remarkable evidence of
these fortuitous thoughts of genius. POPE and SWIFT, being in the country
together, observed, that if contemplative men were to notice "the thoughts
which suddenly present themselves to their minds when walking in the
fields, &c., they might find many as well worth preserving as some of
their more deliberate reflections." They made a trial, and agreed to write
down such involuntary thoughts as occurred during their stay there. These
furnished out the "Thoughts" in Pope's and Swift's Miscellanies.[A] Among
Lord Bacon's Remains, we find a paper entitled "_Sudden Thoughts,_ set
down for Profit." At all hours, by the side of VOLTAIRE'S bed, or on his
table, stood his pen and ink with slips of paper. The margins of his books
were covered with his "sudden thoughts." CICERO, in reading, constantly
took notes and made comments. There is an art of reading, as well as an
art of thinking, and an art of writing.
[Footnote A: This anecdote is found in Ruffhead's "Life of Pope,"
evidently given by Warburton, as was everything of personal knowledge in
that tasteless volume of a mere lawyer, who presumed to write the life of
a poet.]
The art of meditation may be exercised at all hours, and in all places;
and men of genius, in their walks, at table, and amidst assemblies,
turning the eye of the mind inwards, can form an artificial solitude;
retired amidst a crowd, calm amidst distraction, and wise amidst folly.
When DOMENICHINO was reproached for his dilatory habits, in not finishing
a great picture for which he had contracted, his reply described this
method of study: _Eh! lo la sto continuamente dipingendo entro di me_--I
am continually painting it within myself. HOGARTH, with an eye always
awake to the ridiculous, would catch a character on his thumb-nail.
LEONARDO DA VINCI has left a great number of little books which lie
usually carried in his girdle, that he might instantly sketch whatever he
wished to recal to his recollection; and Amoretti discovered, that, in
these light sketches, this fine genius was forming a system of physiognomy
which he frequently inculcated to his pupils.[A] HAYDN carefully noted
down in a pocket-book the passages and ideas which came to him in his
walks or amid company. Some of the great actions of men of this habit of
mind were first meditated on amidst the noise of a convivial party, or the
music of a concert. The victory of Waterloo might have been organized in
the ball-room at Brussels: and thus RODNEY, at the table of Lord Sandwich,
while the bottle was briskly circulating, being observed arranging bits of
cork, and his solitary amusement having excited inquiry, said that he was
practising a plan to annihilate an enemy's fleet. This proved to be that
discovery of breaking the line, which the happy audacity of the hero
afterwards executed. What situation is more common than a sea-voyage,
where nothing presents itself to the reflections of most men than irksome
observations on the desert of waters? But the constant exercise of the
mind by habitual practice is the privilege of a commanding genius, and, in
a similar situation, we discover CICERO and Sir WILLIAM JONES acting
alike. Amidst the Oriental seas, in a voyage of 12,000 miles, the mind of
JONES kindled with delightful enthusiasm, and he has perpetuated those
elevating feelings in his discourse to the Asiatic Society; so CICERO on
board a ship, sailing slowly along the coast, passing by a town where his
friend Trebatius resided, wrote a work which the other had expressed a
wish to possess, and of which wish the view of the town had reminded him.
[Footnote A: A collection of sixty-four of these sketches were published
at Paris in 1730. They are remarkable as delineations of mental character
in feature as strongly felt as if done under the direction of Larater
himself.--ED.]
To this habit of continuity of attention, tracing the first simple idea to
its remoter consequences, the philosophical genius owes many of its
discoveries. It was one evening in the cathedral of Pisa that GALILEO
observed the vibrations of a brass lustre pendent from the vaulted roof,
which had been left swinging by one of the vergers. The habitual
meditation of genius combined with an ordinary accident a new idea of
science, and hence conceived the invention of measuring time by the medium
of a pendulum. Who but a genius of this order, sitting in his orchard,
and observing the descent of an apple, could have discovered a new quality
in matter, and have ascertained the laws of attraction, by perceiving
that the same causes might perpetuate the regular motions of the planetary
system; who but a genius of this order, while viewing boys blowing
soap-bladders, could have discovered the properties of light and colours,
and then anatomised a ray? FRANKLIN, on board a ship, observing a partial
stillness in the waves when they threw down water which had been used for
culinary purposes, by the same principle of meditation was led to the
discovery of the wonderful property in oil of calming the agitated ocean;
and many a ship has been preserved in tempestuous weather, or a landing
facilitated on a dangerous surf, by this solitary meditation of genius.
Thus meditation draws out of the most simple truths the strictness
of philosophical demonstration, converting even the amusements of
school-boys, or the most ordinary domestic occurrences, into the principle
of a new science. The phenomenon of galvanism was familiar to students;
yet was there but one man of genius who could take advantage of an
accident, give it his name, and fix it as a science. It was while lying in
his bath, but still meditating on the means to detect the fraud of the
goldsmith who had made Hiero's crown, that the most extraordinary
philosopher of antiquity was led to the investigation of a series of
propositions demonstrated in the two books of ARCHIMEDES, _De insidentibus
in fluido,_ still extant; and which a great mathematician admires both for
the strictness and elegance of the demonstrations. To as minute a domestic
occurrence as GALVANI'S we owe the steam-engine. When the Marquis of
WORCESTER was a State prisoner in the Tower, he one day observed, while
his meal was preparing in his apartment, that the cover of the vessel
being tight, was, by the expansion of the steam, suddenly forced off, and
driven up the chimney. His inventive mind was led on in a train of thought
with reference to the practical application of steam as a first mover. His
observations, obscurely exhibited in his "Century of Inventions," were
successively wrought out by the meditations of others, and an incident, to
which one can hardly make a formal reference without a risible emotion,
terminated in the noblest instance of mechanical power.
Into the stillness of meditation the mind of genius must be frequently
thrown; it is a kind of darkness which hides from us all surrounding
objects, even in the light of day. This is the first state of existence in
genius. In Cicero's "Treatise on Old Age," we find Cato admiring Caius
Sulpitius Gallus, who, when he sat down to write in the morning, was
surprised by the evening; and when he took up his pen in the evening, was
surprised by the appearance of the morning. SOCRATES sometimes remained a
whole day in immovable meditation, his eyes and countenance directed to
one spot, as if in the stillness of death. LA FONTAINE, when writing his
comic tales, has been observed early in the morning and late in the
evening in the same recumbent posture under the same tree. This quiescent
state is a sort of enthusiasm, and renders everything that surrounds us as
distant as if an immense interval separated us from the scene. Poggius has
told us of DANTE, that he indulged his meditations more strongly than any
man he knew; for when deeply busied in reading, he seemed to live only in
his ideas. Once the poet went to view a public procession; having entered
a bookseller's shop, and taken up a book, he sunk into a reverie; on his
return he declared that he had neither seen nor heard a single occurrence
in the public exhibition, which had passed unobserved before him. It has
been told of a modern astronomer, that one summer night, when he was
withdrawing to his chamber, the brightness of the heavens showed a
phenomenon: he passed the whole night in observing it; and when they came
to him early in the morning, and found him in the same attitude, he said,
like one who had been recollecting his thoughts for a few moments, "It
must be thus; but I'll go to bed before it is late." He had gazed the
entire night in meditation, and was not aware of it. Abernethy has finely
painted the situation of NEWTON in this state of mind. I will not change
his words, for his words are his feelings. "It was this power of mind
--which can contemplate the greatest number of facts or propositions with
accuracy--that so eminently distinguished Newton from other men. It was
this power that enabled him to arrange the whole of a treatise in his
thoughts before he committed a single idea to paper. In the exercise of
this power, he was known occasionally to have passed a whole night or day,
entirely inattentive to surrounding objects."
There is nothing incredible in the stories related of some who have
experienced this entranced state in study, where the mind, deliciously
inebriated with the object it contemplates, feels nothing, from the excess
of feeling, as a philosopher well describes it. The impressions from our
exterior sensations are often suspended by great mental excitement.
ARCHIMEDES, involved in the investigation of mathematical truth, and the
painters PROTOGENES and PARMEGIANO, found their senses locked up as it
were in meditation, so as to be incapable of withdrawing themselves from
their work, even in the midst of the terrors and storming of the place by
the enemy. MARINO was so absorbed in the composition of his "Adonis," that
he suffered his leg to be burned before the painful sensation grew
stronger than the intellectual pleasure of his imagination. Monsieur
THOMAS, a modern French writer, and an intense thinker, would sit for
hours against a hedge, composing with a low voice, taking the same pinch
of snuff for half an hour together without being aware that it had long
disappeared. When he quitted his apartment, after prolonging his studies
there, a visible alteration was observed in his person, and the agitation
of his recent thoughts was still traced in his air and manner. With
eloquent truth BUFFON described those reveries of the student, which
compress his day, and mark the hours by the sensations of minutes!
"Invention depends on patience: contemplate your subject long; it will
gradually unfold till a sort of electric spark convulses for a moment the
brain, and spreads down to the very heart a glow of irritation. Then come
the luxuries of genius, the true hours for production and composition
--hours so delightful, that I have spent twelve or fourteen successively
at my writing-desk, and still been in a state of pleasure." Bishop HORNE,
whose literary feelings were of the most delicate and lively kind, has
beautifully recorded them in his progress through a favourite and
lengthened work--his Commentary on the Psalms. He alludes to himself in
the third person; yet who but the self-painter could have caught those
delicious emotions which are so evanescent in the deep occupation of
pleasant studies? "He arose fresh in the morning to his task; the silence
of the night invited him to pursue it; and he can truly say, that food and
rest were not preferred before it. Every part improved infinitely upon his
acquaintance with it, and no one gave him uneasiness but the last, for
then he grieved that his work was done."
This eager delight of pursuing study, this impatience of interruption, and
this exultation in progress, are alike finely described by MILTON in a
letter to his friend Diodati.
"Such is the character of my mind, that no delay, none of the ordinary
cessations for rest or otherwise, I had nearly said care or thinking of
the very subject, can hold me back from being hurried on to the destined
point, and from completing the great circuit, as it were, of the study in
which I am engaged."
Such is the picture of genius viewed in the stillness of MEDITATION; but
there is yet a more excited state, when, as if consciousness were mixing
with its reveries, in the allusion of a scene, of a person, of a passion,
the emotions of the soul affect even the organs of sense. This excitement
is experienced when the poet in the excellence of invention, and the
philosopher in the force of intellect, alike share in the hours of
inspiration and the ENTHUSIASM of genius.
CHAPTER XII.
The enthusiasm of genius.--A state of mind resembling a waking dream
distinct from reverie.--The ideal presence distinguished from the real
presence.--The senses are really affected in the ideal world, proved by a
variety of instances.--Of the rapture or sensation of deep study in art,
in science, and literature.--Of perturbed feelings in delirium.--In
extreme endurance of attention.--And in visionary illusions.--Enthusiasts
in literature and art--of their self-immolations.
We left the man of genius in the stillness of meditation. We have now
to pursue his history through that more excited state which occurs in
the most active operations of genius, and which the term _reverie_
inadequately indicates. Metaphysical distinctions but ill describe it, and
popular language affords no terms for those faculties and feelings which
escape the observation of the multitude not affected by the phenomenon.
The illusion produced by a drama on persons of great sensibility, when all
the senses are awakened by a mixture of reality with imagination, is the
effect experienced by men of genius in their own vivified ideal world.
Real emotions are raised by fiction. In a scene, apparently passing in
their presence, where the whole train of circumstances succeeds in all the
continuity of nature, and where a sort of real existences appear to rise
up before them, they themselves become spectators or actors. Their
sympathies are excited, and the exterior organs of sense are visibly
affected--they even break out into speech, and often accompany their
speech with gestures.
In this equivocal state the enthusiast of genius produces his
masterpieces. This waking dream is distinct from reverie, where, our
thoughts wandering without connexion, the faint impressions are so
evanescent as to occur without even being recollected. A day of _reverie_
is beautifully painted by ROUSSEAU as distinct from a day of _thinking_:
"J'ai des journees delicieuses, errant sans souci, sans projet, sans
affaire, de bois en bois, et de rocher en rocher, _revant toujours et ne
pensant point."_ Far different, however, is one closely-pursued act of
meditation, carrying the enthusiast of genius beyond the precinct of
actual existence. The act of contemplation then creates the thing
contemplated. He is now the busy actor in a world which he himself only
views; alone, he hears, he sees, he touches, he laughs, he weeps; his
brows and lips, and his very limbs move.
Poets and even painters, who, as Lord Bacon describes witches, "are
imaginative," have often involuntarily betrayed, in the act of
composition, those gestures which accompany this enthusiasm. Witness
DOMENICHINO enraging himself that he might portray anger. Nor were these
creative gestures quite unknown to QUINTILIAN, who has nobly compared them
to the lashings of the lion's tail, rousing him to combat. Actors of
genius have accustomed themselves to walk on the stage for an hour before
the curtain was drawn, that they might fill their minds with all the
phantoms of the drama, and so suspend all communion with the external
world. The great actress of our age, during representation, always had the
door of her dressing-room open, that she might listen to, and if possible
watch the whole performance, with the same attention as was experienced by
the spectators. By this means she possessed herself of all the illusion of
the scene; and when she herself entered on the stage, her dreaming
thoughts then brightened into a vision, where the perceptions of the soul
were as firm and clear as if she were really the Constance or the
Katherine whom she only represented.[A]
[Footnote A: The late Mrs. SIDDONS. She herself communicated this striking
circumstance to me.]
Aware of this peculiar faculty, so prevalent in the more vivid exercise of
genius, Lord KAIMES seems to have been the first who, in a work on
criticism, attempted to name _the ideal presence_, to distinguish it from
the _real presence_ of things. It has been called the representative
faculty, the imaginative state, and many other states and faculties. Call
it what we will, no term opens to us the invisible mode of its operations,
no metaphysical definition expresses its variable nature. Conscious of the
existence of such a faculty, our critic perceived that the conception of
it is by no means clear when described in words.
Has not the difference between an actual thing, and its image in a glass,
perplexed some philosophers? and it is well known how far the ideal
philosophy has been carried by so fine a genius as Bishop BERKELEY. "All
are pictures, alike painted on the retina, or optical sensorium!"
exclaimed the enthusiast BARRY, who only saw pictures in nature, and
nature in pictures. This faculty has had a strange influence over the
passionate lovers of statues. We find unquestionable evidence of the
vividness of the representative faculty, or the ideal presence, vying with
that of reality. EVELYN has described one of this cast of mind, in the
librarian of the Vatican, who haunted one of the finest collections at
Rome. To these statues he would frequently talk as if they were living
persons, often kissing and embracing them. A similar circumstance might be
recorded of a man of distinguished talent and literature among ourselves.
Wondrous stories are told of the amatorial passion for marble statues; but
the wonder ceases, and the truth is established, when the irresistible
ideal presence is comprehended; the visions which now bless these lovers
of statues, in the modern land of sculpture, Italy, had acted with equal
force in ancient Greece. "The Last Judgment," the stupendous ideal
presence of MICHAEL ANGELO, seems to have communicated itself to some of
his beholders: "As I stood before this picture," a late traveller tells
us, "my blood chilled as if the reality were before me, and the very sound
of the trumpet seemed to pierce my ears."
Cold and barren tempers without imagination, whose impressions of objects
never rise beyond those of memory and reflection, which know only to
compare, and not to excite, will smile at this equivocal state of the
ideal presence; yet it is a real one to the enthusiast of genius, and it
is his happiest and peculiar condition. Destitute of this faculty, no
metaphysical aid, no art to be taught him, no mastery of talent will
avail him: unblest with it, the votary will find each sacrifice lying cold
on the altar, for no accepting flame from heaven shall kindle it.
This enthusiasm indeed can only be discovered by men of genius themselves;
yet when most under its influence, they can least perceive it, as the eye
which sees all things cannot view itself; or, rather, such an attempt
would be like searching for the principle of life, which were it found
would cease to be life. From an enchanted man we must not expect a
narrative of his enchantment; for if he could speak to us reasonably, and
like one of ourselves, in that case he would be a man in a state of
disenchantment, and then would perhaps yield us no better account than we
may trace by our own observations.
There is, however, something of reality in this state of the ideal
presence; for the most familiar instances will show how the nerves of each
external sense are put in motion by the idea of the object, as if the real
object had been presented to it. The difference is only in the degree. The
senses are more concerned in the ideal world than at first appears. The
idea of a thing will make us shudder; and the bare imagination of it will
often produce a real pain. A curious consequence may be deduced from this
principle; MILTON, lingering amid the freshness of nature in Eden, felt
all the delights of those elements which he was creating; his nerves moved
with the images which excited them. The fierce and wild DANTE, amidst the
abysses of his "Inferno," must often have been startled by its horrors,
and often left his bitter and gloomy spirit in the stings he inflicted on
the great criminal. The moveable nerves, then, of the man of genius are a
reality, he sees, he hears, he feels, by each. How mysterious to us is the
operation of this faculty!
A HOMER and a RICHARDSON,[A] like nature, open a volume large as life
itself--embracing a circuit of human existence! This state of the mind has
even a reality in it for the generality of persons. In a romance or a
drama, tears are often seen in the eyes of the reader or the spectator,
who, before they have time to recollect that the whole is fictitious, have
been surprised for a moment by a strong conception of a present and
existing scene.
[Footnote A: Richardson assembles a family about him, writing down what
they said, seeing their very manner of saying, living with them as often
and as long as he wills--with such a personal unity, that an ingenious
lawyer once told me that he required no stronger evidence of a fact in any
court of law than a circumstantial scene in Richardson.]
Can we doubt of the reality of this faculty, when the visible and outward
frame of the man of genius bears witness to its presence? When FIELDING
said, "I do not doubt but the most pathetic and affecting scenes have been
writ with tears," he probably drew that discovery from an inverse feeling
to his own. Fielding would have been gratified to have confirmed the
observation by facts which never reached him. Metastasio, in writing the
ninth scene of the second act of his _Olympiad_, found himself suddenly
moved--shedding tears. The imagined sorrows had inspired real tears; and
they afterwards proved contagious. Had our poet not perpetuated his
surprise by an interesting sonnet, the circumstance had passed away with
the emotion, as many such have. Pope could never read Priam's speech for
the loss of his son without tears, and frequently has been observed to
weep over tender and melancholy passages. ALFIERI, the most energetic poet
of modern times, having composed, without a pause, the whole of an act,
noted in the margin--"Written under a paroxysm of enthusiasm, and while
shedding a flood of tears." The impressions which the frame experiences in
this state, leave deeper traces behind them than those of reverie. A
circumstance accidentally preserved has informed us of the tremors of
DRYDEN after having written that ode,[A] which, as he confessed, he had
pursued without the power of quitting it; but these tremors were not
unusual with him--for in the preface to his "Tales," he tells us, that "in
translating Homer he found greater pleasure than in Virgil; but it was not
a pleasure without pain; the continual agitation of the spirits must needs
be a weakener to any constitution, especially in age, and many pauses are
required for refreshment betwixt the heats."
[Footnote A: This famous and unparalleled ode was probably afterwards
retouched; but Joseph Warton discovered in it the rapidity of the
thoughts, and the glow and the expressiveness of the images; which are the
certain marks of the _first sketch_ of a master.]
We find Metastasio, like others of the brotherhood, susceptible of this
state, complaining of his sufferings during the poetical aestus. "When I
apply with attention, the nerves of my sensorium are put into a violent
tumult; I grow as red as a drunkard, and am obliged to quit my work." When
BUFFON was absorbed on a subject which presented great objections to his
opinions, he felt his head burn, and saw his countenance flushed; and this
was a warning for him to suspend his attention. GRAY could never compose
voluntarily: his genius resembled the armed apparition in Shakspeare's
master-tragedy. "He would not be commanded." When he wished to compose the
Installation Ode, for a considerable time he felt himself without the
power to begin it: a friend calling on him, GRAY flung open his door
hastily, and in a hurried voice and tone, exclaiming in the first verse of
that ode--
Hence, avaunt! 'tis holy ground!--
his friend started at the disordered appearance of the bard,
whose orgasm had disturbed his very air and countenance.
Listen to one labouring with all the magic of the spell. Madame ROLAND has
thus powerfully described the ideal presence in her first readings of
Telemachus and Tassot:--"My respiration rose, I felt a rapid fire
colouring my face, and my voice changing had betrayed my agitation. I was
Eucharis for Telemachus, and Erminia for Tancred. However, during this
perfect transformation, I did not yet think that I myself was anything,
for any one: the whole had no connexion with myself. I sought for nothing
around me; I was they; I saw only the objects which existed for them; it
was a dream, without being awakened."
The description which so calm and exquisite an investigator of taste and
philosophy as our sweet and polished REYNOLDS has given of himself at one
of these moments, is too rare not to be recorded in his own words.
Alluding to the famous "Transfiguration," our own RAFFAELLE says--"When I
have stood looking at that picture from figure to figure, the eagerness,
the spirit, the close unaffected attention of each figure to the principal
action, my thoughts have carried me away, that I have forgot myself; and
for that time might be looked upon as an enthusiastic madman; for I could
really fancy the whole action was passing before my eyes."
The effect which the study of Plutarch's Illustrious Men produced on the
mighty mind of ALFIERI, during a whole winter, while he lived as it were
among the heroes of antiquity, he has himself described. Alfieri wept and
raved with grief and indignation that he was born under a government which
favoured no Roman heroes and sages. As often as he was struck with the
great deeds of these great men, in his extreme agitation he rose from his
seat as one possessed. The feeling of genius in Alfieri was suppressed for
more than twenty years, by the discouragement of his uncle: but as the
natural temperament cannot be crushed out of the soul of genius, he was a
poet without writing a single verse; and as a great poet, the ideal
presence at times became ungovernable, verging to madness. In traversing
the wilds of Arragon, his emotions would certainly have given birth to
poetry, could he have expressed himself in verse. It was a complete state
of the imaginative existence, or this ideal presence; for he proceeded
along the wilds of Arragon in a reverie, weeping and laughing by turns. He
considered this as a folly, because it ended in nothing but in laughter
and tears. He was not aware that he was then yielding to a demonstration,
could he have judged of himself, that he possessed those dispositions of
mind and that energy of passion which form the poetical character.
Genius creates by a single conception; the statuary conceives the statue
at once, which he afterwards executes by the slow process of art; and the
architect contrives a whole palace in an instant. In a single principle,
opening as it were on a sudden to genius, a great and new system of things
is discovered. It has happened, sometimes, that this single conception,
rushing over the whole concentrated spirit, has agitated the frame
convulsively. It comes like a whispered secret from Nature. When
MALEBRANCHE first took up Descartes's Treatise on Man, the germ of his own
subsequent philosophic system, such was his intense feeling, that a
violent palpitation of the heart, more than once, obliged him to lay down
the volume. When the first idea of the "Essay on the Arts and Sciences"
rushed on the mind of ROUSSEAU, a feverish symptom in his nervous system
approached to a slight delirium. Stopping under an oak, he wrote with a
pencil the Proso-popeia of Fabricius. "I still remember my solitary
transport at the discovery of a philosophical argument against the
doctrine of transubstantiation," exclaimed GIBBON in his Memoirs.
This quick sensibility of genius has suppressed the voice of poets in
reciting their most pathetic passages. THOMSON was so oppressed by a
passage in Virgil or Milton when he attempted to read, that "his voice
sunk in ill-articulated sounds from the bottom of his breast." The
tremulous figures of the ancient Sibyl appear to have been viewed in the
land of the Muses, by the energetic description which Paulus Jovius gives
us of the impetus and afflatus of one of the Italian improvvisatori, some
of whom, I have heard from one present at a similar exhibition, have not
degenerated in poetic inspiration, nor in its corporeal excitement. "His
eyes fixed downwards, kindle as he gives utterance to his effusions, the
moist drops flow down his cheeks, the veins of his forehead swell, and
wonderfully his learned ear, as it were, abstracted and intent, moderates
each impulse of his flowing numbers."[A]
[Footnote A: The passage is curious:--"Canenti defixi exardent oculi,
sudores manant, frontis venae contumescunt, et quod mirum est, eruditae
aures, tanquam alienae et intentae, omnem impetum profluentium numerorum
exactissima ratione moderantur."]
This enthusiasm throws the man of genius amid Nature into absorbing
reveries when the senses of other men are overcome at the appearance of
destruction; he continues to view only Nature herself. The mind of PLINY,
to add one more chapter to his mighty scroll, sought Nature amidst the
volcano in which he perished. VERNET was on board a ship in a raging
tempest where all hope was given up. The astonished captain beheld the
artist of genius, his pencil in his hand, in calm enthusiasm sketching the
terrible world of waters--studying the wave that was rising to devour
him.[A]
[Footnote A: Vernet was the artist whose sea-ports of France still
decorate the Louvre. He was marine painter to Louis XV. and grandfather of
the celebrated Horace Vernet, whose recent death has deprived France of
her best painter of battle-scenes.--ED.]
There is a tender enthusiasm in the elevated studies of antiquity. Then
the ideal presence or the imaginative existence prevails, by its perpetual
associations, or as the late Dr. Brown has, perhaps, more distinctly
termed them, _suggestions._ "In contemplating antiquity, the mind itself
becomes antique," was finely observed by Livy, long ere our philosophy of
the mind existed as a system. This rapture, or sensation of deep study,
has been described by one whose imagination had strayed into the occult
learning of antiquity, and in the hymns of Orpheus it seemed to him that
he had lifted the veil from Nature. His feelings were associated with her
loneliness. I translate his words:--"When I took these dark mystical hymns
into my hands, I appeared as it were to be descending into an abyss of the
mysteries of venerable antiquity; at that moment, the world in silence and
the stars and moon only, watching me." This enthusiasm is confirmed by Mr.
Mathias, who applies this description to his own emotions on his first
opening the manuscript volumes of the poet Gray on the philosophy of
Plato; "and many a learned man," he adds, "will acknowledge as his own the
feelings of this animated scholar."
Amidst the monuments of great and departed nations, our Imagination is
touched by the grandeur of local impressions, and the vivid associations,
or suggestions, of the manners, the arts, and the individuals, of a great
people. The classical author of Anacharsis, when in Italy, would often
stop as if overcome by his recollections. Amid camps, temples, circuses,
hippodromes, and public and private edifices, he, as it were, held an
interior converse with the manes of those who seemed hovering about the
capital of the old world; as if he had been a citizen of ancient Rome
travelling in the modern. So men of genius have roved amid the awful ruins
till the ideal presence has fondly built up the city anew, and have become
Romans in the Rome of two thousand years past. POMPONOIUS LETUS, who
devoted his life to this study, was constantly seen wandering amidst the
vestiges of this "throne of the world." There, in many a reverie, as his
eye rested on the mutilated arch and the broken column, abstracted and
immovable, he dropped tears in the ideal presence of Rome and of the
Romans.[A] Another enthusiast of this class was BOSIUS, who sought beneath
Rome for another Rome, in those catacombs built by the early Christians
for their asylum and their sepulchre. His work of "Roma Sotteranea" is the
production of a subterraneous life, passed in fervent and perilous
labours. Taking with him a hermit's meal for the week, this new Pliny
often descended into the bowels of the earth, by lamp-light, clearing away
the sand and ruins till a tomb broke forth, or an inscription became
legible. Accompanied by some friend whom his enthusiasm had inspired with
his own sympathy, here he dictated his notes, tracing the mouldering
sculpture, and catching the fading picture. Thrown back into the primitive
ages of Christianity, amid the local impressions, the historian of the
Christian catacombs collected the memorials of an age and of a race which
were hidden beneath the earth.[B]
[Footnote A: Shelley caught much of his poetry in wandering among the
ruins of the palace of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill; and the
impression made by historic ruins on the mind of Byron is powerfully
evinced in his "Childe Harold."--ED.]
[Footnote B: A large number of these important memorials have been since
removed to the _Galleria Lapidaria_ of the Vatican, and arranged on the
walls by Marini. They are invaluable as mementoes of the early Church at
Rome. Aringhi has also devoted a work to their elucidation. The Rev. C.
Maitland's "Church in the Catacombs" is an able general summary, clearly
displaying their intrinsic historic value--ED.]
The same enthusiasm surrounds the world of science with that creative
imagination which has startled even men of science by its peculiar
discoveries. WERNER, the mineralogist, celebrated for his lectures,
appears, by some accounts transmitted by his auditors, to have exercised
this faculty. Werner often said that "he always depended on the muse for
inspiration." His unwritten lecture was a reverie--till kindling in his
progress, blending science and imagination in the grandeur of his
conceptions, at times, as if he had gathered about him the very elements
of nature, his spirit seemed to be hovering over the waters and the
strata. With the same enthusiasm of science, CUVIER meditated on some
bones, and some fragments of bones, which could not belong to any known
class of the animal kingdom. The philosopher dwelt on these animal ruins
till he constructed numerous species which had disappeared from the globe.
This sublime naturalist has ascertained and classified the fossil remains
of animals whose existence can no longer be traced in the records of
mankind. His own language bears testimony to the imagination which carried
him on through a career so strange and wonderful. "It is a rational object
of ambition in the mind of man, to whom only a short space of time is
allotted upon earth, to have the glory of restoring the history of
_thousands of ages which preceded the existence of his race, and of
thousands of animals that never were contemporaneous with his species_."
Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of
genius. Even in the practical part of a science, painful to the operator
himself, Mr. Abernethy has declared, and eloquently declared, that this
enthusiasm is absolutely requisite. "We have need of enthusiasm, or some
strong incentive, to induce us to spend our nights in study, and our days
in the disgusting and health-destroying observation of human diseases,
which alone can enable us to understand, alleviate, or remove them. On no
other terms can we be considered as real students of our profession--to
confer that which sick kings would fondly purchase with their diadem--that
which wealth cannot purchase, nor state nor rank bestow--to alleviate the
most insupportable of human afflictions." Such is the enthusiasm of the
physiologist of genius, who elevates the demonstrations of anatomical
inquiries by the cultivation of the intellectual faculties, connecting
"man with the common Master of the universe."
This enthusiasm inconceivably fills the mind of genius in all great and
solemn operations. It is an agitation amidst calmness, and is required hot
only in the fine arts, but wherever a great and continued exertion of the
soul must be employed. The great ancients, who, if they were not always
philosophers, were always men of genius, saw, or imagined they saw, a
divinity within the man. This enthusiasm is alike experienced in the
silence of study and amidst the roar of cannon, in painting a picture or
in scaling a rampart. View DE THOU, the historian, after his morning
prayers, imploring the Divinity to purify his heart from partiality and
hatred, and to open his spirit in developing the truth, amidst the
contending factions of his times; and HAYDN, employed in his "Creation,"
earnestly addressing the Creator ere he struck his instrument. In moments
like these, man becomes a perfect unity--one thought and one act,
abstracted from all other thoughts and all other acts. This intensity of
the mind was felt by GRAY in his loftiest excursions, and is perhaps the
same power which impels the villager, when, to overcome his rivals in a
contest for leaping, he retires hack some steps, collects all exertion
into his mind, and clears the eventful bound. One of our admirals in the
reign of Elizabeth held as a maxim, that a height of passion, amounting to
frenzy, was necessary to qualify a man for the command of a fleet; and
NELSON, decorated by all his honours about him, on the day of battle, at
the sight of those emblems of glory emulated himself. This enthusiasm was
necessary for his genius, and made it effective.
But this enthusiasm, prolonged as it often has been by the operation of
the imaginative existence, becomes a state of perturbed feeling, and can
only be distinguished from a disordered intellect by the power of volition
possessed by a sound mind of withdrawing from the ideal world into the
world of sense. It is but a step which may carry us from the wanderings of
fancy into the aberrations of delirium. The endurance of attention, even
in minds of the highest order, is limited by a law of nature; and when
thinking is goaded on to exhaustion, confusion of ideas ensues, as
straining any one of our limbs by excessive exertion produces tremor and
torpor.
With curious art the brain too finely wrought
Preys on herself and is destroyed by Thought;
Constant attention wears the active mind,
Blots out her powers, and leaves a blank behind--
The greatest genius to this fate may bow.
Even minds less susceptible than high genius may become overpowered by
their imagination. Often, in the deep silence around us, we seek to
relieve ourselves by some voluntary noise or action which may direct our
attention to an exterior object, and bring us back to the world, which we
had, as it were, left behind us. The circumstance is sufficiently
familiar; as well as another; that whenever we are absorbed in profound
contemplation, a startling noise scatters the spirits, and painfully
agitates the whole frame. The nerves are then in a state of the utmost
relaxation. There may be an agony in thought which only deep thinkers
experience. The terrible effect of metaphysical studies on BEATTIE has
been told by himself. "Since the 'Essay on Truth' was printed in quarto, I
have never _dared_ to read it over. I durst not even read the sheets to
see whether there were any errors in the print, and was obliged to get a
friend to do that office for me. These studies came in time to have
dreadful effects upon my nervous system; and I cannot read what I then
wrote without some degree of horror, because it recalls to my mind the
horrors that I have sometimes felt after passing a long evening in those
severe studies."
GOLDONI, after a rash exertion of writing sixteen plays in a year,
confesses he paid the penalty of the folly. He flew to Genoa, leading a
life of delicious vacuity. To pass the day without doing anything, was all
the enjoyment he was now capable of feeling. But long after he said, "I
felt at that time, and have ever since continued to feel, the consequence
of that exhaustion of spirits I sustained in composing my sixteen
comedies."
The enthusiasm of study was experienced by POPE in his self-education, and
once it clouded over his fine intellect. It was the severity of his
application which distorted his body; and he then partook of a calamity
incidental to the family of genius, for he sunk into that state of
exhaustion which SMOLLETT experienced during half a year, called a _coma
vigil,_ an affection of the brain, where the principle of life is so
reduced, that all external objects appear to be passing in a dream.
BOERHAAVE has related of himself, that having imprudently indulged in
intense thought on a particular subject, he did not close his eyes for six
weeks after; and TISSOT, in his work on the health of men of letters,
abounds in similar cases, where a complete stupor has affected the unhappy
student for a period of six months.
Assuredly the finest geniuses have not always the power to withdraw
themselves from that intensely interesting train of ideas, which we have
shown has not been removed from about them by even the violent stimuli of
exterior objects; and the scenical illusion which then occurs, has been
called the _hallucinatio studiosa,_ or false ideas in reverie. Such was
the state in which PETRARCH found himself, in that minute narrative
of a vision in which Laura appeared to him; and TASSO, in the lofty
conversations he held with a spirit that glided towards him on the beams
of the sun. In this state was MALEBRANCHE listening to the voice of God
within him; and Lord HERBEBT, when, to know whether he should publish his
book, he threw himself on his knees, and interrogated the Deity in the
stillness of the sky.[A] And thus PASCAL started at times at a fiery gulf
opening by his side. SPINELLO having painted the fall of the rebellious
angels, had so strongly imagined the illusion, and more particularly the
terrible features of Lucifer, that he was himself struck with such horror
as to have been long afflicted with the presence of the demon to which his
genius had given birth. The influence of the game ideal presence operated
on the religious painter ANGELONI, who could never represent the
sufferings of Jesus without his eyes overflowing with tears. DESCARTES,
when young, and in a country seclusion, his brain exhausted with
meditation, and his imagination heated to excess, heard a voice in the air
which called him to pursue the search of truth; nor did he doubt the
vision, and this delirious dreaming of genius charmed him even in his
after-studies. Our COLLINS and COWPER were often thrown into that
extraordinary state of mind, when the ideal presence converts us into
visionaries; and their illusions were as strong as SEEDENBORG'S, who saw a
terrestrial heaven in the glittering streets of his New Jerusalem; or
JACOB BEHMEN'S, who listened to a celestial voice till he beheld the
apparition of an angel; or CARDAN'S, when he so carefully observed a
number of little armed men at his feet; or BENVENUTO CELLINI'S, whose
vivid imagination and glorious egotism so frequently contemplated "a
resplendent light hovering over his shadow."
[Footnote A: In his curious autobiography he has given the prayer he used,
ending "I am not satisfied whether I shall publish this book _de
veritate_; if it be for thy glory, I beseech thee give me some sign from
heaven; if not I shall suppress it." His lordships adds, "I had no sooner
spoken these words but a loud, though gentle noise came from the heavens
(for it was like nothing on earth) which did so comfort and cheer me, that
I took my petition as granted, and that I had the sign I demanded,
whereupon also I resolved to print my book. This (how strange soever it
may seem) I protest before the eternal God is true, neither am I any way
superstitiously deceived therein, since I did not only clearly hear the
noise, but in the serenest sky that ever I saw, being without all cloud,
did to my thinking see the place from whence it came."--ED.]
Such minds identified themselves with their visions! If we pass them over
by asserting that they were insane, we are only cutting the knot which we
cannot untie. We have no right to deny what some maintain, that a sympathy
of the corporeal with the incorporeal nature of man, his imaginative with
his physical existence, is an excitement which appears to have been
experienced by persons of a peculiar organization, and which
metaphysicians in despair must resign to the speculations of enthusiasts
themselves, though metaphysicians reason about phenomena far removed from
the perceptions of the eye. The historian of the mind cannot omit this
fact, unquestionable, however incomprehensible. According to our own
conceptions, this state must produce a strange mysterious personage: a
concentration of a human being within himself, endowed with inward eyes,
ears which listen to interior sounds, and invisible hands touching
impalpable objects, for whatever they act or however they are acted on, as
far as respects themselves all must have passed within their own minds.
The Platonic Dr. MORE flattered himself that he was an enthusiast without
enthusiasm, which seems but a suspicious state of convalescence. "I must
ingenuously confess," he says, "that I have a natural touch of enthusiasm,
in my complexion, but such as I thank God was ever governable enough, and
have found at length perfectly subduable. In virtue of which victory I
know better what is in enthusiasts than they themselves; and therefore was
able to write with life and judgment, and shall, I hope, contribute not a
little to the peace and quiet of this kingdom thereby." Thus far one of
its votaries: and all that he vaunts to have acquired by this mysterious
faculty of enthusiasm is the having rendered it "at length perfectly
subduable." Yet those who have written on "Mystical devotion," have
declared that, "it is a sublime state of mind to which whole sects have
aspired, and some individuals appear to have attained."[A] The histories
of great visionaries, were they correctly detailed, would probably prove
how their delusions consisted of the ocular _spectra_ of their brain and
the accelerated sensations of their nerves. BAYLE has conjured up an
amusing theory of apparitions, to show that HOBBES, who was subject to
occasional terrors, might fear that a certain combination of atoms
agitating his brain might so disorder his mind as to expose him to
spectral visions; and so being very timid, and distrusting his own
imagination, he was averse at times to be left alone. Apparitions often
happen in dreams, but they may happen to a man when awake, for reading and
hearing of them would revive their images, and these images might play
even an incredulous philosopher some unlucky trick.
[Footnote A: CHARLES BUTLER has drawn up a sensible essay on "Mystical
Devotion." He was a Roman Catholic. NORRIS, and Dr. HENRY MORE, and Bishop
BERKELEY, may be consulted by the curious.]
But men of genius whose enthusiasm has not been past recovery, have
experienced this extraordinary state of the mind, in those exhaustions of
study to which they unquestionably are subject. Tissot, on "The Health of
Men of Letters," has produced a terrifying number of cases. They
see and hear what none but themselves do. Genius thrown into this
peculiar state has produced some noble effusions. KOTZEBUE was once
absorbed in hypochondriacal melancholy, and appears to have meditated on
self-destruction; but it happened that he preserved his habit of dramatic
composition, and produced one of his most energetic dramas--that of
"Misanthropy and Repentance." He tells us that he had never experienced
such a rapid flow of thoughts and images, and he believed, what a
physiological history would perhaps show, that there are some maladies,
those of the brain and the nerves, which actually stretch the powers of
the mind beyond their usual reach. It is the more vivid world of ideal
existence.
But what is more evident, men of the finest genius have experienced these
hallucinations in society acting on their moral habits. They have
insulated the mind. With them ideas have become realities, and suspicions
certainties; while events have been noted down as seen and heard, which in
truth had never occurred. ROUSSEAU'S phantoms scarcely ever quitted him
for a day. BARRY imagined that he was invisibly persecuted by the Royal
Academy, who had even spirited up a gang of housebreakers. The vivid
memoirs of ALFIERI will authenticate what DONNE, who himself had suffered
from them, calls "these eclipses, sudden offuscations and darkening of the
senses." Too often the man of genius, with a vast and solitary power,
darkens the scene of life; he builds a pyramid between himself and the
sun. Mocking at the expedients by which society has contrived to protect
its feebleness, he would break down the institutions from which he has
shrunk away in the loneliness of his feelings. Such is the insulating
intellect in which some of the most elevated spirits have been reduced. To
imbue ourselves with the genius of their works, even to think of them, is
an awful thing! In nature their existence is a solecism, as their genius
is a paradox; for their crimes seem to be without guilt, their curses have
kindness in them, and if they afflict mankind it is in sorrow.
Yet what less than enthusiasm is the purchase-price of high passion and
invention? Perhaps never has there been a man of genius of this rare cast,
who has not betrayed the ebullitions of imagination in some outward
action, at that period when the illusions of life are more real to genius
than its realities. There is a _fata morgana_, that throws into the air a
pictured land, and the deceived eye trusts till the visionary shadows
glide away. "I have dreamt of a golden land," exclaimed FUSELI, "and
solicit in vain for the barge which is to carry me to its shore." A slight
derangement of our accustomed habits, a little perturbation of the
faculties, and a romantic tinge on the feelings, give no indifferent
promise of genius; of that generous temper which knowing nothing of the
baseness of mankind, with indefinite views carries on some glorious design
to charm the world or to make it happier. Often we hear, from the
confessions of men of genius, of their having in youth indulged the most
elevating and the most chimerical projects; and if age ridicule thy
imaginative existence, be assured that it is the decline of its genius.
That virtuous and tender enthusiast, FENELON, in his early youth, troubled
his friends with a classical and religious reverie. He was on the point of
quitting them to restore the independence of Greece, with the piety of a
missionary, and with the taste of a classical antiquary. The Peloponnesus
opened to him the Church of Corinth where St. Paul preached, the Piraeus
where Socrates conversed; while the latent poet was to pluck laurels from
Delphi, and rove amidst the amenities of Tempe. Such was the influence of
the ideal presence; and barren will be his imagination, and luckless his
fortune, who, claiming the honours of genius, has never been touched by
such a temporary delirium.
To this enthusiasm, and to this alone, can we attribute the
self-immolation of men of genius. Mighty and laborious works have been
pursued, as a forlorn hope, at the certain destruction of the fortune of
the individual. Vast labours attest the enthusiasm which accompanied their
progress. Such men have sealed their works with their blood: they have
silently borne the pangs of disease; they have barred themselves from the
pursuits of fortune; they have torn themselves away from all they loved in
life, patiently suffering these self-denials, to escape from interruptions
and impediments to their studies. Martyrs of literature and art, they
behold in their solitude the halo of immortality over their studious
heads--that fame which is "a life beyond life." VAN HELMONT, in his
library and his laboratory, preferred their busy solitude to the honours
and the invitations of Rodolphus II., there writing down what he daily
experienced during thirty years; nor would the enthusiast yield up to the
emperor one of those golden and visionary days! MILTON would not desist
from proceeding with one of his works, although warned by the physician of
the certain loss of his sight. He declared he preferred his duty to his
eyes, and doubtless his fame to his comfort. ANTHONY WOOD, to preserve the
lives of others, voluntarily resigned his own to cloistered studies; nor
did the literary passion desert him in his last moments, when with his
dying hands the hermit of literature still grasped his beloved papers, and
his last mortal thoughts dwelt on his "Athenae Oxonienses." MORERI, the
founder of our great biographical collections, conceived the design with
such enthusiasm, and found such seduction in the labour, that he willingly
withdrew from the popular celebrity he had acquired as a preacher, and the
preferment which a minister of state, in whose house he resided, would
have opened to his views.[A] After the first edition of his "Historical
Dictionary," he had nothing so much at heart as its improvement. His
unyielding application was converting labour into death; but collecting
his last renovated vigour, with his dying hands he gave the volume to the
world, though he did not live to witness even its publication. All objects
in life appeared mean to him, compared with that exalted delight of
addressing, to the literary men of his age, the history of their brothers.
Such are the men, as BACON says of himself, who are "the servants of
posterity,"--
Who scorn delights, and live laborious days!
[Footnote A: Louis Moreri was born in Provence in 1643, and died in 1680,
at the early age of 37, while engaged on a second edition of his great
work. The minister alluded to in the text was M. de Pomponne, Secretary of
State to Louis XIV. until the year 1679.--ED.]
The same enthusiasm inspires the pupils of art consumed by their own
ardour. The young and classical sculptor who raised the statue of Charles
II., placed in the centre of the Royal Exchange, was, in the midst of his
work, advised by his medical friends to desist; for the energy of his
labour, with the strong excitement of his feelings, already had made fatal
inroads in his constitution: but he was willing, he said, to die at the
foot of his statue. The statue was raised, and the young sculptor, with
the shining eye and hectic flush of consumption, beheld it there--returned
home--and died. DROUAIS, a pupil of David, the French painter, was a youth
of fortune, but the solitary pleasure of his youth was his devotion to
Raphael; he was at his studies from four in the morning till night.
"Painting or nothing!" was the cry of this enthusiast of elegance; "First
fame, then amusement," was another. His sensibility was great as his
enthusiasm; and he cut in pieces the picture for which David declared he
would inevitably obtain the prize. "I have had my reward in your
approbation; but next year I shall feel more certain of deserving it," was
the reply of this young enthusiast. Afterwards he astonished Paris with
his "Marius;" but while engaged on a subject which he could never quit,
the principle of life itself was drying up in his veins. HENRY HEADLEY and
KIRKE WHITE were the early victims of the enthusiasm of study, and are
mourned by the few who are organized like themselves.
'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow,
And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low;
So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
View'd his own feather on the fatal dart,
And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart;
Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel
He nursed the pinion which impell'd the steel,
While the same plumage that had warm'd his nest,
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast,
One of our former great students, when reduced in health by excessive
study, was entreated to abandon it, and in the scholastic language of the
day, not to _perdere substantiam propter accidentia_. With a smile the
martyr of study repeated a verse from Juvenal:
Nec propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.
No! not for life lose that for which I live!
Thus the shadow of death falls among those who are existing with more than
life about them. Yet "there is no celebrity for the artist," said GESNER,
"if the love of his own art do not become a vehement passion; if the hours
he employs to cultivate it be not for him the most delicious ones of his
life; if study become not his true existence and his first happiness; if
the society of his brothers in art be not that which most pleases him; if
even in the night-time the ideas of his art do not occupy his vigils or
his dreams; if in the morning he fly not to his work, impatient to
recommence what he left unfinished. These are the marks of him who labours
for true glory and posterity; but if he seek only to please the taste of
his age, his works will not kindle the desires nor touch the hearts of
those who love the arts and the artists."
Unaccompanied by enthusiasm, genius will produce nothing but uninteresting
works of art; not a work of art resembling the dove of Archytas, which
beautiful piece of mechanism, while other artists beheld flying, no one
could frame such another dove to meet it in the air. Enthusiasm is that
secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius,
throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very
ideal presence whence these works have really originated. A great work
always leaves us in a state of musing.
CHAPTER XIII.
Of the jealousy of Genius.--Jealousy often proportioned to the degree of
genius.--A perpetual fever among Authors and Artists.--Instances of its
incredible excess among brothers and benefactors.--Of a peculiar species,
where the fever consumes the sufferer, without its malignancy.
Jealousy, long supposed to be the offspring of little minds, is not,
however, confined to them. In the literary republic, the passion fiercely
rages among the senators as well as among the people. In that curious
self-description which LINNAEUS comprised in a single page, written with
the precision of a naturalist, that great man discovered that his
constitution was liable to be afflicted with jealousy. Literary jealousy
seems often proportioned to the degree of genius, and the shadowy and
equivocal claims of literary honour is the real cause of this terrible
fear; for in cases where the object is more palpable and definite than
intellectual excellence, jealousy does not appear so strongly to affect
the claimant for admiration. The most beautiful woman, in the season of
beauty, is more haughty than jealous; she rarely encounters a rival;
and while her claims exist, who can contend with a fine feature or a
dissolving glance? But a man of genius has no other existence than in the
opinion of the world; a divided empire would obscure him, and a contested
one might prove his annihilation.
The lives of authors and artists exhibit a most painful disease in that
jealousy which is the perpetual fever of their existence. Why does PLATO
never mention XENOPHON, and why does XENOPHON inveigh against PLATO,
studiously collecting every little rumour which may detract from his fame?
They wrote on the same subject! The studied affectation of ARISTOTLE to
differ from the doctrines of his master PLATO while he was following them,
led him into ambiguities and contradictions which have been remarked. The
two fathers of our poetry, CHAUCER and GOWER, suffered their friendship to
be interrupted towards the close of their lives. Chaucer bitterly reflects
on his friend for the indelicacy of some of his tales: "Of all such
_cursed stories_ I say fy!" and GOWER, evidently in return, erased those
verses in praise of his friend which he had inserted in the first copy of
his "Confessio Amantis." Why did CORNEILLE, tottering to the grave, when
RACINE consulted him on his first tragedy, advise the author never to
write another? Why does VOLTAIRE continually detract from the sublimity of
Corneille, the sweetness of Racine, and the fire of Crebillon? Why did
DRYDEN never speak of OTWAY with kindness but when in his grave, then
acknowledging that Otway excelled him in the pathetic? Why did LEIBNITZ
speak slightingly of LOCKE's Essay, and meditate on nothing less than the
complete overthrow of NEWTON'S system? Why, when Boccaccio sent to
PETRARCH a copy of DANTE, declaring that the work was like a first light
which had illuminated his mind, did Petrarch boldly observe that he had
not been anxious to inquire after it, for intending himself to compose in
the vernacular idiom, he had no wish to be considered as a plagiary? and
he only allows Dante's superiority from having written in the vulgar
idiom, which he did not consider an enviable merit. Thus frigidly Petrarch
could behold the solitary AEtna before him, in the "Inferno," while he
shrunk into himself with the painful consciousness of the existence of
another poet, obscuring his own majesty. It is curious to observe Lord
SHAFTESBURY treating with the most acrimonious contempt the great writers
of his own times--Cowley, Dryden, Addison, and Prior. We cannot imagine
that his lordship was so entirely destitute of every feeling of wit and
genius as would appear by this damnatory criticism on all the wit and
genius of his age. It is not, indeed, difficult to comprehend a different
motive for this extravagant censure in the jealousy which even a great
writer often experiences when he comes in contact with his living rivals,
and hardily, if not impudently, practises those arts of critical
detraction to raise a moment's delusion, which can gratify no one but
himself.
The moral sense has often been found too weak to temper the malignancy of
literary jealousy, and has impelled some men of genius to an incredible
excess. A memorable example offers in the history of the two brothers, Dr.
WILLIAM and JOHN HUNTER, both great characters fitted to be rivals; but
Nature, it was imagined, in the tenderness of blood, had placed a bar to
rivalry. John, without any determined pursuit in his youth, was received
by his brother at the height of his celebrity; the doctor initiated him
into his school; they performed their experiments together; and William
Hunter was the first to announce to the world the great genius of his
brother. After this close connexion in all their studies and discoveries,
Dr. William Hunter published his magnificent work--the proud favourite of
his heart, the assertor of his fame. Was it credible that the genius of
the celebrated anatomist, which had been nursed under the wing of his
brother, should turn on that wing to clip it? John Hunter put in his claim
to the chief discovery; it was answered by his brother. The Royal Society,
to whom they appealed, concealed the documents of this unnatural feud. The
blow was felt, and the jealousy of literary honour for ever separated the
brothers--the brothers of genius.
Such, too, was the jealousy which separated AGOSTINO and ANNIBAL CARRACCI,
whom their cousin LUDOVICO for so many years had attempted to unite, and
who, during the time their academy existed, worked together, combining
their separate powers.[A] The learning and the philosophy of Agostino
assisted the invention of the master genius, Annibal; but Annibal was
jealous of the more literary and poetical character of Agostino, and, by
his sarcastic humour, frequently mortified his learned brother. Alike
great artists, when once employed on the same work, Agostino was thought
to have excelled his brother. Annibal, sullen and scornful, immediately
broke with him; and their patron, Cardinal Farnese, was compelled to
separate the brothers. Their fate is striking: Agostino, divided from his
brother Annibal, sunk into dejection and melancholy, and perished by a
premature death, while Annibal closed his days not long after in a state
of distraction. The brothers of Nature and Art could not live together,
and could not live separate.
[Footnote A: See an article on the Carracci in "Curiosities of
Literature." vol. ii.]
The history of artists abounds with instances of jealousy, perhaps more
than that of any other class of men of genius. HUDSON, the master of
REYNOLDS, could not endure the sight of his rising pupil, and would not
suffer him to conclude the term of his apprenticeship; while even the mild
and elegant Reynolds himself became so jealous of WILSON, that he took
every opportunity of depreciating his singular excellence. Stung by the
madness of jealousy, BARRY one day addressing Sir Joshua on his lectures,
burst out, "Such poor flimsy stuff as your discourses!" clenching his fist
in the agony of the convulsion. After the death of the great artist, BARRY
bestowed on him the most ardent eulogium, and deeply grieved over the
past. But the race of genius born too "near the sun" have found their
increased sensibility flame into crimes of a deeper dye--crimes attesting
the treachery and the violence of the professors of an art which, it
appears, in softening the souls of others, does not necessarily mollify
those of the artists themselves. The dreadful story of ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO
seems not doubtful. Having been taught the discovery of painting in oil by
Domenico Venetiano, yet, still envious of the merit of the generous friend
who had confided that great secret to him, Andrea with his own hand
secretly assassinated him, that he might remain without a rival. The
horror of his crime only appeared in his confession on his death-bed.
DOMENICHINO seems to have been poisoned for the preference he obtained
over the Neapolitan artists, which raised them to a man against him, and
reduced him to the necessity of preparing his food With his own hand. On
his last return to Naples, Passeri says, "_Non fu mai piu veduto da buon
occhio da quelli Napoletani: e li Pittori lo detestavano perche egli
era ritornato--mori con qualche sospetto di veleno, e questo non e
inverisimile perche l'interesso e un perfido tiranno_." So that the
Neapolitans honoured Genius at Naples by poison, which they might have
forgotten had it flourished at Rome. The famous cartoon of the battle
of Pisa, a work of Michael Angelo, which he produced in a glorious
competition with the Homer of painting, Leonardo da Vinci, and in which he
had struck out the idea of a new style, is only known by a print which has
preserved the wonderful composition; for the original, it is said, was cut
into pieces by the mad jealousy of BACCIO BANDINELLI, whose whole life was
made miserable by his consciousness of a superior rival.
In the jealousy of genius, however, there is a peculiar case where the
fever silently consumes the sufferer, without possessing the malignant
character of the disease. Even the gentlest temper declines under its slow
wastings, and this infection may happen among dear friends, whenever a man
of genius loses that self-opinion which animates his solitary labours and
constitutes his happiness. Perhaps when at the height of his class, he
suddenly views himself eclipsed by another genius--and that genius his
friend! This is the jealousy, not of hatred, but of despair. Churchill
observed the feeling, but probably included in it a greater degree of
malignancy than I would now describe.
Envy which turns pale,
And sickens even if a friend prevail.
SWIFT, in that curious poem on his own death, said of POPE that
--He can in one couplet fix
More sense than I can do in six.
The Dean, perhaps, is not quite serious, but probably is in the next
lines--
It gives me such a jealous fit,
I cry "Pox take him and his wit."
If the reader pursue this hint throughout the poem, these compliments to
his friends, always at his own expense, exhibit a singular mixture of the
sensibility and the frankness of true genius, which Swift himself has
honestly confessed.
What poet would not grieve to see
His brother write as well as he?[A]
ADDISON experienced this painful and mixed emotion in his intercourse
with POPE, to whose rising celebrity he soon became too jealously
alive.[B] It was more tenderly, but not less keenly, felt by the Spanish
artist CASTILLO, a man distinguished by every amiable disposition. He was
the great painter of Seville; but when some of his nephew MURILLO'S
paintings were shown to him, he stood in meek astonishmont before them,
and turning away, he exclaimed with a sigh--"_Ya murio Castillo_!"
Castillo is no more! Returning home, the stricken genius relinquished his
pencil, and pined away, in hopelessness. The same occurrence happened to
PIETRO PERUGINO, the master of Raphael, whose general character as a
painter was so entirely eclipsed by his far-renowned scholar; yet, while
his real excellences in the ease of his attitudes and the mild grace of
his female countenances have been passed over, it is probable that
Raphael himself might have caught from them his first feelings of ideal
beauty.
[Footnote A: The plain motive of all these dislikes is still more amusing,
as given in this couplet of the same poem:--
"If with such genius heaven has blest 'em,
Have I not reason to detest 'em."--ED.]
[Footnote B: See article on Pope and Addison in "Quarrels of Authors." ]
CHAPTER XIV.
Want of mutual esteem among men of genius often originates in a deficiency
of analogous ideas.--It is not always envy or jealousy which induces men
of genius to undervalue each other.
Among men of genius, that want of mutual esteem, usually attributed to
envy or jealousy, often originates in a deficiency of analogous ideas, or
of sympathy, in the parties. On this principle, several curious phenomena
in the history of genius may be explained.
Every man of genius has a manner of his own; a mode of thinking and a
habit of style, and usually decides on a work as it approximates or varies
from his own. When one great author depreciates another, his depreciation
has often no worse source than his own taste. The witty Cowley despised
the natural Chaucer; the austere classical Boileau the rough sublimity of
Creibillon; the refining Marivaux the familiar Moliere. Fielding ridiculed
Richardson, whose manner so strongly contrasted with his own; and
Richardson contemned Fielding, and declared he would not last. Cumberland
escaped a fit of unforgiveness, not living to read his own character by
Bishop Watson, whose logical head tried the lighter elegancies of that
polished man by his own nervous genius, destitute of the beautiful in
taste. There was no envy in the breast of Johnson when he advised Mrs.
Thrale not to purchase "Gray's Letters," as trifling and dull, no more
than there was in Gray himself when he sunk the poetical character of
Shenstone, and debased his simplicity and purity of feeling by an image of
ludicrous contempt. I have heard that WILKES, a mere wit and elegant
scholar, used to treat GIBBON as a mere bookmaker; and applied to that
philosophical historian the verse by which Voltaire described, with so
much caustic facetiousness, the genius of the Abbe Trablet--
Il a compile, compile, compile.
The deficient sympathy in these men of genius for modes of feeling
opposite to their own was the real cause of their opinions; and thus it
happens that even superior genius is so often liable to be unjust and
false in its decisions.
The same principle operates still more strikingly in the remarkable
contempt of men of genius for those pursuits which require talents
distinct from their own, and a cast of mind thrown by nature into another
mould. Hence we must not be surprised at the poetical antipathies of
Selden and Locke, as well as Longuerue and Buffon. Newton called poetry
"ingenious nonsense." On the other side, poets undervalue the pursuits of
the antiquary, the naturalist, and the metaphysician, forming their
estimate by their own favourite scale of imagination. As we can only
understand in the degree we comprehend, and feel in the degree in which we
sympathize, we may be sure that in both these cases the parties will be
found altogether deficient in those qualities of genius which constitute
the excellence of the other. To this cause, rather than to the one the
friends of MICKLE ascribed to ADAM SMITH, namely, a personal dislike to
the poet, may we place the severe mortification which the unfortunate
translator of Camoens suffered from the person to whom he dedicated "The
Lusiad." The Duke of Buccleugh was the pupil of the great political
economist, and so little valued an epic poem, that his Grace had not even
the curiosity to open the leaves of the presentation copy.
A professor of polite literature condemned the study of botany, as adapted
to mediocrity of talent, and only demanding patience; but LINNAEUS showed
how a man of genius becomes a creator even in a science which seems to
depend only on order and method. It will not be a question with some
whether a man must be endowed with the energy and aptitude of genius, to
excel in antiquarianism, in natural history, and similar pursuits. The
prejudices raised against the claims of such to the honours of genius have
probably arisen from the secluded nature of their pursuits, and the little
knowledge which the men of wit and imagination possess of these persons,
who live in a society of their own. On this subject a very curious
circumstance has been revealed respecting PEIRESC, whose enthusiasm for
science was long felt throughout Europe. His name was known in every
country, and his death was lamented in forty languages; yet was this great
literary character unknown to several men of genius in his own country;
Rochefoucauld declared he had never heard of his name, and Malherbe
wondered why his death created so universal a sensation.
Madame DE STAEEL was an experienced observer of the habits of the literary
character, and she has remarked how one student usually revolts from
the other when _their occupations are different_, because they are a
reciprocal annoyance. The scholar has nothing to say to the poet, the
poet to the naturalist; and even among men of science, those who are
differently occupied avoid each other, taking little interest in what is
out of their own circle. Thus we see the classes of literature, like the
planets, revolving as distinct worlds; and it would not be less absurd for
the inhabitants of Venus to treat with contempt the powers and faculties
of those of Jupiter, than it is for the men of wit and imagination those
of the men of knowledge and curiosity. The wits are incapable of exerting
the peculiar qualities which give a real value to these pursuits, and
therefore they must remain ignorant of their nature and their result.
It is not then always envy or jealousy which induces men of genius to
undervalue each other; the want of sympathy will sufficiently account for
the want of judgment. Suppose NEWTON, QUINAULT, and MACHIAVEL accidentally
meeting together, and unknown to each other, would they not soon have
desisted from the vain attempt of communicating their ideas? The
philosopher would have condemned the poet of the Graces as an intolerable
trifler, and the author of "The Prince" as a dark political spy. Machiavel
would have conceived Newton to be a dreamer among the stars, and a mere
almanack-maker among men; and the other a rhymer, nauseously _doucereux_.
Quinault might have imagined that he was seated between two madmen. Having
annoyed each other for some time, they would have relieved their ennui by
reciprocal contempt, and each have parted with a determination to avoid
henceforward two such disagreeable companions.
CHAPTER XV.
Self-praise of genius.--The love of praise instinctive in the nature of
genius.--A high opinion of themselves necessary for their great designs.
--The Ancients openly claimed their own praise.--And several Moderns.--An
author knows more of his merits than his readers.--And less of his
defects.--Authors versatile in their admiration and their malignity.
Vanity, egotism, a strong sense of their own sufficiency, form another
accusation against men of genius; but the complexion of self-praise must
alter with the occasion; for the simplicity of truth may appear vanity,
and the consciousness of superiority seem envy--to Mediocrity. It is we
who do nothing, and cannot even imagine anything to be done, who are so
much displeased with self-lauding, self-love, self-independence,
self-admiration, which with the man of genius may often be nothing but an
ostensible modification of the passion of glory.
He who exults in himself is at least in earnest; but he who refuses to
receive that praise in public for which he has devoted so much labour in
his privacy, is not; for he is compelled to suppress the very instinct of
his nature. We censure no man for loving fame, but only for showing us how
much he is possessed by the passion: thus we allow him to create the
appetite, but we deny him its aliment. Our effeminate minds are the
willing dupes of what is called the modesty of genius, or, as it has been
termed, "the polished reserve of modern times;" and this from the selfish
principle that it serves at least to keep out of the company its painful
pre-eminence. But this "polished reserve," like something as fashionable,
the ladies' rouge, at first appearing with rather too much colour, will in
the heat of an evening die away till the true complexion come out. What
subterfuges are resorted to by these pretended modest men of genius, to
extort that praise from their private circle which is thus openly denied
them! They have been taken by surprise enlarging their own panegyric,
which might rival Pliny's on Trajan, for care and copiousness; or
impudently veiling themselves with the transparency of a third person; or
never prefixing their name to the volume, which they would not easily
forgive a friend to pass unnoticed.
Self-love is a principle of action; but among no class of human beings has
nature so profusely distributed this principle of life and action as
through the whole sensitive family of genius. It reaches even to a
feminine susceptibility. The love of praise is instinctive in their
nature. Praise with them is the evidence of the past and the pledge of the
future. The generous qualities and the virtues of a man of genius are
really produced by the applause conferred on him. "To him whom the world
admires, the happiness of the world must be dear," said Madame DE STAeEL.
ROMNEY, the painter, held as a maxim that every diffident artist required
"almost a daily portion of cheering applause." How often do such find
their powers paralysed by the depression of confidence or the appearance
of neglect! When the North American Indians, amid their circle, chant
their gods and their heroes, the honest savages laud the living worthies,
as well as their departed; and when, as we are told, an auditor hears the
shout of his own name, he answers by a cry of pleasure and of pride. The
savage and the man of genius are here true to nature, but pleasure and
pride in his own name must raise no emotion in the breast of genius amidst
a polished circle. To bring himself down to their usual mediocrity, he
must start at an expression of regard, and turn away even from one of his
own votaries. Madame De Staeel, an exquisite judge of the feelings of the
literary character, was aware of this change, which has rather occurred in
our manners than in men of genius themselves. "Envy," says that eloquent
writer, "among the Greeks, existed sometimes between rivals; it has now
passed to the spectators; and by a strange singularity the mass of men are
jealous of the efforts which are tried to add to their pleasures or to
merit their approbation."
But this, it seems, is not always the case with men of genius, since the
accusation we are noticing has been so often reiterated. Take from some
that supreme confidence in themselves, that pride of exultation, and you
crush the germ of their excellence. Many vast designs must have perished
in the conception, had not their authors breathed this vital air of
self-delight, this creative spirit, so operative in great undertakings. We
have recently seen this principle in the literary character unfold itself
in the life of the late Bishop of Landaff. Whatever he did, he felt it was
done as a master: whatever he wrote, it was, as he once declared, the best
work on the subject yet written. With this feeling he emulated Cicero in
retirement or in action. "When I am dead, you will not soon meet with
another JOHN HUNTER," said the great anatomist to one of his garrulous
friends. An apology is formed by his biographer for relating the fact, but
the weakness is only in the apology. When HOGARTH was engaged in his work
of the _Marriage a-la-Mode_, he said to Reynolds, "I shall very soon
gratify the world with such a sight as they have never seen equalled."
--"One of his foibles," adds Northcote, "it is well known, was the
excessive high opinion he had of his own abilities." So pronounced
Northcote, who had not an atom of his genius. Was it a _foible_ in Hogarth
to cast the glove, when he always more than redeemed the pledge?
CORNEILLE has given a very noble full-length of the sublime egotism which
accompanied him through life;[A] but I doubt, if we had any such author in
the present day, whether he would dare to be so just to himself, and so
hardy to the public. The self-praise of BUFFON at least equalled his
genius; and the inscription beneath his statue in the library of the
Jardin des Plantes, which I have been told was raised to him in his
lifetime, exceeds all panegyric; it places him alone in nature, as the
first and the last interpreter of her works. He said of the great geniuses
of modern ages, that "there were not more than five; Newton, Bacon,
Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and Myself." With this spirit he conceived and
terminated his great works, and sat in patient meditation at his desk for
half a century, till all Europe, even in a state of war, bowed to the
modern Pliny.
[Footnote A: See it versified in "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p.
431.]
Nor is the vanity of Buffon, and Voltaire, and Rousseau purely national;
for men of genius in all ages have expressed a consciousness of the
internal force of genius. No one felt this self-exultation more potent
than our HOBBES; who has indeed, in his controversy with Wallis, asserted
that there may be nothing more just than self-commendation.[A] There is a
curious passage in the "Purgatorio" of DANTE, where, describing the
transitory nature of literary fame, and the variableness of human opinion,
the poet alludes with confidence to his own future greatness. Of two
authors of the name of Guido, the one having eclipsed the other, the poet
writes:--
Cosi ha tolto l'uno all'altro Guido
La gloria della lingua; e _forse e nato
Chi l'uno e l'altro caccera di nido_.
Thus has one Guido from the other snatch'd
The letter'd pride; _and he perhaps is born
Who shall drive either from their nest_.[B]
[Footnote A: See "Quarrels of Authors," p. 471.]
[Footnote B: Cary.]
DE THOU, one of the most noble-minded of historians, in the Memoirs of his
own life, composed in the third person, has surprised and somewhat puzzled
the critics, by that frequent distribution of self-commendation which they
knew not how to reconcile with the modesty and gravity with which the
President was so amply endowed. After his great and solemn labour, amidst
the injustice of his persecutors, this eminent man had sufficient
experience of his real worth to assert it. KEPLER, amidst his sublime
discoveries, looks down like a superior being on other men. He breaks
forth in glory and daring egotism: "I dare insult mankind by confessing
that I am he who has turned science to advantage. If I am pardoned, I
shall rejoice; if blamed, I shall endure. The die is cast; I have written
this book, and whether it be read by posterity or by my contemporaries is
of no consequence; it may well wait for a reader during one century, when
God himself during six thousand years has not sent an observer like
myself." He truly predicts that "his discoveries would be verified in
succeeding ages," and prefers his own glory to the possession of the
electorate of Saxony. It was this solitary majesty, this futurity of their
genius, which hovered over the sleepless pillow of Bacon, of Newton, and
of Montesquieu; of Ben Jonson, of Milton, and Corneille; and of Michael
Angelo. Such men anticipate their contemporaries; they know they are
creators, long before they are hailed as such by the tardy consent of the
public. These men stand on Pisgah heights, and for them the sun shines on
a land which none can view but themselves.
There is an admirable essay in Plutarch, "On the manner by which we may
praise ourselves without exciting envy in others." The sage seems to
consider self-praise as a kind of illustrious impudence, and has one very
striking image: he compares these eulogists to famished persons, who
finding no other food, in their rage have eaten their own flesh, and thus
shockingly nourished themselves by their own substance. He allows persons
in high office to praise themselves, if by this they can repel calumny and
accusation, as did Pericles before the Athenians: but the Romans found
fault with Cicero, who so frequently reminded them of his exertions in the
conspiracy of Catiline; while, when Scipio told them that "they should not
presume to judge of a citizen to whom they owed the power of judging all
men," the people covered themselves with flowers, and followed him to the
capitol to join in a thanksgiving to Jove. "Cicero," adds Plutarch,
"praised himself without necessity. Scipio was in personal danger, and
this took away what is odious in self-praise." An author seems sometimes
to occupy the situation of a person in high office; and there may be
occasions when with a noble simplicity, if he appeal to his works, of
which all men may judge, he may be permitted to assert or to maintain his
claims. It has at least been the practice of men of genius, for in this
very essay we find Timotheus, Euripides, and Pindar censured, though they
deserved all the praise they gave themselves.
EPICURUS, writing to a minister of state, declares, "If you desire glory,
nothing can bestow it more than the letters I write to you:" and SENECA,
in quoting these words, adds, "What Epicurus promised to his friend, that,
my Lucilius, I promise you." _Orna me!_ was the constant cry of CICERO;
and he desires the historian Lucceius to write separately the conspiracy
of Catiline, and to publish quickly, that while he yet lived he might
taste the sweetness of his glory. HORACE and OVID wore equally sensible to
their immortality; but what modern poet would be tolerated with such an
avowal? Yet DRYDEN honestly declares that it was better for him to own
this failing of vanity, than the world to do it for him; and adds, "For
what other reason have I spent my life in so unprofitable a study? Why am
I grown old in seeking so barren a reward as fame? The same parts and
application which have made me a poet might have raised me to any honours
of the gown." Was not CERVANTES very sensible to his own merits when a
rival started up? and did he not assert them too, and distinguish his own
work by a handsome compliment? LOPE DE VEGA celebrated his own poetic
powers under the pseudonyme of a pretended editor, Thomas Barguillos. I
regret that his noble biographer, than whom no one can more truly
sympathise with the emotions of genius, has censured the bard for
his querulous or his intrepid tone, and for the quaint conceit of his
title-page, where his detractor is introduced as a beetle in a _vega_ or
garden, attacking its flowers, but expiring in the very sweetness he would
injure. The inscription under BOILEAU'S portrait, which gives a preference
to the French satirist over Juvenal and Horace, is known to have been
written by himself. Nor was BUTLER less proud of his own merits;
for he has done ample justice to his "Hudibras," and traced out, with
great self-delight, its variety of excellences. RICHARDSON, the novelist,
exhibits one of the most striking instances of what is called literary
vanity, the delight of an author in his works; he has pointed out all the
beauties of his three great works, in various manners.[A] He always taxed
a visitor by one of his long letters. It was this intense self-delight
which produced his voluminous labours.
[Footnote A: I have observed them in "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii.
p. 64.]
There are certain authors whose very existence seems to require a high
conception of their own talents; and who must, as some animals appear to
do, furnish the means of life out of their own substance. These men of
genius open their career with peculiar tastes, or with a predilection for
some great work of no immediate interest; in a word, with many unpopular
dispositions. Yet we see them magnanimous, though defeated, proceeding
with the public feeling against them. At length we view them ranking with
their rivals. Without having yielded up their peculiar tastes or their
incorrigible viciousness, they have, however, heightened their individual
excellences. No human opinion can change their self-opinion. Alive to the
consciousness of their powers, their pursuits are placed above impediment,
and their great views can suffer no contraction; _possunt quia posse
videntur_. Such was the language Lord BACON once applied to himself when
addressing a king. "I know," said the great philosopher, "that I am
censured of some conceit of my ability or worth; but I pray your majesty
impute it to desire--_possunt quia posse videntur_." These men of genius
bear a charmed mail on their breast; "hopeless, not heartless," may be
often the motto of their ensign; and if they do not always possess
reputation, they still look onwards for fame; for these do not necessarily
accompany each other.
An author is more sensible of his own merits, as he also is of his labour,
which is invisible to all others, while he is unquestionably much less
sensible to his defects than most of his readers. The author not only
comprehends his merits better, because they have passed through a long
process in his mind, but he is familiar with every part, while the reader
has but a vague notion of the whole. Why does an excellent work, by
repetition, rise in interest? Because in obtaining this gradual intimacy
with an author, we appear to recover half the genius which we had lost on
a first perusal. The work of genius too is associated, in the mind of the
author, with much more than it contains; and the true supplement, which he
only can give, has not always accompanied the work itself. We find great
men often greater than the books they write. Ask the man of genius if he
have written all that he wished to have written? Has he satisfied himself
in this work, for which you accuse his pride? Has he dared what required
intrepidity to achieve? Has he evaded difficulties which he should have
overcome? The mind of the reader has the limits of a mere recipient, while
that of the author, even after his work, is teeming with creation. "On
many occasions, my soul seems to know more than it can say, and to be
endowed with a mind by itself, far superior to the mind I really have,"
said MARIVAUX, with equal truth and happiness.
With these explanations of what are called the vanity and egotism of
Genius, be it remembered, that the sense of their own sufficiency is
assumed by men at their own risk. The great man who thinks greatly of
himself, is not diminishing that greatness in heaping fuel on his fire. It
is indeed otherwise with his unlucky brethren, with whom an illusion of
literary vanity may end in the aberrations of harmless madness; as it
happened to PERCIVAL STOCKDALE. After a parallel between himself and
Charles XII. of Sweden, he concludes that "some parts will be to _his_
advantage, and some to _mine_;" but in regard to fame, the main object
between himself and Charles XII., Percival imagined that "his own will not
probably take its fixed and immovable station, and shine with its expanded
and permanent splendour, till it consecrates his ashes, till it illumines
his tomb." After this the reader, who may never have heard of the name of
Percival Stockdale, must be told that there exist his own "Memoirs of his
Life and Writings."[A] The memoirs of a scribbler who saw the prospects of
life close on him while he imagined that his contemporaries were unjust,
are instructive to literary men. To correct, and to be corrected, should
be their daily practice, that they may be taught not only to exult in
themselves, but to fear themselves.
[Footnote A: I have sketched a character of PERCIVAL STOCKDALE, in
"Calamities of Authors" (pp. 218--224); it was taken _ad vivum_.]
It is hard to refuse these men of genius that _aura vitalis_, of which
they are so apt to be liberal to others. Are they not accused of the
meanest adulations? When a young writer experiences the notice of a person
of some eminence, he has expressed himself in language which transcends
that of mortality. A finer reason than reason itself inspires it. The
sensation has been expressed with all its fulness by Milton:--
The debt immense of endless gratitude.
Who ever pays an "immense debt" in small sums? Every man of genius has
left such honourable traces of his private affections; from LOCKE, whose
dedication of his great work is more adulative than could be imagined from
a temperate philosopher, to CHURCHILL, whose warm eulogiums on his friends
beautifully contrast with his satire. Even in advanced age, the man of
genius dwells on the praise he caught in his youth from veteran genius,
which, like the aloe, will flower at the end of life. When Virgil was yet
a youth, it is said that Cicero heard one of his eclogues, and exclaimed
with his accustomed warmth,
Magna spes altera Romae!
"The second hope of mighty Rome!" intending by the first either himself or
Lucretius. The words of Cicero were the secret honey on which the
imagination of Virgil fed for many a year; for in one of his latest
productions, the twelfth book of the AEneid, he applies these very words
to Ascanius. So long had the accents of Cicero's praise lingered in the
poet's ear!
This extreme susceptibility of praise in men of genius is the same
exuberant sensibility which is so alive to censure. I have elsewhere fully
shown how some have died of criticism.[A] The self-love of genius is
perhaps much more delicate than gross.
But this fatal susceptibility is the cause of that strange facility which
has often astonished the world, by the sudden transitions of sentiment
which literary characters have frequently exhibited. They have eulogised
men and events which they had reprobated, and reprobated what they had
eulogised. The recent history of political revolutions has furnished some
monstrous examples of this subservience to power. Guicciardini records one
of his own times, which has been often repeated in ours. JOVIANUS
PONTANUS, the secretary of Ferdinand, King of Naples, was also selected to
be the tutor of the prince, his son. When Charles VIII. of France invaded
Naples, Pontanus was deputed to address the French conqueror. To render
himself agreeable to the enemies of his country, he did not avoid
expatiating on the demerits of his expelled patrons: "So difficult it is,"
adds the grave and dignified historian, "for ourselves to observe that
moderation and those precepts which no man knew better than Pontanus, who
was endowed with such copious literature, and composed with such facility
in moral philosophy, and possessed such acquirements in universal
erudition, that he had made himself a prodigy to the eye of the world."[B]
The student, occupied by abstract pursuits, may not indeed always take
much interest in the change of dynasties; and perhaps the famous cancelled
dedication to Cromwell, by the learned orientalist Dr. CASTELL,[C] who
supplied its place by another to Charles II., ought not to be placed to
the account of political tergiversation. But the versatile adoration of
the continental _savans_ of the republic or the monarchy, the consul or
the emperor, has inflicted an unhealing wound on the literary character;
since, like PONTANUS, to gratify their new master, they had not the
greatness of mind to save themselves from ingratitude to their old.
[Footnote A: In the article entitled "Anecdotes of Censured Authors," in
vol. i. of "Curiosities of Literature."]
[Footnote B: Guicciardini, Book II.]
[Footnote C: For the melancholy history of this devoted scholar, see note
to the article on "The Rewards of Oriental Students," in "Calamities of
Authors," p. 189.]
Their vengeance, as quickly kindled, lasts as long. Genius is a dangerous
gift of nature. The same effervescent passions form a Catiline or a
Cicero. Plato lays great stress on his man of genius possessing the most
vehement passions, but he adds reason to restrain them. It is Imagination
which by their side stands as their good or evil spirit. Glory or infamy
is but a different direction of the same passion.
How are we to describe symptoms which, flowing from one source, yet show
themselves in such opposite forms as those of an intermittent fever, a
silent delirium, or a horrid hypochondriasm? Have we no other opiate to
still the agony, no other cordial to warm the heart, than the great
ingredient in the recipe of Plato's visionary man of genius--calm
reason? Must men, who so rarely obtain this tardy panacea, remain with all
their tortured and torturing passions about them, often self-disgusted,
self-humiliated? The enmities of genius are often connected with their
morbid imagination. These originate in casual slights, or in unguarded
expressions, or in hasty opinions, or in witty derision, or even in the
obtruding goodness of tender admonition. The man of genius broods over the
phantom that darkens his feelings: he multiplies a single object; he
magnifies the smallest; and suspicions become certainties. It is in this
unhappy state that he sharpens his vindictive fangs, in a libel called his
"Memoirs," or in another species of public outrage, styled a "Criticism."
We are told that COMINES the historian, when residing at the court of the
Count de Charolois, afterwards Duke of Burgundy, one day returning from
hunting, with inconsiderate jocularity sat down before the Count, and
ordered the prince to pull off his boots. The Count would not affect
greatness, and having executed his commission, in return for the princely
amusement, the Count dashed the boot on Comines' nose, which bled; and
from that time, he was mortified at the court of Burgundy, by retaining
the nickname of _the booted head._ The blow rankled in the heart of the
man of genius, and the Duke of Burgundy has come down to us in COMINE'S
"Memoirs," blackened by his vengeance. Many, unknown to their readers,
like COMINES, have had a booted head; but the secret poison is distilled
on their lasting page, as we have recently witnessed in Lord Waldegrave's
"Memoirs." Swift's perpetual malevolence to Dryden originated in that
great poet's prediction, that "cousin Swift would never be a poet;" a
prediction which the wit never could forget. I have elsewhere fully
written a tale of literary hatred, where is seen a man of genius, in the
character of GILBERT STUART, devoting a whole life to harassing the
industry or the genius which he himself could not attain.[A]
[Footnote A: See "Calamities of Authors," pp. 131--139.]
A living Italian poet, of great celebrity, when at the court of Rome,
presented a magnificent edition of his poetry to Pius VI. The bard, Mr.
Hobhouse informs us, lived not in the good graces of his holiness, and
although the pontiff accepted the volume, he did not forbear a severity of
remark which could not fall unheeded by the modern poet; for on this
occasion, repeating some verses of Metastasio, his holiness drily added,
"No one now-a-days writes like that great poet." Never was this to be
erased from memory: the stifled resentment of MONTI vehemently broke forth
at the moment the French carried off Pius VI. from Rome. Then the long
indignant secretary poured forth an invective more severe "against the
great harlot," than was ever traced by a Protestant pen--MONTI now invoked
the rock of Sardinia: the poet bade it fly from its base, that _the last
of monsters_ might not find even a tomb to shelter him. Such was the curse
of a poet on his former patron, now an object of misery--a return for
"placing him below Metastasio!"
The French Revolution affords illustrations of the worst human passions.
When the wretched COLLOT D'HERBOIS was tossed up in the storm to the
summit of power, a monstrous imagination seized him; he projected razing
the city of Lyons and massacring its inhabitants. He had even the heart to
commence, and to continue this conspiracy against human nature; the
ostensible crime was royalism, but the secret motive is said to have been
literary vengeance! As wretched a poet and actor as a man, D'Herbois had
been hissed off the theatre at Lyons, and to avenge that ignominy, he had
meditated over this vast and remorseless crime. Is there but one Collot
D'Herbois in the universe? Long since this was written, a fact has been
recorded of CHENIER, the French dramatic poet, which parallels the horrid
tale of Collot D'Herbois, which some have been willing to doubt from its
enormity. It is said, that this monster, in the revolutionary period, when
he had the power to save the life of his brother Andre, while his father,
prostrate before a wretched son, was imploring for the life of an innocent
brother, remained silent; it is further said that he appropriated to
himself a tragedy which he found among his brother's manuscripts.
"Fratricide from literary jealousy," observes the relator of this
anecdote, "was a crime reserved for a modern French revolutionist."[A]
There are some pathethic stanzas which Andre was composing in his last
moments, when awaiting his fate; the most pathetic of all stanzas is that
one which he left unfinished--
Peut-etre, avant que l'heure en cercle promenee
Ait pose, sur l'email brillant,
Dans les soixante pas ou sa route est bornee,
Son pied sonore et vigilant,
Le sommeil du tombeau pressera ma paupiere--
At this unfinished stanza was the pensive poet summoned to the guillotine!
[Footnote A: _Edinburgh Review_, xxxv. 159]
CHAPTER XVI.
The domestic life of genius.--Defects of great compositions attributed to
domestic infelicities.--The home of the literary character should be the
abode of repose and silence.--Of the Father.--Of the Mother.--Of family
genius.--Men of genius not more respected than other men in their domestic
circle.--The cultivators of science and art do not meet on equal terms
with others, in domestic life.--Their neglect of those around them.--Often
accused of imaginary crimes.
When the temper and the leisure of the literary character are alike
broken, even his best works, the too faithful mirrors of his state of
mind, will participate in its inequalities; and surely the incubations of
genius, in its delicate and shadowy combinations, are not less sensible in
their operation than the composition of sonorous bodies, where, while the
warm metal is settling in the mould, even an unusual vibration of the air
during the moment of fusion will injure the tone.
Some of the conspicuous blemishes of several great compositions may be
attributed to the domestic infelicities of their authors. The desultory
life of CAMOENS is imagined to be perceptible in the deficient connexion
of his epic; and MILTON'S blindness and divided family prevented that
castigating criticism, which otherwise had erased passages which have
escaped from his revising hand. He felt himself in the situation of his
Samson Agonistes, whom he so pathetically describes--
His foes' derision, captive, poor, and blind.
Even LOCKE complains of his "discontinued way of writing," and "writing by
incoherent parcels," from the avocations of a busy and unsettled life,
which undoubtedly produced a deficiency of method in the disposition of
the materials of his great work. The careless rapid lines of DRYDEN
are justly attributed to his distress, and indeed he pleads for his
inequalities from his domestic circumstances. JOHNSON often silently, but
eagerly, corrected the "Ramblers" in their successive editions, of which
so many had been despatched in haste. The learned GREAVES offered some
excuses for his errors in his edition of "Abulfeda," from "his being five
years encumbered with lawsuits, and diverted from his studies." When at
length he returned to them, he expresses his surprise "at the pains he had
formerly undergone," but of which he now felt himself "unwilling, he knew
not how, of again undergoing." GOLDONI, when at the bar, abandoned his
comic talent for several years; and having resumed it, his first comedy
totally failed: "My head," says he, "was occupied with my professional
employment; I was uneasy in mind and in bad humour." A lawsuit, a
bankruptcy, a domestic feud, or an indulgence in criminal or in foolish
pursuits, have chilled the fervour of imagination, scattered into
fragments many a noble design, and paralysed the finest genius. The
distractions of GUIDO'S studies from his passion for gaming, and of
PARMEGIANO'S for alchemy, have been traced in their works, which are often
hurried over and unequal. It is curious to observe, that CUMBERLAND
attributes the excellence of his comedy, _The West Indian_, to the
peculiarly happy situation in which he found himself at the time of its
composition, free from the incessant avocations which had crossed him in
the writing of _The Brothers._ "I was master of my time, my mind was free,
and I was happy in the society of the dearest friends I had on earth. The
calls of office, the cavillings of angry rivals, and the gibings of
newspaper critics, could not reach me on the banks of the Shannon, where
all within-doors was love and affection. In no other period of my life
have the same happy circumstances combined to cheer me in any of my
literary labours."
The best years of MENGS' life were embittered by his father, a poor
artist, and who, with poorer feelings, converted his home into a
prison-house, forced his son into the slavery of stipulated task-work,
while bread and water were the only fruits of the fine arts. In this
domestic persecution, the son contracted those morose and saturnine
habits which in after-life marked the character of the ungenial MENGS.
ALONSO CANO, a celebrated Spanish painter, would have carried his art to
perfection, had not the unceasing persecution of the Inquisitors entirely
deprived him of that tranquillity so necessary to the very existence of
art. OVID, in exile on the barren shores of Tomos, deserted by his
genius, in his copious _Tristia_ loses much of the luxuriance of his
fancy.
We have a remarkable evidence of domestic unhappiness annihilating the
very faculty of genius itself, in the case of Dr. BROOK TAYLOR, the
celebrated author of the "Linear Perspective." This great mathematician in
early life distinguished himself as an inventor in science, and the most
sanguine hopes of his future discoveries were raised both at home and
abroad. Two unexpected events in domestic life extinguished his inventive
faculties. After the loss of two wives, whom he regarded with no common
affection, he became unfitted for profound studies; he carried his own
personal despair into his favourite objects of pursuit, and abandoned
them. The inventor of the most original work suffered the last fifteen
years of his life to drop away, without hope, and without exertion; nor is
this a solitary instance, where a man of genius, deprived of the idolised
partner of his existence, has no longer been able to find an object in his
studies, and where even fame itself has ceased to interest. The reason
which ROUSSEAU alleges for the cynical spleen which so frequently breathes
forth in his works, shows how the domestic character of the man of genius
leaves itself in his productions. After describing the infelicity of his
domestic affairs, occasioned by the mother of Theresa, and Theresa
herself, both women of the lowest class and the worst dispositions, he
adds, on this wretched marriage, "These unexpected disagreeable events, in
a state of my own choice, plunged me into literature, to give a new
direction and diversion to my mind; and in all my first works I scattered
that bilious humour which had occasioned this very occupation." Our
author's character in his works was the very opposite to the one in which
he appeared to these low people. Feeling his degradation among them, for
they treated his simplicity as utter silliness, his personal timidity
assumed a tone of boldness and originality in his writings, while a strong
personal sense of shame heightened his causticity, and he delighted to
contemn that urbanity in which he had never shared, and which he knew not
how to practise. His miserable subservience to these people was the real
cause of his oppressed spirit calling out for some undefined freedom in
society; and thus the real Rousseau, with all his disordered feelings,
only appeared in his writings. The secrets of his heart were confided to
his pen.
"The painting-room must be like Eden before the Fall; no joyless
turbulent passions must enter there"--exclaims the enthusiast RICHARDSON.
The home of the literary character should be the abode of repose and of
silence. There must he look for the feasts of study, in progressive and
alternate labours; a taste "which," says GIBBON, "I would not exchange
for the treasures of India." ROUSSEAU had always a work going on, for
rainy days and spare hours, such as his "Dictionary of Music:" a variety
of works never tired; it was the single one which exhausted. METASTASIO
looks with delight on his variety, which resembled the fruits in the
garden of Armida--
E mentre spunta l'un, l'altro mature.
While one matures, the other buds and blows.
Nor is it always fame, or any lower motive, which may induce the literary
character to hold an unwearied pen. Another equally powerful exists, which
must remain inexplicable to him who knows not to escape from the
listlessness of life--it is the passion for literary occupation. He whose
eye can only measure the space occupied by the voluminous labours of the
elder Pliny, of a Mazzuchelli, a Muratori, a Montfaucon, and a Gough, all
men who laboured from the love of labour, and can see nothing in that
space but the industry which filled it, is like him who only views a city
at a distance--the streets and the edifices, and all the life and
population within, he can never know. These literary characters projected
their works as so many schemes to escape from uninteresting pursuits; and,
in these folios, how many evils of life did they bury, while their
happiness expanded with their volume! Aulus Gellius desired to live no
longer than he was able to retain the faculty of writing and observing.
The literary character must grow as impassioned with his subject as
AElian-with his "History of Animals;" "wealth and honour I might have
obtained at the courts of princes; but I preferred the delight of
multiplying my knowledge. I am aware that the avaricious and the ambitious
will accuse me of folly; but I have always found most pleasure in
observing the nature of animals, studying their character, and writing
their history."
Even with those who have acquired their celebrity, the love of literary
labour is not diminished--a circumstance recorded by the younger Pliny of
Livy. In a preface to one of his lost books, that historian had said that
he had obtained sufficient glory by his former writings on the Roman
history, and might now repose in silence; but his mind was so restless and
so abhorrent of indolence, that it only felt its existence in literary
exertion. In a similar situation the feeling was fully experienced by
HUME. Our philosopher completed his history neither for money nor for
fame, having then more than a sufficiency of both; but chiefly to indulge
a habit as a resource against indolence.[A] These are the minds which are
without hope if they are without occupation.
[Footnote A: This appears in one of his interesting letters first
published in the _Literary Gazette_, Oct. 20, 1821.--[It is addressed to
Adam Smith, dated July 28, 1759, and he says, "I signed an agreement with
Mr. Millar, where I mention that I proposed to write the History of
England from the beginning till the accession of Henry VII.,; and he
engages to give me 1400_l_. for the copy. This is the first previous
agreement ever I made with a bookseller. I shall execute the work at
leisure, without fatiguing myself by such ardent application as I have
hitherto employed. It is chiefly as a resource against idleness that I
shall undertake the work, for as to money I have enough: and as to
reputation what I have wrote already will be sufficient, if it be good; if
not, it is not likely I shall now write better."]]
Amidst the repose and silence of study, delightful to the literary
character, are the soothing interruptions of the voices of those whom he
loves, recalling him from his abstractions into social existence. These
re-animate his languor, and moments of inspiration are caught in the
emotions of affection, when a father or a friend, a wife, a daughter, or a
sister, become the participators of his own tastes, the companions of his
studies, and identify their happiness with his fame. A beautiful incident
in the domestic life of literature is one which Morellet has revealed of
MARMONTEL. In presenting his collected works to his wife, she discovered
that the author had dedicated his volumes to herself; but the dedication
was not made painful to her modesty, for it was not a public one. Nor was
it so concise as to be mistaken for a compliment. The theme was copious,
for the heart overflowed in the pages consecrated to her domestic virtues;
and MARMONTEL left it as a record, that their children might learn the
gratitude of their father, and know the character of their mother, when
the writer should be no more. Many readers were perhaps surprised to find
in NECKER's _Comte rendu au Roi_, a political and financial work, a great
and lovely character of domestic excellence in his wife. This was more
obtrusive than Marmontel's private dedication; yet it was not the less
sincere. If NECKER failed in the cautious reserve of private feelings, who
will censure? Nothing seems misplaced which the heart dictates.
If HORACE were dear to his friends, he declares they owed him to his
father:--
--purus et insons
(Ut me collaudem) si vivo et carus amicis,
Causa fuit Pater his.
If pure and innocent, if dear (forgive
These little praises) to my friends I live,
My father was the cause.
This intelligent father, an obscure tax-gatherer, discovered the
propensity of Horace's mind; for he removed the boy of genius from a rural
seclusion to the metropolis, anxiously attending on him to his various
masters. GROTIUS, like Horace, celebrated in verse his gratitude to his
excellent father, who had formed him not only to be a man of learning, but
a great character. VITRUVIUS pours forth a grateful prayer to the memory
of his parents, who had instilled into his soul a love for literary and
philosophical subjects; and it is an amiable trait in PLUTARCH to have
introduced his father in the Symposiacs, as an elegant critic and
moralist, and his brother Lamprias, whose sweetness of disposition,
inclining to cheerful raillery, the Sage of Cheronaea has immortalised.
The father of GIBBON urged him to literary distinction, and the dedication
of the "Essay on Literature" to that father, connected with his subsequent
labour, shows the force of the excitement. The father of POPE lived long
enough to witness his son's celebrity.
Tears such as tender fathers shed,
Warm from my eyes descend,
For joy, to think when I am dead,
My son shall have mankind his Friend.[A]
The son of BUFFON one day surprised his father by the sight of a column,
which he had raised to the memory of his father's eloquent genius. "It
will do you honour," observed the Gallic sage.[B] And when that son in the
revolution was led to the guillotine, he ascended in silence, so impressed
with his father's fame, that he only told the people, "I am the son of
Buffon!"
[Footnote A: These lines have been happily applied by Mr. BOWLES to the
father of POPE.--The poet's domestic affections were as permanent as they
were strong.]
[Footnote B: It still exists in the gardens of the old chateau at
Montbard. It is a pillar of marble bearing this inscription:--"Excelsae
turris humilia columna, Parenti suo filius Buffon. 1785."--ED.]
Fathers absorbed in their occupations can but rarely attract their
offspring. The first durable impressions of our moral existence come from
the mother. The first prudential wisdom to which Genius listens falls from
her lips, and only her caresses can create the moments of tenderness. The
earnest discernment of a mother's love survives in the imagination of
manhood. The mother of Sir WILLIAM JONES, having formed a plan for the
education of her son, withdrew from great connexions that she might live
only for that son. Her great principle of education, was to excite by
curiosity; the result could not fail to be knowledge. "Read, and you will
know," she constantly replied to her filial pupil. And we have his own
acknowledgment, that to this maxim, which produced the habit of study, he
was indebted for his future attainments. KANT, the German metaphysician,
was always fond of declaring that he owed to the ascendancy of his
mother's character the severe inflexibility of his moral principles. The
mother of BURNS kindled his genius by reciting the old Scottish ballads,
while to his father he attributed his less pleasing cast of character.
Bishop WATSON traced to the affectionate influence of his mother, the
religious feelings which he confesses he inherited from her. The mother of
EDGEWORTH, confined through life to her apartment, was the only person who
studied his constitutional volatility. When he hastened to her death-bed,
the last imperfect accents of that beloved voice reminded him of the past
and warned him of the future, and he declares that voice "had a happy
influence on his habits,"--as happy, at least, as his own volatile nature
would allow. "To the manner in which my mother formed me at an early age,"
said Napoleon, "I principally owe my subsequent elevation. My opinion is,
that the future good or bad conduct of a child entirely depends upon the
mother."
There is this remarkable in the strong affections of the mother in the
formation of the literary character, that, without even partaking of, or
sympathising with the pleasures the child is fond of, the mother will
often cherish those first decided tastes merely from the delight of
promoting the happiness of her son; so that that genius, which some would
produce on a preconceived system, or implant by stratagem, or enforce by
application, with her may be only the watchful labour of love.[A] One of
our most eminent antiquaries has often assured me that his great passion,
and I may say his genius, for his curious knowledge and his vast
researches, he attributes to maternal affection. When his early taste for
these studies was thwarted by the very different one of his father, the
mother silently supplied her son with the sort of treasures he languished
for, blessing the knowledge, which indeed she could not share with him,
but which she beheld imparting happiness to her youthful antiquary.
[Footnote A: Kotzebue has noted the delicate attention of his mother in
not only fostering his genius, but in watching its too rapid development.
He says:--"If at any time my imagination was overheated, my mother always
contrived to select something for my evening reading which might moderate
this ardour, and make a gentler impression on my too irritable fancy."--
ED.]
There is, what may be called, FAMILY GENIUS. In the home of a man of
genius is diffused an electrical atmosphere, and his own pre-eminence
strikes out talents in all. "The active pursuits of my father," says the
daughter of EDGEWORTH, "spread an animation through the house by
connecting children with all that was going on, and allowing them to join
in thought and conversation; sympathy and emulation excited mental
exertion in the most agreeable manner." EVELYN, in his beautiful retreat
at Saye's Court, had inspired his family with that variety of taste which
he himself was spreading throughout the nation. His son translated Rapin's
"Gardens," which poem the father proudly preserved in his "Sylva;" his
lady, ever busied in his study, excelled in the arts her husband loved,
and designed the frontispiece to his "Lucretius:" she was the cultivator
of their celebrated garden, which served as "an example" of his great work
on "forest trees." Cowley, who has commemorated Evelyn's love of books and
gardens, has delightfully applied them to his lady, in whom, says the
bard, Evelyn meets both pleasures:--
The fairest garden in her looks,
And in her mind the wisest books.
The house of HALLER resembled a temple consecrated to science and the
arts, and the votaries were his own family. The universal acquirements of
Haller were possessed in some degree by every one under his roof; and
their studious delight in transcribing manuscripts, in consulting authors,
in botanising, drawing and colouring the plants under his eye, formed
occupations which made the daughters happy and the sons eminent.[A] The
painter STELLA inspired his family to copy his fanciful inventions, and
the playful graver of Claudine Stella, his niece, animated his "Sports of
Children." I have seen a print of COYPEL in his _studio_, and by his side
his little daughter, who is intensely watching the progress of her
father's pencil. The artist has represented himself in the act of
suspending his labour to look on his child. At that moment, his thoughts
were divided between two objects of his love. The character and the works
of the late ELIZABETH HAMILTON were formed entirely by her brother.
Admiring the man she loved, she imitated what she admired; and while the
brother was arduously completing the version of the Persian Hedaya, the
sister, who had associated with his morning tasks and his evening
conversations, was recalling all the ideas, and pourtraying her fraternal
master in her "Hindoo Rajah."
[Footnote A: Haller's death (A.D. 1777) was as remarkable for its calm
philosophy, as his life for its happiness. He was a professional surgeon,
and continued to the last an attentive and rational observer of the
symptoms of the disease which was bringing him to the grave. He
transmitted to the University of Gottingen a scientific analysis of his
case; and died feeling his own pulse.--ED.]
Nor are there wanting instances where this FAMILY GENIUS has been carried
down through successive generations: the volume of the father has been
continued by a son, or a relative. The history of the family of the
ZWINGERS is a combination of studies and inherited tastes. Theodore
published, in 1697, a folio herbal, of which his son Frederic gave an
enlarged edition in 1744; and the family was honoured by their name having
been given to a genus of plants dedicated to their memory, and known in
botany by the name of the _Zwingera_. In history and in literature, the
family name was equally eminent; the same Theodore continued a great work,
"The Theatre of Human Life," which had been begun by his father-in-law,
and which for the third time was enlarged by another son. Among the
historians of Italy, it is delightful to contemplate this family genius
transmitting itself with unsullied probity among the three VILLANIS, and
the MALASPINIS, and the two PORTAS. The history of the learned family of
the STEPHENS presents a dynasty of literature; and to distinguish the
numerous members, they have been designated as Henry I. and Henry II.,--as
Robert I., the II., and the III.[A] Our country may exult in having
possessed many literary families--the WARTONS, the father and two sons:
the BURNEYS, more in number; and the nephews of Milton, whose humble torch
at least was lighted at the altar of the great bard.[B]
[Footnote A: For an account of them and their works, see "Curiosities of
Literature," vol, i. p. 76.]
[Footnote B: The Phillips.]
No event in literary history is more impressive than the fate of
QUINTILIAN; it was in the midst of his elaborate work, which was composed
to form the literary character of a son, that he experienced the most
terrible affliction in the domestic life of genius--the successive deaths
of his wife and his only child. It was a moral earthquake with a single
survivor amidst the ruins. An awful burst of parental and literary
affliction breaks forth in Quintilian's lamentation,--"My wealth, and my
writings, the fruits of a long and painful life, must now be reserved only
for strangers; all I possess is for aliens, and no longer mine!" We feel
the united agony of the husband, the father, and the man of genius!
Deprived of these social consolations, we see JOHNSON call about him those
whose calamities exiled them from society, and his roof lodges the blind,
the lame, and the poor; for the heart must possess something it can call
its own, to be kind to.
In domestic life, the Abbe DE ST. PIERRE enlarged its moral vocabulary, by
fixing in his language two significant words. One served to explain the
virtue most familiar to him--_bienfaisance_; and that irritable vanity
which magnifies its ephemeral fame, the sage reduced to a mortifying
diminutive--_la gloriole!_
It has often excited surprise that men of genius are not more reverenced
than other men in their domestic circle. The disparity between the public
and the private esteem of the same man is often striking. In privacy we
discover that the comic genius is not always cheerful, that the sage is
sometimes ridiculous, and the poet seldom delightful. The golden hour of
invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius
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