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 THE WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
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 AND CONGREYE. 
 
 EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET. 
 
THE 
 
 LITERARY CHARACTER; 
 
 HISTORY OF MEN OF GENIUS, 
 
 DRAWN FROM THEIR OWN FEELINGS AND CONFESSIONS. 
 
 BY I. DISRAELI, D.C.L., F.S.A., 
 
 ETC. ETC. 
 
 FIFTH EDITION, REVISED. 
 
 LONDON : 
 EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET. 
 
 MDCCCXXXIX. 
 
c,o 
 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 BRAPBURV AND EVANS, PRINTERS, 
 
 WHITEKRIARS. 
 
 Transfer 
 Kfflgfneers School Uby. 
 June 29,3 93! 
 
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 contempo- 
 raries 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 hi us, you have 
 multiplied your talents, and have never lost a virtue. 
 
 When I turn from the uninterrupted studies of your 
 
 "nmestic solitude to our metropolitan authors, the contrast, 
 
 hot encouraging, is at least extraordinary. You are not 
 
 laware that the revolutions of Society have operated on 
 
 o. r literature, and that new classes of readers have called 
 
IV DEDICATION. 
 
 forth new classes of writers. The causes, and the conse- 
 quences, 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, — hut 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. 
 
 March, 1839. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Of literary characters, and of the lovers of literature and art . 1 
 
 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 . . . . . . . .5 
 
 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 seras, and by 
 a common end pursued by both . . . . . .15 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Of natural genius. — Minds constitutionally different cannot have 
 an equal aptitude. — Genius not the result of habit and educa- 
 tion. — Originates in peculiar qualities of the mind. — The pre- 
 disposition of genius — A substitution for the white paper of 
 
 Locke • . . . .20 
 
 b 
 
V CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 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 me- 
 lancholy. — 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 man- 
 hood. — 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 in- 
 vention. — What the youth t 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 Mendelsohn. — Friends usually prejudicial in the 
 
 youth of genius A remarkable interview between Petrarch 
 
 in his first studies, and his literary adviser. — Exhortation . GO 
 
 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 . . . .37 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Tbe 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 . . . . . . . 1 1 ■"> 
 
CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 PAGE 
 
 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 con- 
 sists of associations with their pursuits . . . .130 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Literary solitude. — Its necessity. — Its pleasures. — Of visitors by 
 profession. — Its inconveniences 145 
 
 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 . . .154 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The enthusiasm of genius. — A state of mind resembling awaking 
 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 at- 
 tention. — And in visionary illusions. — Enthusiasts in literature 
 and art — of their self-immolations . . . . .184 
 
 62 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 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 con- 
 sumes the sufferer, without its malignancy .... 210 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Want of mutual esteem, among men of genius, often originates in 
 a deficiency of analogous ideas. — It is not always envy or jea- 
 lousy which induces men of genius to undervalue each other . 217 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Self-praise of genius. — The love of praise instinctive in the na- 
 ture of genius A high opinion of themselves necessary for 
 
 their great designs. — The Ancients openly claimed their owu 
 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 . . .221 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The domestic life of genius. — Defects of great compositions at- 
 tributed 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 ge- 
 nius 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 . . 238 
 
 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 . 250 
 
 
CONTENTS. IX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 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 . . . 272 
 
 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 . 288 
 
 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 
 
 300 
 
 ICHAPTER 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 per- 
 fect character of a modern man of letters exhibited in Peiresc. 
 — Their utility to authors and artists 313 
 
 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 .... 330 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 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 .... 339 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Literature an avenue to glory.— An intellectual nobility not chi- 
 merical, but created by public opinion. — Literary honours of 
 various nations. — Local associations with the memory of the 
 man of genius 346 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Influence of authors on society and of society on authors. — Na- 
 tional 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 361 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 For the fifth time I revise a subject which has occu- 
 pied my inquiries from early life, with feelings still 
 delightful, and an enthusiasm not wholly diminished. 
 
 Had not the principle upon which this work is con- 
 structed occurred to me in my youth, the materials 
 which illustrate the literary character could never have 
 been brought together. It was early in life that I con- 
 ceived 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 esta- 
 blished, which, however vague and doubtful in specu- 
 lation, 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. 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 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 ?e 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 con- 
 ceals, or their fears obscure, or their modesty shrinks 
 from, or their pride rejects ; but I have sometimes ima- 
 gined that I have held the clue as they have lost them- 
 selves 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 metaphy- 
 sical disquisition, and there has since appeared an 
 
PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 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 narra- 
 tion 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 ma?f 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 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 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 develop the 
 powers, to regulate the passions, to ascertain the privi- 
 leges 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 inhe- 
 rent 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 ex- 
 traordinary circumstance concurred with these opinions. 
 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 A copy accidentally fell into my hands which had for- 
 merly 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 con- 
 fessions." 
 
 In the Preface to this Edition, in mentioning the 
 fact respecting Lord Byron, which had been the im- 
 mediate 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 
 
XVI PREFACE. 
 
 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 cha- 
 racteristic 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 *. 
 
 * As everything connected with the reading of a mind like Lord 
 Byron's is interesting to the philosophical inquirer, this note may 
 now he 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, hut I was young and petulant, and probably wrote 
 down any thing, 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." 
 
PREFACE. XV11 
 
 Soon after the publication of this third Edition, I 
 received the following letter from his Lordship : — 
 
 " Montenero, Villa Dupuy, near 
 Leghorn, June 10, 1822. 
 
 %t 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 ' Lite- 
 rary Character,' which has often been to me a con- 
 solation, 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 a 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 sus- 
 pected, and two arrested, they have been able to iden- 
 tify 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:' 
 
XV111 PREFACE. 
 
 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 deci- 
 sions 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 kuow 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 Com- 
 mon-place Book, by my friend Lord Clare, containing 
 
PREFACE. XIX 
 
 a few tilings, 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 prin- 
 ciple 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 mytho- 
 logical 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 Yilla Dujmy, near Leghorn, 
 with the islands of Elba and Corsica visible from my 
 
XX PREFACE. 
 
 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 
 w T hose 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 fami- 
 liar 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 Shake- 
 speare, 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 
 
2 THE LITERARY CHARACTER. 
 
 ingenious sovereign survived the translation which he 
 ordered, the immortal labour of the comic satirist of 
 France might have laid the foundations 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 Gmcciardini : 
 t\e German Schlegel writes on our Shakespeare 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 litera- 
 ture of every nation was limited to its father-land, 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 
 Lwer, and the novel arts of the nations of Europe, 
 that they learnt each other's languages ; and they dis- 
 covered, 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 per- 
 ceived 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 
 
THE LITERARY CHARACTER. 3 
 
 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 proba- 
 tionary 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 suc- 
 ceeding age in the mighty mould of his own ; for John- 
 son 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 advance 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. 
 
 b 2 
 
4 LOVERS OF LITERATURE AND ART. 
 
 Professional characters are modified by the change of 
 manners, and are usually national ; while the literary 
 character, from the objects in which it concerns itsell, 
 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 Me, 
 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 
 youncrer Pliny as by Petrarch and Erasmus, and as 
 they have been by Hume and Gibbon. And this simi- 
 larity 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. 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 circula- 
 tion of this intellectual coinage, this 
 
 ; Gold of the dead, 
 
 Which Time does still disperse, hut not devour. 
 
MATTER-OF-FACT MEN. 
 
 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. 
 
 The pursuits of literature have been openly or insi- 
 diously 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 con- 
 ferring the honours of authorship on that " Ten Thou- 
 sand" whose recent list is not so much a muster-roll of 
 heroes, as a table of population.* 
 
 Matter-of-fact men, or men of knowledge, and men 
 of wit and taste, were long inimical to each other's 
 pursuits. t The Royal Society in its origin could 
 
 * We have a Dictionary of "Ten Thousand living Authors" of 
 our own nation. The alphabet is fatal by its juxta-positions. 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 ineffi- 
 cient 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. 
 
 T The cause is developed in the chapter on Want of mutual 
 Esteem. 
 
6 POLITICAL ECONOMISTS UNDERVALUE 
 
 hardly support itself against the ludicrous attacks of 
 literary men,* and the Antiquarian Society has afforded 
 them amusement. 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, when- 
 ever genius extends its awakening hand. The anti- 
 quary, the naturalist, the architect, the chemist, and 
 even writers on medical topics, have in our days 
 asserted their claims, and discovered their long-inter- 
 rupted relationship with the great family of genius and 
 literature. 
 
 A new race of jargonists, the barbarous metaphy- 
 sicians 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 
 
 * See Butler, in his "Elephant in the Moon." South, in his 
 oration at the opening of the theatre at Oxford, passed this bitter sar- 
 casm on the naturalists, — " Mirantur nihil nisi pulices ; pediculos- 
 et se ipsos ,♦" — nothing they admire hut 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 Sgavans is Father Malebranche 
 he is far more severe than Cornelius Agrippa, and he long preceded 
 Rousseau, so famous for his invective against the sciences. Tho 
 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 his- 
 tory, 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. 
 
LITERARY PURSUITS. 7 
 
 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 cha- 
 racters, are forced down into the class "of buffoons, 
 singers, opera-dancers, &c." In a system of political 
 economy it has been discovered, that " that unpros- 
 perous race of men, called men of letter ■*, 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."* 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 how- 
 
 * Wealth of Nations, i. 182. 
 
8 LITERARY OPPONENTS AMONG 
 
 ever 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."* 
 
 There is a more formidable class of men of genius, 
 who are heartless to the interests of literature. Like 
 
 * 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 communi- 
 cated by Shakespeare 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. 1 ' 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. 
 
THOSE WHO ABANDON THEIR STUDIES. 9 
 
 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 judg- 
 ments. 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, Watson, 
 and Wilkes, who abandoned their studies' when their 
 studies had served a purpose. 
 
 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 
 
10 MEN IN OFFICE APT TO TREAT 
 
 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 ap- 
 peared, 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 epi- 
 curean : 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 gra- 
 dations, 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 
 
LITERARY MEN WITH CONTEMPT. 11 
 
 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 him- 
 self, 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 lite- 
 rary men, and, say the Italians, dreaded lest his brothers 
 might shake the pontificate itself.* 
 
 Worse 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 
 
 * 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 con- 
 tempt 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 Laocoon, Adrian silenced their raptures 
 by the frigid observation, that all such things were idola antiquorum ; 
 and ridiculed the amena lettaratura 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. 
 
12 ARBITERS OF PUBLIC OPINION 
 
 the vanity of authors, at least it requires as much 
 vanity to give effect to their own polished effrontery.* 
 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 bride- 
 groom into utter despair by its ideal forcefulness.f 
 
 That spirit of levity which would shake the columns 
 of society, by detracting from or burlesquing the elevat- 
 
 * 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 Burks, the Edinburgh Reviewer, with 
 his peculiar felicity of manner, attacked the character of the man of 
 genius; hut when Mr. Campbell vindicated his immortal brother witb 
 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 exaggera- 
 tion 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 contro- 
 versial warmth is added to a little love of effect, an excess of colour- 
 ing steals over the canvass, 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 free- 
 dom 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 pro- 
 tected while we are degraded. 
 
 t Nouer I'aiguillette, of which the extraordinary effect is described 
 by Montaigne, is an Oriental custom still practised. — Mr. Hobhouse's 
 Journey through Albania, p. 528. 
 
TREATED WITH LEVITY. 13 
 
 ing 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 spark- 
 ling 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 im- 
 portant or successful." A sort of catholic doctrine, to 
 mortify an author into a saint, extinguishing the glori- 
 ous appetite of fame by one Lent all the year, and self- 
 flagellation every day ! Buffon and Gibbon, Vol- 
 taire and Pope, 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 " im- 
 portant 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 ! " 
 
14 LITERARY ARBITERS. 
 
 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." 
 
POETS AND PAINTERS. 15 
 
 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 aeras, 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 feel- 
 ings, 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 
 Faiuts o'er the labour unapproved — alas ! 
 Despair and genius U— 
 
 The congenial histories of literature and art describe 
 the same periodical revolutions and parallel aeras. 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 Corregio, we meet with 
 pleasure the Carraccis, Domenichino, Guido, and Al- 
 bano ; as we read Paterculus, Quintilian, Seneca, Juve- 
 nal, 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 
 
16 POETS AND PAINTERS 
 
 imaginative powers, and the same sensibility, are only 
 operating with different materials. Lanzi, the delight- 
 ful 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 eke sia 
 Tibullo net poetare sente chi sia Andrea (del Sarto) nel 
 dipingere j" 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 manu- 
 script, composed by Rubens, which contained, among 
 other topics concerning art, descriptions of the passions 
 and actions of men, drawn from the poets, and demon- 
 strated 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. 
 
 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 
 
INFLUENCE EACH OTHER. 17 
 
 maintains that " the narrative of an action is not com- 
 parable to the action itself before the eyes •" while the 
 enthusiast Barry considers painting as " poetry real- 
 ised." 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 ei the essence of poetry was picture." The philo- 
 sophical 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 con- 
 fused 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 per- 
 mitted ; but assuredly both these great artists would 
 never have claimed the precedence of the Dantesc 
 genius, and might have hesitated at the rivalry. 
 
 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 dis- 
 tinct works ? Hence curious inquirers could never 
 decide whether the group of the Laocoon in sculpture 
 preceded or was borrowed from that in poetry. Les- 
 sing conjectures that the sculptor copied the poet. It 
 is evident that the agony of Laocoon 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 
 c 
 
18 POETS AND PAINTERS 
 
 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 inven- 
 tion 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 in- 
 spiring letter on landscape-painting, recommends to the' 
 young painter a constant study of poetry and litera- 
 ture, 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, per- 
 haps 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 
 
 
INFLUENCE EACH OTHER. 19 
 
 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 com- 
 municating 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. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 MINDS CONSTITUTIONALLY DIFFERENT 
 
 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.* 
 
 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 had 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 teme- 
 rity 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 
 
 * In the second edition of this work in 1818, T 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." 
 
 
CANNOT HAVE AN EQUAL APTITUDE. 21 
 
 the inspirations of nature, made np 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 
 liabit 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 u 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 
 
22 GENIUS NOT THE RESULT OF 
 
 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 power- 
 fully 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 dis- 
 covered 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 circum- 
 stances, 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 pecu- 
 liarity 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. * This concep- 
 
 * 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 comprehensive our great critic becomes, 
 
HABIT AND EDUCATION. 23 
 
 tion 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 Corregio 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 
 
 when he nobly describes genius, " as the power of mind that collects, 
 combines, amplifies, and animates; the energy without which judg- 
 ment 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. 
 
24 GENIUS ORIGINATES IN 
 
 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. 
 
 Such theorists deduce the faculty called genius from 
 a variety of exterior or secondary causes : zealously 
 rejecting the notion that genius may originate in con- 
 stitutional dispositions, and be only a mode of the 
 individual's existence, they deny that minds are dif- 
 ferently 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 acci- 
 dents had ever supplied the want of genius in the indivi- 
 dual ? 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 
 
PECULIAR QUALITIES OF THE MIND. 25 
 
 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. * The infirm 
 votaries of the new philosophy, with all their sources of 
 genius open before them, went on multiplying medio- 
 crity, while inherent genius, true to nature, still con- 
 tinued rare in its solitary independence. 
 
 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 
 
 * 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. 
 
26 PREDISPOSITION OF GEiNIUS. 
 
 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.* 
 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 must 
 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. t 
 
 * 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." Are- 
 version which has been missed by the many respectable dunces -who 
 have been sons of men of genius. 
 
 •f" 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 
 
PREDISPOSITION OF GENIUS. 27 
 
 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. 
 
 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 consti- 
 tutional 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 par- 
 
 in these words, " It Avill therefore be found, with little exception, that 
 a great poet is but an ordinary genius.' 1 '' 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. 
 
28 PREDISPOSITION OF GENIUS. 
 
 ticular 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 musicians ear wander in the creation of 
 sounds, and the philosopher's head mature its medita- 
 tions. 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 \sdth 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 discrimi- 
 nate 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 medio- 
 crity. Natural or native power is enlarged by art; 
 but the most perfect Art has but narrow limits, de- 
 prived of natural disposition. 
 
 A curious decision on this obscure subject may be 
 drawn from an admirable judge of the nature of genius. 
 
THE " WHITE PAPER OF LOCKE. 29 
 
 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 vicissi- 
 tudes of his own poetical life, and those of some of his 
 brothers. 
 
 Metaphors are but imperfect illustrations in metaphy- 
 sical 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 descrip- 
 tion 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. 
 
30 CONCLUDING REFLECTION. 
 
 But while the origin and nature of that faculty which 
 we understand by the term Genius remains 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 con- 
 sciousness 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 histo- 
 rian, although we cannot be her legislator ? 
 
YOUTH OF GENIUS. 31 
 
 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 distin- 
 guished 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 
 Ann's 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 w T ill 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 con- 
 vince 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 in- 
 dications or predispositions, announcing the permanent 
 character? Is not great sensibility born with its irri- 
 table fibres? Will not the deep retired character cling 
 to its musings? And the unalterable being of intre- 
 pidity and fortitude, will he not, commanding even 
 
32 THE FIRST IMPULSES OF GENIUS 
 
 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 inci- 
 dents 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 
 
ILLUSTRATED BY SUBSEQUENT ACTIONS. 33 
 
 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, sus- 
 ceptible 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 
 u man is a continuation of the child.*" 
 
 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 beau- 
 tiful 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 
 
 * See in his Life, chap. IV., entitled Sviluppo dell' indole indicate 
 da vari fattarelli. " Developement of genius, or natural inclination, 
 indicated by various little matters." 
 
34 YOUTH OF GENIUS. 
 
 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 absoltitus 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 cha- 
 racter which might not have merely and misanthropi- 
 cally 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 intreaty 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 any thing 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 
 
YOUTH OF GENIUS. 35 
 
 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 dropt 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 dispositions, 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. 
 
 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 
 d 2 
 
36 YOUTH OF GENIUS. 
 
 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 
 Alpieri 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 respect- 
 ing 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 be not 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 
 
GENIUS DELIGHTS IN SOLITUDE. 37 
 
 impulse, lie 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." That 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 sen- 
 sations, 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 
 
38 GENIUS DELIGHTS IN SOLITUDE. 
 
 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 Lintemum, 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. " 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 sea- 
 shore ; 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 back 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 com- 
 
GENIUS DELIGHTS IN SOLITUDE. 39 
 
 posed many a poem, had I then known to write either 
 in verse or prose in any language whatever." 
 
 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 : stigma- 
 tising the studious application of Bossuet by the bos 
 suetus aratro w T hich 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 
 
 / 
 
40 GENIUS DELIGHTS IN SOLITUDE. 
 
 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 ; 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 puhlic good : myself I thought 
 Born to that end, born to promote all truth, 
 All righteous things." 
 
 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 elegancies, 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 
 
GENIUS DELIGHTS IN SOLITUDE. 41 
 
 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 hy 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 Mecsenas into 
 the country, while the minister amused himself at ten- 
 nis, 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, how I long rny careless limhs 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 exer- 
 
42 GENIUS AVERSE TO MANLY EXERCISES. 
 
 cises or bodily powers," for the proof of their " re- 
 joicing and excelling in them?" Poets and artists, 
 from their habits, are not usually muscular and robust. 
 Continuity of thought, absorving 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 labour- 
 ers 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 Artisans. Rousseau has described the labours of 
 the closet as enervating men, and weakening the consti- 
 tution, while study wears the whole machinery of man, 
 exhausts the spirits, destroys his strength, and renders 
 him pusillanimous.* 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 sus- 
 pected, that habits so unfavourable to thought and 
 Study precluded that promising genius from attaining 
 
 * In the preface to the u Narcisse." 
 
AMUSEMENTS OF GENIUS. 43 
 
 to the maturity of his talents, however he might have 
 succeeded in invigorating his physical powers. 
 
 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 thou- 
 sand escaped the attack. I myself have had this dis- 
 temper, 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 imagi- 
 nation, as men in their dreams repeat the conceptions 
 which have habitually interested them. The amuse- 
 ments of such an idler have often been analogous to 
 his later pursuits. Ariosto, while yet a school-boy, 
 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 sis- 
 ters, and at this time also delighted himself in trans- 
 lating the old French and Spanish romances. Sir Wil- 
 liam Jones, at Harrow, divided the fields according to 
 
44 AMUSEMENTS OF GENIUS. 
 
 a map of Greece, and to eacli schoolfellow portioned 
 out a dominion ; and when wanting a copy of the Tem- 
 pest 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 : when- 
 ever 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 grand- 
 father, 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, un- 
 doubtedly 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. 
 
A YOUTH DISTINGUISHED BY HIS EQUALS. 45 
 
 For a youth to be distinguished by his equals is per- 
 haps 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 charac- 
 terised 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 contriv- 
 ances 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 
 
46 FEEBLENESS OF THE 
 
 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 remark- 
 able. We are told by Miss Seward, that Johnson, 
 when a boy at the free-school, appeared " a huge over- 
 grown 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 pue- 
 rile 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 tri- 
 umphed 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 
 
FIRST ATTEMPTS OF GENIUS. 47 
 
 touches of the polisher, while others, resembling pearls, 
 appear at once born with their beauteous lustre. 
 
 Among the inauspicious circumstances is the feeble- 
 ness 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 pre- 
 served, remarkably contrast with his writings, for these 
 fragments abound with those points and conceits which 
 he afterwards abhorred. The tender author of Andro- 
 mache 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 at- 
 tempted " History of Switzerland." Johnson's cadenced 
 prose is not recognizable in the humbler simplicity of 
 his earliest years. Many authors have begun un- 
 successfully the walk they afterwards excelled in. 
 Raphael, when he first drew his meagre forms under 
 

 48 GENIUS NOT ALWAYS DISCOVERABLE 
 
 Perugino, had not yet conceived one line of that ideal 
 beauty, which one day he of all men could alone exe- 
 cute. Who could have imagined, in examining the 
 Dream of Raphael, that the same pencil could here- 
 after 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 ? 
 
 Even the manhood of genius may pass unobserved by 
 his companions, and, like iEneas, he may be hidden in 
 a cloud amidst his associates. The celebrated Fabius 
 Maxim cs in his boyhood was called in derision " the 
 little sheep," from the meekness and gravity of his 
 disposition. His sedateness and taciturnity, his indif- 
 ference to juvenile amusements, his slowness and diffi- 
 culty 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 dis- 
 played, 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 them- 
 selves in timorous silent characters, who have not yet- 
 experienced their strength ; and that assiduous love 
 which cannot tear itself away from the secret instruc- 
 tion it is perpetually imbibing, cannot be easily distin- 
 guished 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, 
 
EVEN IN EARLY MANHOOD. 49 
 
 which is the sign of a profound genius ; and Roger 
 Ascham has placed among " the best natures for learn- 
 ing, 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 
 Domexichino, which were at first heavy and unpro- 
 mising, called him, " the great ox ;" and Passeri, while 
 he has happily expressed the still labours of his con- 
 cealed genius, sua taciturna Untezza, 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 suc- 
 cess. Yet I cannot comprehend how such vivacious 
 talents, with a mind so finely organised, and accom- 
 panied 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 deci- 
 sively 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 ; * and, indeed, to his latest hour he was surprising 
 his friends by productions which they had imagined he 
 
 * 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 follow- 
 ing chapter, on " The first Studies." 
 
 E 
 
50 GENIUS NOT ALWAYS DISCOVERABLE 
 
 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 subse- 
 quent one of mature life, has been noticed of many. 
 Even a discerning parent or master has entirely failed 
 to develop the genius of the youth, who has after- 
 wards 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, pro- 
 nounced early, that he was the dullest and most hope- 
 less 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 over- 
 looked 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 images of 
 things. While at his grammar lessons, as it happened 
 to Lucian, he was employing tedious hours in model- 
 
EVEN IN EARLY MANHOOD. 51 
 
 ling in wax, groups of men, animals, and other figures, 
 the rod of the pedagogue often interrupted the fingers 
 of our infant moulder, who fnever 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. 
 
 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 dropt 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 asto- 
 nished the world at once with the birth and the 
 maturity of genius. 
 
 We are told that Pellegrino Tibaldi, who after- 
 wards obtained the glorious title of "the reformed 
 Michael Angelo," long felt the strongest internal dis- 
 satisfaction 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 
 e2 
 
52 GENIUS SUDDENLY INFLUENCED. 
 
 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 embarrass- 
 ment 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 01 
 merchandize ; 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, dedi- 
 cating himself to literature. Proctor, the lost Phidias 
 of our country, would often say, that he should never 
 
PRECOCITY OF GENIUS. 53 
 
 have quitted his mercantile situation, but for the acci- 
 dental 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 disco- 
 vering itself in youth. In general, perhaps, a master- 
 mind exhibits precocity. " Whatever a young man at 
 first applies himself to, is commonly his delight after- 
 wards." 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 for- 
 wards upon agate, 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. 
 
54 PRECOCITY OF GENIUS. 
 
 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 & 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.* 
 
 * 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 in- 
 ductive 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. 1 ' So far back as 
 in 1793, 1 published " a Dissertation on Anecdotes," with the simpli- 
 
THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY. 55 
 
 The predisposition of genius has declared itself in 
 painters and poets, who were such before they under- 
 Stood the nature of colours and the arts of verse ; and 
 this vehement propensity, so mysteriously constitu- 
 tional, may be traced in other intellectual characters be- 
 sides 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 authors thirst for knowledge 
 seems to have been born with him; so that his Cabinet 
 of Rarities may be said to have commenced with Ms 
 being" This strange metaphorical style has only con- 
 fused 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 know- 
 ledge, according to accounts which Gassendi received 
 
 city of a young votary ; there I deduced results, and threw out a mag- 
 nificent 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. 
 
56 THE INSTINCT OF CURIOSITY. 
 
 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 anti- 
 quity 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 apti- 
 tude. They, too, share in the glorious fever of genius, 
 and we feel how just was the expression formerly used, 
 of " their thirst for knowledge." 
 
 
DECISIVE CHARACTER OF GENIUS. 57 
 
 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 main- 
 tained 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 
 
'/ 
 
 58 DECISIVE CHARACTER OF GENIUS. 
 
 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 pur- 
 chased a piece of canvas, which, dividing into parts, 
 he painted on each, figures of saints, landscapes, and 
 flowers ; a 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, whore 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 Jffeen 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. 
 
DECISIVE CHARACTER OP GENIUS. 59 
 
 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 dis- 
 covered 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 ori- 
 ginal genius of French art ; one who, in his vivacious 
 groups, the touch of his graver, and the natural expres- 
 sion of his figures, anticipated the creations of Hogarth. 
 
 Facts of this decisive character are abundant. See 
 the boy Nanteuil hiding 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 
 
60 DECISIVE CHARACTER OF GENIUS. 
 
 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 ordi- 
 nary 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 Edystone 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 excite- 
 ment, or any other of those sources of genius, so fre- 
 quently 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 
 
DECISIVE CHARACTER OP GENIUS. 61 
 
 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, suspect- 
 ing 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, 
 
62 DECISIVE CHARACTER OF GENIUS. 
 
 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 derived my disgust, but I could not bear 
 the idea to be a mere workwoman, or to remain inac- 
 tive 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 em- 
 braced 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 inter- 
 course of life, all the graces she had taught herself; 
 she charmed her friends, and even softened her bar- 
 
DECISIVE CHARACTER OF GENIUS. 63 
 
 barous 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 con- 
 clude that the accidental view of a young actress prac- 
 tising 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 tor- 
 ment the possessor, and which may even be lost from 
 the want of development, dissolved into a state of lan- 
 gour 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 dra- 
 matic 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 sus- 
 ceptibility 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 con- 
 ceal, 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 im- 
 putes to Sir Thomas More " being from a child so 
 
64 DECISIVE CHARACTER OF GENIUS. 
 
 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 remark- 
 able evidence of the precocity of character.* 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 impres- 
 sions 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, 
 
 * I have preserved this manuscript narrative in " Curiosities of 
 Literature." 
 
DECISIVE CHARACTER OF GENIUS. 65 
 
 said, " I give it you as the dying shepherd, Damsetas, 
 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. 
 Some of these facts, we conceive, afford decisive 
 evidence of that instinct in genius, that primary quality 
 of mind, sometimes called organization, which has in- 
 flamed 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. 
 
66 FIRST STUDIES INFLUENCE 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The first studies. — The self-educated are marked by stubborn peculiar- 
 ities. — Their errors. — Their improvement from the neglect or con- 
 tempt they incur. — The history of self-education in Moses Mendel- 
 sohn. — 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 stampec 
 a character on the mind adapted to receive one, as the 
 first step into life has often determined its walk. Bui 
 this, for ourselves, is a far distant period in our exist- 
 ence, which is lost in the horizon of our own recollec- 
 tions, 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 instruc- 
 tions, 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 
 
THE CHARACTER OF GENIUS. 67 
 
 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 re- 
 ceiving light from an aperture at the top, which habitu- 
 ated 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 canvass 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 child- 
 hood, 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. Ryeaut 
 
 f2 
 
68 FIRST STUDIES INFLUENCE 
 
 only communicated the impulse to a mind susceptible 
 of the poetical character ; and without this Turkish 
 history we should still have had the poet.* 
 
 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 ac- 
 quaints us, that when young and wanting books, he 
 accidentally found De Foe's u 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 
 
 * 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— Haw- 
 kins'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 Rode- 
 rick Random, and I was passionate for the Roman History. 
 
 " When a boy I could never bear to read any Poetry whatever with- 
 out 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 the 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 CHARACTER OF GENIUS. 69 
 
 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 con- 
 versing on the discoveries of Columbus, and the con- 
 quests 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 discove- 
 ries 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, sufiicient 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 cha- 
 racter 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 ' s Confessional," and the curious 
 I Memoirs of Hollis," written with such a republican 
 fierceness. 
 
70 OF SELF-EDUCATED GENIUS. 
 
 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 vol- 
 canic explosions was only revealed in a letter acci- 
 dentally 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 founda- 
 tion of my own." The enigma is now solved ! Arch- 
 deacon 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 educa- 
 tion ends genius often begins. Gray was asked if he 
 
OP SELF-EDUCATED GENIUS. 71 
 
 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-edu- 
 cation 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.* 
 
 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 sou] sublime 
 Has felt the influence of malignant star. 
 
 An unfavourable position in society is an 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. Winkelman, who 
 passed his youth in obscure misery as a village school- 
 master, paints feelings which strikingly contrast with 
 his avocations. " I formerly filled the office of a school- 
 master 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 ; 
 
 * Life of John Hunter, by Dr. Adams, p. 59, where the case is 
 curiously illustrated. 
 
72 THE SELF-EDUCATED MARKED 
 
 then I said to myself, as I still say, ' Peace, my soul, 
 thy strength shall surmount thy cares.' " The obstruc- 
 tions 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 unfortu- 
 nately one of those whom the Greeks named oirifAaOeLs, 
 sero sapientes, the late-learned, for I have appeared too 
 late in the world and in Italy. To have done some- 
 thing, it was necessary that I should have had an edu- 
 cation 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. Bud^us declared that he was both "self-taught 
 and late-taught." 
 
 The self-educated are marked by stubborn pecu- 
 liarities. 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, 
 
BY STUBBORN PECULIARITIES. 73 
 
 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 learnt 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 enthu- 
 siasm 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 uncul- 
 tivated minds, even amidst the deep perplexed feelings 
 and the tumultuous thoughts of the most visionary 
 enthusiast, who is often only a man of genius mis- 
 placed.* 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. Bun- 
 yan is the Spenser of the people. The fire burned 
 towards Heaven, although the altar was rude and 
 rustic. 
 
 Barry, the painter, has left behind him works not 
 
 * " 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 Biographic 
 Literaria, i. 143. 
 
74 HISTORY OF SELF-EDUCATION 
 
 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. 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 re- 
 turned 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 ! 
 
 But even such pages as those of Barry's are the ali- 
 ment of young genius. Before we can discern the 
 beautiful, must we not be endowed with the suscepti- 
 bility 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 
 
IN MOSES MENDELSOHN. 75 
 
 of Moses Mendelsohn, on whom literary Germany 
 has bestowed the honourable title of the Jewish 
 Socrates.* So great apparently were the invincible 
 obstructions which barred out Mendelsohn 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 ! 
 
 Mendelsohn, the son of a poor rabbin, in a village 
 in Germany, received an education completely rabbini- 
 cal, 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 
 
 * I composed the life of Mendelsohn 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, Mendelsohn shaking 
 hands with Addison, who wrote on the truth of the Christian religion, 
 and near Locke, the English master of Mendelsohn's mind. 
 
76 HISTORY OF SELF-EDUCATION 
 
 the Turks, is a pious rejection of every species of pro- 
 fane 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 Tal- 
 mud 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 Mendelsohn'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 clear- 
 ing 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, Mendelsohn 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. Mendelsohn 
 received this from the companion of his misery and his 
 
IN MOSES MENDELSOHN. 77 
 
 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. Mendelsohn, 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 lan- 
 guage which Mendelsohn could speak, the Polander 
 voluntarily undertook his literary education. 
 
 Then was seen one of the most extraordinary specta- 
 cles in the history of modern literature. Two house- 
 less 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 
 an 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 Mendelsohn 
 had fallen from his own. 
 
 Mendelsohn 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 express- 
 ing the ideas he was meditating on. He had scarcely 
 made a step into the philosophy of his age, and the 
 genius of Mendelsohn had probably been lost to 
 Germany, had not the singularity of his studies and the 
 
78 HISTORY OF SELF-EDUCATION 
 
 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 discern- 
 ment to perceive, and the generous temper to aid. 
 Mendelsohn 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 run- 
 ning against the hill, at length courses with facility. 
 
 A succeeding effort was to master the living lan- 
 guages, 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 Mendelsohn'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 de- 
 light 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 
 
IN MOSES MENDELSOHN. 79 
 
 brought him into their circle, but a step was yet want- 
 ing to escape from it. 
 
 At length the mind of Mendelsohn 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 Mendelsohn 
 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 dis- 
 concerted and thrown into despair, by the false judg- 
 ments 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 expe- 
 rience, and so practised by converse with the literary 
 world, that its prophetic feeling can anticipate the public 
 
80 FRIENDS USUALLY PREJUDICIAL 
 
 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 
 Ci 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' opi- 
 nions, we might have lost some precious compositions. 
 The friends of Thomson 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 ha> 
 created a new school in art — and appealed from hi 
 circle to the public. From a manuscript letter of ou 
 poet's, written when employed on his " Summer," 
 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 per- 
 
IN THE YOUTH OF GENIUS. 81 
 
 sonal 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," 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 for- 
 warding." 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 irre- 
 trievable distress ; but usually pronounces against 
 novelty. "When Reynolds returned from Italy, warm 
 with all the excellence of his art, and painted a por- 
 
82 ADVICE, ITS ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES. 
 
 trait, 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. 
 
 If it be dangerous for a young writer to resign him- 
 self 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 inspira- 
 tion, 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 know- 
 ledge 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 fa- 
 culty 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 
 
EARLY PRODUCTIONS OF GENIUS. 83 
 
 candidate for public distinction was he aware of his 
 particular powers ; so slowly his imagination had deve- 
 loped 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 predo- 
 minant habits, — resume a former manner more happily, 
 — invent novelty from an old subject he had rudely 
 designed, — and often may steal from himself some in- 
 ventive 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 dis- 
 covered 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 hed 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 
 g 2 
 
84 REMARKABLE INTERVIEW BETWEEN 
 
 of a great painter ; and Reynolds thought Raphael 
 the most extraordinary man the world had ever pro- 
 duced. 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, some- 
 times 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 hap- 
 pened to you.' — 6 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 my- 
 self out of the crowd, and to acquire a name ; and 
 surely not without some success, since I have your 
 
PETRARCH AND JOHN OP FLORENCE. 85 
 
 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 cul- 
 tivate 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 assidu- 
 ous 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 further without shed- 
 ding tears. i Cease to afflict yourself, my son,' said 
 that good man ; c 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 con- 
 cealed from you by excessive presumption. In ascend- 
 ing an elevated spot, we gradually discover many things 
 whose existence before was not suspected by us. Per- 
 severe 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 
 
86 EXHORTATION. 
 
 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 antici- 
 pated, 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, encoun- 
 tered 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 Coreggio and with Mon- 
 tesquieu, " Ed io anche son pittore ! " 
 
IRRITABILITY OF GENIUS. 87 
 
 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. Pro- 
 fessional 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 some- 
 
88 GENIUS IN SOCIETY OFTEN 
 
 times muse till he modulates a verse ; the artist is 
 sketching what a moment presents, and a moment 
 changes; the philosophical historian is suddenly ab- 
 sorbed 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 some- 
 times querulous ; now the soul of tenderness and tran- 
 quillity, view him stung by jealousy, or writhing in 
 aversion ! A fever shakes his spirit ; a fever which 
 has sometimes generated a disease, and has even pro- 
 duced a slight perturbation of the faculties.* In one 
 
 * I have given a history of literary quarrels from personal mo- 
 tives, in Quarrels of Authors, Vol. III. p. 285. There we find how 
 many controversies, in which the public get involved, have sprung 
 from some sudden squabble, some neglect of petty civility, some un- 
 lucky epithet, or some casual observation dropped without much con- 
 sideration, which mortified or enraged the genus irritabile ; a title 
 
IN A STATE OF SUFFERING. 89 
 
 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 depre- 
 ciation 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. 
 
 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 con- 
 ceived 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, 
 
 which from ancient days has heen assigned to every description of 
 authors. The late Dr. Wells, who had some experience in his inter- 
 course with many literary characters, observed, that " In whatever 
 regards the fruits of their mental labours, this is universally acknow- 
 ledged 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. 
 
90 GENIUS IN SOCIETY OFTEN 
 
 without hazard of losing part of that respect which man 
 deserves from man ; or, from the unavoidable imper- 
 fections attending human nature, of one day repenting 
 his confidence." This was the first lesson he learnt 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 acknowledg- 
 ment 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 neglect- 
 ing the irritable poet — " for the mere carcass of great- 
 ness — 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 
 
IN A STATE OF SUFFERING. 91 
 
 moment that the solitary haughtiness of his own genins 
 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 capri- 
 cious 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 
 
92 MORBID INSENSIBILITY OF GENIUS, 
 
 with each other, all the objects of society will be frus- 
 trated 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;" and even the robust mind of Johnson could 
 not suffer to be exhibited as " blinking Sam." 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 feel- 
 ing of envy in that child of nature and genius, Gold- 
 smith, Yoiture, 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 
 Yoiture. 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 ! 
 
 Those who give so many sensations to others must 
 themselves possess an excess and a variety of feelings. 
 
ARISING FROM A VARIETY OF FEELINGS. 93 
 
 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 ban- 
 dying 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 for- 
 tune ? 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 
 
94 ANXIETIES OF THE 
 
 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 reason- 
 able 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 agi- 
 tation 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 philoso- 
 vhising. It seems the fate of all originality of thinking 
 to be immediately opposed ; a contemporary is not pre- 
 pared 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 — 
 
 
MOST SUCCESSFUL GENIUS. 95 
 
 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 gran- 
 deur, 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, 
 Linn^us 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 annihi- 
 lated me. I took my leave of Flora, who bestows 
 nothing on me 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 
 
96 ANXIETIES OF THE 
 
 time, to spend my days and nights 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 Linn,eus 
 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 inde- 
 pendence of his genius attacked the most prevailing pre- 
 judices, 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 
 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 de- 
 signs 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 contem- 
 plating, amidst tribulation and persecution, and ap- 
 proaching 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 unprofit- 
 able 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 
 
 
 
MOST SUCCESSFUL GENIUS. 97 
 
 of that irritability of genius which is so closely con- 
 nected 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 sup- 
 pose that the inventors themselves were not at times 
 alarmed by secret doubts of their soundness and sta- 
 bility ? 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, non- 
 sensical." 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* 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 
 
 * In a letter by Hume to Blair, written in 1766, apparently first 
 miblished in the Literary Gazette, Nov. 17, 1821. 
 
 H 
 
98 ANXIETIES OF THE 
 
 toujour s que je pkche par le fond, et que tous mes $i/s~ 
 terries ne sont que des extravagances." Hartley with 
 his " Vibrations and vibratiuncules," Leibnitz with 
 his " Monads," Cudworth with his " Plastic Natures," 
 Malebranche with his paradoxical doctrine of u 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. 
 
 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! Montes- 
 quieu 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 ad- 
 
WRITERS OF LEARNING. 99 
 
 mire 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 trod- 
 den parts of the same field, is apt to escape an unin- 
 formed 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 vigi- 
 lance, or the accidental knowledge of some inferior 
 mind, and always to the reigning taste, whatever it 
 chance to be, of the public. Burnet criticised Varil- 
 las unsparingly ; 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 " Chro- 
 nology," 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 Stil- 
 lingfleet's end was hastened by Locke's confutation 
 of his metaphysics. The feelings of Sir John Mar- 
 sham could hardly be less irritable when he found his 
 great work tainted by an accusation that it was not 
 friendly to revelation. When the learned Pocock pub- 
 h2 
 
100 ANXIETIES OF 
 
 lished a specimen of his translation of Abulpharagius, 
 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. 
 
 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 authori- 
 tatively 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. 
 
 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, 
 
WRITERS OF TASTE. 101 
 
 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 in- 
 ventors 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 fail- 
 ures. 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 master- 
 
 J- o 
 
 piece. 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 them- 
 selves under that general amnesty too freely granted, 
 that tastes are allowed to differ ; but we should approx- 
 imate much nearer to the truth, if we were to say, that 
 
102 ANXIETIES OF 
 
 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-fond- 
 ness 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, 
 
WRITERS OF TASTE. 103 
 
 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 attain- 
 ment, that a man of genius, late in life, may discover 
 how its secret conceals itself in the habit ; how disci- 
 pline 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 com- 
 plained, while he mourned over the fragment of genius, 
 which after such zealous preparation, he dared not com- 
 plete. Curran, an orator of vehement eloquence, 
 often strikingly original, when late in life he was de- 
 sirous of cultivating literary composition, unaccustomed 
 to its more gradual march, found a pen cold, and desti- 
 tute of every grace. Rousseau has glowingly described 
 the ceaseless inquietude by which he obtained the se- 
 ductive 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 
 
104 ANXIETIES OF ARTISTS. 
 
 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," says 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 01 
 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 sub 
 ject for the Shakspeare Gallery, in the rapture of en 
 thusiasm, amidst the sublime and pathetic labouring in 
 his whole mind, arose the terror of failure. The sub- 
 ject 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 per- 
 fection 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 
 
ANXIETIES OF ARTISTS. 105 
 
 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 imagina- 
 tion 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 forth 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*. 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. 
 
 Thus the days of a man of genius are passed in labours 
 as unremitting and exhausting as those of the artisan. 
 
 * " 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 greatest 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 Chris- 
 tian." 
 
106 GENIUS SELDOM SATISFIED. 
 
 The world is not always aware, that to some, medi- 
 tation, 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, in- 
 stead of amusing him. Hawkesworth, in the second 
 paper of the Adventurer, has drawn, from his own feel- 
 ings, 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, be- 
 cause 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 pic- 
 ture 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 compo- 
 sitions 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 
 
EXTREME SENSIBILITY OF GENIUS. 107 
 
 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 acquir- 
 ing power, genius flags of itself. Genius in the midst 
 of society is a pain, an internal fever which would re- 
 quire to be treated as a real disease, if the records of 
 glory did not soften the sufferings it produces." "Athe- 
 nians ! what troubles have you not cost me," ex- 
 claimed 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 Addi- 
 son, regularly dogged his pieces as they appeared. 
 Corneille's objections he would attribute to jealousy — 
 at his pieces when burlesqued at the Italian theatre, 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. 
 
108 EXTREME SENSIBILITY OF GENIUS. 
 
 that it appears the author was extremely mortified, and 
 on the ill reception of " The Way of theWorld," deter- 
 mined 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 Con 
 greve the sarcastic severity of the French author, more 
 of mortification and humility might have been in Con- 
 greve's language than of affectation or pride. 
 
 The life of Tasso abounds with pictures of a com 
 plete exhaustion of this kind. His contradictory critics 
 had perplexed him with the most intricate literary dis- 
 cussions, 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 that painful state of fear and doubt expe- 
 rienced 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 
 
EXTREME SENSIBILITY OF GENIUS. 10Q 
 
 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. At Florence may still be 
 viewed the many works begun and abandoned by the 
 genius of Michael Angelo ; they are preserved in- 
 violate — " 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 circoscriva 
 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. 
 
 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 
 
110 EXTREME SENSIBILITY OF GENIUS. 
 
 abandon him to his own thoughts, till, after a long absti- 
 nence 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 fawns 
 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 I" 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,* — 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. Th 
 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 Smollet 
 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 
 
 * See Ramazini, " De Morbis Artificium Diatriba," wbich 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. 
 
EXTREME SENSIBILITY OF GENIUS. Ill 
 
 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 under- 
 gone." And Smollet was a popular writer ! Pope's 
 solemn declaration in the preface to his collected works 
 comes by no means short of Smollet's avowaL 
 Hume's philosophical indifference could often suppress 
 that irritability which Pope and Smollet fully indulged. 
 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 !" Al- 
 though 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 ex- 
 pression, 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 eighteen- 
 penny pamphlet," published by Ramsay the painter, 
 written in opposition to Hogarth's principles. So un- 
 tameable was the irritability of this great inventor in 
 art, that he attempts to conceal his irritation by offering 
 
112 EXTREME SENSIBILITY OF GENIUS. 
 
 to dispose gratuitously of the criticism which had dis- 
 turbed his nights. 
 
 Parties confederate against a man of genius, as hap- 
 pened to Corneille, to D'Avenant,* and Milton, and a 
 Pradon and a Settle carry away the meed of a Racine 
 and a Dry den. It was to support the drooping spirit 
 of his friend Racine on the opposition raised against 
 Phsedra, 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 sympa- 
 thise with the secret mortification of the poet, who ima- 
 gined that he had composed his Pastorals on wrong 
 principles, or, when in the agony of his soul, he con- 
 signed 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 ? 
 
 * See " Quarrels of Authors," vol. ii. on the confederacy of several 
 wits against D'Avenant, a great genius ; where I discovered that a 
 volume of poems, said " to he written hy the author's friends," which 
 had hitherto heen referred to as a volume of panegyrics, contains nothing • 
 but irony and satire, which had escaped the discovery of so many tran- 
 scribers of title-pages, frequently miscalled literary historians. 
 
EXTREME IRRITABILITY OF GENIUS. 113 
 
 Genius contracts those peculiarities, of which it is so 
 loudly accused, in its solitary occupations. That lofti- 
 ness of spirit, those quick jealousies, those excessive 
 affections and aversions, which view every thing, 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* : 
 
 * 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 hy the pens of Lord 
 Byron and of Mr. Southey. 
 
 His lordship has here ohserved, "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 : — 
 
114 EXTREME IRRITABILITY OF GENIUS. 
 
 Does he accept with ingratitude the fame he loves more 
 than life? 
 
 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 intel- 
 lectual 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 intellec 
 tual 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 tapes- 
 try-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 con- 
 solation of the dunces. 
 
 ' There is a world elsewhere.' I have never regretted for a moment 
 that country, but often that I ever returned to it at all." 
 
LITERARY MEN IN SOCIETY. 115 
 
 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 disagree- 
 ment 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 de- 
 velopment 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 illumi- 
 nates 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 suc- 
 ceeds a studious one, and the family of genius, the poet, 
 the painter, and the student, are no longer recluses, 
 i 2 
 
116 SOCIETY OFFERS SEDUCTION, AND NOT 
 
 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 arti- 
 ficial 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 opu- 
 lent 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 dis- 
 covered 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 
 
REWARD, TO MEN OP GENIUS. 117 
 
 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 ob- 
 served 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 hnprovisatore ; 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 oppor- 
 tunities 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 abso- 
 lutely 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 
 
118 SOCIETY OFFERS SEDUCTION, AND NOT 
 
 society which is called u 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 of Ms author ism 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 tiling 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 
 
REWARD, TO MEN OF GENIUS. 119 
 
 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 Mignard, expressing his conviction that " the 
 court," by which a Frenchman of the court of Louis 
 XIY. 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 par tag e rarement se consomme, 
 Et les emplois de feu demandent tout rhomme." 
 
 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 exten- 
 sive 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 nou si vien, ne sotto coltre ; 
 
120 WHY GENIUS MIXES WITH SOCIETY. 
 
 Sanzala 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.*" 
 
 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 real- 
 ity 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 opinions 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 
 
 Cary's Dante, Canto xxiv. 
 
 
FALSE FRIENDSHIPS OF LITERARY MEN. 121 
 
 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 every thing connected with 
 fashion becomes obsolete. Her ear has a great suscep- 
 tibility of weariness, and her eye rolls for incessant 
 novelty. Never was she earnest for any thing. Men's 
 minds with her became 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 fresh- 
 ness in this society, are the mould in which the charac- 
 ter 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 charac- 
 ter, often for purposes very distinct from literary ones, 
 imagine that their circle is the public ; but in this fac- 
 
122 HABITS OF GENIUS DISTINCT 
 
 titious 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 fugi- 
 tive, 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 
 iEneas, 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 
 
FROM THOSE OF SOCIETY. 123 
 
 by their own standard : they have no other ; the salt 
 of ridicule gives a poignancy to their deficient compre- 
 hension and their perfect ignorance of the persons or 
 things which are the subjects of their ingenious animad- 
 versions. The habits of the literary character seem 
 inevitably repulsive to persons of the world. Vol- 
 taire, 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 fash- 
 ionable 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 com- 
 menting on Newton. Like other apparitions, they are 
 uneasy companions : they will neither play nor walk ; 
 they will not dissipate their mornings with the charm- 
 ing 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 de- 
 clares they were ciphers " en society," 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. 
 
124 STUDY, MEDITATION, AND ENTHUSIASM, 
 
 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 pre- 
 caution 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 hap- 
 pened 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 
 
THE PROGRESS OF GENIUS. 125 
 
 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 soli- 
 tude, 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 unim passioned triflers of their rank. They 
 preserved unbroken the unity of their character, in 
 constantly escaping from the processional spectacle of 
 society. * It is no trivial observation of another noble 
 
 * 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. 
 
126 LITERARY CHARACTER NOT 
 
 writer, Lord Shaftesbury, that " it may happen that 
 a person may be so much the worse author, for being 
 the finer gentleman." 
 
 An extraordinary instance of this disagreement be- 
 tween the man of the world and the literary character, 
 we find in a philosopher seated on a throne. The cele- 
 brated Julian stained the imperial purple with an 
 author's ink ; and when he resided among the Anti- 
 ochians, 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 him- 
 self, 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 invec- 
 tive, the literary monarch bestows on himself many 
 exquisite and characteristic touches. All that the per- 
 sons of fashion alleged against the literary character, 
 Julian unreservedly confesses — his undressed beard 
 and awkwardnesses, his obstinacy, his unsociable habits, 
 his deficient tastes, while at the same time he repre- 
 sents his good qualities as so many extravagancies. 
 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 circum- 
 stance of having been subject to too strict an education 
 
ADAPTED FOR MIXED SOCIETY. 127 
 
 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 reve- 
 rence 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 ? Anti- 
 pathies and sympathies, those still occult causes, how- 
 ever 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 tram- 
 melled 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 com- 
 pares Socrates to the gallipots of the Athenian apo- 
 
128 LITERARY CHARACTERS NOT 
 
 thecaries : 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 cer- 
 tain 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 fashion- 
 able, like children in society, have sometimes resorted 
 to attract their world by the rumour of some new 
 
 
ADAPTED FOR MIXED SOCIETY. 129 
 
 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 com- 
 panies." 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. 
 
130 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 conver- 
 sation is slow and dull, my humour saturnine and re- 
 served ; 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 intel- 
 lect, 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 sen- 
 sible*; and it would seem that he had never said but 
 one witty thing in his whole life, for only one has been 
 
CONVERSATIONS OF MEN OF GENIUS. 131 
 
 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 com- 
 pany ; 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 ; 
 k2 
 
132 CONVERSATIONS OF MEN OF GENIUS. 
 
 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 
 bonhommie attaches our hearts to him by its simplicity; 
 his legendary conversation makes us, for a moment, 
 poets like himself *. 
 
 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 autho- 
 ritatively ; 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 dan- 
 ger of sinking into pedantry or rising into genius. Even 
 the fulness of knowledge has its tediousness. " It is 
 rare," says Malebranche, " that those who meditate 
 profoundly, can explain well the objects they have me- 
 ditated on ; for they hesitate when they have to speak ; 
 they are scrupulous to convey false ideas or use inaccu- 
 rate 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 serious- 
 ness kills their feeble animal spirits. Smeaton, 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. 
 
^■MMMHH 
 
 CONVERSATIONS OF MEN OF GENIUS. 133 
 
 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, ho »vever, 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 unex- 
 pected views of things in some humour of the moment. 
 
134 CONVERSATIONS OP MEN OF GENIUS. 
 
 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 confi- 
 dence, 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 amuse- 
 ment, 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 ori- 
 ginates 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 misre- 
 present 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 de- 
 lightful, 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 
 
CONVERSATIONS OF MEN OF GENIUS. 135 
 
 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 o-enius, have been remark - 
 able in society for a simplicity and playfulness almost 
 infantine. Such was the gaiety of Hume, such the 
 bonhommie 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 him- 
 self of, than of the features of his face. But what if 
 this intractable obstinacy be only resistance of cha- 
 racter ? 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 linguce" 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." Eras3IUS, that learned and charm- 
 ing writer, who was blest with the genius which could 
 enliven a folio, has well described himself, sum naturd 
 propensior ad jocos quam fortasse deceat: — more consti- 
 
136 SLOW-MINDED MEN NOT THE DULLEST. 
 
 tutionally inclined to pleasantry than, as he is pleased 
 to add, perhaps became him. We know in his inti- 
 macy 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 plea- 
 santry for those who knew not to prize a laughing 
 
 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 surren- 
 ders 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 
 
SLOW-MINDED MEN NOT THE DULLEST. 137 
 
 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 under- 
 standing," observes the wit. Chaucer, like La Fon- 
 taine, 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 agree- 
 able 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 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 con- 
 versed 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 
 jJroved to be the abler writers. He whose fancy is sus- 
 ceptible of excitement in the presence of his auditors, 
 making the minds of men run with his own, seizing on 
 
138 CONVERSATIONISTS NOT 
 
 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 ela- 
 borate 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 the 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 
 
THE ABLEST WRITERS. 139 
 
 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. When the delightful conver- 
 sationist wrote, the deception ceased. Denham, who 
 knew them both, hit off the difference between them : 
 
 " Had Cowley ne'er spoke, Killegrew ne'er writ, 
 Combin'd in one they had made a matchless wit." 
 
 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 canvass 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 
 
140 CONVERSATIONS OF GENIUS CONSIST 
 
 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 other- 
 wise have perceived the precious talent of your neigh- 
 bour : 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 V 
 
 Suffer a man of genius to be such as nature and habit 
 have formed him, and he will then be the most interest- 
 ing 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 
 
OF ASSOCIATIONS WITH ITS PURSUITS. 141 
 
 Cumberland, from personal intimacy, describes the 
 conversation of this man of genius. Even the tempe- 
 rate 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 inspi- 
 ration." 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 intro- 
 ducing 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 execut- 
 ing : " 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 elo- 
 quently instructive on that class of knowledge, or that 
 department of art, which reveals the mastery of their 
 
142 CONVERSATIONS OF GENIUS CONSIST 
 
 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 iEolian 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 conver- 
 sations 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 differ- 
 ent 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 
 
OF ASSOCIATIONS WITH ITS PURSUITS. 143 
 
 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 Yarro 
 in the country. Yarro 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 
 Yarro 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, observ- 
 ing, " Let us leave off inquiring after things which 
 cannot be heard without pain. Rather ask about what 
 we know, for Yarro' 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 Yarro, " 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 de- 
 signed 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 
 
144 CONVERSATIONS OF GENIUS. 
 
 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, Chester- 
 field, Lyttelton, 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 pro- 
 bably 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. That 
 theatre is large enough for my ambition." Such a scene 
 opens a beautiful subject for a curious portrait-painter. 
 These literary groups in the gardens of Pope, saunter- 
 ing, or divided in confidential intercourse, would furnish 
 a scene of literary repose and enjoyment, among some 
 of the most illustrious names in our literature. 
 
LITERARY SOLITUDE. 145 
 
 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 more happily framed for its busi- 
 ness. We do not hear these accusations raised against 
 the painter who wears away his days at 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 dis- 
 interested 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 cha- 
 racter, — to meditate, to compose, to read and to be tran- 
 
 L 
 
146 LITERARY SOLITUDE. 
 
 quil, 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, ad- 
 mired 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 enthu- 
 siasm, 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 
 
 
NECESSITY OF SOLITUDE. 147 
 
 when they shall allow their days to melt harmoniously 
 into each other, if they do not pass whole weeks toge- 
 ther 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 medita- 
 tion. 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 mad- 
 man," 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 communica- 
 tion 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 them- 
 selves 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 
 
 l2 
 
148 PLEASURES OP SOLITUDE. 
 
 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 retire- 
 ment 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 Lin- 
 ternum. 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 
 
INTERRUPTIONS FROM VISITORS. 149 
 
 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." Har- 
 rington, 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 retire- 
 ment 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 Yal chiusa. 
 
 The interruption of visitors by profession has been 
 feelingly lamented by men of letters. The mind, 
 maturing its speculations, feels the unexpected conver- 
 sation 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 amuse- 
 ment 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, " Yerily I have cleansed my heart in 
 vain, and washed my hands in innocency ; for all the 
 
150 INTERRUPTIONS FROM VISITORS. 
 
 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 avari- 
 cious of time, one of the learned Italians had a promi- 
 nent inscription over the door of his study, intimating 
 that whoever remained there must join in his labours. 
 The amiable Melancthon, incapable of a harsh expres- 
 sion, 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. 
 
INCONVENIENCES OF SOLITUDE. 151 
 
 " Quelquefois de facheux arrivent trois volees, 
 Que du pare a l'instant assi£gent les allees ; 
 Alors sauve qui peut, et quatrefois heureux 
 Qui sait s'echapper, a, quelque autre ignor£ 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*. 
 
 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 regu- 
 larities 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 
 
 * This curious advertisement is preserved in Dr. Birch's Life of 
 Boyle, p. 272. 
 
152 INCONVENIENCES OF SOLITUDE. 
 
 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." — " 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 con- 
 tinue to feel, that domestic solitude, however it may be 
 alleviated by the world, by study, and even by friend- 
 ship, 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." 
 
 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. 
 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 dis- 
 satisfied 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 com- 
 
INCONVENIENCES OF SOLITUDE. 153 
 
 plaint, 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 g&trie, 
 
 Au foible prix d'un eclat passager, 
 Vivre isol£s, sans jouir de la vie ! 
 Yingt ans d'ennuis pour quelques jours de gloire. 
 
 Such are the necessity, the pleasures, and the incon- 
 veniences 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. 
 
154 THE MEDITATIONS OF GENIUS. 
 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The meditations of genius. — A work on the art of meditation not yet 
 produced. — Predisposing the mind. — Imagination awakens imagina- 
 tion. — 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 prin- 
 ciple 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 
 
ON PREDISPOSING THE MIND. 155 
 
 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 meta- 
 physics curiously develops, offer many important regu- 
 lations 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 prac- 
 tical 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*." The result of this 
 inquiry would probably lay a broader foundation for 
 this art of the mind than we have hitherto possessed. 
 
 * I recommend the reader to turn to the whole passage, in John- 
 sou's Letters to Mrs. Thrale, Vol. I. p. 296. 
 
156 IMAGINATION AWAKENS IMAGINATION. 
 
 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 with- 
 drawing 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 con- 
 centrates the boundless landscape around him, and 
 patiently traces all nature in that small space. 
 
 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 became 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 ex- 
 hibits 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 under- 
 took any considerable enterprise, without animating his 
 
FEELINGS GENERATED BY MUSIC. 157 
 
 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 circum- 
 stance which has been recorded of many others. Lord 
 Bacon bad music often played in the room adjoining 
 his study : Milton listened to bis organ for his solemn 
 inspiration, and music was even necessary to Warbur- 
 ton. The symphonies which awoke in the poet sub- 
 lime 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 medita- 
 tion 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 
 
158 SLIGHT HABITS OF THE MIND. 
 
 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 Metas- 
 tasio, 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 ! remem- 
 ber 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; 
 
OF GOVERNING OUR THOUGHTS. 159 
 
 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. Mendelsohn, 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 per- 
 fect 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 require little 
 more than judgment and diligence. It is the mind only 
 in its fullness 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 to- 
 gether. Malebranche, Hobbes, Corneille, and others, 
 darkened their apartment, when they wrote, to concen- 
 trate their thoughts, as Milton says of the mind, " in 
 
160 DARKNESS AND SILENCE USEFUL. 
 
 the spacious circuits of her musing." It is in propor- 
 tion 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 in- 
 structed in a darkened apartment, he was aware of 
 this principle ; the boy would learn and retain what he 
 learnt ten times as well. We close our eyes whenever 
 we would collect our mind together, or trace more dis- 
 tinctly an object which seems to have faded away in 
 our recollections. The study of an author or an artist 
 would be ill placed in the midst of a beautiful land- 
 scape ; 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 apart- 
 ment close in front of an Irish turf-stock ; and our 
 comic writer was fully aware of the advantages of the 
 situation. " In all my hours of study," says that ele- 
 gant 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 
 
ARTS OF MEMORY. 161 
 
 wants no outward aid to cheer it. My father, I believe, 
 rather wondered at my choice." The principle ascer- 
 tained, the consequences are obvious. 
 
 The arts of memory have at all times excited the 
 attention of the studious ; they open a world of un di- 
 vulged 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. Inca- 
 pable 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 know- 
 ledge which he had stored up. John Hunter happily 
 illustrated the advantages which every one derives from 
 putting his thoughts in writing, " it resembles a trades- 
 man 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 
 m 
 
162 THE ARTS OF MEMORY. 
 
 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 
 day-time he verified the one and the other of these 
 operations, he had always found them true. Unques- 
 tionably 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 subor- 
 dinate one ; it seems only a grasping and accumulating 
 power, and in the work of genius is imagined to pro- 
 duce 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. 
 
MEMORY THE FOUNDATION OF GENIUS. 163 
 
 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 AVhitelocke, who had drawn up a great 
 work, entitled " Remembrances of the Labours of 
 "Whitelocke, in the Annals of his Life, for the Instruc- 
 tion of his Children." That neither of these family 
 books have 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 obser- 
 m2 
 
164 MEMORY THE FOUNDATION OF GENIUS. 
 
 vations 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 per- 
 forming 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 them- 
 selves, 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 morn- 
 ing 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 con- 
 ceived, 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 
 
MEMORY THE FOUNDATION OF GENIUS. 165 
 
 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 every thing 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 inven- 
 tions, 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 cha- 
 racter 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 devo- 
 tion to his own moral and literary excellence. 
 
166 INVENTIONS TO PRESERVE 
 
 " 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 ho 
 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 "Fault- 
 book," as Lord Shaftesbury would have called it, 
 was always carried about him. These books still 
 exist. An additional contrivance was that of journal- 
 ising 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 feel- 
 ing 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 sim- 
 plicity, opens to us that " variety of mechanical expe- 
 dients by which he secured and arranged his thoughts," 
 
THE MORAL AND LITERARY CHARACTER. 167 
 
 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 de- 
 puty." 
 
 Buffon laid down an excellent rule to obtain ori- 
 ginality, 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. 
 
168 THE MEDITATIONS OF GENIUS 
 
 Industry is the feature by which the ancients so fre- 
 quently describe an eminent character ; such phrases as 
 " incredibili industrial diligentia singulari" 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 bis 
 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 confu- 
 sion, 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 
 
DEPEND ON HABIT. 169 
 
 principle, and without a secret habit which they have 
 acquired, and which some have imagined, by its quick- 
 ness 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 mecha- 
 nical ; 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 Berni the burlesque poet, his existing manu- 
 scripts 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 com- 
 posed three times ;" and he describes the three stages of 
 conception, development, and versifying. " After these 
 three operations, I proceed, like other authors, to polish, 
 correct, or amend." 
 
170 OF THE NIGHT-TIME. 
 
 "All is habit in mankind, even virtue itself!" ex- 
 claimed Metastasio ; and we may add, even the medi- 
 tations 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 improvisatori poets, we are told, 
 cannot sleep after an evening's effusion; the rhymes 
 are still ringing in their ears, and imagination, if they 
 
OF THE NIGHT-TIME. 17 1 
 
 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 Black- 
 more, will ever find that his muse will visit his u slum- 
 bers 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 re- 
 gretted 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 em- 
 bassies, 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 travel- 
 ling in Italy, in Germany, and in England, where he 
 saw and consulted the learned, and examined their 
 curious libraries. He had all his life-time 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 " 
 
172 
 
 THE FACULTIES OF THE MIND. 
 
 with the beams of the morning, the mind suddenly 
 finds itself forsaken and solitary. Rousseau has uttered 
 a complaint on this occasion. Full of enthusiasm, he 
 devoted to the subject of his thoughts, as was his cus- 
 tom, the long sleepless intervals of his nights. Medi- 
 tating 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 papers, 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 inspira- 
 tion 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 recol- 
 lecting 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. 
 
 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 
 
WORKS OF MAGNITUDE. 173 
 
 faculties, in whatever degree they exist, are unques- 
 tionably 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, unob- 
 served 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 land- 
 scape, at the break of day, is wrapt in mist : at first, 
 the sun strikes on a single object, but the light and 
 warmth increasing, the whole scene glows in the noon- 
 day of imagination. How beautifully this state of the 
 
174 WORKS OF GENIUS 
 
 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, u 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." Winckelman 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 Tenser of the Port-Royal, was originally pro- 
 jected to teach a young nobleman all that was practi- 
 cally 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 com- 
 pelled to call in his friend Nicolle ; and thus a few 
 
FROM SLIGHT CONCEPTIONS. 175 
 
 projected pages closed in a Tolume 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 cen- 
 sures as too pompous. The Essay itself is lost, but it 
 w T as the first outline of that great design which he after- 
 wards 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 accumu- 
 lating 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 feli- 
 
MEDITATION EXERCISED AT ALL TIMES. 
 
 cities, which labour cannot afterwards produce, are con- 
 stantly perpetuated ; and these u studies," as they are 
 called, are as precious to posterity, as their more com- 
 plete 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 re- 
 flections." 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*. Among Lord Bacon's Re- 
 mains, we find a paper entitled " sudden thoughts, set 
 down for profit." At all hours, by the side of Vol- 
 taire'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, con- 
 stantly took notes and made comments. There is an 
 art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art 
 of writing. 
 
 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 
 
 * This anecdote is found in Ruft'head's Life of Pope, evidently given 
 by Warbur on, as was everything of personal knowledge in that taste- 
 less volume of a mere lawyer, who presumed to write the life of a poet. 
 
MEDITATION EXERCISED AT ALL TIMES. 177 
 
 contracted, his reply described this method of study. 
 Eh ! Io 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 
 Yinci has left a great number of little books which he 
 usually carried in his girdle, that he might instantly 
 sketch whatever he wished to recall to his recollections ; 
 and Amoretti discovered that in these light sketches, 
 this fine genius was forming a system of physiognomy 
 which he frequently inculcated to his pupils. 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 organised 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 observatioDS on the desert of waters ? 
 But the constant exercise of the mind by habitual prac- 
 tice 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 
 
 N 
 
178 CONTINUITY OF ATTENTION. 
 
 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. 
 
 To this habit of continuity of attention, tracing the 
 first simple idea to its remoter consequences, the philo- 
 sophical genius owes many of its discoveries. It was 
 one evening in the cathedral of Pisa, that Galileo 
 observed the vibrations of a brass lustre pendant from 
 the vaulted roof, which had been left swinging by one 
 of the vergers. The habitual meditation of genius com- 
 bined 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 re- 
 gular 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. 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MEN OF GENIUS. 179 
 
 Thus meditation draws out of the most simple truths 
 the strictness of philosophical demonstration ; convert- 
 ing even the amusements of school-boys, or the most 
 ordinary domestic occurrences, into the principle of a 
 new science. The phenomenon of galvanism was fami- 
 liar 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 demon- 
 strated in the two books of Archimedes, De insidenti- 
 bus in jluido, still extant ; and which a great mathe- 
 matician admires both for the strictness and the elegance 
 of the demonstrations. To as minute a domestic occur- 
 rence 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 pre- 
 paring in his apartment, that the cover of the vessel 
 being tight, was, by the expansion of the steam, sud- 
 denly 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 
 n2 
 
180 MEDITATIONS OF MEN OF GENIUS. 
 
 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. So- 
 crates 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 re- 
 cumbent 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 booksellers 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 exhibi- 
 tion, 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 recol- 
 lecting his thoughts for a few moments, " It must be 
 thus ; but I '11 go to bed before it is late." He had 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MEN OF GENIUS. 181 
 
 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 im- 
 pressions from our exterior sensations are often suspend- 
 ed by great mental excitement. Archimedes, involved 
 in the investigation of mathematical truth, and the 
 painters Protogenes and Parmeggiano 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 u Adonis," that he suffered his leg 
 to be burnt before the painful sensation grew stronger 
 than the intellectual pleasure of his imagination. Mon- 
 sieur 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 
 
182 MEDITATIONS OF MEN OF GENIUS. 
 
 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 de- 
 pends on patience : contemplate your subject long ; it 
 will gradually unfold till a sort of electric spark con- 
 vulses 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 pro- 
 gress 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. 
 
MEDITATIONS OF MEN OF GENIUS. 183 
 
 " Such is the character of my inind, 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 illusion 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. 
 
184 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-immola- 
 tions. 
 
 "We left the man of genius in the stillness of medita- 
 tion. 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 in- 
 adequately 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 mix- 
 ture of reality with imagination, is the effect experi- 
 enced 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 ex- 
 terior organs of sense are visibly affected — they even 
 
 
THE ENTHUSIASM OF GENIUS. 185 
 
 break out into speech, and often accompany their speech 
 with gestures. 
 
 In this equivocal state the enthusiast of genius pro- 
 duces his master-pieces. 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 toujour s 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 de- 
 scribes witches, " are imaginative," have often involun- 
 tarily betrayed, in the act of composition, those gestures 
 which accompany this enthusiasm. Witness Domeni- 
 chino 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- 
 
186 THE IDEAL PRESENCE DISTINGUISHED 
 
 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 per- 
 ceptions of the soul were as firm and clear as if she 
 were really the Constance or the Katherine whom she 
 only represented*. 
 
 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, at- 
 tempted 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 Berkley. " All 
 are pictures, alike painted on the retina, or optical sen- 
 sorium ! " exclaimed the enthusiast Barry, who only 
 saw pictures in nature, and nature in pictures. This 
 faculty has had a strange influence over the passionate 
 
 * The Lite Mrs. Siddons. She herself communicated this striking 
 circumstance to me. 
 
FROM THE REAL PRESENCE. 187 
 
 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 de- 
 scribed 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 our- 
 selves. Wondrous stories are told of the amatorial 
 passion for marble statues ; but the wonder ceases, and 
 the truth is established, when the irresistible ideal pre- 
 sence 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 pic- 
 ture," 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 me- 
 mory 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. 
 
188 THE SENSES ARE REALLY AFFECTED 
 
 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 per- 
 haps 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 movable 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 ! 
 
IN THE IDEAL WORLD. 189 
 
 A Homer and a Richardson*, like nature, open a 
 volume laro-e 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 recol- 
 lect that the whole is fictitious, have been surprised for 
 a moment by a strong conception of a present and exist- 
 ing scene. 
 
 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 per- 
 petuated his surprise by an interesting sonnet, the 
 circumstance had pased 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 
 
 * 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. 
 
190 THE RAPTURE OF DEEP STUDY 
 
 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*, 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." 
 
 We find Metastasio, like others of the brotherhood, 
 susceptible of this state, complaining of his sufferings 
 during the poetical sestus. " When I apply with atten- 
 tion, 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 Sh?kspeare's master- 
 tragedy. " He would not be commanded." When he 
 wished to compose the Installation Ode, for a consider- 
 
 * This famous and unparalleled ode was probably afterwards re- 
 touched ; 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. 
 
IN ART, SCIENCE, AND LITERATURE. 191 
 
 able 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 
 Tasso : — ' ' My respiration rose, I felt a rapid fire colour- 
 ing my face, and my voice changing had betrayed my 
 agitation. I was Eucharis for Telemachus, and Erminia 
 for Tancred. However, during this perfect transform- 
 ation, 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 
 
192 THE RAPTURE OF DEEP STUDY 
 
 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, 
 
IN ART, SCIENCE AND LITERATURE. 193 
 
 opening as it were on a sudden to genius, a great and 
 new system of things is discovered. It lias happened, 
 sometimes, that this single conception, rushing over the 
 whole concentrated spirit, has agitated the frame con- 
 vulsively. 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 Prosopopeia of Fabricius. — "I still 
 remember my solitary transport at the discovery of a 
 philosophical argument against the doctrine of transub- 
 stantiation," exclaimed Gibbon in his Memoirs. 
 
 This quick sensibility of genius has suppressed the 
 voices of poets in reciting their most pathetic passages. 
 — Thomson was so oppressed by a passage in Yirgil 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 improvi- 
 satori, 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 
 
194 ENTHUSIASM EXCITED ON BEHOLDING 
 
 ear, as it were, abstracted and intent, moderates each 
 impulse of his flowing numbers.*" 
 
 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. 
 
 There is a tender enthusiasm in the elevated studies 
 of antiquity. Then the ideal presence or the imagina- 
 tive 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 passage is curious. — " Canenti defixi exardent oculi, sudores 
 manant, frontis venae contumescunt, et quod mirum est, eruditae aures, 
 tanquam alienee et intentae, omneni impetum profluentium numerorum 
 exactissima ratione moderantur." 
 

 THE MONUMENTS OF DEPARTED NATIONS. 195 
 
 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." 
 
 o 
 
 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, hippo- 
 dromes, 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. Pomponius LiETUs, 
 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 immoveable, he dropped tears in the ideal presence 
 of Rome and of the Romans. 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 u Roma Sotteranea" is the production of a sub- 
 o2 
 
196 ENTHUSIASM IN GREAT 
 
 terraneous 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 me- 
 morials of an age and of a race, which were hidden 
 beneath the earth. 
 
 The same enthusiasm surrounds the world of science 
 with that creating 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 exer- 
 cised 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 con- 
 structed numerous species which had disappeared from 
 the globe. This sublime naturalist has ascertained and 
 classified the fossil remains of animals whose existence 
 
OPERATIONS OF GENIUS. 197 
 
 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 wonder- 
 ful. " 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 contempo- 
 raneous icith 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 ele- 
 vates 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 not only in the fine 
 arts, but wherever a great and continued exertion of the 
 soul must be employed. The great ancients, who, if 
 
198 ENTHUSIASM IN GREAT 
 
 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 paint- 
 ing 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 back some steps, col- 
 lects 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 com- 
 mand 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 enthu- 
 siasm 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 distin- 
 guished 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 
 
OPERATIONS OF GENIUS. 199 
 
 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 ex- 
 haustion, 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 destroy' d 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 
 
200 ILLUSIONS OF THE MIND OP GENIUS. 
 
 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 ex- 
 haustion 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 inte- 
 resting 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 
 
ILLUSIONS OF THE MIND OF GENIUS. 201 
 
 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 Male- 
 branche listening to the voice of God within him ; and 
 Lord Herbert, 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. 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 
 same ideal presence operated on the religious painter 
 Angeloni, who could never represent the sufferings of 
 Jesus without his eyes overflowing with tears. Des- 
 cartes, 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 w T ere as strong as Swedenborg'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 
 
202 ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 number of little armed men at his feet ; or Benvenuto 
 Cellini's, whose vivid imagination and glorious egotism 
 so frequently contemplated " a resplendent light hover- 
 ing over his shadow." 
 
 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 meta- 
 physicians 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 
 i o 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 govern- 
 able enough, and have found at length perfectly subdu- 
 able. In virtue of which victory I know better what 
 is in enthusiasts than they themselves ; and therefore, 
 
WAKING DREAMS OF GENIUS. 203 
 
 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 
 4 ' It is a sublime state of mind to which whole sects 
 have aspired, and some individuals appear to have at- 
 tained*." 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 ter- 
 rors, 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 incredu- 
 lous philosopher, some unlucky trick. 
 
 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 
 
 * Charles Butler has drawn up a sensible essay on il Mystical 
 Devotion." He was a Roman Catholic. Norris, and Dr. Henry 
 More, and Bishop Berkley may be consulted by the curious. 
 
204 EXHAUSTIONS OF GENIUS. 
 
 of cases. They see and hear what none but themselves 
 do. Genius thrown into this peculiar state, has pro- 
 duced some noble effusions. Kotzebue was once ab- 
 sorbed 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. Rous- 
 seau'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 con- 
 trived to protect its feebleness, he would break down 
 the institutions from which he has shrunk away in the 
 

 ILLUSIONS OF GENIUS. 205 
 
 loneliness of his feelings. Such is the insulating intellect 
 to 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 man- 
 kind 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 be- 
 trayed 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 mor- 
 gana, 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 in- 
 definite 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 
 
206 SELF-IMMOLATION OF GENIUS. 
 
 the independence of Greece, with the piety of a mission- 
 ary, 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 attri- 
 bute 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. Yast 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 im- 
 pediments 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. 
 
SELF-IMMOLATION OF GENIUS. 207 
 
 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 
 Athenas 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. 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 !" 
 
 The same enthusiasm inspires the pupils of art con- 
 sumed 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 
 
208 SELF-IMMOLATION OF GENIUS. 
 
 his feelings, already had made fatal inroads in his con- 
 stitution : 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 con- 
 sumption, 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 sen- 
 sibility 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 organised like themselves. 
 
 " 'Twas thine own genius gave the final hlow, 
 
 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, hut keener far to feel 
 He nursed the pinion which impcll'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, 
 
 
GENIUS CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT ENTHUSIASM. 209 
 
 and in the scholastic language of the day, not to perdere 
 mbstantiam propter accidentia. With a smile, the 
 martyr of study repeated a verse from Juvenal : 
 
 Nee 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 
 existino- with more than life about them. Yet " there is 
 
 o 
 
 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 un- 
 finished. 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 de- 
 sires, 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. 
 
 p 
 
210 LITERARY JEALOUSY PROPORTIONED 
 
 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 it3 
 malignancy. 
 
 Jealousy, long supposed to be the offspring of little 
 minds, is not, however, confined to them. In the lite- 
 rary republic, the passion fiercely rages among the 
 senators, as well as among the people. In that curious 
 self- description which Linn^us, 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 sha- 
 dowy 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 
 
TO THE DEGREE OF GENIUS. 211 
 
 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 contra- 
 dictions 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 in- 
 delicacy 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 con- 
 sulted 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 illumi- 
 nated his mind, did Petrarch coldly observe that he had 
 not been anxious to inquire after it, for intending him- 
 self 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 
 p2 
 
212 LITERARY JEALOUSY A PERPETUAL FEVER 
 
 idiom, which he did not consider an enviable merit. 
 Thus frigidly Petrarch could behold the solitary iEtna 
 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 desti- 
 tute 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 brother, 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 
 
AMONG AUTHORS AND ARTISTS. 213 
 
 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 Carracct, whom their cousin Ludovico for 
 so many years had attempted to unite, and who, during 
 the time their academy existed, worked together, com- 
 bining their separate powers. 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. 
 
 The history of artists abounds with instances of 
 
214 EXCESSIVE LITERARY JEALOUSY 
 
 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 Rey- 
 nolds 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 them- 
 selves. The dreadful story of Andrea del Cas- 
 tagno seems not doubtful. Having been taught 
 the discovery of painting in oil by Domenico Yene- 
 tiano, yet, still envious of the merit of the gene- 
 rous 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, 
 
AMONG AUTHORS AND ARTISTS. 215 
 
 P Non fu mai piu vednto da buon occkio da qaelli Na- 
 poletani : e li Pittori lo detestavano perche egli era ritor- 
 nato — mori con qualche sosjjetto di veleno, e questo non e 
 incerisimile perche I'interesso e un perfido tiranno." So 
 that the Neapolitans honoured Genius at Naples by 
 poison, which they might hare forgotten had it flou- 
 rished 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 Yinci, 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 ori- 
 ginal, it is said, was cut into pieces by the mad jealousy 
 of Baccto 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 dis- 
 ease. 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 con- 
 stitutes 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 
 
216 LITERARY JEALOUSY WITHOUT MALIGNANCY. 
 
 " 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 a3 well as he ? ' " 
 
 Addison experienced this painful and mixed emotion 
 in his intercourse with Pope, to whose rising celebrity 
 he soon became too jealously alive. 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 astonishment 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 proba- 
 ble that Raphael himself might have caught from them 
 his first feelings of ideal beauty. 
 
WANT OF MUTUAL ESTEEM. 217 
 
 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 pheno- 
 mena 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 de- 
 cides 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 
 Crebillon ; 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 him- 
 
218 WANT OF MUTUAL ESTEEM ORIGINATES IN 
 
 self 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 de- 
 scribed, with so much caustic facetiousness, the genius 
 of the Abbe Trablet : 
 
 " II 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 non- 
 sense." On the other side, poets undervalue the pur- 
 suits of the antiquary, the naturalist, and the metaphy- 
 sician, 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 sympathise, we may be sure that in both 
 these cases the parties will be found altogether deficient 
 in those qualities of genius which constitute the excel- 
 lence 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 
 
A DEFICIENCY OF ANALOGOUS IDEAS. 219 
 
 the severe mortification which the unfortunate trans- 
 lator of Camoens suffered from the person to whom he 
 dedicated " The Lusiad." This 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 Linn^us 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 pos- 
 sess 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 Stael was an experienced observer of 
 the habits of the literary character, and she has re- 
 marked how one student usually revolts from the other 
 
220 ORIGIN OF THE WANT OF MUTUAL ESTEEM. 
 
 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 judg- 
 ment. 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. 
 
SELF-PRAISE. 
 
 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 admi. 
 ration and their malignity.- 
 
 Vanity, egotism, a strong sense of their own suffi- 
 ciency, 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 
 
222 LOVE OP PRAISE INSTINCTIVE 
 
 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 for- 
 give 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 sensi- 
 tive 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 Stael. 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 depres- 
 sion 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 
 
IN THE NATURE OF GENIUS. 223 
 
 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 Stael, 
 an exquisite judge of the feelings of the literary cha- 
 racter, was aware of this change, which has rather 
 occurred in our manners, than in men of genius them- 
 selves. " Envy," says that eloquent writer, " among 
 the Greeks, existed sometimes between rivals ; it has 
 now passed to the spectators ; and by a strange sin- 
 gularity 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 con- 
 fidence 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 cre- 
 ative 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 
 
224 LOVE OF PRAISE INSTINCTIVE. 
 
 am dead, you will not soon meet with another John 
 Hunter," said the great anatomist to one of his gar- 
 rulous 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 * ; 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. 
 
 Nor is the vanity of Buffon, and Voltaire, and 
 
 * See it versified in Curiosilies of Literature. 
 
HIGH SELF-OPINION. 225 
 
 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 # . There is a curious 
 passage in the Purgatorio of Dante, where describing 
 the transitory nature of literary fame, and the variable- 
 ness 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 : 
 
 Cos! ha tolto l'uno all' altro Guido 
 
 La gloria della lingua ; e forse e nato 
 
 Chi V uno e P altro caccera di nido. 
 
 Thus has one Guido from the other snatch'd 
 
 The letter'd pride ; and he perhaps is bom 
 
 Who shall drive either from their nest\. 
 
 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 
 
 * See Quarrels of Authors, vol. iii. p. 113. 
 f Cary. 
 

 226 THE ANCIENTS OPENLY 
 
 advantage. If I am pardoned, I shall rejoice ; if blamed, 
 I shall endure it. 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 yet 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 
 tliey 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 
 
CLAIMED THEIR OWN PRAISE. 227 
 
 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. u Cicero," adds Plutarch, " praised himself with- 
 out 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 Timo- 
 theus, 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 were 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 
 Q2 
 
228 AN AUTHOR KNOWS MORE OF 
 
 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 
 beetle in a vega or garden, attacking its flowers, but 
 expiring in the very sweetness he would injure. The 
 inscription under Boileaus 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*. He always taxed a visitor by one of his 
 long letters. It was this intense self-delight which 
 produced his voluminous labours. 
 
 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 
 
 * I have observed them in Curiosities of Literature. 
 
 LS 
 
 a 
 
HIS MERITS THAN HIS READERS. 229 
 
 a predilection for some great work of no immediate 
 interest ; in a word, with many unpopular dispositions. 
 Yet we see them magnanimous, though defeated, pro- 
 ceeding with the public feeling against them. At 
 length we view them ranking with their rivals. With- 
 out having yielded up their peculiar tastes or their 
 incorrigible viciousness, they have, however, heightened 
 their individual excellencies. No human opinion can 
 change their self-opinion. Alive to the consciousness 
 of their powers, their pursuits are placed above impedi- 
 ment, and their great views can suffer no contraction ; 
 jpossunt 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 
 
230 AN AUTHOR KNOWS MORE OF 
 
 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 un- 
 lucky 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 con- 
 cludes 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 im- 
 moveable station, and shine with its expanded and 
 
HIS OWN MERITS THAN HIS READERS. 231 
 
 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 *." 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. 
 
 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 ima- 
 gined 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 vete- 
 ran genius, which, like the aloe, will flower at the end 
 of life. When Yirgil was yet a youth, it is said that 
 
 * I have sketched a character of Percival Stockdale, in Calamities 
 of Authors; it was taken ad vivum. 
 
232 AUTHORS ARE VERSATILE IN THEIR 
 
 Cicero heard one of his eclogues, and exclaimed with 
 his accustomed warmth, 
 
 Magna spes altera Romse ! 
 
 " 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 iEneid, 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 # . 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 eulo- 
 gised 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 
 
 * In Curiosities of Literature. 
 
ADMIRATION AND MALIGNITY. 233 
 
 avoid expatiating on the demerits of his expelled 
 patrons : " So difficult it is," adds the grave and digni- 
 fied historian, " for ourselves to observe that moderation 
 and those precepts which no man knew better than 
 Pontanus ; w T ho was endowed with such copious litera- 
 ture, and composed with such facility in moral philoso- 
 phy, and possessed such acquirements in universal 
 erudition that he had made himself a prodigy to the eye 
 of the world * ." The student, occupied by abstract 
 pursuits, may not indeed always take much interest in 
 the change of dynasties ; and perhaps the famous can- 
 celled dedication to Cromwell, by the learned Orientalist 
 Dr. Castell, 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 s^avans 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. 
 
 Their vengeance, as quickly kindled, lasts as long. 
 Genius is a dangerous gift of nature. The same effer- 
 vescent 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 
 
 * Guicciardini, Book II. 
 
234 AUTHORS ARE VERSATILE IN THEIR 
 
 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 vision- 
 ary 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 re- 
 siding 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's nose, which bled ; 
 and from that time, he was mortified at the court of. 
 Burgundy, by retaining the nick- name 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 
 Comines' Memoirs, blackened by his vengeance. Many, 
 unknown to their readers, like Comines, have had a 
 
ADMIRATION AND MALIGNITY. 235 
 
 booted head ; but the secret poison is distilled on their 
 lasting page, as we have recently witnessed in Lord 
 Waldeo-rave's Memoirs. Swift's perpetual malevolence 
 to Dryden originated in that great poet's prediction, 
 that " cousin Swift would never be a poet;" a predic- 
 tion which the wit never could forget. I have else- 
 where fully written a tale of literary hatred, where is 
 seen a man of genius, in the character of Gilbert 
 Stewart, devoting a whole life to harassing the indus- 
 try or the genius which he himself could not attain *. 
 
 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 un- 
 heeded 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 !" 
 
 * See Calamities of Authors. 
 
236 MALIGNITY OF AUTHORS. 
 
 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 remorse- 
 less 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 him- 
 self a tragedy which he found among his brother's 
 manuscripts. " Fratricide from literary jealousy," ob- 
 serves the relator of this anecdote, " was a crime reserved 
 for a modern French revolutionist *." There are some 
 pathetic 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 — 
 
 * Edinburgh Review, XXXV. 159. 
 
LITERARY MALIGNITY. 237 
 
 Peut-etre, avant que l'heure en cercle prornenee 
 
 Ait pose, sur l'ernail brillant 
 Dans les soixantc 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 sum- 
 moned to the guillotine ! 
 
238 DEFECTS OF GREAT COMPOSITIONS 
 
 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 sono- 
 rous 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 infelici- 
 ties 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 revis- 
 ing hand. He felt himself in the situation of his Sam- 
 son Agonistes, whom he so pathetically describes as, 
 
 u His foes' derision, captive, poor, and blind." 
 
 Even Locke complains of his " discontinued way of 
 
ATTRIBUTABLE TO DOMESTIC INFELICITIES. 239 
 
 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 des- 
 patched in haste. The learned Greaves offered some 
 excuses for his errors in his edition of Abulfeda, from 
 " his being five years encumbered with law-suits 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 law-suit, a 
 bankruptcy, a domestic feud, or an indulgence in crimi- 
 nal or in foolish pursuits, have chilled the fervour of 
 imagination, scattered into fragments many a noble 
 design, and paralysed the finest genius. The distrac- 
 tions 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 
 
240 DEFECTS OF GREAT COMPOSITIONS 
 
 avocations which had crossed him in the writing of c 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 unhap- 
 piness 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 dis- 
 coveries were raised both at home and abroad. Two 
 unexpected events in domestic life extinguished his 
 
ATTRIBUTABLE TO DOMESTIC INFELICITIES. 241 
 
 inventive faculties. After the loss of two wives, whom 
 he regarded with no common affection, he became un- 
 fitted for profound studies ; he carried his own personal 
 despair into his favourite objects of pursuit, and aban- 
 doned 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 occupa- 
 tion." 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 to practise. His miserable subservience to 
 these people was the real cause of his oppressed spirit 
 
 R 
 
the 
 the 
 
 242 OF A PASSION FOR 
 
 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 th 
 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 mentve 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 OCCUPATION. 243 
 
 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 iElian 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 circum- 
 stance recorded by the younger Pliny of Livy. In a pre- 
 face 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 indo- 
 lence, 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*. These are the minds 
 which are without hope, if they are without occupation. 
 
 Amidst the repose and silence of study, delightful to 
 the literary character are the soothing interruptions of 
 
 * This appears in one of his interesting letters first published in the 
 Literary Gazette, Oct. 20, 1821. 
 
 r2 
 
244 GRATITUDE OF GENIUS 
 
 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 Compte 
 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 dedi- 
 cation ; yet it was not the less sincere. If Necker failed 
 in the cautious reserve of private feelings, who will cen- 
 sure? 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 cams 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. 
 
 
FOR PARENTAL INSTRUCTION. 245 
 
 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 grati- 
 tude to his excellent father, who had formed him 
 not only to be a man of learning but a great cha- 
 racter. 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 
 Cheronsea has immortalized. The father of Gibbon 
 urged him to literary distinction, and the dedication of 
 the " Essay on Literature' 1 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." * 
 
 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. And when that son in the 
 revolution was led to the guillotine, he ascended in 
 
 * These lines have heen happily applied by Mr. Bowles to the father 
 of Pope. — The poet's domestic affections were as permanent as they 
 were strong. 
 
246 GRATITUDE OF GENIUS 
 
 silence, so impressed with his father's fame, that he only 
 told the people, " I am the son of Buffon ! " 
 
 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 mothers cha-^ 
 racter, 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 
 
FOR PARENTAL INSTRUCTION. 247 
 
 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 en- 
 tirely 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 precon- 
 ceived system, or implant by stratagem, or enforce by 
 application, with her may be only the watchful labour 
 of love. 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 fathers, 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. 
 
 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 
 
248 FAMILY- GENIUS. 
 
 conversation ; sympathy and emulation excited mental 
 exertion in the most agreeable manner." Evelyn, in 
 his beautiful retreat at Saye's Court, had inspired hii 
 family with that variety of tastes 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 de- 
 signed the frontispiece to his Lucretius : she was the 
 cultivator of their celebrated garden, which served as 
 u 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 co~ 
 louring the plants under his eye, formed occupations 
 which made the daughters happy and the sons eminent. 
 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 
 
 3 
 
 s 
 
FAMILY-GENIUS. 249 
 
 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 portraying her fraternal master in her 
 " Hindoo Rajah." 
 
 Nor are there wanting instances where this family- 
 genius has been carried down through successive gene- 
 rations : 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 1097, 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 con- 
 tinued a great work, " The Theatre of Human Life," 
 
 i which had been begun by his father-in-law, and which 
 
 i 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, 
 
 j 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. Our country may exult in 
 
250 MEN OF GENIUS NOT REVERENCED 
 
 having possessed many literary families — the Wartons, 
 the father and two sons ; the Burneys, more in num- 
 ber ; and the nephews of Milton, whose humble toroh 
 at least was lighted at the altar of the great bard. 
 
 No event in literary history is more impressive than 
 the fate of Qjtintilian; 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 — hienfaisance ; 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 pri- 
 vate esteem of the same man is often striking. In 
 
IN THEIR DOMESTIC CIRCLE. 251 
 
 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 returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, 
 and the amusements of life, his companions behold him 
 as one of themselves — the creature of habits and in- 
 firmities. 
 
 In the business of life the cultivators of science and 
 the arts, with all their simplicity of feeling and generous 
 openness about them, do not meet on equal terms with 
 other men. Their frequent abstractions calling off the 
 mind to whatever enters into its lonely pursuits, render 
 them greatly inferior to others in practical and imme- 
 diate observation. Studious men have been reproached 
 as being so deficient in the knowledge of the human 
 character, that they are usually disqualified for the 
 management of public business. Their confidence in 
 their friends has no bound, while they become the 
 easy dupes of the designing. A friend, who was in 
 office with the late Mr. Cumberland, assures me, that 
 he was so intractable to the forms of business, and so 
 easily induced to do more or to do less than he ought, 
 that he was compelled to perform the official business of 
 this literary man, to free himself from his annoyance ; 
 and yet, Cumberland could not be reproached with 
 any deficiency in a knowledge of the human character, 
 which he was always touching with caustic pleasantry. 
 
 Addison and Prior were unskilful statesmen ; and 
 Malesherbes confessed, a few days before his death, 
 that Turgot and himself, men of genius and philo- 
 sophers, from whom the nation had expected much, had 
 
252 MEN OF GENIUS NEGLECTFUL 
 
 badly administered the affairs of the state ; for " know> 
 ing men but by books, and unskilful in business, we 
 could not form the king to the government." A man 
 of genius may know the whole map of the world oi 
 human nature ; but, like the great geographer, may be 
 apt to be lost in the wood which any one in the neigh- 
 bourhood knows better than him. 
 
 " The conversation of a poet," says Goldsmith, " is 
 that of a man of sense, while his actions are those of a 
 fool." Genius, careless of the future, and often absent 
 in the present, avoids too deep a commingling in the 
 minor cares of life. Hence it becomes a victim to 
 common fools and vulgar villains. " I love my family's 
 welfare, but I cannot be so foolish as to make myself 
 the slave to the minute affairs of a house," said Mon- 
 tesquieu. The story told of a man of learning is pro- 
 bably true, however ridiculous it may appear. Deeply 
 occupied in his library, one, rushing in, informed him 
 that the house was on fire ! " Go to my wife — these 
 matters belong to her!" pettishly replied the inter- 
 rupted student. Bacon sat at one end of his table 
 wrapt in many a reverie, while at the other the crea- 
 tures about him were trafficking w T ith his honour, and 
 ruining his good name : " I am better fitted for this," 
 said that great man once, holding out a book, " than 
 for the life I have of late led. Nature has not fitted 
 me for that ; knowing myself by inward calling to be 
 fitter to hold a book than to play a part." 
 
 Buffon, who consumed his mornings in his old tower 
 of Montbar, at the end of his garden, with all nature 
 opening to him, formed all his ideas of what was passing 
 before him from the arts of a pliant capuchin, and the 
 
OF THOSE AROUND TEEM. 253 
 
 comments of a perruquier on the scandalous chronicle of 
 the village. These humble confidants he treated as 
 children, but the children were commanding the great 
 man ! Young, whose satires give the very anatomy of 
 human foibles, was wholly governed by his housekeeper. 
 She thought and acted for him, which probably greatly 
 assisted the " Night Thoughts," but his curate exposed 
 the domestic economy of a man of genius by a satirical 
 novel. If I am truly informed, in that gallery of satirical 
 portraits in his " Love of Fame," Young has omitted 
 one of the most striking — his own I While the poet's 
 eye was glancing from " earth to heaven," he totally 
 overlooked the lady whom he married, and who soon 
 became the object of his contempt ; and not only his 
 wife, but his only son, who when he returned home for 
 the vacation from Winchester school, was only admitted 
 into the presence of his poetical father on the first and 
 on the last day ; and whose unhappy life is attributed to 
 this unnatural neglect* : — a lamentable domestic cata- 
 strophe, which, I fear, has too frequently occurred amidst 
 the ardour and occupations of literary glory. Much, 
 too much, of the tender domesticity of life is violated 
 by literary characters. All that lives under their eye, 
 all that should be guided by their hand, the recluse and 
 abstracted men of genius must leave to their own 
 direction. But let it not be forgotten, that, if such 
 neglect others, they also neglect themselves, and are 
 deprived of those family enjoyments for which few men 
 
 * These facts are drawn from a manuscript of the late Sir Herbert 
 Croft, who regretted that Dr. Johnson would not suffer him to give 
 this account during the doctor's lifetime, in his life of Young, but 
 which it had always been his intention to have added to it. 
 
254 MEN OF GENIUS OFTEN 
 
 have warmer sympathies. "While the literary cha- 
 racter burns with the ambition of raising a great 
 literary name, he is too often forbidden to taste of thi: 
 domestic intercourse, or to indulge the versatile curiosity 
 of his private amusements — for he is chained to his 
 great labour. Robertson felt this while employed on 
 his histories, and he at length rejoiced when, after many 
 years of devoted toil, he returned to the luxury of reading 
 for his own amusement and to the conversation of his 
 friends. " Such a sacrifice," observes his philosophical 
 biographer, " must be more or less made by all who 
 devote themselves to letters, whether with a view to 
 emolument or to fame ; nor would it perhaps be easy 
 to make it, were it not for the prospect (seldom, alas ! 
 realised) of earning by their exertions that learned and 
 honourable leisure, which he was so fortunate as to 
 attain." 
 
 But men of genius have often been accused of 
 imaginary crimes. Their very eminence attracts the 
 lie of calumny, which tradition often conveys beyond 
 the possibility of refutation. Sometimes they are 
 reproached as wanting in affection, when they displease 
 their fathers by making an obscure name celebrated. 
 The family of Descartes lamented, as a blot in their 
 escutcheon, that Descartes, who was born a gentleman, 
 should become a philosopher ; and this elevated genius 
 was refused the satisfaction of embracing an unforgiving 
 parent, while his dwarfish brother, with a mind diminu- 
 tive as his person, ridiculed his philosophic relative, and 
 turned to advantage his philosophic disposition. The 
 daughter of Addison was educated with a perfect con- 
 tempt of authors, and blushed to bear a name more 
 illustrious than that of all the "War wicks, on her alliance 
 
ACCUSED OF IMAGINARY CRIMES. 255 
 
 to which noble family she prided herself. The children 
 of Milton, far from solacing the age of their blind 
 parent, became impatient for his death, embittered his 
 last hours with scorn and disaffection, and combined to 
 cheat and rob him. Milton haying enriched our na- 
 tional poetry by two immortal epics, with patient grief 
 blessed the single female who did not entirely abandon 
 him, and the obscure fanatic who was pleased with his 
 poems because they were religious. What felicities ! 
 what laurels ! And now we have recently learnt, that 
 the daughter of Madame De Sevigne lived on ill terms 
 with her mother, of whose enchanting genius she appears 
 to have been insensible ! The unquestionable docu- 
 ments are two letters hitherto cautiously secreted. The 
 daughter was in the house of her mother, when an 
 extraordinary letter was addressed to her from the 
 chamber of Madame de Sevigne, after a sleepless night. 
 In this she describes, with her peculiar felicity, the ill 
 treatment she received from the daughter she idolised ; 
 it is a kindling effusion of maternal reproach, and ten- 
 derness, and genius*. 
 
 Some have been deemed disagreeable companions, 
 because they felt the weariness of dulness, or the im- 
 pertinence of intrusion ; described as bad husbands 
 when united to women, who without a kindred feeling, 
 had the mean art to prey upon their infirmities ; or as 
 bad fathers, because their offspring have not always 
 reflected the moral beauty of their own page. But the 
 magnet loses nothing of its virtue, even when the 
 particles about it, incapable themselves of being at- 
 tracted, are not acted on by its occult property. 
 
 * Lettres in^dites de Madame de Sevigne, pp. 201 and 203. 
 
250 POVERTY OF LITERARY MEN 
 
 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. 
 
 Poverty is a state not so fatal to genius, as it is usually- 
 conceived to be. We shall find that it has been some- 
 times voluntarily chosen ; and that to connect too closely 
 great fortune with great genius, creates one of those 
 powerful but unhappy alliances, where the one party 
 must necessarily act contrary to the interests of the 
 other. 
 
 Poverty is a relative quality, like cold and heat, 
 which are but the increase or the diminution in our own 
 sensations. The positive idea must arise from com- 
 parison. There is a state of poverty reserved even for 
 the wealthy man, the instant that he comes in hateful 
 contact with the enormous capitalist. But there is a 
 poverty neither vulgar nor terrifying, asking no favours 
 and on no terms receiving any ; a poverty which an- 
 nihilates its ideal evils, and, becoming even a source of 
 pride, will confer independence, that first step to genius. 
 
 Among the continental nations, to accumulate wealth 
 in the spirit of a capitalist, does not seem to form the 
 prime object of domestic life. The traffic of money is 
 with them left to the traffickers, their merchants, and 
 their financiers. In our country, the commercial cha- 
 racter has so closely interwoven and identified itself 
 
IN WHAT DEGREE DESIRABLE. 257 
 
 with the national one, and its peculiar views have so 
 terminated all our pursuits, that every rank is alike 
 influenced by its spirit, and things are valued by a 
 market-price, which naturally admit of no such appraise- 
 ment. In a country where " The Wealth of Nations" 
 has been fixed as the first principle of political exist- 
 ence, wealth has raised an aristocracy more noble than 
 nobility, more celebrated than genius, more popular 
 than patriotism ; but however it may partake at times 
 of a generous nature, it hardly looks beyond its own 
 narrow pale. It is curious to notice that Montesquieu, 
 who was in England, observed, that " If I had been 
 born here, nothing could have consoled me in failing to 
 accumulate a large fortune : but I do not lament the 
 mediocrity of my circumstances in France." The 
 sources of our national wealth have greatly multiplied, 
 and the evil has consequently increased, since the visit 
 of the great philosopher. 
 
 The cares of property, the daily concerns of a family, 
 the pressure of such minute disturbers of their studies, 
 have induced some great minds to regret the abolition 
 of those monastic orders beneath whose undisturbed 
 shade were produced the mighty labours of a Mont- 
 faucon, a Calmet, a Florez, and the still unfinished 
 volumes of the Benedictines. Often has the literary 
 character, amidst the busied delights of study, sighed 
 I to bid a farewell sweet" to the turbulence of society. 
 It was not discontent, nor anv undervaluing; of general 
 society, but the pure enthusiasm of the library, which 
 once induced the studious Evelyn to sketch a retreat of 
 this nature, which he addressed to his friend, the illus- 
 trious Boyle. He proposed to form '* A college where 
 
258 POVERTY OF LITERARY MEN 
 
 persons of the same turn of mind might enjoy the 
 pleasure of agreeable society, and at the same time .pass 
 their days without care or interruption*." This aban- 
 donment of their life to their genius has, indeed, often 
 cost them too dear, from the days of Sophocles, who, 
 ardent in his old age, neglected his family affairs, and 
 was brought before his judges by his relations, as one 
 fallen into a second childhood. The aged poet brought 
 but one solitary witness in his favour — an unfinished 
 tragedy; which having read, the judges rose before 
 him, and retorted the charge on his accusers. 
 
 A parallel circumstance occurred to the Abbe Cotin, 
 the victim of a rhyme of the satirical Boileau. Stu- 
 dious, and without fortune, Cotin had lived contented 
 till he incurred the unhappiness of inheriting a large 
 estate. Then a world of cares opened on him; hi 
 rents were not paid, and his creditors increased. Drag- 
 ged from his Hebrew and Greek, poor Cotin resolved 
 to make over his entire fortune to one of his heirs, on 
 condition of maintenance. His other relations assuming 
 that a man who parted with his estate in his lifetime 
 must necessarily be deranged, brought the learned Cotin 
 into court. Cotin had nothing to say in his own favour, 
 but requested his judges would allow him to address 
 them from the sermons which he preached. The good 
 sense, the sound reasoning, and the erudition of the 
 
 * This romantic literary retreat is one of those delightful reveries 
 which the elegant taste of Evelyn abounded with. It may he found 
 at full length in the fifth volume of Boyle's Works, not in the second, 
 as the Biog. Brit. says, llis lady was to live among the society. " If 
 I and my wife take up two apartments, for we are to be decently 
 asunder, however I stipulate, and her inclination will greatly suit with 
 it, that shall be no impediment to the society, but a considerable advan- 
 tage to the economic part," &c. 
 
IN WHAT DEGREE DESIRABLE. 259 
 
 preacher were such, that the whole bench unanimously 
 declared that they themselves might be considered as 
 madmen, were they to condemn a man of letters who 
 was desirous of escaping from the incumbrance of a 
 fortune which had only interrupted his studies. 
 
 There may then be sufficient motives to induce such 
 a man to make a state of mediocrity his choice. If he 
 lose his happiness, he mutilates his genius. Goldoni, 
 with all the simplicity of his feelings and habits, in 
 reviewing his life, tells us how he was always relapsing 
 into his old propensity of comic writing ; " but the 
 thought of this does not disturb me," says he ; " for 
 though in any other situation I might have been in 
 easier circumstances, I should never have been so 
 happy." Bayle is a parent of the modern literary 
 character; he pursued the same course, and early in 
 life adopted the principle " Neither to fear bad fortune, 
 nor have any ardent desires for good." Acquainted 
 with the passions only as their historian, and living 
 only for literature, he sacrificed to it the two great 
 acquisitions of human pursuits, fortune and a family : 
 but in what country had Bayle not a family and a 
 possession in his fame? Hume and Gibbon had the 
 most perfect conception of the literary character, and 
 they were aware of this important principle in its 
 habits. " My own revenue," said Hume, " will be 
 sufficient for a man of letters, who surely needs less 
 money both for his entertainment and credit than other 
 people." Gibbon observed of himself, " Perhaps the 
 golden mediocrity of my fortune has contributed to 
 fortify my application." 
 
 The state of poverty then, desirable in the domestic 
 s2 
 
260 EXTREME POVERTY OF GENIUS. 
 
 life of genius, is one in which the cares of property 
 never intrude, and the want of wealth is never per- 
 ceived. This is not indigence ; that state which, how- 
 ever dignified the man of genius himself may be, must 
 inevitably degrade ! for the heartless will gibe, and 
 even the compassionate turn aside in contempt. This 
 literary outcast will soon be forsaken even by himself ! 
 his own intellect will be clouded over, and his limbs 
 shrink in the palsy of bodily misery and shame. 
 
 Malcsuada Fames, et turpis Egestas 
 Terribiles visu formse. 
 
 Not that in this history of men of genius we are 
 without illustrious examples of those who have even 
 learnt to want, that they might emancipate their genius 
 from their necessities ! 
 
 We see Rousseau rushing out of the palace of the 
 financier, selling his watch, copying music by the sheet, 
 and by the mechanical industry of two hours purchasing 
 ten for genius. We may smile at the enthusiasm of 
 young Barry, who finding himself too constant a 
 haunter of taverns, imagined that this expenditure of 
 time was occasioned by having money ; and to put an 
 end to the conflict, he threw the little he possessed at 
 once into the LifYey ; but let us not forget that Barry, 
 in the maturity of life, confidently began a labour of 
 years, and one of the noblest inventions in his art, a 
 great poem in a picture, with no other resource than 
 what he found by secret labours through the night, in 
 furnishing the shops with those slight and saleable 
 sketches which secured uninterrupted mornings for his 
 genius. Spinosa, a name as celebrated and perhaps as 
 calumniated as Epicurus, lived in all sorts of abstinence, 
 
EXTREME POVERTY OF GENIUS. 26 1 
 
 even of honours, of pensions, and of presents; which, 
 however disguised by kindness, he would not accept, so 
 fearful was this philosopher of a chain ! Lodging in a 
 cottage, and obtaining a livelihood by polishing optical 
 glasses, he declared he had never spent more than he 
 earned, and certainly thought there was such a thing 
 as superfluous earnings. At his death his small ac- 
 counts showed how he had subsisted on a few pence a 
 day, and 
 
 "Enjov'd, spare feast! a radish and an egg." 
 
 Poussin persisted in refusing a higher price than that 
 affixed to the back of his pictures, at the time he was 
 living without a domestic. The great oriental scholar, 
 Axquetil de Perron, is a recent example of the lite- 
 rary character carrying his indifference to privations to 
 the very cynicism of poverty ; and he seems to exult 
 over his destitution with the same pride as others would 
 expatiate over their possessions. Yet, we must not 
 forget, to use the words of Lord Bacon, that "judging 
 that means were to be spent upon learning, and not 
 learning to be applied to means," De Perron refused 
 the offer of thirty thousand livres for his copy of the 
 Zend-avesta. Writing to some Bramins, he describes 
 his life at Paris to be much like their own. " I subsist 
 on the produce of my literary labours without revenue, 
 establishment, or place. I have no wife nor children ; 
 alone, absolutely free, but always the friend of men of 
 probity. In a perpetual war with my senses, I triumph 
 over the attractions of the world or I contemn them." 
 
 This ascetic existence is not singular. Parini, a 
 great modern poet of Italy, whom the Milanese point 
 out to strangers as the glory of their city, lived in the 
 
262 EXTREME POVERTY OF GENIUS. 
 
 same state of unrepining poverty. Mr. Hobhouse has 
 given us this self-portrait of the poet : 
 
 " Me, non nato a perootere 
 Le dure illustri porte, 
 Nudo accorrk, ma libero 
 11 regno della morte." 
 
 Naked, but free ! A life of hard deprivations was 
 long that of the illustrious Linnaeus. Without fortune, 
 to that great mind it never seemed necessary to acquire 
 any. Peregrinating on foot with a stylus, a magnify- 
 ing-glass, and a basket for plants, he shared the rustic 
 meal of the peasant. Never was glory obtained at a 
 cheaper rate ! exclaims one of his eulogists. Satisfied 
 with the least of the little, he only felt one perpetual 
 want — that of completing his Floras. Not that Lin- 
 naeus was insensible to his situation, for he gave his 
 name to a little flower in Lapland — the Linncea Borealis, 
 from the fanciful analogy he discovered between its 
 character and his own early fate, " a little northern 
 plant flowering early, depressed, abject, and long over- 
 looked." The want of fortune, however, did not de- 
 prive this man of genius of his true glory, nor of that 
 statue raised to him in the gardens of the University 
 of Upsal, nor of that solemn eulogy delivered by a 
 crowned head, nor of those medals which his nation 
 struck to commemorate the genius of the three king- 
 doms of nature ! 
 
 This, then, is the race who have often smiled at the 
 light regard of their good neighbours when contrasted 
 with their own celebrity ; for in poverty and in soli- 
 tude, such men are not separated from their fame ; that 
 is ever proceeding, ever raising a secret, but constant, 
 triumph in their minds. 
 
OF LITERARY TASK-WORK. 263 
 
 Yes! Genius undegraded and unexhausted, may, 
 indeed, even in a garret glow in its career ; but it must 
 be on the principle which induced Rousseau solemnly 
 to renounce writing " par metier." This in the Journal 
 des Sqavans he once attempted, but found himself quite 
 inadequate to " the profession.* " In a garret, the 
 author of the " Studies of Nature," as he exultingly 
 tells us, arranged his work. " It was in a little garret, 
 in the new street of St. Etienne du Mont, where I 
 resided four years, in the midst of physical and domestic 
 afflictions. But there I enjoyed the most exquisite 
 pleasures of my life, amid profound solitude and an 
 enchanting horizon. There I put the finishing hand to 
 my ' Studies of Nature,' and there I published them." 
 Pope, one day taking his usual walk with Harte in the 
 Haymarket, desired him to enter a little shop, where 
 going up three pair of stairs into a small room, Pope 
 said, " In this garret, Addison wrote his • Campaign! ' " 
 To the feelings of the poet, this garret had become a 
 consecrated spot ; Genius seemed more itself, placed in 
 contrast with its miserable locality ! 
 
 The man of genius wrestling with oppressive fortune, 
 who follows the avocations of an author as a precarious 
 source of existence, should take as the model of the 
 authorial life, that of Dr. Johnson. The dignity of the 
 literary character was as deeply associated with his 
 feelings, and the " reverence thyself" as present to his 
 mind, when doomed to be one of the Helots of litera- 
 ture, by Osborn, Cave, and Miller, as when, in the 
 honest triumph of Genius, he repelled a tardy adulation 
 
 * Twice he repeated this resolution. See his works, vol. xxxi. p. 
 283 ; vol. xxxii. p. 90. 
 
264 OF LITERARY TASK-WORK. 
 
 
 of the lordly Chesterfield. Destitute of this ennobling 
 principle, the author sinks into the tribe of those rabid 
 adventurers of the pen, who have masked the degraded 
 form of the literary character under the assumed title 
 of " authors by profession " * — the Guthries, the 
 Ralphs, and the Amhursts. " There are worse evils, 
 for the literary man," says a living author, who himself 
 is the true model of the great literary character, " than 
 neglect, poverty, imprisonment, and death. There are 
 even more pitiable objects than Chatterton himself with 
 the poison at his lips." — " I should die with hunger, 
 were I at peace with the world ! " exclaimed a corsair 
 of literature, — and dashed his pen into the black flood 
 before him of soot and gall. 
 
 In substituting fortune for the object of his designs, 
 the man of genius deprives himself of those heats of 
 inspiration reserved for him who lives for himself; the 
 tnollia tempora fandi of Art. If he be subservient to 
 the public taste, without daring to raise it to his own, 
 the creature of his times has not the choice of his sub- 
 jects, which choice is itself a sort of invention. A task- 
 worker ceases to think his own thoughts. The stipu- 
 lated price and time /ire weighing on his pen or his 
 pencil, while the hour-glass is dropping its hasty sands. 
 If the man of genius would be wealthy and even luxu- 
 rious, another fever besides the thirst of glory torments 
 him. Such insatiable desires create many fears, and a 
 
 * From an original letter which I have published from Guthrie to 
 a minister of state, this modern phrase appears to have been his own 
 invention. The principle unblushingly avowed, required the sanction 
 of a respectable designation. I have preserved it in " Calamities of 
 Authors." 
 
OF LITERARY TASK-WORK. 265 
 
 mind in fear is a mind in slavery. In one of Shake- 
 speare's sonnets he pathetically laments this compul- 
 sion of his necessities which forced him to the trade of 
 pleasing the public ; and he illustrates this degradation 
 by a novel image. " Chide Fortune," cries the bard, — 
 
 14 The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds, 
 That did not better for my life provide 
 Than public means which public manners breeds ; 
 Thence comes it that my name receives a brand ; 
 And almost thence my nature is subdued 
 To ichat it works in, like the dyer's hand." 
 
 Such is the fate of that author, who, in his variety of 
 task-works, blue, yellow, and red, lives without ever 
 having shown his own natural complexion. We hear 
 the eloquent truth from one who has alike shared in 
 the bliss of composition, and the misery of its " daily 
 bread." " A single hour of composition won from the 
 business of the day, is worth more than the whole day's 
 toil of him who works at the trade of literature : in the 
 one case, the spirit comes joyfully to refresh itself, like 
 a hart to the water-brooks ; in the other, it pursues its 
 miserable way, panting and jaded with the dogs of 
 hunger and necessity behind *." We trace the fate of 
 all task-work in the history of Poussin, when called on 
 to reside at the French court. Labouring without in- 
 termission, sometimes on one thing and sometimes on 
 another, and hurried on in things which required both 
 time and thought, he saw too clearly the fatal tendency 
 of such a life, and exclaimed with ill-suppressed bitter- 
 ness, " If I stay long in this country, I shall turn dauber 
 like the rest here." The great artist abruptly returned 
 to Rome to regain the possession of his own thoughts. 
 
 * Quarterly Review, vol. viii. p. 538. 
 
266 OF GRATUITOUS LITERARY WORKS. 
 
 It has been a question with some, more indeed abroad 
 than at home, whether the art of instructing mankind 
 by the press would not be less suspicious in its character, 
 were it less interested in one of its prevalent motives ? 
 Some noble self-denials of this kind are recorded. The 
 principle of emolument will produce the industry which 
 furnishes works for popular demand ; but it is only the 
 principle of honour which can produce the lasting works 
 of genius. Boileau seems to censure Racine for having 
 accepted money for one of his dramas, while he, who 
 was not rich, gave away his polished poems to the 
 public. He seems desirous of raising the art of writing 
 to a more disinterested profession than any other, re- 
 quiring no fees for the professors. Olivet presented 
 his elaborate edition of Cicero to the world, requiring 
 no other remuneration than its glory. Milton did not 
 compose his immortal work for his trivial copyright ; 
 and Linnaeus sold his labours for a single ducat. The 
 Abbe Mably, the author of many political and moral 
 works, lived on little, and would accept only a few 
 presentation-copies from the booksellers. But, since 
 we have become a nation of book-collectors, and since 
 there exists, as Mr. Coleridge describes it, "a reading 
 public," — this principle of honour is altered. Wealthy, 
 and even noble authors are proud to receive the largest 
 tribute to their genius, because this tribute is the cer- 
 tain evidence of the number who pay it. The property 
 of a book, therefore, represents to the literary candidate 
 the collective force of the thousands of voters on whose 
 favour his claims can only exist. This change in the 
 affairs of the literary republic, in our country, was felt 
 by Gibbon, who has fixed on " the patronage of book- 
 
" PATRONAGE OF BOOKSELLERS." 267 
 
 sellers " as the standard of public opinion : " the mea- 
 sure of their liberality," he says, " is the least ambigu- 
 ous test of our common success." The philosopher 
 accepted it as a substitute for that " friendship or favour 
 of princes, of which he could not boast." The same 
 opinion was held by Johnson. Yet, looking on the 
 present state of English literature, the most profuse, 
 perhaps, in Europe, we cannot refrain from thinking, 
 that the u patronage of booksellers" is frequently inju- 
 rious to the great interests of literature. 
 
 The dealers in enormous speculative purchases are 
 only subservient to the spirit of the times. If they are 
 the purveyors, they are also the panders of public taste ; 
 and their vaunted patronage only extends to popular 
 subjects ; while their urgent demands are sure to pro- 
 duce hasty manufactures. A precious work on a recon- 
 dite subject, which may have consumed the life of its 
 author, no bookseller can patronise ; and whenever such 
 a work is published, the author has rarely survived the 
 long season of the public's neglect. While popular 
 works, after some few years of celebrity, have at length 
 been discovered not worth the repairs nor the renewal of 
 their lease of fame, the neglected work of a nobler design 
 rises in value and rarity. The literary work which 
 requires the greatest skill and difficulty, and the longest 
 labour, is not commercially valued with that hasty, 
 spurious novelty, for which the taste of the public is 
 craving, from the strength of its disease rather than of 
 
 O 7 o 
 
 its appetite. Rousseau observed, that his musical opera, 
 the work of five or six weeks, brought him as much 
 money as he had received for his " Emile," which had 
 cost him twenty years of meditation, and three years of 
 
268 LITERATURE INADEQUATELY REWARDED. 
 
 composition. This single fact represents a hundred. 
 So fallacious are public opinion, and the patronage of 
 booksellers ! 
 
 Such, then, is the inadequate remuneration of a life 
 devoted to literature ; and notwithstanding the more 
 general interest excited by its productions within the 
 last century, it has not essentially altered their situation 
 in society ; for who is deceived by the trivial exultation 
 of the gay sparkling scribbler who lately assured us that 
 authors now dip their pens in silver ink-standishes, and 
 have a valet for an amanuensis ? Fashionable writers 
 must necessarily get out of fashion ; it is the inevitable 
 fate of the material and the manufacturer. An elee- 
 mosynary fund can provide no permanent relief for the 
 age and sorrows of the unhappy men of science and 
 literature ; and an author may even have composed a 
 work which shall be read by the next generation as 
 well as the present, and still be left in a state even of 
 pauperism. These victims perish in silence ! No one 
 has attempted to suggest even a palliative for this great 
 evil ; and when I asked the greatest genius of our age 
 to propose some relief for this general suffering, a sad 
 and convulsive nod, a shrug that sympathised with the 
 misery of so many brothers, and an avowal that even he 
 could not invent one, was all that genius had to alleviate 
 the forlorn state of the literary character*. 
 
 The only man of genius who has thrown out a hint 
 for improving the situation of the literary man, is Adam 
 Smith. In that passage in his " Wealth of Nations" 
 
 * It was the late Sir Walter Scott — if I could assign the date of 
 this conversation, it would throw some light on what might he then 
 passing in his own mind. 
 
LITERATURE INADEQUATELY REWARDED. 269 
 
 to which I have already referred, he says, that " Before 
 the invention of the art of printing, the only employ- 
 ment by which a man of letters could make anything by 
 his talents was that of a public or a private teacher, or 
 by communicating to other people the various and useful 
 knowledge which he had acquired himself; and this 
 surely is a more honourable, a more useful, and in 
 general even a more profitable employment than that 
 other of writing for a bookseller, to which the art of 
 printing has given occasion." We see the political 
 economist, alike insensible to the dignity of the literary 
 character, incapable of taking a just view of its glorious 
 avocation. To obviate the personal wants attached to 
 the occupations of an author, he would, more effectually 
 than skilfully, get rid of authorship itself. This is not to 
 restore the limb, but to amputate it. It is not the pre- 
 servation of existence, but its annihilation. His friends 
 Hume and Robertson must have turned from this page 
 humiliated and indignant. They could have supplied 
 Adam Smith with a truer conception of the literary cha- 
 racter, of its independence, its influence, and its glory. 
 I have projected a plan for the alleviation of the state 
 of those authors who are not blessed with a patrimony. 
 The trade connected with literature is carried on by men 
 who are usually not literate, and the generality of the 
 publishers of books, unlike all other tradesmen, are 
 often the worst judges of their own wares. Were it 
 practicable, as I believe it to be, that authors and men 
 of letters could themselves be booksellers, the public 
 would derive this immediate benefit from the scheme ; 
 a deluge of worthless or indifferent books would be 
 turned away, and the name of the literary publisher 
 
270 PROJECT TO PROVIDE AGAINST 
 
 would be a pledge for the value of every new book. 
 
 Every literary man would choose his own favourite 
 department, and we should learn from him as well as 
 
 from his books. 
 
 Against this project it may be urged, that literary 
 men are ill adapted to attend to the regular details of 
 trade, and that the great capitalists in the book-business 
 have not been men of literature. But this plan is not 
 suggested for accumulating a great fortune, or for the 
 purpose of raising up a new class of tradesmen. It is 
 not designed to make authors wealthy, for that would 
 inevitably extinguish great literary exertion, but only 
 to make them independent, as the best means to preserve 
 exertion. The details of trade are not even to reach 
 him. The poet Gesner, a bookseller, left his librairie 
 to the care of his admirable wife. His own works, the 
 elegant editions which issued from his press, and the 
 value of manuscripts, were the objects of his attention. 
 On the Continent many of the dealers in books have 
 been literary men. At the memorable expulsion of the 
 French protestants on the edict of Nantes, their ex- 
 patriated literary men flew to the shores of England, 
 and the free provinces of Holland ; and it was in 
 Holland that this colony of litterateurs established 
 magnificent printing-houses, and furnished Europe with 
 editions of the native writers of France, often preferable 
 to the originals, and even wrote the best works of that 
 time. At that memorable period in our own history, 
 when two thousand non-conformists were ejected on St. 
 Bartholomew's day from the national establishment, the 
 greater part were men of learning, who, deprived of 
 their livings, were destitute of any means of existence. 
 
EXTREME POVERTY AMONG LITERARY MEN. 271 
 
 These scholars were compelled to look to some profitable 
 occupation, and for the greater part they fixed on trades 
 connected with literature ; some became eminent book- 
 sellers and continued to be voluminous writers, without 
 finding their studies interrupted by their commercial 
 arrangements. The details of trade must be left to 
 others ; the hand of a child can turn a vast machine, and 
 the object here proposed would be lost, if authors sought 
 to become merely booksellers. 
 
 Whenever the public of Europe shall witness such a 
 new order of men among their booksellers, they will 
 have less to read, but more to remember. Their opinions 
 will be less fluctuating, and their knowledge will come 
 to them with more maturity. Men of letters will fly to 
 the house of the bookseller who in that class of literature 
 in which he deals, will himself be not the least eminent 
 member. 
 
272 MATRIMONY NOT SUITED TO GENIUS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 The matrimonial state of literature. — Matrimony said not to be well 
 suiled 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. 
 
 Matrimony has often been considered as a condition 
 not well suited to the domestic life of genius, accom- 
 panied as it must be by many embarrassments for the 
 head and the he^rt. It was an axiom with Fuessli, the 
 Swiss artist, that the marriage state is incompatible 
 with a high cultivation of the fine arts ; and such appears 
 to have been the feeling of most artists. When Michael 
 Angelo was asked why he did not marry, he replied, 
 " I have espoused my art ; and it occasions me sufficient 
 domestic cares, for my works shall be my children. 
 What would Bartholomeo Ghiberti have been, had he 
 not made the gates of St. John? His children con- 
 sumed his fortune, but his gates, worthy to be the gates 
 of Paradise, remain." The three Caraccis refused the 
 conjugal bond on the same principle, dreading the inter- 
 ruptions of domestic life. Their crayons and paper were 
 always on their dining-table. Careless of fortune, they 
 determined never to hurry over their works in order 
 that they might supply the ceaseless demands of a 
 family. We discover the same principle operating in 
 our own times. When a young painter, who had just 
 
DOMESTIC LIFE OF GENIUS. 273 
 
 married, told Sir Joshua that he was preparing to pur- 
 sue his studies in Italy, that great painter exclaimed, 
 " Married ! then you are ruined as an artist !" 
 
 The same principle has influenced literary men. Sir 
 Thomas Bodley had a smart altercation with his first 
 librarian, insisting that he should not marry, maintain- 
 ing its absurdity in the man who had the perpetual care 
 of a public library ; and Woodward left as one of the 
 express conditions of his lecturer, that he was not to be 
 a married man. They imagined that their private affairs 
 would interfere with their public duties. Peiresc, the 
 great French collector, refused marriage, convinced that 
 the cares of a family were too absorbing for the freedom 
 necessary to literary pursuits, and claimed likewise a 
 sacrifice of fortune incompatible with his great designs. 
 Boyle, who would not suffer his studies to be inter- 
 rupted by " household affairs," lived as a boarder with 
 his sister, Lady Ranelagh. Newton, Locke, Leibnitz, 
 Bayle, and Hobbes, and Hume, and Gibbon, and Adam 
 Smith, decided for celibacy. These great authors placed 
 their happiness in their celebrity. 
 
 This debate, for the present topic has sometimes 
 warmed into one, is in truth ill adapted for controversy. 
 The heart is more concerned in its issue than any 
 espoused doctrine terminating in partial views. Look 
 into the domestic annals of genius — observe the variety 
 of positions into which the literary character is thrown 
 in the nuptial state. Cynicism will not always obtain 
 a sullen triumph, nor prudence always be allowed to 
 calculate away some of the richer feelings of our nature. 
 It is not an axiom that literary characters must neces- 
 sarily institute a new order of celibacy. The sentence 
 
 T 
 
274 CELIBACY A CONCEALED CAUSE OF THE 
 
 of the apostle pronounces, that " the forbidding to marry 
 is a doctrine of devils." Wesley, who published 
 " Thoughts on a Single Life," advised some " to remain 
 single for the kingdom of heaven's sake ; but the pre- 
 cept," he adds, " is not for the many." So indecisive 
 have been the opinions of the most curious inquirers 
 concerning the matrimonial state, whenever a great 
 destination has engaged their consideration. 
 
 One position we may assume, that the studies, and 
 even the happiness of the pursuits of men of genius, are 
 powerfully influenced by the domestic associate of their 
 lives. 
 
 They rarely pass through the age of love without its 
 passion. Even their Delias and their Amandas are often 
 the shadows of some real object ; for as Shakspeare's 
 experience told him, 
 
 " Never durst poet touch a pen to write, 
 Until his ink were temper'd with love's sighs." 
 
 Their imagination is perpetually colouring those pictures 
 of domestic happiness on which they delight to dwell. 
 He who is no husband sighs for that tenderness which 
 is at once bestowed and received ; and tears will start 
 in the eyes of him who, in becoming a child among 
 children, yet feels that he is no father ! These depri- 
 vations have usually been the concealed cause of the 
 querulous melancholy of the literary character. 
 
 Such was the real occasion of Shenstone's unhappi- 
 ness. In early life he had been captivated by a young 
 lady adapted to be both the muse and the wife of the 
 poet, and their mutual sensibility lasted for some years. 
 It lasted until she died. It was in parting from her 
 
QUERULOUSNESS OF MEN OF GENIUS. 275 
 
 that he first sketched his " Pastoral Ballad." Shen- 
 stone had the fortitude to refuse marriage. His spirit 
 could not endure that she should participate in that life 
 of self-privations to which he was doomed ; but his heart 
 was not locked up in the ice of celibacy, and his plain- 
 tive love-songs and elegies flowed from no fictitious 
 source. " It is long since," says he, " I have considered 
 myself as undone. The world will not perhaps consider 
 me in that light entirely till I have married my maid." 
 Thomson met a reciprocal passion in his Amanda, 
 while the full tenderness of his heart was ever wasting 
 itself like waters in a desert. As we have been made 
 little acquainted with this part of the history of the poet 
 of the Seasons, I shall give his own description of those 
 deep feelings from a manuscript letter written to Mallet. 
 " To turn my eyes a softer way, to you know who — 
 absence sighs it to me. What is mv heart made of ? a 
 soft system of low nerves, too sensible for my quiet — 
 capable of being very happy or very unhappy, I am 
 afraid the last will prevail. Lay your hand upon a 
 kindred heart, and despise me not. I know not what 
 it is, but she dwells upon my thought in a mingled 
 sentiment, which is the sweetest, the most intimately 
 pleasing the soul can receive, and w r hich I would wish 
 never to want towards some dear object or another. To 
 have always some secret darling idea to which one can 
 still have recourse amidst the noise and nonsense of the 
 world, and which never fails to touch us in the most 
 exquisite manner, is an art of happiness that fortune 
 cannot deprive us of. This may be called romantic ; 
 but whatever the cause is, the effect is really felt. Pray, 
 when you write, tell me when you saw her, and with 
 t2 
 
276 CELIBACY A CONCEALED CAUSE OF THE 
 
 the pure eye of a friend, when you see her again, 
 whisper that I am her most humble servant." 
 
 Even Pope was enamoured of a " scornful lady ; " and, 
 as Johnson observed, ," polluted his will with female 
 resentment." Johnson himself, we are told by one who 
 knew him, " had always a metaphysical passion for one 
 princess or other, — the rustic Lucy Porter, or the 
 haughty Molly Aston, or the sublimated methodistic 
 Hill Boothby; and, lastly, the more charming Mrs. 
 Thrale." Even in his advanced age, at the height of 
 his celebrity, we hear his cries of lonely wretchedness. 
 " I want every comfort ; my life is very solitary and 
 very cheerless. Let me know that I have yet a friend — 
 let us be kind to one another." But the u kindness" of 
 distant friends is like the polar sun — too far removed 
 to warm us. Those who have eluded the individual 
 tenderness of the female, are tortured by an aehing void 
 in their feelings. The stoic Akenside, in his " Odes," 
 has preserved the history of a life of genius in a series 
 of his own feelings. One entitled, " At Study," closes 
 with these memorable lines : 
 
 " Me though no peculiar fair 
 Touches with a lover's care ; 
 
 Though the pride of my desire 
 Asks immortal friendship's name, 
 Asks the palm of honest fame 
 
 And the old heroic lyre ; 
 Though the day have smoothly gone, 
 Or to letter' d leisure known, 
 
 Or in social duty spent ; 
 Yet at eve my lonely breast 
 Seeks in vain for perfect rest, 
 
 Languishes fur true content.^ 
 
 If ever a man of letters lived in a state of energy and 
 excitement which might raise him above the atmosphere 
 
QUERULOUSNESS OF MEN OF GENIUS. 277 
 
 of social love, it was assuredly the enthusiast, Thomas 
 Hollis, who, solely devoted to literature and to re- 
 publicanism, was occupied in furnishing Europe and 
 America with editions of his favourite authors. He 
 would not marry, lest marriage should interrupt the 
 labours of his platonic politics. But his extraordinary 
 memoirs, while they show an intrepid mind in a robust 
 frame, bear witness to the self-tormentor who had trod- 
 den down the natural bonds of domestic life. Hence 
 the deep "dejection of his spirits;" those incessant 
 cries, that he has " no one to advise, assist, or cherish 
 those magnanimous pursuits in him." At length he 
 retreated into the country, in utter hopelessness. " I go 
 not into the country for attentions to agriculture as such, 
 nor attentions of interest of any kind, which I have ever 
 despised as such ; but as a used man, to pass the re- 
 mainder of a life in tolerable sanity and quiet, after 
 having given up the flower of it, voluntarily, day, week, 
 month, year after year, successive to each other, to 
 public service, and being no longer able to sustain, in 
 body or mind, the labours that I have chosen to go 
 through without falling speedily into the greatest dis- 
 orders, and it might be imbecility itself. This is not 
 colouring, but the exact plain truth." 
 
 " Poor moralist, and what art thou ? 
 A solitary fly ! 
 
 Thy joys no glittering female meets, 
 No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets." 
 
 Assuredly it would not have been a question whether 
 these literary characters should have married, had not 
 Montaigne, when a widower, declared that " he would 
 not marry a second time, though it were wisdom itself ;" 
 
278 UNHAPPY UNIONS. 
 
 but the airy Gascon has not disclosed how far Madame 
 was concerned in this anathema. 
 
 If the literary man unite himself to a woman whose 
 taste and whose temper are adverse to his pursuits, he 
 must courageously prepare for a martyrdom. Should a 
 female mathematician be united to a poet, it is probable 
 that she would be left amidst her abstractions, to demon- 
 strate to herself how many a specious diagram fails when 
 brought into its mechanical operation ; or discovering 
 the infinite varieties of a curve, she might take occasion 
 to deduce her husband's versatility. If she become as 
 jealous of his books as other wives might be of his 
 mistresses, she may act the virago even over his inno- 
 cent papers. The wife of Bishop Cooper, while her 
 husband was employed on his Lexicon, one day con- 
 signed the volume of many years to the flames, and ob- 
 liged that scholar to begin a second siege of Troy in a 
 second Lexicon. The wife of Whitelocke often de- 
 stroyed his MSS., and the marks of her nails have come 
 down to posterity in the numerous lacerations still 
 gaping in his " Memorials." The learned Sir Henry 
 Saville, who devoted more than half his life, and nearly 
 ten thousand pounds, to his magnificent edition of St. 
 Chrysostom, led a very uneasy life between the saint 
 and her ladyship. What with her tenderness for him, 
 and her own want of amusement, Saint Chrysostom, it 
 appears, incurred more than one danger. 
 
 Genius has not preserved itself from the errors and 
 infirmities of matrimonial connexions. The energetic 
 character of Dante could neither soften nor control the 
 asperity of his lady; and when that great poet lived 
 in exile, she never cared to see him more, though he was 
 
UNHAPPY UNIONS. # 279 
 
 the father of her six children. The internal state of the 
 house of Domenichino afflicted that great artist with 
 many sorrows. He had married a beauty of high birth, 
 and extreme haughtiness, and of the most avaricious dis- 
 position. When at Naples, he himself dreaded lest the 
 avaricious passion of his wife should not be able to resist 
 the offers she received to poison him, and he was com- 
 pelled to provide and dress his own food. It is believed 
 that he died of poison. What a picture has Passeri left 
 of the domestic interior of this great artist ! Cosi fra 
 mille crepacuori mori uno de piu eccellenti artejici del 
 mundo ; cite oltre at suo valore pittorico avrebbe piu d'ogni 
 altri maritato di viver sempre per I'onesta personale. 
 " So perished, amidst a thousand heart-breakings, the 
 most excellent of artists ; who besides his worth as a 
 painter, deserved as much as any one to have lived for 
 his excellence as a man." 
 
 Milton carried nothing of the greatness of his mind 
 in the choice of his wives. His first wife was the 
 object of sudden fancy. He left the metropolis, and 
 unexpectedly returned a married man, and united to a 
 woman of such uncongenial dispositions, that the romp 
 was frightened at the literary habits of the great poet, 
 found his house solitary, beat his nephews, and ran away 
 after a single month's residence ! To this circumstance 
 we owe his famous treatise on Divorce ; and a party 
 (by no means extinct), who having made as ill choices 
 in their wives, were for divorcing, as fast as they had 
 been for marrying, calling themselves Miltonists. 
 
 When we find that Moliere, so skilful in human 
 life, married a girl from his own troop, who made him 
 experience all those bitter disgusts and ridiculous em- 
 
280 UNHAPPY UNIONS. 
 
 barrassments which he himself played off at the theatre ; 
 that Addison's fine taste in morals and in life could 
 suffer the ambition of a courtier to prevail with himself 
 to seek a countess, whom he describes under the stormy 
 character of Oceana, and who drove him contemptuously 
 into solitude, and shortened his days ; and that Steele, 
 warm and thoughtless, was united to a cold precise 
 " Miss Prue," as he himself calls her, and from whom he 
 never parted without bickerings ; in all these cases we 
 censure the great men, not their wives*. Rousseau 
 has honestly confessed his error. He had united him- 
 self to a low illiterate woman ; and when he retreated 
 into solitude, he felt the weight which he carried with 
 him. He laments that he had not educated his wife : 
 " In a docile age, I could have adorned her mind with 
 talents and knowledge, which would have more closely 
 united us in retirement. We should not then have feli 
 the intolerable tedium of a tete-a-tete ; it is in solitude 
 one feels the advantage of living with another who can 
 think." Thus Rousseau confesses the fatal error, and 
 indicates the right principle. 
 
 Yet it seems not absolutely necessary for the domestic 
 happiness of the literary character, that his wife should 
 be a literary woman. Tycho Brahe, noble by birth 
 as well as genius, married the daughter of a peasant. 
 By which means that great man obtained two points 
 essential for his abstract pursuits; he acquired an 
 obedient wife, and freed himself of his noble relatives, 
 who would no longer hold an intercourse with the man 
 who was spreading their family honours into more ages 
 
 * See " Curiosities of Literature," for anecdotes of "Literary 
 Wives." 
 
UNHAPPY UNIONS. 281 
 
 than perhaps they could have traced them backwards. 
 The lady of Wieland was a pleasing domestic person, 
 who, without reading her husband's works, knew he 
 was a great poet. Wieland was apt to exercise his 
 imagination in declamatory invectives and bitter ampli- 
 fications ; and the writer of this account, in perfect 
 German taste, assures us, " that many of his felicities 
 of diction were thus struck out at a heat." During this 
 frequent operation of his genius, the placable temper of 
 Mrs. Wieland overcame the orgasm of the German 
 bard, merely by persisting in her admiration and her 
 patience. When the burst was over, Wieland himself 
 was so charmed by her docility, that he usually closed 
 with giving up all his opinions. 
 
 There is another sort of homely happiness, aptly 
 described in the plain words of Bishop 1S t ewton. Pie 
 found " the study of sacred and classic authors ill agreed 
 with butchers' and bakers' bills ;" and when the prospect 
 of a bishopric opened on him, " more servants, more 
 entertainments, a better table, &c." it became necessary 
 to look out for " some clever sensible woman to be his 
 wife, who would lay out his money to the best advan- 
 tage, and be careful and tender of his health ; a friend 
 and companion at all hours, and who would be happier 
 in staying at home than be perpetually gadding abroad." 
 Such are the wives, not adapted to be the votaries, but 
 who may be the faithful companions through life, even 
 of a man of genius. 
 
 But in the character of the higher female we may 
 discover a constitutional faculty of docility and enthu- 
 siasm, which has varied with the genius of different ages. 
 It is the opinion of an elegant metaphysician, that the 
 
282 DOCILITY AND SUSCEPTIBILITY OF 
 
 mind of the female adopts and familiarises itself with 
 ideas more easily than that of man, and hence the facility 
 with which the sex contract, or lose habits, and accom- 
 modate their minds to new situations. Politics, war, 
 and learning, are equally objects of attainment to their 
 delightful susceptibility. Love has the fancied trans- 
 parency of the cameleon. When the art of government 
 directed the feelings of a woman, we behold Aspasia, 
 eloquent with the genius of Pericles, instructing the 
 Archons ; Portia, the wife of the republican Brutus, 
 devouring burning coals ; and the wife of Lucan, tran- 
 scribing and correcting the Pharsalia, before the bust of 
 the poet, which she had placed on her bed, that his very 
 figure might never be absent. When universities w^ere 
 opened to the sex, they acquired academic glory. The 
 wdves of military men have shared in the perils of the 
 field ; or, like Anna Comnena and our Mrs. Hutchinson, 
 have become even their historians. In the age of love 
 and sympathy, the female often receives an indelible 
 pliancy from her literary associate. His pursuits become 
 the objects of her thoughts, and he observes his own 
 tastes reflected in his family; much less through his 
 own influence, for his solitary labours often preclude 
 him from forming them, than by that image of his own 
 genius — the mother of his children ! The subjects, the 
 very books which enter into his literary occupation, are 
 cherished by her imagination ; a feeling finely opened 
 by the lady of the author of Sandford and Merton : 
 " My ideas of my husband," she said, " are so much 
 associated with his hooks, that to part with them would 
 be as it were breaking some of the last ties which still 
 connect me with so beloved an object. The being in the 
 
THE HIGHER FEMALE CHARACTER. 283 
 
 midst of books he has been accustomed to read, and 
 which contain his marks and notes, will still give him a 
 sort of existence with me. Unintelligible as such fond 
 chimeras may appear to many people, I am persuaded 
 they are not so to you." 
 
 With what simplicity Meta Mollers, the wife of 
 Klopstock, in her German-English, describes to Richard- 
 son, the novelist, the manner in which she passes her 
 day with her poet ! she tells him, that " she is always 
 present at the birth of the young verses, which begin 
 by fragments, here and there, of a subject with which 
 his soul is just then filled. Persons who live as we do 
 have no need of two chambers ; we are always in the 
 same : I with my little work, still ! still ! only regard- 
 ing sometimes my husband's face, which is so venerable 
 at that time with tears of devotion, and all the sublimity 
 of the subject — my husband reading me his young 
 verses, and suffering my criticisms." 
 
 The picture of a literary wife of antiquity has de- 
 scended to us, touched by the domestic pencil of genius, 
 in the susceptible Calphurnia, the lady of the younger 
 Pliny. " Her affection for me," he says, " has given her 
 a turn to books : her passion will increase with our days, 
 for it is not my youth or my person, which time gradu- 
 ally impairs, but my reputation and my glory, of which 
 she is enamoured." 
 
 I have been told that Buffon, notwithstanding 
 his favourite seclusion of his old tower in his garden, 
 acknowledged to a friend, that his lady had a consider- 
 able influence over his compositions : " Often," said 
 he, " when I cannot please myself, and am impatient at 
 the disappointment, Madame de Buffon reanimates my 
 
: 
 
 284 PICTURE OF A LITERARY WIFE. 
 
 exertion, or withdraws me to repose for a short interval 
 I return to my pen refreshed, and aided by her advice 
 
 Gesner declared that whatever were his talents, th 
 person who had most contributed to develop them was 
 his wife. She is unknown to the public ; but the histor 
 of the mind of such a woman is discovered in th 
 " Letters of Gesner and his Family." While Gesner 
 gave himself up entirely to his favourite arts, drawing, 
 painting, etching, and poetry, his wife would often 
 reanimate a genius that was apt to despond in its 
 attempts, and often exciting him to new productions, 
 her sure and delicate taste was attentively consulted by 
 the poet-painter — but she combined the most practical 
 good sense with the most feeling imagination. This 
 forms the rareness of the character ; for this same 
 woman, who united with her husband in the education 
 of their children, to relieve him from the interruptions 
 of common business, carried on alone the concerns of hi 
 house in la librairie. Her correspondence with her son 
 a young artist travelling for his studies, opens what an 
 old poet comprehensively terms " a gathered mind.' 
 Imagine a woman attending to the domestic economy 
 and to the commercial details, yet withdrawing out o 
 this business of life into the more elevated pursuits of h 
 husband, and at the same time combining with all this 
 the cares and counsels which she bestowed on her son 
 to form the artist and the man. 
 
 To know this incomparable woman we must hear 
 her. "Consider your father's precepts as oracles of 
 wisdom ; they arc the result of the experience he has 
 collected, not only of life, but of that art which he has 
 acquired simply by his own industry." She would not 
 
 lis 
 
PICTURE OF A LITERARY WIFE. 285 
 
 have her son suffer his strong affection to herself to 
 absorb all other sentiments. " Had you remained at 
 home, and been habituated under your mother's auspices 
 to employments merely domestic, what advantage would 
 you have acquired? I own we should have passed 
 some delightful winter evenings together; but your 
 love for the arts, and my ambition to see my sons as 
 much distinguished for their talents as their virtues, 
 would have been a constant source of regret at your 
 passing your time in a manner so little worthy of you." 
 
 How profound is her observation on the strong but 
 confined attachments of a youth of genius ! "I have 
 frequently remarked, with some regret, the excessive 
 attachment you indulge towards those who see and feel 
 as you do yourself, and the total neglect with which 
 you seem to treat every one else. I should reproach a 
 man with such a fault who was destined to pass his life 
 in a small and unvarying circle ; but in an artist, w T ho 
 has a great object in view, and whose country is the 
 whole world, this disposition seems to me likely to pro- 
 duce a great number of inconveniences. Alas ! . my 
 son, the life you have hitherto led in your father's house 
 has been in fact a pastoral life, and not such a one as 
 was necessary for the education of a man whose destiny 
 summons him to the world." 
 
 And when her son, after meditating on some of the 
 most glorious productions of art, felt himself, as he 
 says, " disheartened and cast down at the unattainable 
 superiority of the artist, and that it was only by re- 
 flecting on the immense labour and continued efforts 
 which such master-pieces must have required, that I 
 regained my courage and my ardour," she observes, 
 
286 
 
 PICTURE OF A LITERARY WIFE. 
 
 " This passage, my dear son, is to me as precious as 
 gold, and I send it to you again, because I wish you to 
 impress it strongly on your mind. The remembrance 
 of this may also be a useful preservative from too great 
 confidence in your abilities, to which a warm imagina- 
 tion may sometimes be liable, or from the despondence 
 you might occasionally feel from the contemplation of 
 grand originals. Continue, therefore, my dear son, to 
 form a sound judgment and a pure taste from your own 
 observations : your mind, while yet young and flexible, 
 may receive whatever impressions you wish. Be careful 
 that your abilities do not inspire in you too much con- 
 fidence, lest it should happen to you as it has to many 
 others, that they have never possessed any greater merit 
 than that of having good abilities." 
 
 One more extract, to preserve an incident which may 
 touch the heart of genius. This extraordinary woman, 
 whose characteristic is that of strong sense combined 
 with delicacy of feeling, would check her German sen- 
 timentality at the moment she was betraying those 
 emotions in which the imagination is so powerfully 
 mixed up with the associated feelings. Arriving at 
 their cottage at Sihlwald, she proceeds — " On entering 
 the parlour three small pictures, painted by you, met 
 my eyes. I passed some time in contemplating them. 
 It is now a year, thought I, since I saw him trace these 
 pleasing forms ; he whistled and sang, and I saw them 
 grow under his pencil ; now he is far, far from us. — In 
 short, I had the weakness to press my lips on one of 
 these pictures. You well know, my dear son, that 
 am not much addicted to scenes of a sentimental turn 
 but to-day, while I considered your works, I could not 
 
 
PICTURE OF A LITERARY WIFE. 287 
 
 restrain this little impulse of maternal feelings. Do 
 not, however, be apprehensive that the tender affection 
 of a mother will ever lead me too far, or that I shall 
 suffer my mind to be too powerfully impressed with 
 the painful sensations to which your absence gives birth. 
 My reason convinces me that it is for your welfare that 
 you are now in a place where your abilities will have 
 opportunities of unfolding, and where you can become 
 great in your art." 
 
 Such was the incomparable wife and mother of the 
 Gesxers ! Will it now be a question whether matri- 
 mony be incompatible with the cultivation of the arts ? 
 A wife who reanimates the drooping genius of her hus- 
 band, and a mother who is inspired by the ambition of 
 beholding; her sons eminent, is she not the real being 
 which the ancients personified in their Muse ? 
 
288 LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Literary friendships — In early life — Different from those of men of 
 the world. — They suffer an 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. 
 
 Among the virtues which literature inspires, is often 
 that of the most romantic friendship. The delirium of 
 love, and even its lighter caprices, are incompatible with 
 the pursuits of the student ; but to feel friendship like 
 a passion is necessary to the mind of genius alternately 
 elated and depressed, ever prodigal of feeling and ex- 
 cursive in knowledge. 
 
 The qualities which constitute literary friendship, 
 compared with those of men of the world, must render 
 it a sentiment as rare as love itself, which it resembles 
 in that intellectual tenderness in which both so deeply 
 participate. 
 
 Born " in the dews of their youth," this friendship 
 will not expire on their tomb. In the school or the 
 college this immortality begins ; and engaged in similar 
 studies, should even one excel the other, he will find in 
 him the protector of his fame ; as Addison did in 
 Steele, West in Gray, and Gray in Mason. Thus 
 Petrarch was the guide of Boccaccio, thus Boccaccio 
 became the defender of his master's genius. Perhaps 
 friendship is never more intense than in an intercourse 
 of minds of ready counsels and inspiring ardours. United 
 
LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS. 289 
 
 in the same pursuits, but directed by an unequal expe- 
 rience, the imperceptible superiority interests, without 
 mortifying. It is a counsel, it is an aid ; in whatever 
 form it shows itself, it has nothing of the malice of 
 rivalry. 
 
 A beautiful picture of such a friendship among men 
 of genius offers itself in the history of Mignard, the 
 great French painter, and Du Fresno y, the great critic 
 of the art itself. Du Fresnoy, abandoned in utter 
 scorn by his stern father, an apothecary, for his entire 
 devotion to his seductive art, lived at Rome in voluntary 
 poverty, till Mignard, his old fellow-student, arrived, 
 when they became known by the name of " the inse- 
 parables." The talents of the friends were different, 
 but their studies were the same. Their days melted 
 away together in drawing from the ancient statues and 
 the basso-relievos, in studying in the galleries of paint- 
 ings, or among the villas which embellish the environs 
 of Rome. One roof sheltered them, and one table sup- 
 plied then' sober meal. Light were the slumbers which 
 closed each day, each the pleasing image of the former. 
 But this remarkable friendship was not a simple senti- 
 ment which limited the views of " the Inseparables," 
 for with them it was a perpetual source of mutual use- 
 fulness. They gave accounts to each other of whatever 
 they observed, and carefully noted their own defects. 
 Du Fresnoy, so critical in the theory of the art, was un- 
 successful in the practical parts. His delight in poetical 
 composition had retarded the progress of his pictorial 
 powers. Not having been taught the handling of his 
 pencil, he worked with difficulty ; but Mignard suc- 
 ceeded in giving him a freer command and a more 
 u 
 
290 LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 skilful touch ; while Du Fresnoy, who was the more 
 literary man, enriched the invention of Mignard by- 
 reading to him an Ode of Anacreon or Horace, a pas- 
 sage from the Iliad or Odyssey, or the iEneid, or the 
 Jerusalem Delivered, which offered subjects for the 
 artist's invention, who would throw out five or six 
 different sketches on the same subject ; a habit which 
 so highly improved the inventive powers of Mignard, 
 that he could compose a fine picture with playful facility. 
 Thus they lived together, mutually enlightening each 
 other. Mignard supplied Du Fresnoy with all that 
 fortune had refused him ; and, when he was no more, 
 perpetuated his fame, which he felt was a portion of 
 his own celebrity, by publishing his posthumous poem, 
 De Arte Graphical; a poem, which Mason has made 
 readable by his versification, and Reynolds even inte- 
 resting by his invaluable commentary. 
 
 In the poem Cowley composed on the death of his 
 friend Harvey, this stanza opens a pleasing scene of 
 two young literary friends engaged in their midnight 
 studies. 
 
 " Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights ! 
 How oft unwearied have we spent the nights, 
 Till the Ledaean stars, so famed for love, 
 Wonder 1 d at us from above. 
 We spent them not in toys, in lust, or wine ; 
 But search of deep philosophy, 
 Wit, eloquence, and poetry ; 
 Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine." 
 
 Touched by a personal knowledge of this union of 
 genius and affection, even Malone commemorates, with 
 unusual warmth, the literary friendships of Sir Joshua 
 
 * La Vie de Pierre Mignard, par L'Abbe de Monville, the work ot 
 an amateur. 
 
LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS. 291 
 
 Reynolds; and with a felicity of fancy not often 
 indulged, has raised an unforced parallel between the 
 bland wisdom of Sir Joshua and the " mitis sapientia 
 Lasli." " What the illustrious Scipio was to Lselius, 
 was the all-knowing and all-accomplished Burke to 
 Reynolds;" and what the elegant Lselius was to his 
 master Panotitis, whom he gratefully protected, and to 
 his companion the poet Lucilius, whom he patronised, 
 was Reynolds to Johnson, of whom he was the scholar 
 and friend, and to Goldsmith, whom he loved and 
 aided. 
 
 Count Azara mourns with equal tenderness and 
 force over the memory of the artist and the writer 
 Mengs. " The most tender friendships would call forth 
 tears in this sad duty of scattering flowers on his tomb ; 
 but the shade of my extinct friend warns me not to be 
 satisfied with dropping flowers and tears — they are use- 
 ■ less; and I would rather accomplish his wishes, in 
 making known the author and his works." 
 
 I am infinitely delighted by a circumstance commu- 
 nicated to me by one who had visited Gleim, the German 
 poet, who seems to have been a creature made up alto- 
 gether of sensibility. His many and illustrious friends 
 he had never forgotten, and to the last hour of a life 
 prolonged beyond his eightieth year, he possessed those 
 interior feelings which can make even an old man an 
 enthusiast. There seemed for Gleim to be no extinction 
 in friendship when the friend was no more ; and he had 
 invented a singular mode of gratifying his feelings of 
 j literary friendships. The visitor found the old man in 
 a room of which the wainscot was panelled, as we still 
 see among us in ancient houses. In every panel Gleim 
 u2 
 
292 LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS DIFFER 
 
 had inserted the portrait of a friend, and the apartment 
 was crowded. " You see," said the grey-haired poet, 
 " that I never have lost a friend, and am sitting always 
 among them." 
 
 Such friendships can never be the lot of men of the 
 world ; for the source of these lies in the interior affec- 
 tions and the intellectual feelings. Fontenelle de- 
 scribes with characteristic delicacy the conversations of 
 such literary friends : " Our days passed like moments ; 
 thanks to those pleasures, which, however, are not in- 
 cluded in those which are commonly called pleasures." 
 The friendships of the men of society move on the 
 principle of personal interest, but interest can easily 
 separate the interested ; or they are cherished to relieve 
 themselves from the listlessness of existence, but as 
 weariness is contagious, the contact of the propagator 
 is watched. Men of the world may look on each other 
 with the same countenances, but not with the same 
 hearts. In the common mart of life intimacies may be 
 found which terminate in complaint and contempt ; the 
 more they know one another, the less is their mutual 
 esteem : the feeble mind quarrels with one still more 
 imbecile than itself ; the dissolute riot with the dissolute, 
 and they despise their companions, while they too have 
 themselves become despicable. 
 
 Literary friendships are marked by another pecu- 
 liarity ; the true philosophical spirit has learnt to bear 
 that shock of contrary opinions which minds less medi- 
 tative are unequal to encounter. Men of genius live in 
 the unrestrained communication of their ideas, and 
 confide even their caprices with a freedom which some- 
 times startles ordinary observers. We see literary men 
 
FROM THOSE OF MEN OF THE WORLD. 293 
 
 the most opposite in dispositions and opinions, deriving 
 from each other that fulness of knowledge which unfolds 
 the certain, the probable, the doubtful. Topics which 
 break the world into factions and sects; and truths 
 which ordinary men are doomed only to hear from a 
 malignant adversary, they gather from a friend ! If 
 neither yields up his opinions to the other, they are at 
 least certain of silence and a hearing ; but usually 
 
 " The wise, new wisdom from the wise acquire." 
 
 This generous freedom, which spares neither repri- 
 mands nor exhortation, has often occurred in the inter- 
 course of literary men. Hume and Robertson were 
 engaged in the same studies, but with very opposite 
 principles ; yet Robertson declined writing the English 
 history, which he aspired to do, lest it should injure the 
 plans of Hume ; a noble sacrifice ! 
 
 Politics once divided Boccaccio and Petrarch. The 
 poet of Yalchiusa had never forgiven the Florentines 
 for their persecution of his father. By the mediation 
 of Boccaccio they now offered to reinstate Petrarch 
 in his patrimony and his honours. Won over by the 
 tender solicitude of his friend, Petrarch had consented 
 to return to his country ; but with his usual inconstancy 
 of temper, he had again excused himself to the senate 
 of Florence, and again retreated to his solitude. Nor 
 was this all ; for the Visconti of Milan had by their 
 flattery and promises seduced Petrarch to their court ; 
 a court, the avowed enemy of Florence. Boccaccio, 
 for the honour of literature, of his friend, of his country, 
 indignantly heard of Petrarch's fatal decision, and 
 addressed him by a letter, the most interesting perhaps 
 which ever passed between two literary friends, who 
 
294 LITERARY FRIENDS BEAR MUTUAL 
 
 were torn asunder by the momentary passions of the 
 vulgar, but who were still united by that immortal 
 friendship which literature inspires, and by a reverence 
 for that posterity which they knew would concern itself 
 with their affairs. 
 
 It was on a journey to Ravenna that Boccaccio first 
 heard the news of Petrarch's abandonment of his 
 country, when he thus vehemently addressed his brother- 
 genius. 
 
 " I would be silent, but I cannot : my reverence com- 
 mands silence, but my indignation speaks. How has it 
 happened that Silvanus (under this name he conceals 
 Petrarch) has forgotten his dignity, the many conver- 
 sations we had together on the state of Italy, his hatred 
 of the archbishop (Yisconti), his love of solitude and 
 freedom, so necessary for study, and has resolved to 
 imprison the Muses at that court? Whom may we 
 trust again, if Silvanus, who once branded II Visconti as 
 the Cruel, a Polyphemus, a Cyclop, has avowed himself 
 his friend, and placed his neck under the yoke of him 
 whose audacity, and pride, and tyranny, he so deeply 
 abhorred ? How has Yisconti obtained that which King 
 Robert, which the pontiff, the emperor, the King of 
 France could not? Am I to conclude that you accepted 
 this favour from a disdain of your fellow-citizens, who 
 once indeed scorned you, but who have reinstated you 
 in the paternal patrimony of which you had been 
 deprived? I do not disapprove of a just indignation ; 
 but I take Heaven to witness, that I believe that no 
 man, whoever he may be, rightly and honestly can 
 labour against his country, whatever be the injury he 
 has received. You will gain nothing by opposing me 
 
REPRIMANDS AND EXHORTATIONS. 295 
 
 in this opinion ; for if stirred up by the most just indig- 
 nation, you become the friend of the enemy of your 
 country, unquestionably you will not spur him on to 
 war, nor assist him by your arm, nor by your counsel ; 
 yet how can you avoid rejoicing with him, when you 
 hear of the ruins, the conflagrations, the imprisonments, 
 death, and rapine, which he shall spread among us ?" 
 
 Such was the bold appeal to elevated feelings, and 
 such the keen reproach inspired by that confidential 
 freedom which can only exist in the intercourse of great 
 minds. The literary friendship, or rather adoration of 
 Boccaccio for Petrarch, was not bartered at the cost 
 of his patriotism : and it is worthy of our notice that 
 Petrarch, whose personal injuries from an ungenerous 
 republic were rankling in his mind, and whom even the 
 eloquence of Boccaccio could not disunite from his pro- 
 tector Yisconti, yet received the ardent reproaches of 
 his friend without anger, though not without maintain- 
 ing the freedom of his own opinions. Petrarch replied, 
 that the anxiety of Boccaccio for the liberty of his 
 friend was a thought most grateful to him ; but he 
 assured Boccaccio that he preserved his freedom, even 
 although it appeared that he bowed under a, hard yoke. 
 He hoped that he had not to learn to serve in his old 
 age, he, who had hitherto studied to preserve his inde- 
 pendence ; but in respect to servitude, he did not know 
 whom it was most displeasing to serve, a tyrant like 
 Yisconti, or with Boccaccio, a people of tyrants'*. 
 
 The unity of feeling is displayed in such memorable 
 associates as Beaumont and Fletcher ; whose labours 
 
 * These interesting letters are preserved in. Count Baldelli's Life of 
 Boccaccio, p. 115. 
 
296 UNITY OF FEELING. 
 
 are so combined, that no critic can detect the mingled 
 production of either; and whose lives are so closely united > 
 that no biographer can compose the memoirs of the one 
 without running into the history of the other. Their 
 days were interwoven as their verses. Montaigne and 
 Charron, in the eyes of posterity, are rivals, but such 
 literary friendship knows no rivalry. Such was Mon- 
 taigne's affection for Charron, that he requested him by 
 his will to bear the arms of the Montaignes ; and Char- 
 ron evinced his gratitude to the manes of his departed 
 friend, by leaving his fortune to the sister of Montaigne. 
 How pathetically Erasmus mourns over the death of 
 his beloved Sir Thomas More ! — " In Moro mihi videor 
 extinctus" — " I seem to see myself extinct in More." 
 It was a melancholy presage of his own death, which 
 shortly after followed. The Doric sweetness and sim- 
 plicity of old Isaac Walton, the angler, were reflected 
 in a mind as clear and generous, when Charles Cotton 
 continued the feelings, rather than the little work of 
 "Walton. Metastasio and Farinelli called each other 
 il Gemello, the Twin ; and both delighted to trace the 
 resemblance of their lives and fates, and the perpetual 
 alliance of the verse and the voice. The famous John 
 Baptista Porta had a love of the mysterious parts of 
 sciences, such as physiognomy, natural magic, the cryp- 
 tical arts of writing, and projected many curious inven- 
 tions which astonished his age, and which we have 
 carried to perfection. This extraordinary man saw his 
 fame somewhat diminished by a rumour that his brother 
 John Yincent had a great share in the composition of 
 his works ; but this never disturbed him, and Peiresc, 
 in an interesting account of a visit to this celebrated 
 
UNITY OF FEELING. 297 
 
 Neapolitan, observed, that though now aged and grey- 
 haired, he treated his younger brother as a son. These 
 single-hearted brothers, who would not marry that they 
 might never be separated, knew of but one fame, and 
 that was the fame of Porta. 
 
 Goguet, the author of " The Origin of the Arts and 
 Sciences," bequeathed his MSS. and his books to his 
 friend Fugere, with whom he had long united his affec- 
 tions and his studies, that his surviving friend might 
 proceed with them : but the author had died of a slow 
 and painful disorder, which Fugere had watched by his 
 side, in silent despair. The sight of those MSS. and 
 books was the friend's death-stroke ; half his soul, 
 which had once given them animation, was parted from 
 him, and a few weeks terminated his own days. When 
 Lloyd heard of the death of Churchill, he neither 
 wished to survive him, nor did. The Abbe de St. Pierre 
 gave an interesting proof of literary friendship for 
 Varignon the geometrician. They were of congenial 
 dispositions, and St. Pierre, when he went to Paris, 
 could not endure to part with Yarignon, who was too 
 poor to accompany him ; and St. Pierre was not rich. 
 A certain income, however moderate, was necessary for 
 the tranquil pursuits of geometry. St. Pierre presented 
 Yarignon with a portion of his small income, accom- 
 panied by that delicacy of feeling which men of genius 
 who know each other can best conceive : " I do not give 
 it you," said St. Pierre, " as a salary but as an annuity, 
 that you may be independent, and quit me when you 
 dislike me." The same circumstance occurred between 
 Akenside and Dyson. Dyson, when the poet was in 
 great danger of adding one more illustrious name to the 
 
298 SYMPATHY OF FEELINGS NOT OF MANNERS 
 
 " Calamities of Authors," interposed between him and 
 ill-fortune, by allowing him an annuity of three hundred 
 a year ; and, when he found the fame of his literary 
 friend attacked, although not in the habit of composi- 
 tion, he published a defence of his poetical and philoso- 
 phical character. The name and character of Dyson 
 have been suffered to die away, without a single tribute 
 of even biographical sympathy ; as that of Longueville 
 the modest patron of Butler, in whom that great 
 political satirist found what the careless ingratitude of 
 a court had denied : but in the record of literary glory, 
 the patron's name should be inscribed by the side of the 
 literary character ; for the public incurs an obligation 
 whenever a man of genius is protected. 
 
 The statesman Fouquet, deserted by all others, wit- 
 nessed La Fontaine hastening every literary man to 
 the prison-gate. Many have inscribed their works to 
 their disgraced patron, as Pope did so nobly to the Earl 
 of Oxford in the Tower ; 
 
 " When interest calls off all her sneaking train, 
 And all the obliged desert, and all the vain, 
 They wait, or to the scaffold, or the cell, 
 When the last ling'ring friend has bid farewell." 
 
 Literary friendship is a sympathy not of manners, 
 but of feelings. The personal character may happen to 
 be very opposite : the vivacious may be loved by the 
 melancholic, and the wit by the man of learning. He 
 who is vehement and vigorous, will feel himself a double 
 man by the side of the friend who is calm and subtle. 
 When we observe such friendships, we are apt to 
 imagine that they are not real because the characters 
 are dissimilar ; but it is their common tastes and pursuits 
 which form a bond of union. Pomponius L^etus, so 
 
AMONG LITERARY MEN. 2Q9 
 
 called from his natural good-humour, was the close 
 friend of Hermolaus Barbarus, whose saturnine and 
 melancholy dispositions he often exhilarated ; the warm, 
 impetuous Luther was the beloved friend of the mild 
 and amiable Melancthon ; the caustic Boileau was 
 the companion of Racine and Moliere ; and France, 
 perhaps, owes the chefs-d'oeuvres of her tragic and her 
 comic poet to her satirist. The delicate taste, and the 
 refining ingenuity of Hurd, only attached him the more 
 to the impetuous and dogmatic "Warburton. No men 
 could be more opposite in personal character than the 
 careless, gay, and hasty Steele, and the cautious, 
 serious, and elegant Addison ; yet no literary friend- 
 ship was more fortunate than their union. 
 
 One glory is reserved for literary friendship. The 
 friendship of a great name, indicates the greatness of 
 the character who appeals to it. When Sydenham 
 mentioned, as a proof of the excellence of his method of 
 treating acute diseases, that it had received the appro- 
 bation of his illustrious friend Locke, the philosophers 
 opinion contributed to the physician's success. 
 
 Such have been the friendships of great literary 
 characters ; but too true it is, that they have not always 
 contributed thus largely to their mutual happiness 
 The querulous lament of Gleim to Klopstock is too 
 generally participated. As Gleim lay on his death- 
 bed, he addressed the great bard of Germany — " I am 
 dying, dear Klopstock ; and as a dying man will I say, 
 in this world we have not lived long enough together 
 and for each other ; but in vain would we now recall 
 the past ! M What tenderness in the reproach ! What 
 self-accusation in its modesty ! 
 
300 LITERARY AND PERSONAL CHARACTER. 
 
 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. — Para- 
 doxical appearances in the history of Genius. — Why the character of 
 the man may be opposite to that of his writings. 
 
 Are the personal dispositions of an author discover- 
 able in his writings as those of an artist are imagined 
 to appear in his works, where Michael Angelo is always 
 great, and Raphael ever graceful ? 
 
 Is the moralist a moral man ? Is he malignant who 
 publishes caustic satires ? Is he a libertine who com- 
 poses loose poems ? And is he whose imagination 
 delights in terror and in blood, the very monster he 
 paints ? 
 
 Many licentious writers have led chaste lives. La 
 Mothe le Vayer wrote two works of a free nature ; 
 yet his was the unblemished life of a retired sage. 
 Bayle is the too faithful compiler of impurities, but he 
 resisted the voluptuousness of the senses as much as 
 Newton. La Fontaine wrote tales fertile in intrigues, 
 yet the " bon homme " has not left on record a single 
 ingenious amour of his own. The Queen of Navarre's 
 Tales are gross imitations of Boccaccio's ; but she herself 
 was a princess of irreproachable habits, and had given 
 proof of the most rigid virtue ; but stories of intrigues, 
 told in a natural style, formed the fashionable literature 
 of the day, and the genius of the female writer was 
 amused in becoming an historian without being an actor. 
 
LITERARY AND PERSONAL CHARACTER. 301 
 
 ^ortiguerra, the author of the Ricciardetto, abounds 
 Ith loose and licentious descriptions, and yet neither 
 is manners nor his personal character were stained by- 
 te offending freedom of his inventions. Smollet's 
 laracter is immaculate; yet he has described two 
 jenes which offend even in the license of imagination. 
 Rowley, who boasts with such gaiety of the versatility 
 his passion among so many mistresses, wanted even 
 the confidence to address one. Thus, licentious writers 
 lay be very chaste persons. The imagination may be 
 volcano, while the heart is an Alp of ice. 
 Turn to the moralist — there we find Seneca, an 
 usurer of seven millions, writing on moderate desires on 
 a table of gold. Sallust, who so eloquently declaims 
 against the licentiousness of the age, was repeatedly 
 accused in the senate of public and habitual debaucheries; 
 and when this inveigh er against the spoilers of provinces 
 attained to a remote government, he pillaged like Verres. 
 That " Demosthenes was more capable of recommend- 
 ing than of imitating the virtues of our ancestors," is the 
 observation of Plutarch. Lucian, when young, de- 
 claimed against the friendship of the great, as another 
 name for servitude ; but when his talents procured him 
 a situation under the emperor, he facetiously compared 
 himself to those quacks, who themselves plagued by a 
 perpetual cough, offer to sell an infallible remedy for one. 
 Sir Thomas More, in his Utopia, declares that no man 
 ought to be punished for his religion ; yet he became a 
 fierce persecutor, flogging and racking men for his own 
 " true faith." At the moment the poet Rousseau was 
 giving versions of the Psalms, full of unction, as our 
 Catholic neighbours express it, he was profaning the 
 
302 PERSONAL CHARACTER OP AN AUTHOR 
 
 same pen with infamous epigrams ; and an erotic poet 
 of our times has composed night-hymns in churchyards 
 with the same ardour with which he poured forth 
 Anacreontics. Napoleon said of Bernardin St. Pierre, 
 whose writings breathe the warm principles of humanity 
 and social happiness in every page, that he was one of 
 the worst private characters in France. I have heard 
 this from other quarters ; it startles one ! The pathetic 
 genius of Sterne played about his head, but never 
 reached his heart. Cardinal Richelieu wrote "The 
 Perfection of a Christian, or the Life of a Christian ;" 
 yet was he an utter stranger to Gospel maxims ; and 
 Frederick the Great, when young, published his 
 Anti-Machiavel, and deceived the world by the promise 
 of a pacific reign. This military genius protested against 
 those political arts which he afterwards adroitly prac- 
 tised, uniting the lion's head with the fox's tail — and thus 
 himself realising the political monster of Machiavel ! 
 
 And thus also is it with the personal dispositions of 
 an author, which may be quite the reverse from those 
 which appear in his writings. Johnson would not 
 believe that Horace was a happy man because his 
 verses were cheerful, any more than he could think 
 Pope so, because the poet is continually informing us of 
 it. It surprised Spence, when Pope told him that Rowe 
 the tragic poet, whom he had considered so solemn a 
 personage, " would laugh all day long, and do nothing 
 else but laugh." Lord Kaimes says, that Arbuthnot 
 must have been a great genius, for he exceeded Swift 
 and Addison in humorous painting ; although we are 
 informed, he had nothing of that peculiarity in his 
 character. Young, who is constantly contemning pre- 
 
MAY BE THE REVERSE OF HIS WRITINGS. 303 
 
 ferment in his writings, was all his life pining after it ; 
 and the conversation of the sombrous author of the 
 " Night Thoughts " was of the most volatile kind, 
 abounding with trivial puns. He was one of the first 
 who subscribed to the assembly at Wellwyn. Mrs. Carter, 
 who greatly admired his sublime poetry, expressing her 
 surprise at his social converse, he replied, — " Madam, 
 there is much difference between writing and talking." 
 
 Moliere, on the contrary, whose humour is so per- 
 fectly comic, and even ludicrous, was thoughtful and 
 serious, and even melancholy. His strongly-featured 
 physiognomy exhibits the face of a great tragic, rather 
 than of a great comic poet. Boileau called Moliere 
 " The contemplative man." Those who make the 
 world laugh, often themselves laugh the least. A 
 famous and witty harlequin of France was overcome 
 with hypochondriasm, and consulted a physician, who, 
 after inquiring about his malady, told his miserable 
 patient, that he knew of no other medicine for him than 
 to take frequent doses of Carlin — " I am Carlin him- 
 self," exclaimed the melancholy man in despair. Bur- 
 ton, the pleasant and vivacious author of "The Anatomy 
 of Melancholy," of whom it is noticed, that he could in 
 an interval of vapours raise laughter in any company, 
 in his chamber was " mute and mopish," and was at 
 last so overcome by that intellectual disorder, which he 
 appeared to have got rid of by writing his volume, that 
 it is believed he closed his life in a fit of melancholy. 
 
 Could one have imagined that the brilliant wit, the 
 luxuriant raillery, and the fine and deep sense of Pascal, 
 could have combined with the most opposite qualities — 
 the hypochondriasm and bigotry of an ascetic ? Roche- 
 
304 PERSONAL CHARACTER OF AN AUTHOR 
 
 foucauld, in private life, was a conspicuous exarapl 
 of all those moral qualities of which he seemed to deny 
 the existence, and exhibited in this respect a striking 
 contrast to the Cardinal De Retz, who has presumed to 
 censure him for his want of faith in the reality of virtue , 
 but De Retz himself was the unbeliever in disinte- 
 rested virtue. This great genius was one of those 
 pretended patriots destitute of a single one of the 
 virtues for which he was the clamorous advocate o: 
 faction. 
 
 When Yalincour attributed the excessive tenderness 
 in the tragedies of Racine to the poet's own impassioned 
 character, the son amply showed that his father was by 
 no means this slave of love. Racine never wrote 
 single love poem, nor even had a mistress ; and his 
 wife had never read his tragedies, for poetry was not 
 her delight. Racine's motive for making love the 
 constant source of action in his tragedies, was, from the 
 principle which has influenced so many poets, who 
 usually conform to the prevalent taste of the times. In 
 the court of a young monarch, it was necessary that 
 heroes should be lovers ; Corneille had nobly run in one 
 career, and Racine could not have existed as a great poet, 
 had he not rivalled him in an opposite one. The tender 
 Racine was no lover; but he was a subtle and epigram- 
 matic observer, before whom his convivial friends never 
 cared to open their minds ; and the caustic Boileau 
 truly said of him, " Racine is far more malicious than 
 
 In 
 am. 
 
 Alfieri speaks of his mistress, as if he lived with 
 
 her in the most unreserved familiarity; the reverse was 
 
 the case. And the gratitude and affection with which 
 
MAY BE THE REVERSE OF HIS WRITINGS. 305 
 
 he describes his mother, and which she deserved, entered 
 so little into his habitual feelings, that after their early- 
 separation, he never saw her but once, though he often 
 passed through the country where she resided. 
 
 Johnson has composed a beautiful Rambler, describ- 
 ing the pleasures which result from the influence of good 
 humour ; and somewhat remarkably says, " Without 
 good humour, learning and bravery can be only formi- 
 dable, and confer that superiority which swells the 
 heart of the lion in the desert, where he roars without 
 reply and ravages without resistance." He who could 
 so finely discover the happy influence of this pleasing 
 quality was himself a stranger to it, and " the roar and 
 the ravage " were familiar to our lion. Men of genius 
 frequently substitute their beautiful imagination for 
 spontaneous and natural sentiment. It is not therefore 
 surprising if we are often erroneous in the conception 
 we form of the personal character of a distant author. 
 Klopstock, the votary of the muse of Zion, so asto- 
 nished and warmed the sage Bodmer, that he invited 
 the inspired bard to his house ; but his visitor shocked 
 the grave professor, when, instead of a poet rapt in 
 silent meditation, a volatile youth leapt out of the 
 chaise, who was an enthusiast for retirement only when 
 writing verses. An artist whose pictures exhibit a 
 series of scenes of domestic tenderness, awakening all 
 ! the charities of private life, I have heard participated 
 in them in no other way than on his canvas. Evelyn, 
 who has written in favour of active life, loved, and lived 
 
 in, retirement*;" while Sir George Mackenzie, who 
 
 , 
 
 * Since this -was written, the correspondence of Evelyn has appeared, 
 by which we find that he apologised to Cowley for having published 
 
 X 
 
306 ERRONEOUS CONCEPTIONS OP THE 
 
 had been continually in the bustle of business, framed 
 an eulogium on solitude. We see in Machiavei/s code 
 of tyranny, of depravity, and of criminal violence, a 
 horrid picture of human nature ; but this retired phi- 
 losopher was a friend to the freedom of his country, he 
 participated in none of the crimes he had recorded, but 
 drew up these systematised crimes "as an observer, 
 not as a criminal." Drummond, whose sonnets still 
 retain the beauty and the sweetness and the delicacy of 
 the most amiable imagination, was a man of a harsh 
 irritable temper, and has been thus characterised : 
 
 " Testie Drummond could not speak for fretting." 
 
 Thus authors and artists may yield no certain indi- 
 cation of their personal characters in their works. In- 
 constant men will write on constancy, and licentious 
 minds may elevate themselves into poetry and piety 
 We should be unjust to some of the greatest geniuses, 
 if the extraordinary sentiments which they put into the 
 mouths of their dramatic personages are maliciously to 
 be applied to themselves. Euripides was accused of 
 atheism when he introduced a denier of the gods on tin 
 stage. Milton has been censured by Clarke for th 
 impiety of Satan; and an enemy of Shakespeare 
 might have reproached him for his perfect delineation 
 of the accomplished villain Iago, as it was said that 
 Dr. Moore was hurt in the opinions of some by his 
 
 this very treatise, which seemed to condemn that life of study and 
 privacy to which they were both equally attached ; and confesses that 
 the whole must be considered as a mere sportive effusion, request™ 
 that Cowley would not suppose its principles formed his private opinions. 
 Thus Leibnitz, we arc told, laughed at the fanciful system revealed in 
 his T/teodicee, and acknowledged, that he never wrote it in earnest; 
 that a philosopher is not always obliged to write seriously, and that to 
 invent an hypothesis is only a proof of the force of imagination. 
 
CHARACTER OF DISTANT AUTHORS. 307 
 
 odious Zeluco. Crebillon complains of this — " They 
 charge me with all the iniquities of Atreus, and they 
 consider me in some places as a wretch with whom it is 
 unfit to associate ; as if all which the mind invents 
 must be derived from the heart." This poet offers a 
 striking instance of the little alliance existing between 
 the literary and personal dispositions of an author. 
 Crebillox, who exulted on his entrance into the French 
 Academy that he had never tinged his pen with the gall 
 of satire, deliohted to strike on the most harrowing 
 string of the tragic lyre. In his Atreus, the father 
 drinks the blood of his son ; in his Rhadamistus, the son 
 expires under the hand of the father : in his Electra, 
 the son assassinates the mother. A poet is a painter of 
 the soul, but a great artist is not therefore a bad man. 
 
 Montaigne appears to have been sensible of this fact 
 in the literary character. Of authors, he says, he likes 
 to read their little anecdotes and private passions : — 
 " Car j'ai une singuliere curiosite de connaitre Tame et 
 les na'ifs jugemens de mes auteurs. II faut bien juger 
 leur sumsance, mais non pas leurs mceurs, ni eux, par 
 cette montre de leurs ecrits qu ils etalent au theatre du 
 monde." "Which may be thus translated : " For I have 
 a singular curiosity to know the soul and simple opinions 
 of my authors. "We must judge of their ability, but 
 not of their manners, nor of themselves, by that show 
 of their writings which they display on the theatre of 
 the world." This is very just; are we yet sure, 
 however, that the simplicity of this old favourite of 
 Europe might not have been as much a theatrical 
 gesture, as the sentimentality of Sterne ? The great 
 authors of the Port-Royal Logic have raised severe 
 x 2 
 
308 ERRONEOUS CONCEPTIONS OF THE 
 
 objections to prove that Mointaigne was not quite so 
 open in respect to those simple details which he imagined 
 might diminish his personal importance with his readers 
 He pretends that he reveals all his infirmities and 
 weaknesses, while he is perpetually passing himself off 
 for something more than he is. He carefully informs 
 us that he has " a page," the usual attendant of an in 
 dependent gentleman, and lives in an old family chateau; 
 when the fact was, that his whole revenue did not 
 exceed six thousand livres, a state beneath mediocrity. 
 He is also equally careful not to drop any mention of 
 his having a clerk with a hag ; for he was a counsellor 
 of Bordeaux, but affected the gentleman and the soldier 
 He trumpets himself forth for having been mayor of 
 Bordeaux, as this offered an opportunity of telling us 
 that he succeeded Marshal Biron, and resigned it to 
 Marshal Matignon. Could he have discovered that any 
 marshal had been a lawyer, he would not have sunk 
 that part of his life. Montaigne himself has said, 
 " that in forming a judgment of a man's life, particular 
 regard should be paid to his behaviour at the end of it ; " 
 and he more than once tells us that the chief study of 
 his life is to die calm and silent; and that he will 
 plunge himself headlong and stupidly into death, as 
 into an obscure abyss, which swallows one up in an 
 instant ; that to die was the affair of a moment's suf- 
 fering, and required no precepts. He talked of reposing 
 on the " pillow of doubt." But how did this great 
 philosopher die ? He called for the more powerful 
 opiates of the infallible church ! The mass was per- 
 formed in his chamber, and in rising to embrace it his 
 hands dropped and failed him; thus, as Professor 
 
CHARACTER OF DISTANT AUTHORS. 309 
 
 Dugald Stewart observes on this philosopher, — " He 
 expired in performing what his old preceptor, Buchanan, 
 would not have scrupled to describe as an act of 
 idolatry." 
 
 We must not then consider that he who paints vice 
 with energy is therefore vicious, lest we injure an 
 honourable man; nor must we imagine that he who 
 celebrates virtue is therefore virtuous, for we may then 
 repose on a heart which knowing the right pursues the 
 wrong. 
 
 These paradoxical appearances in the history of 
 genius present a curious moral phenomenon. Much 
 must be attributed to the plastic nature of the versatile 
 faculty itself. Unquestionably many men of genius 
 have often resisted the indulgence of one talent to 
 exercise another with equal power ; and some who have 
 solely composed sermons, could have touched on the 
 foibles of society with the spirit of Horace or Juvenal. 
 Blackstone and Sir William Jones directed that 
 genius to the austere studies of law and philology, 
 which might have excelled in the poetical and historical 
 character. So versatile is this faculty of genius, that 
 its possessors are sometimes uncertain of the manner in 
 which they shall treat their subject, whether gravely 
 or ludicrously. When Breboeuf, the French translator 
 of the Pharsalia of Lucan, had completed the first 
 book as it now appears, he at the same time composed 
 a burlesque version, and sent both to the great arbiter 
 of taste in that day, to decide which the poet should 
 continue. The decision proved to be difficult. Are 
 I there not writers who, with all the vehemence of genius, 
 | by adopting one principle, can make all things shrink 
 
310 PARADOXICAL APPEARANCES IN 
 
 into the pigmy forms of ridicule, or by adopting another 
 principle startle us by the gigantic monsters of their 
 own exaggerated imagination? On this principle of 
 the versatility of the faculty, a production of genius is 
 a piece of art which wrought up to its full effect, with 
 a felicity of manner acquired by taste and habit, is 
 merely the result of certain arbitrary combinations of 
 the mind. 
 
 Are we then to reduce the works of a man of genius 
 to a mere sport of his talents — a game in which he is 
 only the best player? Can he whose secret power 
 raises so many emotions in our breasts, be without any 
 in his own ? A mere actor performing a part ? Is he 
 unfeeling when he is pathetic, indifferent when he is 
 indignant ? Is he an alien to all the wisdom and virtue 
 he inspires ? No ! were men of genius themselves to 
 assert this, and it is said some incline so to do, there is 
 a more certain conviction than their misconceptions, in 
 our own consciousness, which for ever assures us, that 
 deep feelings and elevated thoughts can alone spring 
 from those who feel deeply and think nobly. 
 
 In proving that the character of the man may be very 
 opposite to that of his writings, we must recollect that 
 the habits of the life may be contrary to the habits of 
 the mind*. The influence of their studies over men of 
 genius is limited. Out of the ideal world, man is 
 
 * Nothing is more delightful to me in my researches on the literary 
 character, than when I find in persons of unquestionable and high genius 
 the results of my own discoveries. This circumstance has frequently 
 happened to confirm my principles. Long after this was published, 
 Madame de Stael made this important confession in her recent work,. 
 " Dix Annees d'Exil," p. 154. " Je ne pouvois me dissimuler que 
 jc n'etois pas une personne courageuse ; j'ai dc la hardiessc dans Vima- 
 gination, mais de la timidite dans le caraciere." 
 
 
THE HISTORY OF GENIUS. 311 
 
 reduced to be the active creature of sensation. An 
 author has, in truth, two distinct characters : the literary, 
 formed by the habits of his study ; the personal, by the 
 habits of his situation. Gray, cold, effeminate, and 
 timid in his personal, was lofty and awful in his literary 
 character. We see men of polished manners and bland 
 affections, who, in grasping a pen, are thrusting a 
 poniard ; while others in domestic life with the simpli- 
 city of children and the feebleness of nervous affections, 
 can shake the senate or the bar with the vehemence of 
 their eloquence and the intrepidity of their spirit. The 
 writings of the famous Baptista Porta are marked by 
 the boldness of his genius, which formed a singular con- 
 trast with the pusillanimity of his conduct when menaced 
 or attacked. The heart may be feeble though the mind is 
 strong. To think boldly may be the habit of the mind, 
 to act weakly may be the habit of the constitution. 
 
 However the personal character may contrast with 
 that of their genius, still are the works themselves 
 genuine, and exist as realities for us — and were so 
 doubtless to the composers themselves, in the act of 
 composition. In the calm of study, a beautiful ima- 
 gination may convert him, whose morals are corrupt, 
 into an admirable moralist, awakening feelings which 
 yet may be cold in the business of life : as we have 
 shown that the phlegmatic can excite himself into wit, 
 and the cheerful man delight in " Night Thoughts." 
 Sallust, the corrupt Sallust, might retain the most 
 sublime conceptions of the virtues which were to save 
 the Republic ; and Sterne, w T hose heart was not so sus- 
 ceptible in ordinary occurrences, while he was gradually 
 creating incident after incident and touching successive 
 
312 PARADOXICAL APPEARANCES. 
 
 emotions, in the stories of Le Fevre and Maria, might 
 have thrilled— like some of his readers. Many have 
 mourned over the wisdom or the virtue they contem- 
 plated, mortified at their own infirmity. Thus, though 
 there may be no identity between the book and the 
 man, still for us, an author is ever an abstract being, 
 and, as one of the Fathers said, (i a dead man may sin 
 dead, leaving books that make others sin." An author's 
 wisdom or his folly does not die with him. The volume 
 not the author, is our companion, and is for us a real 
 personage, performing before us whatever it inspires; 
 " He being dead, yet speaketh." Such is the vitality 
 of a book ! 
 
 
THE MAN OF LETTERS. 313 
 
 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. 
 
 Among the active members of the literary republic, 
 there is a class whom formerly we distinguished by the 
 title of Men of Letters, a title which, with us, has 
 nearly gone out of currency, though I do not think that 
 the genera] term of " literary men" would be sufficiently 
 appropriate. 
 
 The man of letters, whose habits and whose whole 
 life so closely resemble those of an author, can only be 
 distinguished by this simple circumstance, that the man 
 of letters is not an author. 
 
 Yet he whose sole occupation through life is litera- 
 ture, he who is always acquiring and never producing, 
 appears as ridiculous as the architect who never raised an 
 edifice, or the statuary who refrains from sculpture. His 
 pursuits are reproached with terminating in an epicurean 
 selfishness, and amidst his incessant avocations he him- 
 self is considered as a particular sort of idler. 
 
 This race of literary characters, as we now find them, 
 could not have appeared till the press had poured 
 forth its affluence. In the degree that the nations of 
 Europe became literary, was that philosophical curiosity 
 kindled, which induced some to devote their fortunes 
 
314 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AUTHORS AND 
 
 and their days, and to experience some of the purest of 
 human enjoyments, in preserving and familiarising 
 themselves with " the monuments of vanished minds," 
 as books are called by D'Avenant with so much sub- 
 limity. Their expansive library presents an inde- 
 structible history of the genius of every people, through 
 all their seras — and whatever men have thought and 
 whatever men have done, were at length discovered in 
 books. 
 
 Men of letters occupy an intermediate station between 
 authors and readers. They are gifted with more curi- 
 osity of knowledge and more multiplied tastes, and by 
 those precious collections which they are forming during 
 their lives, are more completely furnished with the 
 means than are possessed by the multitude who read, 
 and the few who write. 
 
 The studies of an author are usually restricted to 
 particular subjects. His tastes are tinctured by their 
 colouring, his mind is always shaping itself by their 
 form. An author's works form his solitary pride, and 
 his secret power ; while half his life wears away in the 
 slow maturity of composition, and still the ambition of 
 authorship torments its victim alike in disappointment 
 or in possession. 
 
 But soothing is the solitude of the Man of Letters ! 
 View the busied inhabitant of the library surrounded 
 by the objects of his love ! He possesses them — and 
 they possess him ! Those volumes — images of our mind 
 and passions ! — as he traces them from Herodotus to 
 Gibbon, from Homer to Shakespeare — those portfolios, 
 which gather up the inventions of genius, and tlat 
 selected cabinet of medals, which holds so i* ' , > 
 

 MERE MEN OF LETTERS. 315 
 
 unwritten histories ; — some favourite sculptures and 
 pictures, and some antiquities of all nations, here and 
 there about his house — these are his furniture ! 
 
 In his unceasing occupations the only repose he re- 
 quires, consists, not in quitting but in changing them. 
 Every day produces its discovery ; every day in the life 
 of a man of letters may furnish a multitude of emotions 
 and of ideas. For him there is a silence amidst the 
 world ; and in the scene, ever opening before him, all 
 that has passed is acted over again, and all that is to 
 come seems revealed as in a vision. Often his library 
 is contiguous to his chamber *, and this domain " parva 
 sed apta," this contracted space, has often marked the 
 boundary of the existence of the opulent owner, who 
 lives where he will die ; contracting his days into hours : 
 and a whole life thus passed is found too short to close 
 its designs. Such are the men who have not been un- 
 happily described by the Hollanders as lief-helbers, 
 lovers or fanciers, and their collections as lief-kebbery, 
 things of their love. The Dutch call everything for 
 
 * The contiguity of the chamber to the library is not the solitary 
 fancy of an individual, hut marks the class. Early in life, when in 
 France and Holland, I met with several of these amateurs, who had 
 hounded their lives by the circle of their collections, and were rarely 
 seen out of them. The late Duke of Roxburgh once expressed, his 
 delight to a literary friend of mine, that he had only to step from his sleep- 
 ing apartment into his fine library ; so that he could command, at all 
 moments, the gratification of pursuing his researches while he indulged 
 his reveries. The Chevalier Verhulst, of Bruxelles, of whom we have 
 a curious portrait prefixed to the catalogue of his pictures and curiosi- 
 ties, was one of those men of letters who experienced this strong affection 
 for his collections, and to such a degree, that he never went out of his 
 house for twenty years ; where, however, he kept up a courteous inter- 
 course with the lovers of art and literature. He was an enthusiastic 
 votary of Rubens, of whom he has written a copious life in Dutch, the 
 only work he appears to have composed. 
 
316 
 
 RECLUSE LIFE OP 
 
 which they are impassioned lief-hebbery ; but their feel- 
 ing being much stronger than their delicacy, they apply 
 the term to everything from poesy and picture to tulips 
 and tobacco. The term wants the melody of the lan- 
 guages of genius ; but something parallel is required to 
 correct that indiscriminate notion which most persons 
 associate with that of collectors. 
 
 It was fancifully said of one of these lovers, in the 
 style of the age, that " His book was his bride, and his 
 study his bride-chamber." Many have voluntarily re- 
 linquished a public station and their rank in society, 
 neglecting even their fortune and their health, for the 
 life of self-oblivion of the man of letters. Count de 
 Caylus expended a princely income in the study and 
 the encouragement of Art. He passed his mornings 
 among the studios of artists, watching their progress, 
 increasing his collections, and closing his day in the 
 retirement of his own cabinet. His rank and his opu- 
 lence were no obstructions to his settled habits. Cicero 
 himself, in his happier moments, addressing Atticus, 
 exclaimed — " I had much rather be sitting on your 
 little bench under Aristotle's picture, than in the curule 
 chairs of our great ones." This wish was probably sin- 
 cere, and reminds us of another great politician who in 
 his secession from public affairs retreated to a literary 
 life, where he appears suddenly to have discovered a 
 new-found world. Fox's favourite line, which he often 
 repeated, was, 
 
 " How various his employments 
 Calls idle!" 
 
 •horn the world 
 
 De Sacy, one of the Port-Royalists, was fond of re- 
 peating this lively remark of a man of wit : — " that all 
 
MEN OF LETTERS. 317 
 
 the mischief in the world comes from not being able to 
 keep ourselves quiet in our room." 
 
 But tranquillity is essential to the existence of the 
 man of letters — an unbroken and devotional tranquillity. 
 For though, unlike the author, his occupations are inter- 
 rupted without inconvenience, and resumed without 
 effort ; yet if the painful realities of life break into this 
 visionary world of literature and art, there is an atmo- 
 sphere of taste about him which will be dissolved, and 
 harmonious ideas which will be chased away, as it hap- 
 pens when something is violently flung among the trees 
 where the birds are singing ; all instantly disperse ! 
 
 Even to quit their collections for a short time is a real 
 suffering to these lovers ; everything which surrounds 
 them becomes endeared by habit, and by some higher 
 associations. Men of letters have died with grief from 
 having been forcibly deprived of the use of their libra- 
 ries. De Thou, with all a brother's sympathy, in his 
 great history, has recorded the sad fates of several who 
 had witnessed their collections dispersed in the civil wars 
 of France, or had otherwise been deprived of their 
 precious volumes. Sir Robert Cotton fell ill, and 
 betrayed, in the ashy paleness of his countenance, the 
 misery which killed him on the sequestration of his col- 
 lections. " They have broken my heart who have locked 
 up my library from me," was his lament. 
 
 If this passion for acquisition and enjoyment be so 
 strong and exquisite, what wonder that these " lovers" 
 should regard all things as valueless in comparison with 
 the objects of their love? There seem to be spells in 
 their collections, and in their fascination they have often 
 submitted to the ruin of their personal, but not of their 
 
MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 internal enjoyments. They have scorned to balance in 
 the scales the treasures of literature and art, though 
 imperial magnificence once was ambitious to outweigh 
 them. 
 
 Van Praun, a friend of Albert Durer's, of whom we 
 possess a catalogue of pictures and prints, was one of 
 these enthusiasts of taste. The Emperor of Germany, 
 probably desirous of finding a royal road to a rare col- 
 lection, sent an agent to procure the present one entire ; 
 and that some delicacy might be observed with such a 
 man, the purchase was to be proposed in the form of a 
 mutual exchange; the emperor had gold, pearls, and 
 diamonds. Our Uef-hehber having silently listened to 
 the imperial agent, seemed astonished that such thino-s 
 should be considered as equivalents for a collection of 
 works of art, which had required a long life of experience 
 and many previous studies and practised tastes to have 
 formed, and compared with which gold, pearls, and dia- 
 monds, afforded but a mean, an unequal, and a barbarou 
 barter. 
 
 If the man of letters be less dependent on others for 
 the very perception of his own existence, than men of 
 the world are ; his solitude however is not that of a 
 desert : for all there tends to keep alive those concen- 
 trated feelings which cannot be indulged with security, 
 or even without ridicule in general society. Like the 
 Lucullus of Plutarch, he would not only live amono- the 
 votaries of literature, but would live for them ; he throws 
 open his library, his gallery, and his cabinet to all the 
 Grecians. Such men are the fathers of genius ; they 
 seem to possess an aptitude in discovering those minds 
 which are clouded over by the obscurity of their situ- 
 
MEN OF LETTERS. 319 
 
 ations ; and it is they who so frequently project those 
 benevolent institutions, where they have poured out the 
 philanthropy of their hearts in that world which they 
 appear to have forsaken. If Europe be literary, to 
 whom does she owe this more than to these men of 
 letters ? Is it not to their noble passion of amassing 
 through life those magnificent collections, which often 
 bear the names of their founders from the gratitude of 
 a following age ? Venice, Florence, and Copenhagen, 
 Oxford and London, attest the existence of their labours. 
 Our Bodleys and our Harleys, our Cottons and our 
 Sloanes, our Cracherodes, our Townleys, and our 
 Banks, were of this race ! In the perpetuity of their 
 own studies they felt as if they were extending human 
 longevity, by throwing an unbroken light of knowledge 
 into the next age. The private acquisitions of a solitary 
 man of letters during half a century have become public 
 endowments. A generous enthusiasm inspired these 
 intrepid labours, and their voluntary privations of what 
 the world calls its pleasures and its honours, would form 
 an interesting history not yet written ; their due, yet 
 undischarged. 
 
 But " men of the world," as they are emphatically 
 distinguished, imagine that a man so lifeless in "the 
 world" must be one of the dead in it, and, with 
 mistaken wit, would inscribe over the sepulchre of his 
 library, " Here lies the body of our friend." If the 
 man of letters have voluntarily quitted their " world," 
 at least he has passed into another, where he enjoys a 
 sense of existence through a long succession of ages, 
 and where Time, who destroys all things for others, for 
 him only preserves and discovers. This world is best 
 
320 MEN OF LETTERS. 
 
 described by one who lias lingered among its inspirations. 
 " We are wafted into other times and strange lands, 
 connecting us by a sad but exalting relationship with 
 the great events and great minds which have passed 
 away. Our studies at once cherish and control th< 
 imagination, by leading it over an unbounded range o 
 the noblest scenes in the overawing company of departed 
 wisdom and genius*." 
 
 Living more with books than with men, which is 
 often becoming better acquainted with man himself, 
 though not always with men, the man of letters is 
 more tolerant of opinions than opinionists are among 
 themselves. Nor are his views of human affairs con- 
 tracted to the day, like those who in the heat and hurry 
 of a too active life, prefer expedients to principles ; men 
 who deem themselves politicians because they are not 
 moralists ; to whom the centuries behind have conveyed 
 no results, and who cannot see how the present time is 
 always full of the future. " Everything," says the 
 lively Burnet, " must be brought to the nature of 
 tinder or gunpowder, ready for a spark to set it on fire," 
 before they discover it. The man of letters indeed is 
 accused of a cold indifference to the interests which 
 divide society ; he is rarely observed as the head or the 
 "rump of a party;" he views at a distance their tem- 
 porary passions — those mighty beginnings, of which h 
 knows the miserable terminations. 
 
 Antiquity presents the character of a perfect mar. o 
 letters in Attic us, who retreated from a political to a 
 literary life. Had his letters accompanied those o 
 Cicero, they would have illustrated the ideal character 
 
 * Quarterly Review, No. XXXIII. p. 145. 
 
TOLERANT OP THEIR OPINIONS. 321 
 
 of his class. But the sage Atticus rejected a popular 
 celebrity for a passion not less powerful, yielding up 
 his whole soul to study. Cicero, with all his devotion 
 to literature, was at the same time agitated by another 
 kind of glory, and the most perfect author in Rome 
 imagined that he was enlarging his honours by the 
 intrigues of the consulship. He has distinctly marked 
 the character of the man of letters in the person of his 
 friend Atticus, for which he has expressed his respect, 
 although he could not content himself with its imitation. 
 St I know," says this man of genius and ambition, " I 
 know the greatness and ingenuousness of your soul, nor 
 have I found any difference between us, but in a different 
 choice of life ; a certain sort of ambition has led me 
 earnestly to seek after honours, while other motives, by 
 no means blamable, induced you to adopt an honourable 
 leisure; honestum otium*." These motives appear in 
 the interesting memoirs of this man of letters ; a con- 
 tempt of political intrigues combined with a desire to 
 escape from the splendid bustle of Rome to the learned 
 leisure of Athens. He wished to dismiss a pompous 
 train of slaves for the delight of assembling under his 
 roof a literary society of readers and transcribers. 
 And having collected under that roof the portraits or 
 busts of the illustrious men of his country, inspired by 
 their spirit and influenced by their virtues or their 
 genius, he inscribed under them, in concise verses, the 
 characters of their mind. Valuing wealth only for its 
 use, a dignified economy enabled him to be profuse, and 
 a moderate expenditure allowed him to be generous. 
 The result of this literary life was the strong affections 
 * Ad Atticum, Lib. i. Ep. 17. 
 Y 
 
322 DISPOSITIONS OF 
 
 of the Athenians. At the first opportunity the absence 
 of the man of letters offered, they raised a statue to 
 him, conferring on our Pomponius the fond surname of 
 Attictjs. To have received a name from the voice of 
 the city they inhabited, has happened to more than one 
 man of letters. Pinelli, born a Neapolitan, but re- 
 siding at Venice, among other peculiar honours received 
 from the senate, was there distinguished by the affec- 
 tionate title of " the Venetian." 
 
 Yet such a character as Atticus could not escape 
 censure from "men of the world." They want the 
 heart and the imagination to conceive something better 
 than themselves. The happy indifference, perhaps the 
 contempt, of our Atticus for rival factions, they have 
 stigmatized as a cold neutrality, a timid pusillanimous 
 hypocrisy. Yet Atticus could not have been a mutual 
 friend, had not both parties alike held the man of letters 
 as a sacred being amidst their disguised ambition ; and 
 the urbanity of Atticus, while it balanced the fierceness 
 of two heroes, Pompey and Caesar, could even temper 
 the rivalry of genius in the orators Hortensius and 
 Cicero. A great man of our own country widely 
 differed from the accusers of Atticus. Sir Matthew 
 Hale lived in distracted times, and took the character 
 of our man of letters for his model, adopting two prin- 
 ciples in the conduct of the Roman. He engaged him- 
 self with no party business, and afforded a constant 
 relief to the unfortunate, of whatever party. He was 
 thus preserved amidst the contests of the times. 
 
 If the personal interests of the man of letters be not 
 deeply involved in society, his individual prosperity, 
 however, is never contrary to public happiness. Other 
 
MEN OF LETTERS. 323 
 
 professions necessarily exist by the conflict and the 
 calamities of the community ; the politician becomes 
 great by hatching an intrigue ; the lawyer in counting 
 his briefs; the physician his sick-list; the soldier is 
 clamorous for war, the merchant riots on high prices. 
 But the man of letters only calls for peace and books, 
 to unite himself with his brothers scattered over Europe ; 
 and his usefulness can only be felt at those intervals, 
 when, after a long interchange of destruction, men 
 recovering their senses, discover that " knowledge is 
 power." Burke, whose ample mind took in every 
 conception of the literary character, has finely touched 
 . on the distinction between this order of contemplative 
 , men, and the other active classes of society. In ad- 
 dressing Mr. Malone, whose real character was that of 
 a man of letters who first showed us the neglected 
 state of our literary history, Burke observed, for I 
 •shall give his own words, always too beautiful to alter — 
 If you are not called to exert your great talents, and 
 employ your great acquisitions in the transitory service 
 of your country, which is done in active life ; you will 
 continue to do it that permanent service which it 
 ; receives from the labours of those who know how to 
 make the silence of closets more beneficial to the world 
 than all the noise and bustle of courts, senates, and 
 camps." 
 
 A moving picture of the literary life of a man of 
 letters who was no author, would have been lost to us, 
 had not Peiresc found in Gassendi a twin spirit. So 
 intimate was that biographer with the very thoughts, 
 so closely united in the same pursuits, and so perpetual 
 an observer of the remarkable man whom he has im- 
 y2 
 
324 PERFECT CHARACTER OF A 
 
 mortalized, that when employed on this elaborate 
 resemblance of his friend, he was only painting himself 
 with all the identifying strokes of self-love *. 
 
 It was in the vast library of Pinelli, the founder of 
 the most magnificent one in Europe, that Peiresc, 
 then a youth, felt the remote hope of emulating the 
 man of letters before his eyes. His life was not without 
 preparation, nor without fortunate coincidences, but 
 there was a grandeur of design in the execution, which 
 originated in the genius of the man himself. 
 
 The curious genius of Peiresc was marked by its 
 precocity, as usually are strong passions in strong 
 minds ; this intense curiosity was the germ of all those 
 studies which seemed mature in his youth. He early 
 resolved on a personal intercourse with the great literary 
 characters of Europe ; and his friend has thrown over 
 these literary travels that charm of detail by which we 
 accompany Peiresc into the libraries of the learned ; 
 there with the historian opening new sources of history, 
 or with the critic correcting manuscripts, and settling 
 points of erudition ; or by the opened cabinet of the 
 antiquary, decyphering obscure inscriptions, and ex- 
 plaining medals. In the galleries of the curious in art, 
 among their marbles, their pictures, and their prints, 
 Peiresc has often revealed to the artist some secret in 
 his own art. In the museum of the naturalist, or the 
 garden of the botanist, there was no rarity of nature, 
 on which he had not something to communicate. His 
 
 * " I suppose,'' writes Evelyn, that most agreeable enthusiast of 
 literature, to a travelling friend, " that you carry the life of that in- 
 comparable virtuoso always about you in your motions, not only because 
 it is portable, but for that it is written by the pen of the great Gas 
 6endus." 
 

 MODERN MAN OF LETTERS. 325 
 
 mind toiled with that impatience of knowledge, that 
 becomes a pain only when the mind is not on the 
 advance. In England Peiresc was the associate of 
 Camden and Selden, and had more than one interview 
 with that friend to literary men, our calumniated James 
 the First. One may judge by these who were the men 
 whom Peiresc sought, and by whom he himself was 
 ever after sought. Such, indeed, were immortal friend- 
 ships ! Immortal they may be justly called, from the 
 objects in which they concerned themselves, and from 
 the permanent results of the combined studies of such 
 friends. 
 
 Another peculiar greatness in this literary character 
 was Peiresc s enlarged devotion to literature out of its 
 purest love for itself alone. He made his own universal 
 curiosity the source of knowledge to other men. Con- 
 sidering the studious as forming but one great family 
 wherever they were, for Peiresc the national reposi- 
 tories of knowledge in Europe formed but one collection 
 for the world. This man of letters had possessed him- 
 self of their contents, that he might have manuscripts 
 collated, unedited pieces explored, extracts supplied, 
 and even draughtsmen employed in remote parts of the 
 world, to furnish views and plans, and to copy antiqui- 
 ties for the student, who in some distant retirement 
 often discovered that the literary treasures of the world 
 were unfailingly opened to him by the secret devotion 
 of this man of letters. 
 
 Carrying on the same grandeur in his views, his uni- 
 versal mind busied itself in every part of the habitable 
 globe. He kept up a noble traffic with all travellers, 
 supplying them with philosophical instruments and recent 
 
326 PERFECT CHARACTER OF A 
 
 inventions, by which he facilitated their discoveries, 
 and secured their reception even in barbarous realms. 
 In return he claimed, at his own cost, for he was " born 
 rather to give than to receive," says Gassendi, fresh im- 
 portations of oriental literature, curious antiquities, or 
 botanic rarities; and it was the curiosity of Peiresc 
 which first embellished his own garden, and thence the 
 gardens of Europe, with a rich variety of exotic flowers 
 and fruits. Whenever presented with a medal, a vase, 
 or a manuscript, he never slept over the gift till he had 
 discovered what the donor delighted in ; and a book, a 
 picture, or a plant, when money could not be offered, 
 fed their mutual passion, and sustained the general 
 cause of science. The correspondence of Peiresc 
 branched out to the farthest bounds of Ethiopia, con- 
 nected both Americas, and had touched the newly dis- 
 covered extremities of the universe, when this intrepid 
 mind closed in a premature death. 
 
 I have drawn this imperfect view of Peiresc's 
 character, that men of letters may be reminded of the 
 capacities they possess. In the character of Peiresc, 
 however, there still remains another peculiar feature. 
 His fortune was not great ; and when he sometimes en- 
 dured the reproach of those whose sordidness was startled 
 at his prodigality of mind, and the great objects which 
 were the result, Peiresc replied, that " a small matter 
 suffices for the natural wants of a literary man, whose 
 true wealth consists in the monuments of arts, the 
 treasures of his library, and the brotherly affections of 
 the ingenious." Peiresc was a French judge, but he 
 supported his rank more by his own character than by 
 luxury or parade. He would not wear silk, and no 
 
MAN OF LETTERS. 327 
 
 tapestry hangings ornamented his apartments ; but the 
 walls were covered with the portraits of his literary- 
 friends ; and in the unadorned simplicity of his study, 
 his books, his papers, and his letters, were scattered 
 about him on the tables, the seats, and the floor. 
 There, stealing from the world, he would sometimes 
 admit to his spare supper his friend Gassendi, " con- 
 tent," says that amiable philosopher, " to have me for 
 his guest." 
 
 Peiresc, like Pinelli, never published any work. 
 These men of letters derived their pleasure, and perhaps 
 their pride, from those vast strata of knowledge which 
 their curiosity had heaped together in their mighty col- 
 lections. They either were not endowed with that 
 faculty of genius which strikes out aggregate views, or 
 were destitute of the talent of composition which em- 
 bellishes minute ones. This deficiency in the minds of such 
 men may be attributed to a thirst of learning, which the 
 very means to allay can only inflame. From all sides 
 they are gathering information; and that knowledge 
 seems never perfect to which every day brings new 
 acquisitions. With these men, to compose is to hesi- 
 tate; and to revise is to be mortified by fresh doubts and 
 unsupplied omissions. Peiresc was employed all his 
 life on a history of Provence ; but, observes Gassendi, 
 " He could not mature the birth of his literary offspring, 
 or lick it into any shape of elegant form ; he was there- 
 fore content to take the midwife's part, by helping the 
 happier labours of others." 
 
 Such are the cultivators of knowledge, who are rarely 
 authors, but who are often, however, contributing to 
 the works of others ; and without whose secret labours 
 the public would not have possessed many valued ones. 
 
328 UTILITY OP MEN OF LETTERS 
 
 The delightful instruction which these men are con- 
 stantly offering to authors and to artists, flows from 
 their silent but uninterrupted cultivation of literature 
 and the arts. 
 
 When Robertson, after his successful History of Scot- 
 land, was long irresolute in his designs, and still unprac- 
 tised in that curious research which habitually occupies 
 these men of letters, his admirers had nearly lost his 
 popular productions, had not a fortunate introduction 
 to Dr. Birch enabled him to open the clasped books, 
 and to drink of the sealed fountains. Robertson has 
 confessed his inadequate knowledge, and his overflowing 
 gratitude, in letters which I have elsewhere printed. 
 A suggestion by a man of letters has opened the career 
 of many an aspirant. A hint from Walsh conveyed a 
 new conception of English poetry to one of its masters. 
 The celebrated treatise of Grotius on " Peace and 
 War" was projected by Peiresc. It was said of Ma- 
 gliabechi, who knew all books, and never wrote one, 
 that by his diffusive communications he was in some 
 respect concerned in all the great works of his times. 
 Sir Robert Cotton greatly assisted Camden and Speed; 
 and that hermit of literature, Baker of Cambridge, was 
 ever supplying with his invaluable researches Burnet, 
 Kennet, Hearne, and Middleton. The concealed aid 
 which men of letters afford authors, may be compared 
 to those subterraneous streams, which, flowing into 
 spacious lakes, are, though unobserved, enlarging the 
 waters which attract the public eye. 
 
 Count De Caylus, celebrated for his collections, and 
 for his generous patronage of artists, has given the last 
 touches to this picture of the man of letters, with all 
 the delicacy and warmth of a self-painter. 
 
TO AUTHORS AND ARTISTS. 329 
 
 " His glory is confined to the mere power which he 
 has of being one day useful to letters and to the arts ; 
 for his whole life is employed in collecting materials of 
 which learned men and artists make no use till after 
 the death of him who amassed them. It affords him a 
 very sensible pleasure to labour in hopes of being useful 
 to those who pursue the same course of studies, while 
 there are so great a number who die without discharging 
 the debt which they incur to society." 
 
 Such a man of letters appears to have been the late Lord 
 Woodhouselee. Mr. Mackenzie, returning from his 
 lordship's literary retirement, meeting Mr. Alison, finely 
 said, that " he hoped he was going to Woodhouselee ; 
 for no man could go there without being happier, or 
 return from it without being better." 
 
 Shall we then hesitate to assert, that this class of 
 literary men forms a useful, as well as a select order in 
 society ? We see that their leisure is not idleness, that 
 their studies are not unfruitful for the public, and that 
 their opinions, purified from passions and prejudices, are 
 always the soundest in the nation. They are counsellors 
 whom statesmen may consult ; fathers of genius to whom 
 authors and artists may look for aid, and friends of all 
 nations ; for we ourselves have witnessed, during a war of 
 thirty years, that the men of letters in England were 
 still united with their brothers in France. The abode of 
 Sir Joseph Banks was ever open to every literary and 
 scientific foreigner ; while a wish expressed, or a com- 
 munication written by this man of letters, was even 
 respected by a political power which, acknowledging no 
 other rights, paid a voluntary tribute to the claims of 
 science and the privileges of literature. 
 
330 LITERARY OLD AGE 
 
 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. 
 
 The old age of the literary character retains its enjoy- 
 ments, and usually its powers — a happiness which ac- 
 companies no other. The old age of coquetry witnesses 
 its own extinct beauty ; that of the " used" idler is left 
 without a sensation ; that of the grasping Croesus exists 
 only to envy his heir ; and that of the Machiavel who 
 has no longer a voice in the cabinet, is but an unhappy 
 spirit lingering to find its grave : but for the aged man 
 of letters memory returns to her stores, and imagination 
 is still on the wing amidst fresh discoveries and new de- 
 signs. The others fall like dry leaves, but he drops 
 like ripe fruit, and is valued when no longer on the tree. 
 
 The constitutional melancholy of Johnson often tinged 
 his views of human life. When he asserted that " no 
 man adds much to his stock of knowledge, or improves 
 much after forty," his theory was overturned by his 
 own experience ; for his most interesting works were 
 the productions of a very late period of life, formed out 
 of the fresh knowledge with which he had then furnished 
 himself. 
 
 The intellectual faculties, the latest to decline, are 
 often vigorous in the decrepitude of age. The curious 
 mind is still striking out into new pursuits, and the mind 
 of geniusis still creating. Ancora imparo ! — " Even yet 
 
CONTINUES TO ACQUIRE KNOWLEDGE. 331 
 
 I am learning !* was the concise inscription on an inge- 
 nious device of an old man placed in a child's go-cart, with 
 an hour-glass upon it, which, it is said, Michael Angelo 
 applied to his own vast genius in his ninetieth year. 
 Painters have improved even to extreme old age : 
 West's last works were his best, and Titian was 
 greatest on the verge of his century. Poussin was de- 
 lighted with the discovery of this circumstance in the 
 lives of painters. "Asl grow older, I feel the desire 
 of surpassing myself." And it was in the last years of 
 his life, that with the finest poetical invention, he painted 
 the allegorical pictures of the Seasons. A man of letters 
 in his sixtieth year once told me, " It is but of late years 
 that I have learnt the right use of books and the art of 
 reading." 
 
 Time, the great destroyer of other men's happiness, 
 only enlarges the patrimony of literature to its pos- 
 sessor. A learned and highly intellectual friend once 
 said to me, " If I have acquired more knowledge these 
 last four years than I had hitherto, I shall add mate- 
 rially to my stores in the next four years ; and so at 
 every subsequent period of my life, should I acquire 
 only in the same proportion, the general mass of my 
 knowledge will greatly accumulate. If we are not de- 
 prived by nature or misfortune of the means to pursue 
 this perpetual augmentation of knowledge, I do not see 
 but we may be still fully occupied and deeply interested 
 even to the last day of our earthly term." Such is the 
 delightful thought of Owen Feltham ; " If I die to- 
 morrow, my life will be somewhat the sweeter to-day 
 for knowledge." The perfectibility of the human 
 mind, the animating theory of the eloquent De Stael, 
 
)F LATE STUDIES. 
 
 consists in the mass of our ideas, to which every age 
 will now add, by means unknown to preceding genera T 
 tions. Imagination was born at once perfect, and her 
 arts find a term to their progress ; but there is no 
 boundary to knowledge nor the discovery of thought. 
 
 How beautiful in the old age of the literary character 
 was the plan which a friend of mine pursued. His 
 mind, like a mirror whose quicksilver had not decayed, 
 reflected all objects to the last. Full of learned studies 
 and versatile curiosity, he annually projected a summer- 
 tour on the Continent to some remarkable spot. The 
 local associations were an unfailing source of agreeable 
 impressions to a mind so well prepared, and he presented 
 his friends with a " Voyage Litteraire," as a new-year's 
 gift. In such pursuits, where life is " rather wearing 
 out than rusting out," as Bishop Cumberland expressed 
 it, scarcely shall we feel those continued menaces of 
 death which shake the old age of men of no intellectual 
 pursuits, who are dying so many years. 
 
 Active enjoyments in the decline of life, then, consti- 
 tute the happiness of literary men. The study of the 
 arts and literature spreads a sunshine over the winter of 
 their days. In the solitude and the night of human life, 
 they discover that unregarded kindness of nature, which 
 has given flowers that only open in the evening, and 
 only bloom through the night-season. Necker perceived 
 the influence of late studies in life ; for he tells us, that 
 " the era of threescore and ten is an agreeable age for 
 writing ; your mind has not lost its vigour, and envy 
 leaves you in peace." 
 
 The opening of one of La Motiie le Vayer's Trea- 
 tises is striking : " I should but ill return the favours 
 
INFLUENCE OF LATE STUDIES. 333 
 
 God has granted me in the eightieth year of my age, 
 should I allow myself to give way to that shameless 
 want of occupation which all my life I have con- 
 demned ;" and the old man proceeds with his " Observa- 
 tions on the Composition and Reading of Books." " If 
 man be a bubble of air, it is then time that I should 
 hasten my task ; for my eightieth year admonishes me 
 to get my baggage together ere I leave the world," 
 wrote Varro, in opening his curious treatise de Re Rus- 
 tica, which the sage lived to finish, and which, afternearly 
 two thousand years, the world possesses. " My works 
 are many, and I am old ; yet I still can fatigue and tire 
 myself with writing more," says Petrarch in his 
 Epistle to Posterity. The literary character has been 
 fully occupied in the eightieth and the ninetieth year of 
 life. Isaac Walton still glowed while writing some 
 of the most interesting biographies in his eighty-fifth 
 year, and in the ninetieth enriched the poetical world 
 with the first publication of a romantic tale by Chalk- 
 hill, " the friend of Spenser." Bodmer, beyond eighty, 
 was occupied on Homer, and Wieland on Cicero's 
 Letters. * 
 
 But the delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new 
 course of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of 
 youth even to old age. The revolutions of modern 
 chemistry kindled the curiosity of Dr. Reid to his latest 
 days, and he studied by various means, to prevent the 
 decay of his faculties, and to remedy the deficiencies of 
 one failing sense by the increased activity of another. 
 A late popular author, when advanced in life, discovered, 
 
 * See Curiosities of Literature, on " The progress of old age in new 
 studies." 
 
334 INFLUENCE OF LATE STUDIES. 
 
 in a class of reading to which he had never been accus- 
 tomed, a profuse supply of fresh furniture for his mind. 
 This felicity was the delightfulness of the old age of 
 Goethe— literature, art, and science, formed his daily in- 
 quiries; and this venerable genius, prompt to receive each 
 novel impression, was a companion for the youthful, and 
 a communicator of knowledge even for the most curious. 
 Even the steps of time are retraced, and we resume 
 the possessions we seemed to have lost ; for in advanced 
 life a return to our early studies refreshes and renovates 
 the spirits : we open the poets who made us enthusiasts, 
 and the philosophers who taught us to think, with a 
 new source of feeling acquired by our own experience. 
 Adam Smith confessed his satisfaction at this pleasure to 
 professor Dugald Stewart, while "he was re-perusing, w T ith 
 the enthusiasm of a student, the tragic poets of ancient 
 Greece, and Sophocles and Euripides lay openon his table." 
 
 Dans ses veines toujours un jeune sang bouillone, 
 Et Sophocle a cent ans peint encore Antigone. 
 
 The calm philosophic Hume found that death only 
 could interrupt the keen pleasure he was again receiv- 
 ing from Lucian, inspiring at the moment a humorous 
 self-dialogue with Charon. " Happily," said this phi- 
 losopher, " on retiring from the world, I found my taste 
 for reading return, even with greater avidity." We 
 find Gibbon, after the close of his History, returning 
 with an appetite as keen to " a full repast on Homer and 
 Aristophanes, and involving himself in the philosophic 
 maze of the writings of Plato." Lord Woodhouselee 
 found the recomposition of his " Lectures on History" 
 so fascinating in the last period of his life, that Mr. 
 Alison informs us, "it rewarded him with that peculiar 
 
INFLUENCE OF LATE STUDIES. 335 
 
 it, which has been often observed in the later 
 years of literary men ; the delight of returning again to 
 the studies of their youth, and of feeling under the 
 snows of age the cheerful memories of their spring." 
 
 Not without a sense of exultation has the literary 
 character felt this peculiar happiness, in the unbroken 
 chain of his habits and his feelings. Hobbes exulted 
 that he had outlived his enemies, and was still the same 
 Hobbes; and to demonstrate the reality of this existence, 
 published, in the eighty-seventh year of his age, his 
 version of the Odyssey, and the following year, his Iliad. 
 Of the happy results of literary habits in advanced life, 
 the Count De Tressan, the elegant abridger of the old 
 French romances, in his "literary advice to his children," 
 has drawn a most pleasing picture. With a taste for 
 study, which he found rather inconvenient in the 
 moveable existence of a man of the world, and a military 
 wanderer, he had, however, contrived to reserve an hour 
 or two every day for literary pursuits. The men of science, 
 with whom he had chiefly associated, appear to have 
 turned his passion to observation and knowledge, rather 
 than towards imagination and feeling ; the combination 
 formed a wreath for his gray hairs. When Count de 
 Tressan retired from a brilliant to an affectionate circle, 
 amidst his family, he pursued his literary tastes, with the 
 vivacity of a young author inspired by the illusion of 
 fame. At the age of seventy-five, with the imagination 
 of a poet, he abridged, he translated, he recomposed his 
 old Chivalric Romances, and his reanimated fancy 
 struck fire in the veins of the old man. Among the 
 first designs of his retirement was a singular philoso- 
 phical legacy for his children. It was a view of the 
 
336 OCCUPATIONS IN ADVANCED AGE 
 
 history and progress of the human mind — of its princi- 
 ples, its errors, and its advantages, as these were 
 reflected in himself; in the dawnings of his taste, and 
 the secret inclinations of his mind, which the men of 
 genius of the age with whom he associated had deve- 
 loped. Expatiating on their memory, he calls on his 
 children to witness the happiness of study, so evident 
 in those pleasures which were soothing and adorning 
 his old age. " Without knowledge, without literature," 
 exclaims the venerable enthusiast, " in whatever rank 
 we are born, we can only resemble the vulgar." To 
 the centenary Fontenelle the Count De Tressan was 
 chiefly indebted for the happy life he derived from the 
 cultivation of literature ; and when this man of a hun- 
 dred years died, Tressan, himself on the borders of 
 the grave, would offer the last fruits of his mind in an 
 eloge to his ancient master. It was' the voice of the 
 dying to the dead, a last moment of the love and 
 sensibility of genius, which feeble life could not 
 extinguish. 
 
 The genius of Cicero, inspired by the love of litera- 
 ture, has thrown something delightful over this latest sea- 
 son of life, in his de Senectute. To have written on old age, 
 in old age, is to have obtained a triumph over Time. * 
 
 When the literary character shall discover himself to 
 be like a stranger in a new world, when all that he 
 loved has not life, and all that lives has no love for old 
 age : when his ear has ceased to listen, and nature has 
 locked up the man within himself, he may still expire 
 amidst his busied thoughts. Such aged votaries, like 
 
 * Spurinna, or the Comforts of Old Age, by the Lite Sir Thomas 
 Bernard, was written a year or two before he died. 
 
OF THE LITERARY CHARACTER. 337 
 
 the old bees, have been found dying in their honey- 
 combs. Let them preserve but the flame alive on the 
 altar, and at the last moments they may be found in 
 the act of sacrifice ! The venerable Bede, the instructor 
 of his generation and the historian for so many succes- 
 sive ones, expired in the act of dictating. Such was 
 the fate of Petrarch, who, not long before his death, 
 had written to a friend, " I read, I write, I think ; 
 such is my life, and my pleasures as they were in my 
 youth." Petrarch was found lying on a folio in his 
 library, from which volume he had been busied in 
 making extracts for the biography of his countrymen. 
 His domestics having often observed him studying in 
 that reclining posture for days together, it was long 
 before they discovered that the poet was no more. The 
 fate of Leibnitz was similar : he was found dead 
 with the Argenis of Barclay in his hand ; he had been 
 studying the style of that political romance as a model 
 for his intended history of the House of Brunswick. 
 The literary death of Barthelemy affords a remark- 
 able proof of the force of uninterrupted habits of study. 
 He had been slightly looking over the newspaper, when 
 suddenly he called for a Horace, opened the volume, 
 and found the passage, on which he paused for a 
 moment ; and then, too feeble to speak, made a sign to 
 bring him Dacier's ; but his hands were already cold, 
 the Horace fell — and the classical and dying man of 
 letters sunk into a fainting fit, from which he never 
 recovered. Such too was the fate, perhaps now told 
 for the first time, of the great Lord Clarendon. It 
 was in the midst of composition that his pen suddenly 
 dropped from his hand on the paper, he took it up 
 z 
 
338 LITERARY OLD AGE. 
 
 again, and again it dropped : deprived of the sense 
 of touch — his hand without motion — the earl per- 
 ceived himself struck by palsy — and the life of the 
 noble exile closed amidst the warmth of a literary work 
 unfinished ! 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF GENIUS. 339 
 
 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. 
 
 The ancients addicted themselves to one species of 
 composition ; the tragic poet appears not to have entered 
 into the province of comedy, nor, as far as we know, 
 were their historians writers of verse. Their artists 
 worked on the same principle ; and from Pliny's account 
 of the ancient sculptors, we may infer that with them 
 the true glory of genius consisted in carrying to per- 
 fection a single species of their art. They did not 
 exercise themselves indifferently on all subjects, but 
 cultivated the favourite ones which they had chosen 
 from the impulse of their own imagination. The hand 
 which could copy nature in a human form, with the 
 characteristics of the age and the sex, and the occupa- 
 tions of life, refrained from attempting the colossal and 
 ideal majesty of a divinity ; and when one of these 
 sculptors, whose skill was pre-eminent in casting ani- 
 mals, had exquisitely wrought the glowing coursers for 
 a triumphal car, he requested the aid of Praxiteles to 
 place the driver in the chariot, that his work might not 
 be disgraced by a human form of inferior beauty to his 
 animals. Alluding to the devotion of an ancient 
 \ sculptor to his labours, Madame de Stael has finely 
 said, " The history of his life was the history of his 
 statue." 
 
 z2 
 
340 LIMITED NOTION OF GENIUS 
 
 Such was the limited conception which the ancients 
 formed of genius. They confined it to particular ob 
 jects or departments in art. But there is a tendency 
 among men of genius to ascribe an universality of power 
 to a master-intellect. Dryden imagined that Virgil 
 could have written satire equally with Juvenal, and 
 some have hardily defined genius as "a power to accom 
 plish all that we undertake." But literary history will 
 detect this fallacy, and the failures of so many eminent 
 men are instructions from Nature which must not be 
 lost on us. 
 
 No man of genius put forth more expansive pro 
 mises of universal power than Leibnitz. Science, 
 imagination, history, criticism, fertilised the richest of 
 human soils ; yet Leibnitz with immense powers and 
 perpetual knowledge, dissipated them in the multi 
 plicity of his pursuits. " The first of philosophers," 
 the late Professor Playfair observed, " has left nothing 
 in the immense tract of his intellect which can be dis- 
 tinguished as a monument of his genius." As an uni- 
 versalist, Voltaire remains unparalleled in ancient or 
 in modern times. This voluminous idol of our neigh- 
 bours stands without a rival in literature ; but an 
 exception, even if this were one, cannot overturn a 
 fundamental principle, for we draw our conclusions not 
 from the fortune of one man of genius, but from the fate 
 of many. The real claims of this great writer to inven- 
 tion and originality are as moderate as his size and his 
 variety are astonishing. The wonder of his ninety 
 volumes is, that he singly consists of a number of men 
 of the second order, making up one great man ; for 
 unquestionably some could rival Voltaire in any single 
 
ENTERTAINED BY THE ANCIENTS. 341 
 
 province, but no one but himself has possessed them all. 
 Voltaire discovered a new art, that of creating a supple- 
 ment to the genius which had preceded him ; and with- 
 out Corneille, Racine, and Ariosto, it would be difficult 
 to conjecture what sort of a poet Voltaire could have 
 been. He was master too of a secret in composition, 
 which consisted in a new style and manner. His style 
 promotes, but never interrupts thinking, while it ren- 
 ders all subjects familiar to our comprehension : his 
 manner consists in placing objects well known in new 
 combinations ; he ploughed up the fallow lands, and 
 renovated the worn-out exhausted soils. Swift denned 
 a good style, as " proper words in proper places." 
 Voltaire's impulse was of a higher flight, " proper 
 thoughts on proper subjects." Swift's idea was that of 
 a grammarian. Voltaire's feeling was that of a philo- 
 sopher. We are only considering this universal writer 
 
 ' in his literary character, which has fewer claims to the 
 character of an inventor, than several who never attained 
 to his celebrity. 
 
 Are the original powers of genius then limited to a 
 single art, and even to departments in that art ? May 
 not men of genius plume themselves with the vain 
 glory of universality ? Let us dare to call this a vain 
 glory ; for he who stands the first in his class, does not 
 really add to the distinctive character of his genius, by 
 
 ' a versatility which, however apparently successful, is 
 always subordinate to the great character on which his 
 fame rests. It is only that character which bears the 
 
 • raciness of the soil ; it is only that impulse whose soli- 
 tary force stamps the authentic work of genius. To 
 execute equally well on a variety of subjects, may raise 
 
342 OPPOSITE FACULTIES ACT 
 
 a suspicion of the nature of the executive power. 
 Should it be mimetic, the ingenious writer may remain 
 absolutely destitute of every claim to genius. Du Clos 
 has been refused the honours of genius by the French 
 critics, because he wrote equally well on a variety of 
 subjects. 
 
 I know that this principle is contested by some of 
 great name, who have themselves evinced a wonderful 
 variety of powers. This penurious principle flatters 
 not that egotism which great writers share in common 
 with the heroes who have aimed at universal empire. 
 Besides, this universality may answer many temporary 
 purposes. These writers may however observe, that 
 their contemporaries are continually disputing on the 
 merits of their versatile productions, and the most con- 
 trary opinions are even formed by their admirers ; but 
 their great individual character standing by itself, and 
 resembling no other, is a positive excellence. It is time 
 only, who is influenced by no name, and will never, 
 like contemporaries, mistake the true work of genius. 
 
 And if it be true that the primary qualities of the 
 mind are so different in men of genius as to render 
 them more apt for one class than for another, it would 
 seem, that whenever a pre-eminent faculty had shaped 
 the mind, a faculty of the most contrary nature must 
 act with a diminished force, and the other often with 
 an exclusive one. An impassioned and pathetic genius 
 has never become equally eminent as a comic genius. 
 Richardson and Fielding could not have written each 
 other's works. Could Butler, who excelled in wit 
 and satire, like Milton have excelled in sentiment and 
 imagination ? Some eminent men have shown remark- 
 
WITH DIMINISHED FORCE. 343 
 
 able failures in their attempts to cultivate opposite 
 departments in their own pursuits. The tragedies and 
 the comedies of Dryden equally prove that he was not 
 blest with a dramatic genius. Cibber, a spirited comic 
 writer, was noted for the most degrading failures in 
 tragedy ; while Rowe, successful in the softer tones of 
 the tragic muse, proved as luckless a candidate for the 
 smiles of the comic, as the pathetic Otway. La 
 Fontaine, unrivalled humorist as a fabulist, found his 
 opera hissed, and his romance utterly tedious. The 
 true genius of Sterne was of a descriptive and pathetic 
 cast, and his humour and ribaldry were a perpetual 
 violation of his natural bent. Alfieri's great tragic 
 powers could not strike out into comedy or wit. 
 Scarron declared he intended to write a tragedy. The 
 experiment was not made, but with his strong cast of 
 mind and habitual associations, we probably have lost a 
 new sort of " Roman comique." Cicero failed in poetry, 
 Addison in oratory, Yoltaire in comedy, and John- 
 son in tragedy. The Anacreontic poet remains only 
 Anacreontic in his epic. With the fine arts the same 
 occurrence has happened. It has been observed in 
 painting, that the school eminent for design was de- 
 ficient in colouring ; while those who with Titian's 
 warmth could make the blood circulate in the flesh, 
 could never rival the expression and anatomy of even 
 the middling artists of the Roman school. 
 
 Even among those rare and gifted minds which have 
 startled us by the versatility of their powers, whence 
 do they derive the high character of their genius? 
 Their durable claims are substantiated by what is in- 
 herent in themselves — what is individual — and not by 
 
344 MEN OF GENIUS EXCEL 
 
 that flexibility which may include so much which others 
 can equal. We rate them by their positive originality, 
 not by their variety of powers. When we think of 
 Young, it is only of his " Night Thoughts," not of his 
 tragedies, nor his poems, nor even of his satires, which 
 others have rivalled or excelled. Of Akenside the 
 solitary work of genius is his great poem ; his nume- 
 rous odes are not of a higher order than those of other 
 ode- writers. Had Pope only composed odes and trage- 
 dies, the great philosophical poet, master of human life 
 and of perfect verse, had not left an undying name. 
 Teniers, unrivalled in the walk of his genius, degraded 
 history by the meanness of his conceptions. Such 
 instances abound, and demonstrate an important truth 
 in the history of genius, that we cannot, however we 
 may incline, enlarge the natural extent of our genius, 
 any more than we can " add a cubit to our stature." 
 We may force it into variations, but in multiplying 
 mediocrity, or in doing what others can do, we add 
 nothing to genius. 
 
 So true is it that men of genius appear only to excel 
 in a single art, or even in a single department of art, 
 that it is usual with men of taste to resort to a parti- 
 cular artist for a particular object. Would you orna- 
 ment your house by interior decorations, to whom 
 would you apply if you sought the perfection of art, 
 but to different artists, of very distinct characters in 
 their invention and their execution ? For your Arab- 
 esques you would call in the artist whose delicacy of 
 touch and playfulness of ideas, are not to be expected 
 from the grandeur of the historical painter, or the 
 sweetness of the Paysagiste. Is it not evident that men 
 
ONLY IN A SINGLE ART. 345 
 
 of genius excel only in one department of their art, and 
 that whatever they do with the utmost original perfec- 
 tion, cannot be equally done by another man of genius ? 
 He whose undeviating genius guards itself in its own 
 true sphere, has the greatest chance of encountering no 
 rival. He is a Dante, a Milton, a Michael Angelo, a 
 Raphael : his hand will not labour on what the Italians 
 call pasticcios ; and he remains not unimitated, but 
 inimitable. 
 
346 LITERATURE AN AVENUE TO GLORY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIY. 
 
 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. 
 
 Literature is an avenue to glory, ever open for 
 those ingenious men who are deprived of honours or of 
 wealth. Like that illustrious Roman who owed nothing 
 to his ancestors, videtur ex se natus, these seem self- 
 born ; and in the baptism of fame, they have given 
 themselves their name. Bruyere has finely said of men 
 of genius, " These men have neither ancestors nor poste- 
 rity ; they alone compose their whole race." 
 
 But Akenside, we have seen, blushed when his 
 lameness reminded him of the fall of one of his father s 
 cleavers ; Prior, the son of a vintner, could not endure 
 to be reminded, though by his favourite Horace, that 
 " the cask retains its flavour ; " like Yoiture, another 
 descendant of a marchand du vin, whose heart sickened 
 over that which exhilarates all other hearts, whenever 
 his opinion of its quality was maliciously consulted. 
 All these instances too evidently prove that genius is 
 subject to the most vulgar infirmities. 
 
 But some have thought more courageously. The 
 amiable Rollin was the son of a cutler, but the historian 
 of nations never felt his dignity compromised by his 
 birth. Even late in life, he ingeniously alluded to his 
 first occupation, for we find an epigram of his in send- 
 ing a knife for a new-year's gift, " informing his friend, 
 
LITERATURE AN AVENUE TO GLORY. 34/ 
 
 that, should this present appear to come rather from 
 Vulcan than from Minerva, it should not surprise, for," 
 adds the epigrammatist, " it was from the cavern of the 
 Cyclops, I began to direct my footsteps towards 
 Parnassus." The great political negotiator, Cardinal 
 D'Ossat, was elevated by his genius from an orphan 
 state of indigence, and was alike destitute of ancestry, 
 of titles, even of parents. On the day of his creation, 
 when others of noble extraction assumed new titles from 
 the seignorial names of their ancient houses, he was at 
 a loss to fix on one. Having asked the pope, whether 
 he should choose that of his bishopric, his Holiness re- 
 quested him to preserve his plain family name, which 
 he had rendered famous by his own genius. The sons 
 of a sword-maker, a potter, and a tax-gatherer, were 
 the greatest of the orators, the most majestic of the 
 poets, and the most graceful of the satirists of antiquity ; 
 Demosthenes, Virgil, and Horace. The eloquent Mas- 
 sillon, the brilliant Flechier, Rousseau and Diderot ; 
 Johnson, Goldsmith, and Franklin, arose amidst the 
 most humble avocations. 
 
 Vespasian raised a statue to the historian Josephus, 
 though a Jew ; and the Athenians one to iEsop, though 
 a slave. Even among great military republics the road 
 to public honour was open, not alone to heroes and 
 patricians, but to that solitary genius which derives from 
 itself all which it gives to the public, and nothing from 
 its birth or the public situation it occupies. 
 
 It is the prerogative of genius to elevate obscure 
 men to the higher class of society. If the influence of 
 wealth in the present day have created a new aristocracy 
 of its own, where they already begin to be jealous of 
 
348 AN INTELLECTUAL NOBILTTY 
 
 their ranks, we may assert that genius creates a sort of 
 intellectual nobility, which is now conferred by public 
 feeling ; as heretofore the surnames of " the African," 
 and of " Coriolanus," won by valour, associated with 
 the names of the conqueror of Africa, and the van- 
 quisher of Corioli. Were men of genius as such, to 
 have armorial bearings, they might consist, not of 
 imaginary things, of griffins and chimeras, but of deeds 
 performed and of public works in existence. When 
 Dondi raised the great astronomical clock at the Uni- 
 versity of Padua which was long the admiration of 
 Europe, it gave a name and nobility to its maker and 
 all his descendants. There still lives a Marquis Dondi 
 dal' Horologio. Sir Hugh Middleton, in memory 
 of his vast enterprise, changed his former arms to 
 bear three piles, to perpetuate the interesting cir- 
 cumstance, that by these instruments he had strength- 
 ened the works he had invented, when his genius poured 
 forth the waters through our metropolis, thereby dis- 
 tinguishing it from all others in the world. Should not 
 Evelyn have inserted an oak-tree in his bearings ? for 
 his "Sylva" occasioned the plantation of "many mil- 
 lions of timber-trees," and the present navy of Great 
 Britain has been constructed with the oaks which the 
 genius of Evelyn planted. There was an eminent 
 Italian musician, who had a piece of music inscribed 
 on his tomb ; and I have heard of a Dutch mathema- 
 tician, who had a calculation for his epitaph. 
 
 We who were reproached for a coldness in our 
 national character, have caught the inspiration and en- 
 thusiasm for the works and the celebrity of genius ; the 
 symptoms indeed were long dubious. Reynolds wished 
 
CREATED BY PUBLIC OPINION. 349 
 
 to have one of his own pictures, " Contemplation in 
 the figure of an Angel," carried at his funeral ; a 
 custom not unusual with foreign painters ; but it was 
 not deemed prudent to comply with this last wish of the 
 great artist, from the fears entertained as to the manner 
 in which a London populace might have received such 
 a novelty. This shows that the profound feeling of art 
 is still confined within a circle among us, of which, 
 hereafter, the circumference perpetually enlarging, may 
 embrace even the whole people. If the public have 
 borrowed the names of some lords to dignify a " Sand- 
 wich" and a "Spencer," we may be allowed to raise 
 into titles of literary nobility those distinctions which 
 the public voice has attached to some authors ; Msckylus 
 Potter, Athenian Stuart, sm&Anacreon Moore. Butler, 
 in his own day, w^as more generally known by the sin- 
 gle and singular name of Hudibras, than by his own. 
 
 This intellectual nobility is not chimerical. Such 
 titles must be found indeed, in the years which are to 
 come ; yet the prelude of their fame distinguishes these 
 men from the crowd. Whenever the rightful possessor 
 appears, will not the eyes of all spectators be fixed on 
 him ? I allude to scenes which I have witnessed. Will 
 not even literary honours superadd a nobility to nobility ; 
 and make aname instantly recognised which might other- 
 wise be hidden under its rank, and remain unknown by 
 its title ? Our illustrious list of literary noblemen is far 
 more glorious than the satirical " Catalogue of Noble 
 Authors," drawn up by a polished and heartless cynic, 
 who has pointed his brilliant shafts at all who were 
 chivalrous in spirit, or related to the family of genius. 
 One may presume on the existence of this intellectual 
 
350 AN INTELLECTUAL NOBILITY 
 
 
 Mobility, from the extraordinary circumstance that the 
 great have actually felt a jealousy of the literary rank. 
 But no rivalry can exist in the solitary honour conferred 
 on an author. It is not an honour derived from birth 
 nor creation, but from public opinion, and inseparable 
 from his name, as an essential quality ; for the diamond 
 will sparkle and the rose will be fragrant, otherwise it 
 is no diamond or rose. The great may well conde- 
 scend to be humble to genius, since genius pays its 
 homage in becoming proud of that humility. Cardinal 
 Richelieu was mortified at the celebrity of the unbend- 
 ing Corneille ; so were several noblemen at Pope's 
 indifference to their rank ; and Magliabechi, the book 
 prodigy of his age, whom every literary stranger visited 
 at Florence, assured Lord Raley that the Duke of 
 Tuscany had become jealous of the attention he was 
 receiving from foreigners, as they usually went to visit 
 Magliabechi before the grand duke. 
 
 A confession by Montesquieu states, with open can- 
 dour, a fact in his life which confirms this jealousy of 
 the great with the literary character. " On my entering 
 into life I was spoken of as a man of talents, and peo- 
 ple of condition gave me a favourable reception ; but 
 when the success of my Persian Letters proved perhaps 
 that I was not unworthy of my reputation, and the 
 public began to esteem me, my reception with the great 
 was discouraging, and I experienced innumerable morti- 
 fications." Montesquieu subjoins a reflection sufficiently 
 humiliating for the mere nobleman: "The great, in- 
 wardly wounded with the glory of a celebrated name, 
 seek to humble it. In general he only can patiently 
 endure the fame of others, who deserves fame himself." 
 
CREATED BY PUBLIC OPINION. 351 
 
 This sort of jealousy unquestionably prevailed in the 
 late Lord Orford, a wit, a man of the world, and a 
 man of rank ; but while he considered literature as a 
 mere amusement, he was mortified at not obtaining 
 literary celebrity ; he felt his authorial, always beneath 
 his personal character. It fell to my lot to develop his 
 real feelings respecting himself and the literary men of 
 his age.* 
 
 Who was the dignified character, Lord Chesterfield 
 or Samuel Johnson, when the great author, proud of his 
 protracted and vast labour, rejected his lordship's tardy 
 and trivial patronage ? "I value myself," says Swift, 
 " upon making the ministry desire to be acquainted 
 with Parnell, and not Parnell with the ministry." 
 Piron would not suffer the literary character to be 
 lowered in his presence. Entering the apartment of a 
 nobleman, who was conducting another peer to the 
 stair s-head, the latter stopped to make way for Piron : 
 " Pass on, my lord," said the noble master ; " pass, he 
 is only a poet." Piron replied, " Since our qualities 
 are declared, I shall take my rank," and placed himself 
 before the lord. Nor is this pride, the true source of 
 elevated character, refused to the great artist as well as 
 the great author. Michael Angelo, invited by Julius 
 II. to the court of Rome, found that intrigue had in- 
 
 * Calamities of Authors, vol. i. I printed, in 1812, extracts from 
 Walpole's correspondence with Cole. Some have considered that 
 there was a severity of delineation in my character of Horace Walpole. 
 I was the first, in my impartial view of his literary character, to pro- 
 claim to the world what it has now fully sanctioned, that " His most 
 pleasing, if not his great talent, lay in letter-writing ,• here he was 
 without a rival. His correspondence abounded with literature, criti- 
 cism, and wit of the most original and brilliant composition." This 
 was published several years before the recent collection of his letters. 
 
352 AN INTELLECTUAL NOBILITY 
 
 disposed his Holiness towards him, and more than once 
 the great artist was suffered to linger in attendance in 
 the ante-chamber. One day the indignant man of ge- 
 nius exclaimed, " Tell his Holiness, if he want me, he 
 must look for me elsewhere." He flew back to his 
 beloved Florence, to proceed with that celebrated car- 
 toon which afterwards became a favourite study with 
 all artists. Thrice the pope wrote for his return, and 
 at length menaced the little state of Tuscany with war, 
 if Michael Angelo prolonged his absence. He returned. 
 The sublime artist knelt at the feet of the Father of the 
 Church, turning aside his troubled countenance in si- 
 lence. An intermeddling bishop offered himself as a 
 mediator, apologising for our artist by observing, that 
 " Of this proud humour are these painters made ! " 
 Julius turned to this pitiable mediator, and, as Vasari 
 tells, used a switch on this occasion, observing, " You 
 speak injuriously of him, while I am silent. It is you 
 who are ignorant." Raising Michael Angelo, Julius II. 
 embraced the man of genius. 
 
 " I can make lords of you every day, but I cannot 
 create a Titian," said the Emperor Charles V. to his 
 courtiers, who had become jealous of the hours and the 
 half-hours which the monarch stole from them that he 
 might converse with the man of genius at his work. 
 There is an elevated intercourse between power and 
 genius ; and if they are deficient in reciprocal esteem, 
 neither are great. The intellectual nobility seems to 
 have been asserted by De Harlay, a great French states- 
 man ; for when the academy was once not received 
 with royal honours, he complained to the French mo- 
 
CREATED BY PUBLIC OPINION. 353 
 
 presented to Francis I. for the first time, the king 
 always advanced three steps from the throne to receive 
 him." It is something more than an ingenious thought, 
 when Fontenelle, in his eloge on Leibnitz, alluding to 
 the death of Queen Anne, adds of her successor, that 
 U The Elector of Hanover united under his dominion 
 an electorate, the three kingdoms of Great Britain, and 
 Leibnitz and Newton." 
 
 If ever the voice of individuals can recompense a life 
 of literary labour, it is in speaking a foreign accent. 
 This sounds like the distant plaudit of posterity. The 
 distance of space between the literary character and the 
 inquirer, in some respects represents the distance of 
 time which separates the author from the next age. 
 Fontenelle was never more gratified than when a 
 Swede, arriving at the gates of Paris, inquired of the 
 custom-house officers where Fontenelle resided, and ex- 
 pressed his indignation that not one of them had ever 
 heard of his name. Hobbes expresses his proud delight 
 that his portrait was sought after by foreigners, and 
 that the Great Duke of Tuscany made the philosopher 
 the object of his first inquiries. Camden was not in- 
 sensible to the visits of German noblemen, who were 
 desirous of seeing the British Pliny ; and Pocock, 
 while he received no aid from patronage at home for 
 his Oriental studies, never relaxed in those unrequited 
 labours, animated by the learned foreigners, who hast- 
 ened to see and converse with this prodigy of eastern 
 learning. 
 
 Yes ! to the very presence of the man of genius will 
 the world spontaneously pay their tribute of respect, of 
 admiration, or of love. Many a pilgrimage has he lived 
 
 A A 
 
354 LITERARY HONOURS 
 
 to receive, and many a crowd has followed his foot- 
 steps ! There are days in the life of genius which repay 
 its sufferings. Demosthenes confessed he was pleased 
 when even a fishwoman of Athens pointed him out. 
 Corneille had his particular seat in the theatre, and 
 the audience would rise to salute him when he entered. 
 At the presence of Raynal in the House of Commons, 
 the speaker was requested to suspend the debate till 
 that illustrious foreigner, who had written on the En- 
 glish parliament, was accommodated with a seat. 
 Spinosa, when he gained an humble livelihood by grind- 
 ing optical glasses, at an obscure village in Holland, 
 was visited by the first general in Europe, who for the 
 sake of this philosophical conference, suspended the 
 inarch of the army. 
 
 In all ages and in all countries has this feeling been 
 created. It is neither a temporary ebullition, nor an 
 individual honour. It comes out of the heart of man. 
 It is the passion of great souls. In Spain, whatever 
 was most beautiful in its kind was described by the 
 name of the great Spanish bard ; every thing excellent 
 was called a Lope. Italy would furnish a volume of 
 the public honours decreed to literary men ; nor is that 
 spirit extinct, though the national character has fallen 
 by the chance of fortune. Metastasio and Tirabos- 
 chi received what had been accorded to Petrarch and 
 to Poggio. Germany, patriotic to its literary characters, 
 is the land of the enthusiasm of genius. On the bor- 
 ders of the Linnet, in the public walk of Zurich, the 
 monument of Gesner, erected by the votes of his fel- 
 low-citizens, attests their sensibility; and a solemn 
 funeral honoured the remains of Klopstock, led by 
 
OP VARIOUS NATIONS. 355 
 
 the senate of Hamburgh, with fifty thousand votaries, 
 so penetrated by one universal sentiment, that this 
 multitude preserved a mournful silence, and the inter- 
 ference of the police ceased to be necessary through the 
 city at the solemn burial of the man of genius. Has 
 even Holland proved insensible ? The statue of Eras- 
 mus, in Rotterdam, still animates her young students, 
 and offers a noble example to her neighbours of the 
 influence even of the sight of the statue of a man of 
 genius. Travellers never fail to mention Erasmus 
 when Basle occupies their recollections ; so that, as 
 Bayle observes, " He has rendered the place of his 
 death as celebrated as that of his birth." In France, 
 since Francis I. created genius, and Louis XIY. pro- 
 tected it, the impulse has been communicated to the 
 French people. There the statues of their illustrious 
 men spread inspiration on the spots which living they 
 would have haunted : — in their theatres the -great dra- 
 matists ; in their Institute their illustrious authors ; in 
 their public edifices congenial men of genius*. This is 
 worthy of the country which privileged the family of 
 La Fontaine to be for ever exempt from taxes, and 
 decreed that " the productions of the mind were not 
 seizable," when the creditors of Crebillon would have 
 attached the produce of his tragedies. 
 
 These distinctive honours accorded to genius, were in 
 unison with their decree respecting the will of Bayle. 
 It was the subject of a lawsuit between the heir of the 
 
 * We cannot bury the fame of our English worthies — that exists 
 before us, independent of ourselves ; but we bury the influence of their 
 inspiring presence in those immortal memorials of genius easy to be 
 read by all men — their statues and their busts, consigning them to 
 spots seldom visited, and often too obscure to be viewed. 
 A a2 
 
356 LOCAL ASSOCIATIONS WITH THE 
 
 will and the inheritor by blood. The latter contested that 
 this great literary character, being a fugitive for religion, 
 and dying in a proscribed country, was divested by law 
 of the power to dispose of his property, and that our 
 author, when resident in Holland, in a civil sense was 
 dead. In the parliament of Toulouse the judge decided 
 that learned men are free in all countries ; that he who 
 had sought in a foreign land an asylum from his love of 
 letters, was no fugitive ; that it was unworthy of France 
 to treat as a stranger a son in whom she gloried, and he 
 protested against the notion of a civil death to such a 
 man as Bayle, whose name was living throughout Eu- 
 rope. This judicial decision in France was in unison 
 with that of the senate of Rotterdam, who declared of 
 the emigrant Bayle, that " Such a man should not be 
 considered as a foreigner." 
 
 Even the most common objects are consecrated when 
 associated with the memory of the man of genius. 
 We still seek for his tomb on the spot where it has 
 vanished. The enthusiasts of genius still wander on 
 the hills of Pausilippo, and muse on Virgil to retrace 
 his landscape. There is a grove at Magdalen College 
 which retains the name of Addison's walk, where still 
 the student will linger ; and there is a cave at Macao, 
 which is still visited by the Portuguese from a national 
 feeling, for Camoens there passed many days in com- 
 posing his Lusiad. When Petrarch was passing by 
 his native town, he was received with the honours of 
 his fame ; but when the heads of the town conducted 
 Petrarch to the house where the poet was born, and 
 informed him that the proprietor had often wished to 
 make alterations, but that the towns-people had risen 
 
MEMORY OF THE MAN OF GENIUS. 357 
 
 to insist that the house which was consecrated by the 
 birth of Petrarch should be preserved unchanged ; this 
 was a triumph more affecting to Petrarch than his coro- 
 nation at Rome*. 
 
 In the village of Certaldo is still shown the house of 
 Boccaccio ; and on a turret are seen the arms of the 
 Medici, which they had sculptured there, with an in- 
 scription alluding to a small house and a name which 
 filled the world ; and in Ferrara, the small house which 
 Ariosto built was purchased, to be preserved, by the 
 municipality, and there they still show the poet's study ; 
 and under his bust a simple but affecting tribute to 
 genius records, that " Ludovico Ariosto in this apart- 
 ment wrote." Two hundred and eighty years after the 
 death of the divine poet, it was purchased and restored 
 by the podesta, with the money of the commune, that 
 " the public veneration may be maintained." " Fo- 
 reigners," says Anthony Wood of Milton, " have, out 
 of pure devotion, gone to Bread-street to see the house 
 and chamber where he was born ;" and at Paris the 
 house which Yoltaire inhabited, and at Ferney his 
 study, are both preserved inviolate. In the study of 
 Montesquieu at La Brede, near Bordeaux, the pro- 
 prietor has preserved all the furniture, without altering 
 anything, that the apartment where this great man 
 meditated on his immortal work should want for nothing 
 to assist the reveries of the spectator ; and on the side 
 
 * On this passage I find a remarkable manuscript note by Lord 
 Byron. 
 
 " It would have pained me more that ' the proprietor ' should have 
 ' often ' wished to make alterations, tban it could give pleasure tbat 
 the rest of Arezzo rose against bis right (for right he had) ; the de- 
 preciation of tbe lowest of mankind is more painful than the applause 
 of the highest is pleasing ; the sting of a scorpion is more in torture 
 than the possession of anything could be in rapture." 
 
358 LOCAL ASSOCIATIONS WITH THE 
 
 of the chimney is still seen a place which while writing 
 he was accustomed to rub his feet against, as they 
 rested on it. In a keep or dungeon of this feudal cha- 
 teau, the local association suggested to the philosopher 
 his chapter on " The Liberty of the Citizen." It is 
 the second chapter of the twelfth book, of which the 
 close is remarkable. 
 
 Let us regret that the little villa of Pope, and the 
 poetic Leasowes of Shenstone, have fallen the victims 
 of property as much as if destroyed by the barbarous 
 hand which cut down the consecrated tree of Shak- 
 speare. The very apartment of a man of genius, the 
 chair he studied in, the table he wrote on, are con- 
 templated with curiosity ; the spot is full of local im- 
 pressions. And all this happens from an unsatisfied 
 desire to see and hear him whom we never can see nor 
 hear ; yet in a moment of illusion, if we listen to a 
 traditional conversation, if we can revive one of his 
 feelings, if we can catch but a dim image, we reproduce 
 this man of genius before us, on whose features we so 
 often dwell. Even the rage of the military spirit has 
 taught itself to respect the abode of genius ; and Caesar 
 and Sylla, who never spared the blood of their own 
 Rome, alike felt their spirit rebuked, and alike saved 
 the literary city of Athens. Antiquity has preserved 
 a beautiful incident of this nature, in the noble reply 
 of the artist Protogenes. When the city of Rhodes 
 was taken by Demetrius, the man of genius was dis- 
 covered in his garden, tranquilly finishing a picture. 
 " How is it that you do not participate in the general 
 alarm ? " asked the conqueror. " Demetrius, you war 
 against the Rhodians, but not against the fine arts," 
 replied the man of genius. Demetrius had already 
 
MEMORY OF THE MAN OF GENIUS. 359 
 
 shown this by his conduct, for he forbade firing that 
 part of the city where the artist resided. 
 
 The house of the man of genius has been spared 
 amidst contending empires, from the days of Pindar to 
 those of Buffon ; " the Historian of Nature's " chateau 
 was preserved from this elevated feeling by Prince 
 Schwartzenberg, as our Marlborough had performed 
 the same glorious office in guarding the hallowed asylum 
 of Fe.velon. In the grandeur of Milton's verse we 
 perceive the feeling he associated with this literary 
 honour — 
 
 " The great Emathian conqueror bid spare 
 
 The house of Pindarus when temple and tower 
 Went to the ground ■ ." 
 
 And the meanest things, the very household stuff, 
 associated with the memory of the man of genius, 
 become the objects of our affections. At a, festival 
 in honour of Thomson the poet, the chair in which 
 he composed part of his Seasons was produced, and 
 appears to have communicated some of the raptures 
 to which he was liable who had sat in that chair. 
 Rabelais, amongst his drollest inventions, could not 
 have imagined that his old cloak would have been 
 preserved in the university of Montpelier for future 
 doctors to wear on the day they took their degree ; 
 nor could Shakspeare have supposed, with all his 
 fancy, that the mulberry-tree which he planted would 
 have been multiplied into relics. But in such in- 
 stances the feeling is right, with a wrong direction ; 
 and while the populace are exhausting their emotions 
 on an old tree, an old chair, and an old cloak, they are 
 paying that involuntary tribute to genius which forms 
 its pride, and will generate the race. 
 
360 INFLUENCE OF AUTHORS ON SOCIETY. 
 
 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 naturd grada- 
 tions of genius. — Men of Genius produce their usefulness in privacy. 
 — The public mind is now the creation of the public writer. — Poli- 
 ticians 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. 
 
 Literary fame, which is the sole preserver of all 
 other fame, participates little, and remotely, in the 
 remuneration and the honours of professional characters. 
 All other professions press more immediately on the 
 wants and attentions of men, than the occupations of 
 Literary Characters, who from their habits are 
 secluded ; producing their usefulness often at a late 
 period of life, and not always valued by their own 
 generation. 
 
 It is not the commercial character of a nation which 
 inspires veneration in mankind, nor will its military 
 power engage the affections of its neighbours. So late 
 as in 1700, the Italian Gemelli told all Europe that he 
 could find nothing among us but our writings to distin- 
 guish us from a people of barbarians. It was long con- 
 sidered that our genius partook of the density and 
 variableness of our climate, and that we were incapaci- 
 
NATIONAL TASTES. 36 1 
 
 tated even by situation from the enjoyments of those 
 beautiful arts which had not yet travelled to us, — as if 
 Nature herself had designed to disjoin us from more 
 polished nations and brighter skies. 
 
 At length we have triumphed! Our philosophers, 
 our poets, and our historians, are printed at foreign 
 presses. This is a perpetual victory, and establishes 
 the ascendancy of our genius, as much at least as the 
 commerce and the prowess of England. This singular 
 revolution in the history of the human mind, and by its 
 reaction, this singular revolution in human affairs, was 
 effected by a glorious succession of authors, who have 
 enabled our nation to arbitrate among the nations of 
 Europe, and to possess ourselves of their involuntary 
 esteem by discoveries in science, by principles in phi- 
 losophy, by truths in history, and even by the graces 
 of fiction ; and there is not a man of genius among 
 foreigners who stands unconnected with our intellectual 
 sovereignty. Even had our country displayed more 
 limited resources than its awful powers have opened, 
 and had the sphere of its dominion been closed by its 
 island boundaries, if the same national literary character 
 had predominated, we should have stood on the same 
 eminence among our continental rivals. The small 
 cities of Athens and of Florence will perpetually attest 
 the influence of the literary character over other nations. 
 The one received the tribute of the mistress of the uni- 
 verse, when the Romans sent their youth to be educated 
 at the Grecian city, while the other, at the revival of 
 letters, beheld every polished European crowding to its 
 little court. 
 
 In closing this imperfect work by attempting to 
 
362 LITERARY PREJUDICES. 
 
 
 ascertain the real influence of authors on society, it will 
 be necessary to notice some curious facts in the history 
 of genius. 
 
 The distinct literary tastes of different nations, and 
 the repugnance they mutually betray for the master- 
 writers of each other, is an important circumstance to 
 the philosophical observer. These national tastes origi- 
 nate in modes of feeling, in customs, in idioms, and all 
 the numerous associations prevalent among every people. 
 The reciprocal influence of manners on taste, and of taste 
 on manners, of government and religion on the litera- 
 ture of a people, and of their literature on the national 
 character, with other congenial objects of inquiry, still 
 require a more ample investigation. Whoever attempts 
 to reduce this diversity, and these strong contrasts of 
 national tastes, to one common standard, by forcing such 
 dissimilar objects into comparative parallels, or by try- 
 ing them by conventional principles and arbitrary regu- 
 lations, will often condemn what in truth his mind is 
 inadequate to comprehend, and the experience of his 
 associations to combine. 
 
 These attempts have been the fertile source in litera- 
 ture of what may be called national prejudices. The 
 French nation insists that the northerns are defective in 
 taste — the taste, they tell us, which is established at 
 Paris, and which existed at Athens : the Gothic imagi- 
 nation of the north spurns at the timid copiers of the 
 Latin classics, and interminable disputes prevail in their 
 literature, as in their architecture and their painting. 
 Philosophy discovers a fact of which taste seems little 
 conscious ; it is, that genius varies with the soil, and 
 produces a nationality of taste. The feelings of man- 
 
POWER OF TRUE GENIUS. 363 
 
 kind indeed have the same common source, but they 
 must come to us through the medium and by the modi- 
 fications of society. Love is an universal passion, but 
 the poetry of love in different nations is peculiar to each ; 
 for every great poet belongs to his country. Petrarch, 
 Lope de Vega, Racine, Shakespeare, and Sadi, would 
 each express this universal passion by the most specific 
 differences ; and the style that would be condemned as 
 unnatural by one people, might be habitual with another. 
 The concetti of the Italian, the figurative style of the 
 Persian, the swelling grandeur of the Spaniard, the 
 classical correctness of the French, are all modifications 
 of genius, relatively true to each particular writer. On 
 national tastes critics are but wrestlers : the Spaniard 
 will still prefer his Lope de Vega to the French Racine, 
 or the English his Shakspeare, as the Italian his Tasso 
 and his Petrarch. Hence all national writers are studied 
 with enthusiasm by their own people, and their very 
 peculiarities, offensive to others, with the natives con- 
 stitute their excellences. Nor does this perpetual con- 
 test about the great writers of other nations solely arise 
 from an association of patriotic glory, but really because 
 these great native writers have most strongly excited 
 the sympathies and conformed to the habitual tastes of 
 their own people. 
 
 Hence then we deduce that true genius is the organ of 
 its nation. The creative faculty is itself created ; for it 
 is the nation which first imparts an impulse to the 
 character of genius. Such is the real source of those 
 distinct tastes which we perceive in all great national 
 authors. Every literary work, to ensure its success, 
 must adapt itself to the sympathies and the under- 
 
364 GENIUS THE ORGAN OF 
 
 standings of the people it addresses. Hence those oppo- 
 site characteristics which are usually ascribed to the 
 master-writers themselves, originate with the country, 
 and not with the writer. Lope de Vega and Calderon 
 in their dramas, and Cervantes, who has left his 
 name as the epithet of a peculiar grave humour, were 
 Spaniards before they were men of genius. Corneille, 
 Racine, and Rabelais, are entirely of an opposite cha- 
 racter to the Spaniards, having adapted their genius to 
 their own declamatory and vivacious countrymen. Pe- 
 trarch and Tasso display a fancifulness in depicting 
 the passions, as Boccaccio narrates his facetious stories, 
 quite distinct from the inventions and style of northern 
 writers. Shakspeare is placed at a wider interval 
 from all of them than they are from each other, and is 
 as perfectly insular in his genius, as his own countrymen 
 were in their customs, and their modes of thinking and 
 feeling. 
 
 Thus the master-writers of every people preserve the 
 distinct national character in their works ; and hence 
 that extraordinary enthusiasm with which every people 
 read their own favourite authors ; but in which others 
 cannot participate, and for which, with all their national 
 prejudices, they often recriminate on each other with 
 false, and even ludicrous criticism. 
 
 But genius is not only the organ of its nation ; it is 
 also that of the state of the times, and a great work 
 usually originates in the age. Certain events must pre- 
 cede the man of genius, who often becomes only the 
 vehicle of public feeling. Machiavel has been re- 
 proached for propagating a political system subversive 
 of all human honour and happiness ; but was it Ma- 
 
THE STATE OF THE AGE. 365 
 
 chiavel who formed his age, or the age which created 
 Machiavel ? Living among the petty principalities of 
 Italy, where stratagem and assassination were the prac- 
 tices of those wretched courts, what did that calumniated 
 genius more than lift the veil from a cabinet of banditti ; 
 Machiavel alarmed the world by exposing a system 
 subversive of all human virtue and happiness, and 
 whether he meant it or not, certainly led the way to 
 political freedom. On the same principle we may learn 
 that Boccaccio would not have written so many in- 
 decent tales, had not the scandalous lives of the monks 
 engaged public attention. This we may now regret ; 
 but the court of Rome felt the concealed satire, and that 
 luxurious and numerous class in society never recovered 
 from the chastisement. 
 
 Montaigne has been censured for his universal scep- 
 ticism, and for the unsettled notions he threw out on his 
 motley page, which has been attributed to his incapacity 
 of forming decisive opinions. " Que scais-je V was his 
 motto. The same accusation may reach the gentle 
 Erasmus, who alike offended the old catholics and the 
 new reformers. The real source of their vacillations we 
 may discover in the age itself. It was one of contro- 
 versy and of civil wars, when the minds of men were 
 thrown into perpetual agitation, and opinions, like the 
 victories of the parties, were every day changing sides. 
 
 Even in its advancement beyond the intelligence of 
 its own age, genius is but progressive. In nature all is 
 continuous ; she makes no starts and leaps. Genius is 
 said to soar, but we should rather say that genius 
 climbs. Did the great Verulam, or Rawleigh, or Dr. 
 More, emancipate themselves from all the dreams of 
 
366 CAUSES OF THE SUPPRESSION OF 
 
 their age, from the occult agency of witchcraft, the 
 astral influence, and the ghost and demon creed ? 
 
 Before a particular man of genius can appear, certain 
 events must arise to prepare the age for him. A great 
 commercial nation, in the maturity of time, opened all 
 the ^sources of wealth to the contemplation of Adam 
 Smith. That extensive system of what is called poli- 
 tical economy, could not have been produced at any 
 other time ; for before this period the materials of this 
 work had but an imperfect existence, and the advances 
 which this sort of science had made were only partial 
 and preparatory. If the principle of Adam Smith's 
 great work seems to confound the happiness of a nation 
 with its wealth, we can scarcely reproach the man of 
 genius, who we shall find is always reflecting back the 
 feelings of his own nation, even in his most original 
 speculations. 
 
 In works of pure imagination we trace the same 
 march of the human intellect; and we discover in those 
 inventions, which appear sealed by their originality, 
 how much has been derived from the age and the people 
 in which they were produced. Every work of genius 
 is tinctured by the feelings, and often originates in the 
 events of the times. The Inferno of Dante was caught 
 from the popular superstitions of the age, and had been 
 preceded by the gross visions which the monks had 
 forged, usually for their own purposes. " La Citta 
 dolente," and " la perduta gente," w T ere familiar to the 
 imaginations of the people, by the monkish visions, and 
 it seems even by ocular illusions of Hell, exhibited in 
 mysteries, with its gulfs of flame, and its mountains of 
 ice, and the shrieks of the condemned. To produce the 
 
GENIUS IN A PEOPLE. 367 
 
 " Inferno" only required the giant step of genius, in 
 the sombre, the awful, and the fierce Dante. When 
 the age of chivalry flourished, all breathed of love and 
 courtesy ; the great man was the great lover, and the 
 great author the romancer. It was from his own age 
 that Milton derived his greatest blemish, — the intro- 
 duction of school-divinity into poetry. In a polemical 
 age the poet, as well as the sovereign, reflected the 
 reigning tastes. 
 
 There are accidents to which genius is liable, and by 
 which it is frequently suppressed in a people. The 
 establishment of the Inquisition in Spain at one stroke 
 annihilated all the genius of the country. Cervantes 
 said that the Inquisition had spoilt many of his most 
 delightful inventions ; and unquestionably it silenced 
 the wit and invention of a nation whose proverbs attest 
 they possessed them even to luxuriance. All the conti- 
 nental nations have boasted great native painters and 
 architects, while these arts were long truly foreign to 
 us. Theoretical critics, at a loss to account for this 
 singularity, accused not only our climate, but even our 
 diet, as the occult causes of our unfitness to cultivate 
 them. Yet Montesquieu and Winkelman might have 
 observed, that the air of fens and marshes had not 
 deprived the gross feeders of Holland and Flanders of 
 admirable artists. We have been outrageously calum- 
 niated. So far from any national incapacity, or obtuse 
 feelings attaching to ourselves in respect to these arts, 
 the noblest efforts had long been made, not only by 
 individuals, but by the magnificence of Henry VIII., 
 who invited to his court Raphael and Titian, but unfor- 
 tunately only obtained Holbein. A later sovereign, 
 
368 WORKS OF GENIUS 
 
 Charles the First, not only possessed galleries of pictures, 
 and was the greatest purchaser in Europe, for he raised 
 their value, but he likewise possessed the taste and the 
 science of the connoisseur. Something, indeed, had 
 occurred to our national genius which had thrown it 
 into a stupifying state, from which it is yet hardly 
 aroused. Could those foreign philosophers have ascended 
 to moral causes, instead of vapouring forth fanciful no- 
 tions, they might have struck at the true cause of the 
 deficiency in our national genius. The jealousy of puri- 
 tanic fanaticism had persecuted these arts from the first 
 rise of the Reformation in this country. It had not 
 only banished them from our cl^urches and altar-pieces, 
 but the fury of the people, and the " wisdom" of par- 
 liament, had alike combined to mutilate and even efface 
 what little remained of painting and sculpture among 
 us. Even within our own times this deadly hostility 
 to art was not extinct ; for when a proposal was made 
 gratuitously to decorate our places of worship by a 
 series of religious pictures, and English artists, in pure 
 devotion to Art, zealous to refute the continental calum- 
 niators, asked only for walls to cover, George the Third 
 highly approved of the plan. The design was put aside, 
 as some had a notion that the cultivation of the fine 
 arts in our naked churches was a return to Catholicism. 
 Had this glorious plan been realised, the golden age of 
 English art might have arisen. Every artist would 
 have invented a subject most congenial to his powers. 
 Reynolds would have emulated Raphael in the Virgin 
 and Child in the manger, West had fixed on Christ 
 . raising the young man from the dead, Barry had pro- 
 foundly*meditated on the Jews rejecting Jesus. Thus 
 
OFTEN INVENTED, BUT NEGLECTED. 369 
 
 did an age of genius perish before its birth ! It was on 
 the occasion of this frustrated project that Barry, in 
 the rage of disappointment, immortalised himself by a 
 gratuitous labour of seven years on the walls of the 
 Society of Arts, for which, it is said, the French govern- 
 ment under Buonaparte offered ten thousand pounds. 
 
 Thus also it has happened, that we have possessed 
 among ourselves great architects, although opportunities 
 for displaying their genius have been rare. This the 
 fate and fortune of two Englishmen attest. Without 
 the fire of London, we might not have shown the world 
 one of the greatest architects, in Sir Christopher 
 Wren; had not a St. Paul's been required by the 
 nation, he would have found no opportunity of display- 
 ing the magnificence of his genius, which even then was 
 mutilated, as the original model bears witness to the 
 world. That great occasion served this noble architect 
 to multiply his powers in other public edifices : and it 
 is here worth remarking, that had not Charles II. been 
 seized by apoplexy, the royal residence which was begun 
 at Winchester on a plan of Sir Christopher Wren's, by 
 its magnificence would have raised a Versailles for 
 England. 
 
 The fate of Inigo Jones is as remarkable as that of 
 Wren. Whitehall afforded a proof to foreigners, that 
 among a people which, before that edifice appeared, 
 was reproached for their total deficiency of feeling for 
 the pure classical style of architecture, the true taste 
 could nevertheless exist. This celebrated piece of archi- 
 tecture, however, is but a fragment of a grander compo- 
 sition, by which, had not the civil wars intervened, the 
 fame of Britain would have balanced the glory of Greece, 
 
 B B 
 
370 NATURAL GRADATION OP GENIUS. 
 
 or Italy, or France, and would have shown that our 
 country is more deficient in marble than in genius. 
 Thus the fire of London produces a St. Paul's, and the 
 civil wars suppress a Whitehall. Such circumstances 
 in the history of art among nations have not always 
 been developed by those theorists who have calumniated 
 the artists of England. 
 
 In the history of genius it is remarkable, that its 
 work is often invented, and lies neglected. A close 
 observer of this age pointed out to me, that the military 
 genius of that great French captain who so long 
 appeared to have conquered Europe, was derived from 
 his applying the new principles of war discovered by 
 Folard and Guibert. The genius of Folard observed, 
 that among the changes of military discipline in the 
 practice of war among European nations since the 
 introduction of gunpowder, one of the ancient methods 
 of the Romans had been improperly neglected, and in 
 his Commentaries on Polybius, Folard revived this 
 forgotten mode of warfare. Guibert, in his great 
 work " Histoire de la Milice Francaise," or rather the 
 History of the Art of War, adopted Folard's system of 
 charging by columns, and breaking the centre of the 
 enemy, which seems to be the famous plan of our Rodney 
 and Nelson in their maritime battles. But this favourite 
 plan became the ridicule of the military ; and the bold- 
 ness of his pen, with the high confidence of the author, 
 only excited adversaries to mortify his pretensions, 
 and to treat him as a dreamer. From this perpetual 
 opposition to his plans, and the neglect he incurred, 
 Guibert died of "vexation of spirit;" and the last 
 words on the death-bed of this man of genius were, 
 
NATURAL GRADATION OF GENIUS. 371 
 
 " One day they will know me ! " Folard and Guibert 
 created a Buonaparte, who studied them on the field 
 of battle; and he who would trace the military genius 
 who so long held in suspense the fate of the world, may 
 discover all that he performed in the neglected inventions 
 of preceding genius. 
 
 Hence also we may deduce the natural gradations of 
 genius. Many men of genius must arise before a parti- 
 cular man of genius can appear. Before Homer there 
 were other epic poets ; a catalogue of their names and 
 their works has come down to us. Corneille could 
 not have been the chief dramatist of France, had not 
 the founders of the French drama preceded him, and 
 Pope could not have preceded Dryden. It was in the 
 nature of things that a Giotto and a Cimabue should 
 have preceded a Raphael and a Michael Angelo. 
 
 Even the writings of such extravagant geniuses as 
 Bruno and Cardan, gave indications of the progress 
 of the human mind ; and had Ramus not shaken the 
 authority of the Organon of Aristotle, we might not 
 have had the Novum Organon of Bacon. Men slide 
 into their degree in the scale of genius, often by the 
 exercise of a single quality which their predecessors did 
 not possess, or by completing what at first was left 
 imperfect. Truth is a single point in knowledge, as 
 beauty is in art ; ages revolve till a Newton and a 
 Locke accomplish what an Aristotle and a Descartes 
 began. The old theory of animal spirits, observes 
 Professor Dugald Stewart, was applied by Descartes 
 to explain the mental phenomena, which led Newton 
 into that train of thinking which served as the ground- 
 work of Hartley's theory of vibrations. The learning 
 bb2 
 
372 MEN OF GENIUS PRODUCE THEIR 
 
 of one man makes others learned, and the influence of 
 genius is in nothing more remarkable than in its effects 
 on its brothers. Selden's treatise on the Syrian and Ara- 
 bian Deities enabled Milton to comprise in one hundred 
 and thirty beautiful lines, the two large and learned 
 syntagma which Selden had composed on that abstract 
 subject. Leland, the father of British antiquities, 
 impelled Stowe to work on his "Survey of London;" 
 and Stowe's " London " inspired Camden's stupendous 
 " Britannia." Herodotus produced Thucydides, and 
 Thucydides Xenophon. With us Hume, Robertson, 
 and Gibbon rose almost simultaneously by mutual in- 
 spiration. There exists a perpetual action and reaction 
 in the history of the human mind. It has frequently 
 been inquired why certain periods seem to have been 
 more favourable to a particular class of genius than 
 another ; or in other words, why men of genius appear 
 in clusters. We have theories respecting barren periods, 
 which are only satisfactorily accounted for by moral 
 causes. Genius generates enthusiasm and rivalry; but 
 having reached the meridian of its class, we find that 
 there can be no progress in the limited perfection of 
 human nature. All excellence in art, if it cannot 
 advance, must decline. 
 
 Important discoveries are often obtained by accident; 
 but the single work of a man of genius, which has at 
 length changed the character of a people, and even of 
 an age, is slowly matured in meditation. Even the 
 mechanical inventions of genius must first become 
 perfect in its own solitary abode ere the world can 
 possess them. Men of genius then produce their use- 
 fulness in privacy ; but it may not be of immediate 
 
USEFULNESS IN PRIVACY. 373 
 
 application, and is often undervalued by their own 
 generation. 
 
 The influence of authors is so great, while the author 
 himself is so inconsiderable, that to some the cause may 
 not appear commensurate to its effect. When Epicurus 
 published his doctrines, men immediately began to 
 express themselves with freedom on the established 
 religion, and the dark and fearful superstitions of 
 paganism, falling into neglect, mouldered away. If, 
 then, before the art of multiplying the productions of 
 the human mind existed, the doctrines of a philosopher 
 in manuscript or by lecture, could diffuse themselves 
 throughout a literary nation, it will baffle the algebraist 
 of metaphysics to calculate the unknown quantities of 
 the propagation of human thought. There are problems 
 in metaphysics, as well as in mathematics, which can 
 never be resolved. 
 
 A small portion of mankind appears marked out by 
 nature and by study for the purpose of cultivating their 
 thoughts in peace, and of giving activity to their dis- 
 coveries, by disclosing them to the people. " Could I," 
 exclaims Montesquieu, whose heart was beating with 
 the feelings of a great author, " could I but afford new 
 reasons to men to love their duties, their king, their 
 country, their laws, that they might become more 
 sensible of their happiness under every government they 
 live, and in every station they occupy, I should deem 
 myself the happiest of men ! " Such was the pure aspi- 
 ration of the great author who studied to preserve, by 
 ameliorating the humane fabric of society. The same 
 largeness of mind characterises all the eloquent friends 
 of the human race. In an age of religious intolerance 
 
374 THE PUBLIC MIND IS THE 
 
 it inspired the President De Thou to inculcate, from 
 sad experience and a juster view of human nature, the 
 impolicy as well as the inhumanity of religious perse- 
 cutions, in that dedication to Henry IV. which Lord 
 Mansfield declared he could never read without rapture, 
 " I was not born for myself alone, but for my country 
 and my friends!" exclaimed the genius which hallowed 
 the virtuous pages of his immortal history. 
 
 Even our liberal yet dispassionate Locke restrained 
 the freedom of his inquiries, and corrected the errors 
 which the highest intellect may fall into, by marking 
 out that impassable boundary which must probably 
 for ever limit all human intelligence ; for the maxim 
 which Locke constantly inculcates is, that "Reason 
 must be the last judge and guide in everything." A 
 final answer to those who propagate their opinions, 
 whatever they may be, with a sectarian spirit, to force 
 the understandings of other men to their own modes of 
 belief, and their own variable opinions. This alike in- 
 cludes those who yield up nothing to the genius of their 
 age to correct the imperfections of society, and those 
 who, opposing all human experience, would annihilate 
 what is most admirable in its institutions. 
 
 The public mind is the creation of the Master- 
 Writers ; an axiom as demonstrable as any in Euclid, 
 and a principle as sure in its operation as any in 
 mechanics. Bacon's influence over philosophy and 
 Grotius's over the political state of society are still 
 felt, and their principles practised far more than in their 
 own age. These men of genius in their solitude, 
 and with their views not always comprehended by their 
 contemporaries, became themselves the founders of our 
 
CREATION OF MASTER- WRITERS. 375 
 
 science and our legislation. When Locke and Mon- 
 tesquieu appeared, the old systems of government were 
 reviewed ; ' the principle of toleration was developed ; 
 and the revolutions of opinion were discovered. 
 
 A noble thought of Yitruvius, who of all the authors 
 of antiquity seems to have been most deeply imbued 
 with the feelings of the literary character, has often 
 struck me by the grandeur and the truth of its concep- 
 tion. " The sentiments of excellent writers," he says, 
 " although their persons be for ever absent, exist in 
 future ages ; and in councils and debates are of greater 
 authority than those of the persons who are present." 
 
 But politicians affect to disbelieve that abstract 
 principles possess any considerable influence on the 
 conduct of the subject. They tell us, that " in times 
 of tranquillity they are not wanted, and in times of 
 confusion they are never heard:" this is the philosophy 
 of men who do not choose that philosophy should disturb 
 their fire-side ! But it is in leisure, when they are not 
 wanted, that the speculative part of mankind create 
 them, and when they are wanted, they are already 
 prepared for the active multitude, who come like a 
 phalanx, pressing each other with a unity of feeling, 
 and an integrity of force. Paley would not close his 
 eyes on what was passing before him ; for he has 
 observed, that during the convulsions at Geneva, the 
 political theory of Rousseau was prevalent in their 
 contests ; while in the political disputes of our country, 
 the ideas of civil authority displayed in the works of 
 Locke, recurred in every form. The character of a 
 great author can never be considered as subordinate in 
 society; nor do politicians secretly think so at the 
 
376 AUTHORS STAND BETWEEN THE 
 
 moment they are proclaiming it to the world, for on 
 the contrary, they consider the worst actions of men as 
 of far less consequence than the propagation of their 
 opinions. Politicians have exposed their disguised 
 terrors. Books, as well as their authors, have been 
 tried and condemned. Cromwell was alarmed when he 
 saw the Oceana of Harrington, and dreaded the effects 
 of that volume more than the plots of the royalists ; 
 while Charles II. trembled at an author only in his 
 manuscript state, and in the height of terror, and to the 
 honour of genius it was decreed, that "Scribere est 
 agere." — " The book of Telemachus," says Madame de 
 Stael, " was a courageous action." To insist with such 
 ardour on the duties of a sovereign, and to paint with 
 such truth a voluptuous reign, disgraced Fenelon at 
 the court of Louis XIV., but the virtuous author raised 
 a statue for himself in all hearts. Massillon's Petit 
 Careme was another of these animated recalls of man 
 to the sympathies of his nature, which proves the influ- 
 ence of an author ; for during the contests of Louis XV. 
 with the parliaments, large editions of this book were 
 repeatedly printed, and circulated through the kingdom. 
 In such moments it is that a people find and know the 
 value of a great author, whose work is the mighty 
 organ which conveys their voice to their governors. 
 
 But if the influence of benevolent authors over society 
 is great, it must not be forgotten that the abuse of 
 this influence is terrific. Authors preside at a tribunal 
 in Europe, which is independent of all the powers of 
 the earth, — the tribunal of Opinion ! But since, as 
 Sophocles has long declared, " Opinion is stronger than 
 Truth," it is unquestionable, that the falsest and the 
 
GOVERNORS AND THE GOVERNED. 377 
 
 most depraved notions are, as long as these opinions, 
 maintain their force, accepted as immutable truths; 
 and the mistakes of one man become the crimes of a 
 whole people. 
 
 Authors stand between the governors and the governed, 
 and form the single organ of both. Those who govern 
 a nation cannot at the same time enlighten the people, 
 for the executive power is not empirical ; and the 
 governed cannot think, for they have no continuity of 
 leisure. The great systems of thought, and the great 
 discoveries in moral and political philosophy, have come 
 from the solitude of contemplative men, seldom occupied 
 in public affairs or in private employments. The com- 
 mercial world owes to two retired philosophers, Locke 
 and Smith, those principles which dignify trade into a 
 liberal pursuit, and connect it with the happiness and 
 the glory of a people. A work in France, under the title 
 of " L' Ami des Hommes," by the Marquis of Mirabeau, 
 first spread there a general passion for agricultural 
 pursuits ; and although the national ardour carried all 
 to excess in the reveries of the " Economistes," yet marshes 
 were drained and waste lands inclosed. The Emilius 
 of Rousseau, whatever may be its errors and extrava- 
 gancies, operated a complete revolution in modern 
 Europe, by communicating a bolder spirit to education, 
 and improving the physical force and character of man. 
 An Italian marquis, whose birth and habits seemed little 
 favourable to study, operated a moral revolution in the 
 administration of the laws. Beccaria dared to plead 
 in favour of humanity against the prejudices of many 
 centuries, in his small volume on " Crimes and Punish- 
 ments," and at length abolished torture ; while the 
 
378 THE SOLITARY AUTHOR IN HIS STUDY. 
 
 French advocates drew their principles from that book, 
 rather than from their national code, and our Blackstone 
 quoted it with admiration ! Locke and Voltaire 
 having written on " Toleration," have long made us 
 tolerant. In all such cases, the authors were themselves 
 entirely unconnected with their subjects, except as 
 speculative writers. 
 
 Such are the authors who become universal in public 
 opinion ; and it then happens that the work itself meets 
 with the singular fate, which that great genius Smeaton 
 said happened to his stupendous Pharos : " the novelty 
 having yearly worn off, and the greatest real praise of 
 the edifice being that nothing has happened to it, nothing 
 has occurred to keep the talk of it alive." The funda- 
 mental principles of such works, after having long 
 entered into our earliest instruction, become unquestion- 
 able as self-evident propositions ; yet, no one perhaps 
 at this day, can rightly conceive the great merits of 
 Locke's Treatises on " Education," and on " Toleration," 
 or the philosophical spirit of Montesquieu, and works 
 of this high order, which first diffused a tone of thinking- 
 over Europe. The principles have become so incorpo- 
 rated with our judgment, and so interwoven with our 
 feelings, that we can hardly now imagine the fervour 
 they excited at the time, or the magnanimity of their 
 authors in the decision of their opinions. Every first 
 great monument of genius raises a new standard to our 
 knowledge, from which the human mind takes its 
 impulse and measures its advancement. The march of 
 human thought, through ages, might be indicated by 
 every great work, as it is progressively succeeded by 
 others. It stands like the golden milliary column in 
 
CREATES AN EPOCH IN HISTORY. 379 
 
 the midst of Rome, from which all others reckoned their 
 distances. 
 
 But a scene of less grandeur, yet more beautiful, is 
 the view of the solitary author himself in his own study 
 — so deeply occupied, that whatever passes before him 
 never reaches his observation, while working more than 
 twelve hours every day, he still murmurs as the hour 
 strikes; the volume still lies open, the page still impor- 
 tunes — " And whence all this business?" He has made 
 a discovery for us ! that never has there been anything 
 important in the active world, but what is reflected in 
 the literary — books contain everything, even the false- 
 hoods and the crimes which have been only projected 
 by men ! This solitary man of genius is arranging the 
 materials of instruction and curiosity from every country, 
 and every age ; he is striking out, in the concussion of 
 new light, a new order of ideas for his own times ; he 
 possesses secrets which men hide from their contempo- 
 raries, truths they dared not utter, facts they dared not 
 discover. View him in the stillness of meditation, his 
 eager spirit busied over a copious page, and his eye 
 sparkling with gladness. He has concluded what his 
 countrymen will hereafter cherish as the legacy of 
 genius — y oil see him now changed; and the restlessness 
 of his soul is thrown into his very gestures — could you 
 listen to the vaccinator ! But the next age only will quote 
 his predictions. If he be the truly great author, he will 
 be best comprehended by posterity, for the result of ten 
 years of solitary meditation has often required a whole 
 century to be understood and to be adopted. The ideas of 
 Bishop Berkeley, in his " Theory of Vision," were 
 condemned as a philosophical romance, and now form 
 
380 INFLUENCE OF POPULAR AUTHORS. 
 
 an essential part of every treatise of optics ; and " the 
 History of Oracles," by Fontenelle, says La Harpe, 
 which in his youth was censured for its impiety, the 
 centenarian lived to see regarded as a proof of his respect 
 for religion. 
 
 " But what influence can this solitary man, this author 
 of genius, have on his nation, when he has none in the 
 very street in which he lives? and it may be suspected 
 as little in his own house ; whose inmates are hourly 
 practising on the infantine simplicity which marks his 
 character, and that frequent abstraction from what is 
 passing under his own eyes?'*' 
 
 This solitary man of genius is stamping his own 
 character on the minds of his own people. Take one 
 instance, from others far more splendid, in the contrast 
 presented by Franklin and Sir William Jones. The 
 parsimonious habits, the money-getting precepts, the 
 wary cunning, the little scruple about means, the fixed 
 intent upon the end, of Dr. Franklin, imprinted them- 
 selves on his Americans. Loftier feelings could not 
 elevate a man of genius, who became the founder of a 
 trading people, and who retained the early habits of a 
 journeyman ; while the elegant tastes of Sir William 
 Jones could inspire the servants of a commercial corpo- 
 ration to open new and vast sources of knowledge. A 
 mere company of merchants, influenced by the literary 
 character, enlarges the stores of the imagination, and 
 provides fresh materials for the history of human 
 nature. 
 
 Franklin, with that calm good sense which is freed 
 from the passion of imagination, has himself declared 
 this important truth relating to the literary character. 
 
INFLUENCE OF POPULAR AUTHORS. 381 
 
 " I have always thought that one man of tolerable 
 abilities may work great changes and accomplish great 
 affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan ; 
 and cutting off all amusements or other employments 
 that would divert his attention, makes the execution of 
 that same plan his sole study and business." Fontenelle 
 was of the same opinion, for he remarks, that "a single 
 great man is sufficient to accomplish a change in the 
 taste of his age." The life of Granville Sharp is a 
 striking illustration of the solitary force of individual 
 character. 
 
 It cannot be doubted that the great author, in the 
 solitude of his study, has often created an epoch in the 
 annals of mankind. A single man of genius arose in a 
 barbarous period in Italy, who gave birth not only to 
 Italian, but to European literature. Poet, orator, phi- 
 losopher, geographer, historian, and antiquary, Pe- 
 trarch kindled a line of light through his native land, 
 while a crowd of followers hailed their father-genius, 
 who had stamped his character on the age. Descartes, 
 it has been observed, accomplished a .change in the 
 taste of his age by the perspicacity and method, for 
 which he was indebted to his mathematical researches ; 
 and " models of metaphysical analysis and logical dis- 
 cussions " in the works of Hume and Smith have had 
 the same influence in the writings of our own time. 
 
 Even genius not of the same colossal size may aspire 
 to add to the progressive mass of human improvement 
 by its own single effort. When an author writes on a 
 national subject, he awakens all the knowledge which 
 slumbers in a nation, and calls around him, as it were, 
 every man of talents ; and though his own fame may 
 
382 INFLUENCE OF POPULAR AUTHORS. 
 
 be eclipsed by his successors, yet the emanation, the 
 morning light, broke from his solitary study. Our 
 naturalist Ray, though no man was more modest in his 
 claims, delighted to tell a friend, that " Since the publi- 
 cation of his catalogue of Cambridge plants, many were 
 prompted to botanical studies, and to herbalise in their 
 walks in the fields." Johnson has observed, that " An 
 emulation of study was raised by Cheke and Smith, to 
 which even the present age perhaps owes many advan- 
 tages, without remembering or knowing its benefactors." 
 Rollin is only a compiler of history, and to the anti- 
 quary he is nothing ! But races yet unborn will be 
 enchanted by that excellent man, in whose works " the 
 heart speaks to the heart," and whom Montesquieu 
 called " The Bee of France." The Bacons, the New- 
 tons, and the Leibnitzes were insulated by their own 
 creative powers, and stood apart from the world, till 
 the dispersers of knowledge became their interpreters to 
 the people, opening a communication between two 
 spots, which, though close to each other, were long 
 separated — the closet and the world ! The Addisons, 
 the Fontenelles, and the Feyjoos, the first popular 
 authors in their nations, who taught England, France, 
 and Spain, to become a reading people, while their fugi- 
 tive page imbues with intellectual sweetness every 
 uncultivated mind, like the perfumed mould taken up 
 by the Persian swimmer. " It was but a piece of common 
 earth, but so delicate was its fragrance, that he who 
 found it, in astonishment asked whether it were musk 
 or amber ? 'I am nothing but earth ; but roses were 
 planted in my soil, and their odorous virtues have deli- 
 ciously penetrated through all my pores : I have retained 
 
INFLUENCE OF POPULAR AUTHORS. 383 
 
 the infusion of sweetness, otherwise I had been but a 
 lump of earth !' " 
 
 I have said that authors produce their usefulness in 
 privacy, and that their good is not of immediate appli- 
 cation, and often unvalued by their own generation. 
 On this occasion the name of Evelyn always occurs to 
 me. This author supplied the public with nearly thirty 
 works, at a time when taste and curiosity were not yet 
 domiciliated in our country; his patriotism warmed 
 beyond the eightieth year of his age, and in his dying 
 hand he held another legacy for his nation. Evelyn 
 conveys a pleasing idea of his own works and their 
 design. He first taught his countrymen how to plant, 
 then to build : and having taught them to be useful 
 without doors, he then attempted to divert and occupy 
 them within doors, by his treatises on chalcography, 
 painting, medals, libraries. It was during the days of 
 destruction and devastation both of woods and buildings, 
 the civil wars of Charles the First, that a solitary author 
 was projecting to make the nation delight in repairing 
 their evil, by inspiring them with the love of agriculture 
 and architecture. Whether his enthusiasm was intro- 
 ducing to us a taste for medals and prints, or intent on 
 purifying the city from smoke and nuisances, and 
 sweetening it by plantations of native plants, after 
 having enriched our orchards and our gardens, placed 
 summer-ices on our tables, and varied even the salads of 
 our country ; furnishing " a Gardener's Kalendar/' 
 which, as Cowley said, was to last as long " as months 
 and years;" whether the philosopher of the Royal 
 Society, or the lighter satirist of the toilette, or the fine 
 moralist for active as well as contemplative life — in all 
 
384 INFLUENCE OF POPULAR AUTHORS. 
 
 these changes of a studious life, the better part of his 
 history has not yet been told. "While Britain retains 
 her awful situation among the nations of Europe, the 
 " Sylva" of Evelyn will endure with her triumphant 
 oaks. In the third edition of that work the heart of 
 the patriot expands at its result : he tells Charles II. 
 " how many millions of timber trees, besides infinite 
 others, have been propagated and planted at the insti- 
 gation^ and by the sole direction of this work." It was 
 an author in his studious retreat, who casting a pro- 
 phetic eye on the age we live in, secured the late 
 victories of our naval sovereignty. Inquire at the 
 Admiralty how the fleets of Nelson have been cr in- 
 structed, and they can tell you that it was with the 
 oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted *. 
 
 The same character existed in France, where De" 
 Serres in 1599 composed a work on the cultivation of 
 mulberry trees, in reference to the art of raising silk- 
 worms. He taught his fellow-citizens to convert a leaf 
 into silk, and silk to become the representative of gold. 
 Our author encountered the hostility of the prejudices 
 of his times, even from Sully, in giving his country one 
 of her staple commodities ; but I lately received a medal 
 recently struck in honour of De Serres by the Agri- 
 cultural Society of the Department of the Seine. We 
 slowly commemorate the intellectual characters of our 
 own country, and our men of genius are still defrauded 
 of the debt we are daily incurring of their posthumous 
 
 * Since this was first printed, the Diary of Evelyn has appeared ; 
 and although it could not add to his general character, yet I was not 
 too sanguine in my anticipations of the diary of so perfect a literary 
 character, who has shown how his studies were intermingled with the 
 business of life. 
 
IMMORTALITY OF THOUGHT. 385 
 
 fame. Let monuments be raised, and let medals be 
 struck ! They are sparks of glory which might be 
 scattered through the next age ! 
 
 There is a singleness and unity in the pursuits of 
 genius which is carried on through all ages, and will for 
 ever connect the nations of the earth. The immor- 
 tality of Thought exists for Man ! The veracity 
 of Herodotus, after more than two thousand years, is 
 now receiving a fresh confirmation. The single and 
 precious idea of genius, however obscure, is eventually 
 disclosed ; for original discoveries have often been the 
 developments of former knowledge. The system of 
 tL t rculation of the blood appears to have been ob- 
 scurely conjectured by Servetus, who wanted expe- 
 rimental facts to support his hypothesis ; Vesalius 
 aad an imperfect perception of the right motion of the 
 blood : CvEsalpinus admits a circulation without com- 
 prehending its consequences; at length our Harvey, 
 by patient meditation and penetrating sagacity, removed 
 the errors of his predecessors, and demonstrated the 
 true system. Thus, too, Hartley expanded the hint 
 of " the association of ideas" from Locke, and raised a 
 system on what Locke had only used for an incidental 
 illustration. The beautiful theory of vision by Berke- 
 ley, was taken up by him just where Locke had 
 dropped it ; and as Professor Dugald Stewart describes, 
 by following out his principles to their remoter conse- 
 quences, Berkeley brought out a doctrine which was 
 as true as it seemed novel. Lydgate's "fall of Princes," 
 says Mr. Campbell, " probably suggested to Lord Sack- 
 ville the idea of his ' Mirror for Magistrates.' " The 
 Mirror for Magistrates again gave hints to Spenser in 
 
386 THE FAMILY OF GENIUS ILLUSTRATED 
 
 allegory, and may also " have possibly suggested to 
 Shakspeare the idea of his historical plays." When 
 indeed we find that that great original, Hogarth, 
 adopted the idea of his u Idle and Industrious Appren- 
 tice," from the old comedy of " Eastward Hoe," we 
 easily conceive that some of the most original inventions 
 of genius, whether the more profound or the more 
 agreeable, may thus be tracked in the snow of time. 
 
 In the history of genius therefore there is no chrono- 
 logy, for to its votaries every thing it has done is 
 present — the earliest attempt stands connected with 
 the most recent. This continuity of ideas characterises 
 the human mind, and seems to yield an anticipation of 
 its immortal nature. 
 
 There is a consanguinity in the characters of men of 
 genius, and a genealogy may be traced among their 
 races. Men of genius in their different classes, living 
 at distinct periods, or in remote countries, seem to 
 reappear under another name ; and in this manner there 
 exists in the literary character an eternal transmigration. 
 In the great march of the human intellect the same 
 individual spirit seems still occupying the same place, 
 and is still carrying on, with the same powers, his great 
 work through a line of centuries. It was on this 
 principle that one great poet has recently hailed his 
 brother as " The Ariosto of the North," and Ariosto 
 as " The Scott of the South." And can we deny the 
 real existence of the genealogy of genius? Coperni- 
 cus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton ! this is a single line 
 of descent ! 
 
 Aristotle, Hobbes, and Locke, Descartes and 
 Newton, approximate more than we imagine. The 
 
 
BY THEIR GENEALOGY. 387 
 
 same chain of intellect which Aristotle holds, through 
 the intervals of time, is held by them ; and links will 
 only be added by their successors. The naturalists, 
 Pliny, Gesner, Aldrovandus, and Buffon, derive 
 differences in their characters, from the spirit of the 
 times ; but each only made an accession to the family 
 estate, while he was the legitimate representative of the 
 family of the naturalists. Aristophanes, Moliere, and 
 Foote, are brothers of the family of national wits : the 
 wit of Aristophanes was a part of the common property, 
 and Moliere and Foote were Aristophanic. Plutarch, 
 La Mothe le Yayer, and Bayle, alike busied in 
 amassing the materials of human thought and human 
 action, with the same vigorous and vagrant curiosity, 
 must have had the same habits of life. If Plutarch 
 were credulous, La Mothe le Yayer sceptical, and 
 Bayle philosophical, all that can be said is, that though 
 the heirs of the family may differ in their dispositions, 
 no one will arraign the integrity of the lineal descent. 
 Varro did for the Romans what Pausanias had done 
 for the Greeks, and Montfaucon for the French, and 
 Camden for ourselves. 
 
 My learned and reflecting friend, whose original re- 
 searches have enriched our national history, has this 
 observation on the character of Wickliffe: — " To 
 complete our idea of the importance of Wickliffe, it is 
 only necessary to add, that as his writings made John 
 Huss the reformer of Bohemia, so the writings of John 
 Huss led Martin Luther to be the reformer of Germany; 
 so extensive and so incalculable are the consequences 
 which sometimes follow from human actions."* Our 
 * Turner's History of England, vol. ii. p. 432. 
 
388 CONCLUSION. 
 
 historian has accompanied this by giving the very feelings 
 of Luther in early life on his first perusal of the works 
 of John Huss : we see the spark of creation caught at 
 the moment : a striking influence of the generation of 
 character ! Thus a father-spirit has many sons ; and 
 several of the great revolutions in the history of man 
 have been carried on by that secret creation of minds 
 visibly operating on human affairs. In the history of 
 the human mind, he takes an imperfect view, who is 
 confined to contemporary knowledge, as well as he who 
 stops short with the Ancients. Those who do not carry 
 researches through the genealogical lines of genius, 
 mutilate their minds. 
 
 Such, then," is the influence of Authors ! — those 
 "great lights of the world," by whom the torch of 
 genius has been successively seized and perpetually 
 transferred from hand to hand, in the fleeting scene. 
 Descartes delivers it to Newton, Bacon to Locke ; 
 and the continuity of human affairs, through the rapid 
 generations of man, is maintained from age to age ! 
 
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