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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Literary Character of Men of Genius, by Isaac
+Disraeli, Edited by Benjamin Disraeli
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Literary Character of Men of Genius
+ Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions
+
+
+Author: Isaac Disraeli
+
+Editor: Benjamin Disraeli
+
+Release Date: May 31, 2005 [eBook #15960]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY CHARACTER OF MEN OF
+GENIUS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, John R. Bilderback, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+Editorial note: Due to limitations in rendering some print characters,
+ the following abbreviations are used in this text to
+ represent the original printer's symbols:
+ "4^to" for "quarto"
+ "12^o" for "duodecimo"
+ "f^o" for "folio"
+
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY CHARACTER OF MEN OF GENIUS
+
+Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions
+
+by
+
+ISAAC DISRAELI
+
+A New Edition
+Edited by His Son
+THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD.
+
+London:
+Frederick Warne and Co.,
+Bedford Street, Strand.
+London:
+Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., Printers, Whitefriars.
+
+1850
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The following Preface is of interest for the expression of the author's
+own view of these works.
+
+This volume comprises my writings on subjects chiefly of our vernacular
+literature. Now collected together, they offer an unity of design, and
+afford to the general reader and to the student of classical antiquity
+some initiation into our national Literature. It is presumed also, that
+they present materials for thinking not solely on literary topics; authors
+and books are not alone here treated of,--a comprehensive view of human
+nature necessarily enters into the subject from the diversity of the
+characters portrayed, through the gradations of their faculties, the
+influence of their tastes, and those incidents of their lives prompted by
+their fortunes or their passions. This present volume, with its brother
+"CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE," now constitute a body of reading which may
+awaken knowledge in minds only seeking amusement, and refresh the deeper
+studies of the learned by matters not unworthy of their curiosity.
+
+The LITERARY CHARACTER has been an old favourite with many of my
+contemporaries departed or now living, who have found it respond to their
+own emotions.
+
+THE MISCELLANIES are literary amenities, should they be found to deserve
+the title, constructed on that principle early adopted by me, of
+interspersing facts with speculation.
+
+THE INQUIRY INTO THE LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST
+has surely corrected some general misconceptions, and thrown light on some
+obscure points in the history of that anomalous personage. It is a
+satisfaction to me to observe, since the publication of this tract, that
+while some competent judges have considered the "evidence irresistible," a
+material change has occurred in the tone of most writers. The subject
+presented an occasion to exhibit a minute picture of that age of
+transition in our national history.
+
+The titles of CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS and QUARRELS OF AUTHORS do not wholly
+designate the works, which include a considerable portion of literary
+history.
+
+Public favour has encouraged the republication of these various works,
+which often referred to, have long been difficult to procure. It has been
+deferred from time to time with the intention of giving the subjects a
+more enlarged investigation; but I have delayed the task till it cannot be
+performed. One of the Calamities of Authors falls to my lot, the delicate
+organ of vision with me has suffered a singular disorder,[A]--a disorder
+which no oculist by his touch can heal, and no physician by his experience
+can expound; so much remains concerning the frame of man unrevealed to
+man!
+
+In the midst of my library I am as it were distant from it. My unfinished
+labours, frustrated designs, remain paralysed. In a joyous heat I wander
+no longer through the wide circuit before me. The "strucken deer" has the
+sad privilege to weep when he lies down, perhaps no more to course amid
+those far-distant woods where once he sought to range.
+
+[Footnote A: I record my literary calamity as a warning to my sedentary
+brothers. When my eyes dwell on any object, or whenever they are closed,
+there appear on a bluish film a number of mathematical squares, which are
+the reflection of the fine network of the retina, succeeded by blotches
+which subside into printed characters, apparently forming distinct words,
+arranged in straight lines as in a printed book; the monosyllables are
+often legible. This is the process of a few seconds. It is remarkable that
+the usual power of the eye is not injured or diminished for distant
+objects, while those near are clouded over.]
+
+Although thus compelled to refrain in a great measure from all mental
+labour, and incapacitated from the use of the pen and the book, these
+works, notwithstanding, have received many important corrections, having
+been read over to me with critical precision.
+
+Amid this partial darkness I am not left without a distant hope, nor a
+present consolation; and to HER who has so often lent to me the light of
+her eyes, the intelligence of her voice, and the careful work of her hand,
+the author must ever owe "the debt immense" of paternal gratitude.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+ PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTION 3
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Of literary characters, and of the lovers of literature and art. 11
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Of the adversaries of literary men among themselves.--Matter-of-fact
+men, and men of wit.--The political economists.--Of those who
+abandon their studies.--Men in office.--The arbiters of public
+opinion.--Those who treat the pursuits of literature with levity. 14
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Of artists, in the history of men of literary genius.--Their habits
+and pursuits analogous.--The nature of their genius is similar in
+their distinct works.--Shown by their parallel areas, and by a
+common end pursued by both. 20
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Of natural genius.--Minds constitutionally different cannot have an
+equal aptitude.--Genius not the result of habit and education.--
+Originates in peculiar qualities of the mind.--The predisposition
+of genius.--A substitution for the white paper of Locke. 24
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Youth of genius.--Its first impulses may be illustrated by its
+subsequent actions.--Parents have another association of the man
+of genius than we.--Of genius, its first habits.--Its melancholy.
+--Its reveries.--Its love of solitude.--Its disposition to repose.
+--Of a youth distinguished by his equals.--Feebleness of its first
+attempts.--Of genius not discoverable even in manhood.--The
+education of the youth may not be that of his genius.--An unsettled
+impulse, querulous till it finds its true occupation.--With some,
+curiosity as intense a faculty as invention.--What the youth first
+applies to is commonly his delight afterwards.--Facts of the
+decisive character of genius. 31
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The first studies.--The self-educated are marked by stubborn
+peculiarities.--Their errors.--Their improvement from the neglect
+or contempt they incur.--The history of self-education in Moses
+Mendelssohn.--Friends usually prejudicial in the youth of genius.
+--A remarkable interview between Petrarch in his first studies,
+and his literary adviser.--Exhortation. 55
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Of the irritability of genius.--Genius in society often in a state
+of suffering.--Equality of temper more prevalent among men of
+letters.--Of the occupation of making a great name.--Anxieties of
+the most successful.--Of the inventors.--Writers of learning.--
+Writers of taste. --Artists. 69
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The spirit of literature and the spirit of society.--The inventors.
+--Society offers seduction and not reward to men of genius.--The
+notions of persons of fashion of men of genius.--The habitudes of
+the man of genius distinct from those of the man of society.--
+Study, meditation, and enthusiasm, the progress of genius.--The
+disagreement between the men of the world and the literary
+character. 89
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Conversations of men of genius.--Their deficient agreeableness may
+result from qualities which conduce to their greatness.--Slow-minded
+men not the dullest.--The conversationists not the ablest writers.
+--Their true excellence in conversation consists of associations
+with their pursuits. 99
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Literary solitude.--Its necessity.--Its pleasures.--Of visitors
+by profession.--Its inconveniences. 109
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The meditations of Genius.--A work on the Art of Meditation not yet
+produced.--Predisposing the mind.--Imagination awakens imagination.
+--Generating feelings by music.--Slight habits.--Darkness and
+silence, by suspending the exercise of our senses, increase the
+vivacity of our conceptions.--The arts of memory.--Memory the
+foundation of genius.--Inventions by several to preserve their own
+moral and literary character.--And to assist their studies.--The
+meditations of genius depend on habit.--Of the night-time.--A
+day of meditation should precede a day of composition.--Works of
+magnitude from slight conceptions.--Of thoughts never written.--The
+art of meditation exercised at all hours and places.--Continuity of
+attention the source of philosophical discoveries. --Stillness of
+meditation the first state of existence in genius. 116
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The enthusiasm of genius.--A state of mind resembling a waking
+dream distinct from reverie.--The ideal presence distinguished
+from the real presence.--The senses are really affected in the
+ideal world, proved by a variety of instances.--Of the rapture
+or sensation of deep study in art, science, and literature.
+--Of perturbed feelings, in delirium.--In extreme endurance
+of attention.--And in visionary illusions.--Enthusiasts in
+literature and art.--Of their self-immolations. 136
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Of the jealousy of genius.--Jealousy often proportioned to the
+degree of genius.--A perpetual fever among authors and artists.
+--Instances of its incredible excess among brothers and
+benefactors.--Of a peculiar species, where the fever consumes
+the sufferer without its malignancy. 154
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Want of mutual esteem among men of genius often originates in
+a deficiency of analogous ideas.--It is not always envy or
+jealousy which induces men of genius to undervalue each other. 159
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Self-praise of genius.--The love of praise instinctive in the
+nature of genius.--A high opinion of themselves necessary for
+their great designs.--The ancients openly claimed their own
+praise.--And several moderns.--An author knows more of his merits
+than his readers.--And less of his defects.--Authors versatile
+in their admiration and their malignity. 162
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+The domestic life of genius.--Defects of great compositions
+attributed to domestic infelicities.--The home of the literary
+character should be the abode of repose and silence.--Of the
+father.--Of the mother.--Of family genius.--Men of genius not
+more respected than other men in their domestic circle.--The
+cultivators of science and art do not meet on equal terms with
+others, in domestic life.--Their neglect of those around them.
+--Often accused of imaginary crimes. 173
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+The poverty of literary men.--Poverty, a relative quality.--Of
+the poverty of literary men in what degree desirable.--Extreme
+poverty.--Task-work.--Of gratuitous works.--A project to provide
+against the worst state of poverty among literary men. 186
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+The matrimonial state of literature.--Matrimony said not to be
+well-suited to the domestic life of genius.--Celibacy a concealed
+cause of the early querulousness of men of genius.--Of unhappy
+unions.--Not absolutely necessary that the wife should be a
+literary woman.--Of the docility and susceptibility of the higher
+female character.--A picture of a literary wife. 198
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+Literary friendships.--In early life.--Different from those of
+men of the world.--They suffer in unrestrained communication of
+their ideas, and bear reprimands and exhortations.--Unity of
+feelings.--A sympathy not of manners but of feelings.--Admit of
+dissimilar characters.--Their peculiar glory.--Their sorrow. 209
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+The literary and the personal character.--The personal
+dispositions of an author may be the reverse of those which
+appear in his writings.--Erroneous conceptions of the character
+of distant authors.--Paradoxical appearances in the history of
+genius.--Why the character of the man may be opposite to that
+of his writings. 217
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+The man of letters.--Occupies an intermediate station between
+authors and readers.--His solitude described.--Often the father
+of genius.--Atticus, a man of letters of antiquity.--The perfect
+character of a modern man of letters exhibited in Peiresc.--
+Their utility to authors and artists. 226
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+Literary old age still learning.--Influence of late studies in
+life.--Occupations in advanced age of the literary character.
+--Of literary men who have died at their studies. 238
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+Universality of genius.--Limited notion of genius entertained
+by the ancients.--Opposite faculties act with diminished force.
+--Men of genius excel only in a single art. 244
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+Literature an avenue to glory.--An intellectual nobility not
+chimerical, but created by public opinion.--Literary honours
+of various nations.--Local associations with the memory of the
+man of genius. 248
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+Influence of authors on society, and of society on authors.
+--National tastes a source of literary prejudices.--True
+genius always the organ of its nation.--Master-writers preserve
+the distinct national character.--Genius the organ of the state
+of the age.--Causes of its suppression in a people.--Often
+invented, but neglected.--The natural gradations of genius.--Men
+of genius produce their usefulness in privacy--The public mind
+is now the creation of the public writer.--Politicians affect to
+deny this principle.--Authors stand between the governors and
+the governed.--A view of the solitary author in his study.--They
+create an epoch in history.--Influence of popular authors.--The
+immortality of thought.--The family of genius illustrated by
+their genealogy. 258
+
+
+
+LITERARY MISCELLANIES.
+
+
+Miscellanists 281
+
+Prefaces 286
+
+Style 291
+
+Goldsmith and Johnson 294
+
+Self-characters 295
+
+On reading 298
+
+On habituating ourselves to an individual pursuit 302
+
+On novelty in literature 305
+
+Vers de Société 308
+
+The genius of Molière 310
+
+The sensibility of Racine 325
+
+Of Sterne 332
+
+Hume, Robertson, and Birch 340
+
+Of voluminous works incomplete by the deaths of the authors 350
+
+Of domestic novelties at first condemned 355
+
+Domesticity; or a dissertation on servants 364
+
+Printed letters in the vernacular idiom 375
+
+
+
+CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST.
+
+
+Advertisement 383
+
+Of the first modern assailants of the character of
+James I., Burnet, Bolingbroke and Pope, Harris, Macaulay,
+and Walpole 386
+
+His pedantry 388
+
+His polemical studies 389
+
+--how these were political 392
+
+The Hampton Court conference 393
+
+Of some of his writings 398
+
+Popular superstitions of the age 400
+
+The King's habits of life those of a man of letters 402
+
+Of the facility and copiousness of his composition 404
+
+Of his eloquence 405
+
+Of his wit 406
+
+Specimens of his humour, and observations on human life 407
+
+Some evidences of his sagacity in the discovery of truth 410
+
+Of his "Basilicon Doron" 413
+
+Of his idea of a tyrant and a king 414
+
+Advice to Prince Henry in the choice of his servants
+and associates 415
+
+Describes the Revolutionists of his time 416
+
+Of the nobility of Scotland 417
+
+Of colonising _ib._
+
+Of merchants 418
+
+Regulations for the prince's manners and habits _ib._
+
+Of his idea of the royal prerogative 421
+
+The lawyers' idea of the same _ib._
+
+Of his elevated conception of the kingly character 425
+
+His design in issuing "The Book of Sports" for the Sabbath-day 426
+
+The Sabbatarian controversy 428
+
+The motives of his aversion to war 430
+
+James acknowledges his dependence on the Commons; their conduct 431
+
+Of certain scandalous chronicles 434
+
+A picture of the age from a manuscript of the times 437
+
+Anecdotes of the manners of the age 441
+
+James I. discovers the disorders and discontents of a peace
+of more than twenty years 449
+
+The King's private life in his occasional retirements 450
+
+A detection of the discrepancies of opinion among the
+decriers of James I 451
+
+Summary of his character 455
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+ROBERT SOUTHEY, LL.D.,
+
+&c. &c. &c.
+
+
+In dedicating this Work to one of the most eminent literary characters of
+the age, I am experiencing a peculiar gratification, in which few, perhaps
+none, of my contemporaries can participate; for I am addressing him, whose
+earliest effusions attracted my regard, near half a century past; and
+during that awful interval of time--for fifty years is a trial of life of
+whatever may be good in us--you have multiplied your talents, and have
+never lost a virtue.
+
+When I turn from the uninterrupted studies of your domestic solitude to
+our metropolitan authors, the contrast, if not encouraging, is at least
+extraordinary. You are not unaware that the revolutions of Society have
+operated on our literature, and that new classes of readers have called
+forth new classes of writers. The causes and the consequences of the
+present state of this fugitive literature might form an inquiry which
+would include some of the important topics which concern the PUBLIC MIND,
+--but an inquiry which might be invidious shall not disturb a page
+consecrated to the record of excellence. They who draw their inspiration
+from the hour must not, however, complain if with that hour they pass
+away.
+
+I. DISRAELI.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+
+For the fifth time I revise a subject which has occupied my inquiries from
+early life, with feelings still delightful, and an enthusiasm not wholly
+diminished.
+
+Had not the principle upon which this work is constructed occurred to me
+in my youth, the materials which illustrate the literary character could
+never have been brought together. It was in early life that I conceived
+the idea of pursuing the history of genius by the similar events which had
+occurred to men of genius. Searching into literary history for the
+literary character formed a course of experimental philosophy in which
+every new essay verified a former trial, and confirmed a former truth. By
+the great philosophical principle of induction, inferences were deduced
+and results established, which, however vague and doubtful in speculation,
+are irresistible when the appeal is made to facts as they relate to
+others, and to feelings which must be decided on as they are passing in
+our own breast.
+
+It is not to be inferred from what I have here stated that I conceive that
+any single man of genius will resemble every man of genius; for not only
+man differs from man, but varies from himself in the different stages of
+human life. All that I assert is, that every man of genius will discover,
+sooner or later, that he belongs to the brotherhood of his class, and that
+he cannot escape from certain habits, and feelings, and disorders, which
+arise from the same temperament and sympathies, and are the necessary
+consequence of occupying the same position, and passing through the same
+moral existence. Whenever we compare men of genius with each other, the
+history of those who are no more will serve as a perpetual commentary on
+our contemporaries. There are, indeed, secret feelings which their
+prudence conceals, or their fears obscure, or their modesty shrinks from,
+or their pride rejects; but I have sometimes imagined that I have held
+the clue as they have lost themselves in their own labyrinth. I know
+that many, and some of great celebrity, have sympathised with the
+feelings which inspired these volumes; nor, while I have elucidated the
+idiosyncrasy of genius, have I less studied the habits and characteristics
+of the lovers of literature.
+
+It has been considered that the subject of this work might have been
+treated with more depth of metaphysical disquisition; and there has since
+appeared an attempt to combine with this investigation the medical
+science. A work, however, should be judged by its design and its
+execution, and not by any preconceived notion of what it ought to be
+according to the critic, rather than the author. The nature of this work
+is dramatic rather than metaphysical. It offers a narration or a
+description; a conversation or a monologue; an incident or a scene.
+
+Perhaps I have sometimes too warmly apologised for the infirmities of men
+of genius. From others we may hourly learn to treat with levity the man of
+genius because he is _only_ such. Perhaps also I may have been too fond of
+the subject, which has been for me an old and a favourite one--I may have
+exalted the literary character beyond the scale by which society is
+willing to fix it. Yet what is this Society, so omnipotent, so all
+judicial? The society of to-day was not the society of yesterday. Its
+feelings, its thoughts, its manners, its rights, its wishes, and its
+wants, are different and are changed: alike changed or alike created by
+those very literary characters whom it rarely comprehends and often would
+despise. Let us no longer look upon this retired and peculiar class as
+useless members of our busy race. There are mental as well as material
+labourers. The first are not less necessary; and as they are much rarer,
+so are they more precious. These are they whose "published labours" have
+benefited mankind--these are they whose thoughts can alone rear that
+beautiful fabric of social life, which it is the object of all good men to
+elevate or to support. To discover truth and to maintain it,--to develope
+the powers, to regulate the passions, to ascertain the privileges of man,
+--such have ever been, and such ever ought to be, the labours of AUTHORS!
+Whatever we enjoy of political and private happiness, our most necessary
+knowledge as well as our most refined pleasures, are alike owing to this
+class of men; and of these, some for glory, and often from benevolence,
+have shut themselves out from the very beings whom they love, and for whom
+they labour.
+
+Upwards of forty years have elapsed since, composed in a distant county,
+and printed at a provincial press, I published "An Essay on the Manners
+and Genius of the Literary Character." To my own habitual and inherent
+defects were superadded those of my youth. The crude production was,
+however, not ill received, for the edition disappeared, and the subject
+was found more interesting than the writer.
+
+During a long interval of twenty years, this little work was often
+recalled to my recollection by several, and by some who have since
+obtained celebrity. They imagined that their attachment to literary
+pursuits had been strengthened even by so weak an effort. An extraordinary
+circumstance concurred with these opinions. A copy accidentally fell into
+my hands which had formerly belonged to the great poetical genius of our
+times; and the singular fact, that it had been more than once read by him,
+and twice in two subsequent years at Athens, in 1810 and 1811, instantly
+convinced me that the volume deserved my renewed attention.
+
+It was with these feelings that I was again strongly attracted to a
+subject from which, indeed, during the course of a studious life, it
+had never been long diverted. The consequence of my labours was the
+publication, in 1818, of an octavo volume, under the title of "The
+Literary Character, illustrated by the History of Men of Genius, drawn
+from their own feelings and confessions."
+
+In the preface to this edition, in mentioning the fact respecting Lord
+Byron, which had been the immediate cause of its publication, I added
+these words: "I tell this fact assuredly not from any little vanity which
+it may appear to betray;--for the truth is, were I not as liberal and as
+candid in respect to my own productions, as I hope I am to others, I could
+not have been gratified by the present circumstance; for the marginal
+notes of the noble author convey no flattery;--but amidst their pungency,
+and sometimes their truth, the circumstance that a man of genius could
+reperuse this slight effusion at two different periods of his life, was a
+sufficient authority, at least for an author, to return it once more to
+the anvil."
+
+Some time after the publication of this edition of "The Literary
+Character," which was in fact a new work, I was shown, through the
+kindness of an English gentleman lately returned from Italy, a copy of it,
+which had been given to him by Lord Byron, and which again contained
+marginal notes by the noble author. These were peculiarly interesting, and
+were chiefly occasioned by observations on his character, which appeared
+in the work.
+
+In 1822 I published a new edition of this work, greatly enlarged, and in
+two volumes. I took this opportunity of inserting the manuscript Notes of
+Lord Byron, with the exception of one, which, however characteristic of
+the amiable feelings of the noble poet, and however gratifying to my own,
+I had no wish to obtrude on the notice of the public.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: As everything connected with the reading of a mind like Lord
+BYRON'S interesting to the philosophical inquirer, this note may now be
+preserved. On that passage of the Preface of the second Edition which I
+have already quoted, his Lordship was thus pleased to write:
+
+"I was wrong, but I was young and petulant, and probably wrote down
+anything, little thinking that those observations would be betrayed to the
+author, whose abilities I have always respected, and whose works in
+general I have read oftener than perhaps those of any English author
+whatever, except such as treat of Turkey."]
+
+Soon after the publication of this third edition, I received
+the following letter from his lordship:--
+
+
+_"Montenero, Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, June 10, 1822._
+
+"DEAR SIR,--If you will permit me to call you so,--I had some time ago
+taken up my pen at Pisa, to thank you for the present of your new edition
+of the 'Literary Character,' which has often been to me a consolation, and
+always a pleasure. I was interrupted, however, partly by business, and
+partly by vexation of different kinds,--for I have not very long ago lost
+a child by fever, and I have had a good deal of petty trouble with the
+laws of this lawless country, on account of the prosecution of a servant
+for an attack upon a cowardly scoundrel of a dragoon, who drew his sword
+upon some unarmed Englishmen, and whom I had done the honour to mistake
+for an officer, and to treat like a gentleman. He turned out to be
+neither,--like many other with medals, and in uniform; but he paid for his
+brutality with a severe and dangerous wound, inflicted by nobody knows
+whom, for, of three suspected, and two arrested, they have been able to
+identify neither; which is strange, since he was wounded in the presence
+of thousands, in a public street, during a feast-day and full promenade.
+--But to return to things more analogous to the 'Literary Character,' I
+wish to say, that had I known that the book was to fall into your hands,
+or that the MS. notes you have thought worthy of publication would have
+attracted your attention, I would have made them more copious, and perhaps
+not so careless.
+
+"I really cannot know whether I am, or am not, the genius you are pleased
+to call me,--but I am very willing to put up with the mistake, if it be
+one. It is a title dearly enough bought by most men, to render it
+endurable, even when not quite clearly made out, which it never _can_ be,
+till the Posterity, whose decisions are merely dreams to ourselves, have
+sanctioned or denied it, while it can touch us no further.
+
+"Mr. Murray is in possession of a MS. memoir of mine (not to be published
+till I am in my grave), which, strange as it may seem, I never read over
+since it was written, and have no desire to read over again. In it I have
+told what, as far as I know, is the _truth_--_not the whole_ truth--for if
+I had done so, I must have involved much private, and some dissipated
+history: but, nevertheless, nothing but truth, as far as regard for others
+permitted it to appear.
+
+"I do not know whether you have seen those MSS.; but, as you are curious
+in such things as relate to the human mind, I should feel gratified if you
+had. I also sent him (Murray), a few days since, a Common-place Book, by
+my friend Lord Clare, containing a few things, which may perhaps aid his
+publication in case of his surviving me. If there are any questions which
+you would like to ask me, as connected with your philosophy of the
+literary mind (_if_ mine be a literary mind), I will answer them fairly,
+or give a reason for _not_, good--bad--or indifferent. At present, I am
+paying the penalty of having helped to spoil the public taste; for, as
+long as I wrote in the false exaggerated style of youth and the times in
+which we live, they applauded me to the very echo; and within these few
+years, when I have endeavoured at better things, and written what I
+suspect to have the principle of duration in it: the Church, the
+Chancellor, and all men, even to my grand patron, Francis Jeffrey, Esq.,
+of the _Edinburgh Review_, have risen up against me, and my later
+publications. Such is Truth! men dare not look her in the face, except by
+degrees; they mistake her for a Gorgon, instead of knowing her to be
+Minerva. I do not mean to apply this mythological simile to my own
+endeavours, but I have only to turn over a few pages of your volumes to
+find innumerable and far more illustrious instances. It is lucky that I am
+of a temper not to be easily turned aside, though by no means difficult to
+irritate. But I am making a dissertation, instead of writing a letter. I
+write to you from the Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, with the islands of Elba
+and Corsica visible from my balcony, and my old friend the Mediterranean
+rolling blue at my feet. As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for
+Nature, I can partly soften or subdue my other passions, and resist or
+endure those of others.
+
+"I have the honour to be, truly,
+
+"Your obliged and faithful servant,
+
+"NOEL BYRON.
+
+"To I. D'Israeli, Esq."
+
+The ill-starred expedition to Greece followed this letter.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+This work, conceived in youth, executed by the research of manhood, and
+associated with the noblest feelings of our nature, is an humble but
+fervent tribute, offered to the memory of those Master Spirits from whose
+labours, as BURKE eloquently describes, "their country receives permanent
+service: those who know how to make the silence of their closets more
+beneficial to the world than all the noise and bustle of courts, senates,
+and camps."
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY CHARACTER.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Of Literary Characters, and of the Lovers of Literature and Art.
+
+
+Diffused over enlightened Europe, an order of men has arisen, who,
+uninfluenced by the interests or the passions which give an impulse to the
+other classes of society, are connected by the secret links of congenial
+pursuits, and, insensibly to themselves, are combining in the same common
+labours, and participating in the same divided glory. In the metropolitan
+cities of Europe the same authors are now read, and the same opinions
+become established: the Englishman is familiar with Machiavel and
+Montesquieu; the Italian and the Frenchman with Bacon and Locke; and the
+same smiles and tears are awakened on the banks of the Thames, of the
+Seine, or of the Guadalquivir, by Shakspeare, Molière, and Cervantes--
+
+ Contemporains de tous les hommes,
+ Et citoyens de tous les lieux.
+
+A khan of Tartary admired the wit of Molière, and discovered the Tartuffe
+in the Crimea; and had this ingenious sovereign survived the translation
+which he ordered, the immortal labour of the comic satirist of France
+might have laid the foundation of good taste even among the Turks and the
+Tartars. We see the Italian Pignotti referring to the opinion of an
+English critic, Lord Bolingbroke, for decisive authority on the peculiar
+characteristics of the historian Guicciardini: the German Schlegel writes
+on our Shakspeare like a patriot; and while the Italians admire the noble
+scenes which our Flaxman has drawn from their great poet, they have
+rejected the feeble attempts of their native artists. Such is the wide and
+the perpetual influence of this living intercourse of literary minds.
+
+Scarcely have two centuries elapsed since the literature of every nation
+was limited to its fatherland, and men of genius long could only hope for
+the spread of their fame in the single language of ancient Rome; which for
+them had ceased to be natural, and could never be popular. It was in the
+intercourse of the wealth, the power, and the novel arts of the nations of
+Europe, that they learned each other's languages; and they discovered
+that, however their manners varied as they arose from their different
+customs, they participated in the same intellectual faculties, suffered
+from the same wants, and were alive to the same pleasures; they perceived
+that there were no conventional fashions, nor national distinctions, in
+abstract truths and fundamental knowledge. A new spirit seems to bring
+them nearer to each other: and, as if literary Europe were intent to form
+but one people out of the populace of mankind, they offer their reciprocal
+labours; they pledge to each other the same opinions; and that knowledge
+which, like a small river, takes its source from one spot, at length
+mingles with the ocean-stream common to them all.
+
+But those who stand connected with this literary community are not always
+sensible of the kindred alliance; even a genius of the first order has not
+always been aware that he is the founder of a society, and that there will
+ever be a brotherhood where there is a father-genius.
+
+These literary characters are partially, and with a melancholy colouring,
+exhibited by JOHNSON. "To talk in private, to think in solitude, to
+inquire or to answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar. He wanders
+about the world without pomp or terror; and is neither known nor valued
+but by men like himself." Thus thought this great writer during those sad
+probationary years of genius when
+
+ Slow rises worth, by _poverty_ depress'd;
+
+not yet conscious that he himself was devoting his days to cast the minds
+of his contemporaries and of the succeeding age in the mighty mould of his
+own; JOHNSON was of that order of men whose individual genius becomes that
+of a people. A prouder conception rose in the majestic mind of MILTON, of
+"that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise which God and good men have
+consented shall be the reward of those whose PUBLISHED LABOURS advanced
+the good of mankind."
+
+The LITERARY CHARACTER is a denomination which, however vague, defines the
+pursuits of the individual, and separates him from other professions,
+although it frequently occurs that he is himself a member of one.
+Professional characters are modified by the change of manners, and are
+usually national; while the literary character, from the objects in which
+it concerns itself, retains a more permanent, and necessarily a more
+independent nature.
+
+Formed by the same habits, and influenced by the same motives,
+notwithstanding the contrast of talents and tempers, and the remoteness of
+times and places, the literary character has ever preserved among its
+followers the most striking family resemblance. The passion for study, the
+delight in books, the desire of solitude and celebrity, the obstructions
+of human life, the character of their pursuits, the uniformity of their
+habits, the triumphs and the disappointments of literary glory, were as
+truly described by CICERO and the younger PLINY as by PETRARCH and
+ERASMUS, and as they have been by HUME and GIBBON. And this similarity,
+too, may equally be remarked with respect to that noble passion of the
+lovers of literature and of art for collecting together their mingled
+treasures; a thirst which was as insatiable in ATTICUS and PEIRESC as in
+our CRACHERODE and TOWNLEY.[A] We trace the feelings of our literary
+contemporaries in all ages, and among every people who have ranked with
+nations far advanced in civilization; for among these may be equally
+observed both the great artificers of knowledge and those who preserve
+unbroken the vast chain of human acquisitions. The one have stamped the
+images of their minds on their works, and the others have preserved the
+circulation of this intellectual coinage, this
+
+ --Gold of the dead,
+Which Time does still disperse, but not devour.
+
+[Footnote A: The Rev. C.M. Cracherode bequeathed at his death, in 1799, to
+the British Museum, the large collection of literature, art, and virtu he
+had employed an industrious life in collecting. His books numbered nearly
+4500 volumes, many of great rarity and value. His drawings, many by early
+Italian masters, and all rare or curious, were deposited in the print-room
+of the same establishment; his antiquities, &c. were in a similar way
+added to the other departments. The "Townley Gallery" of classic sculpture
+was purchased of his executors by Government for 28,200_l_. It had been
+collected with singular taste and judgment, as well as some amount of good
+fortune also; Townley resided at Rome during the researches on the site of
+Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli; and he had for aids and advisers Sir William
+Hamilton, Gavin Hamilton, and other active collectors; and was the friend
+and correspondent of D'Haucarville and Winckelmann.--ED.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Of the Adversaries of Literary Men among themselves.--Matter-of-fact
+Men, and Men of Wit.--The Political Economist.--Of those who abandon
+their studies.--Men in office.--The arbiters of public opinion.--Those
+who treat the pursuits of literature with levity.
+
+
+The pursuits of literature have been openly or insidiously lowered by
+those literary men who, from motives not always difficult to penetrate,
+are eager to confound the ranks in the republic of letters, maliciously
+conferring the honours of authorship on that "Ten Thousand" whose recent
+list is not so much a muster-roll of heroes as a table of population.[A]
+
+Matter-of-fact men, or men of knowledge, and men of wit and taste, were
+long inimical to each other's pursuits.[B] The Royal Society in its origin
+could hardly support itself against the ludicrous attacks of literary
+men,[C] and the Antiquarian Society has afforded them amusement.[D] Such
+partial views have ceased to contract the understanding. Science yields a
+new substance to literature; literature combines new associations for the
+votaries of knowledge. There is no subject in nature, and in the history
+of man, which will not associate with our feelings and our curiosity,
+whenever genius extends its awakening hand. The antiquary, the naturalist,
+the architect, the chemist, and even writers on medical topics, have in
+our days asserted their claims, and discovered their long-interrupted
+relationship with the great family of genius and literature.
+
+[Footnote A: We have a Dictionary of "Ten Thousand living Authors" of our
+own nation. The alphabet is fatal by its juxtapositions. In France, before
+the Revolution, they counted about twenty thousand writers. When David
+would have his people numbered, Joab asked, "Why doth my lord delight in
+this?" In political economy, the population returns may be useful,
+provided they be correct; but in the literary republic, its numerical
+force diminishes the strength of the empire. "There you are numbered, we
+had rather you were weighed." Put aside the puling infants of literature,
+of whom such a mortality occurs in its nurseries; such as the writers of
+the single sermon, the single law-tract, the single medical dissertation,
+&c.; all writers whose subject is single, without being singular; count
+for nothing the inefficient mob of mediocrists; and strike out our
+literary _charlatans_; and then our alphabet of men of genius will not
+consist, as it now does, of the four-and-twenty letters.]
+
+[Footnote B: The cause is developed in the chapter on "Want of Mutual
+Esteem."]
+
+[Footnote C: See BUTLER, in his "Elephant in the Moon." SOUTH, in his
+oration at the opening of the theatre at Oxford, passed this bitter
+sarcasm on the naturalists,--"_Mirantur nihil nisi pulices, pediculos--et
+se ipsos_;"--nothing they admire but fleas, lice, and themselves! The
+illustrious SLOANE endured a long persecution from the bantering humour of
+Dr. KING. One of the most amusing declaimers against what he calls _les
+Sciences des faux Sçavans_ is Father MALEBRANCHE; he is far more severe
+than Cornelius Agrippa, and he long preceded ROUSSEAU, so famous for his
+invective against the sciences. The seventh chapter of his fourth book is
+an inimitable satire. "The principal excuse," says he, "which engages men
+in _false studies_, is, that they have attached the _idea of learned_
+where they should not." Astronomy, antiquarianism, history, ancient
+poetry, and natural history, are all mowed down by his metaphysical
+scythe. When we become acquainted with the _idea_ Father Malebranche
+attaches to the term _learned_, we understand him--and we smile.]
+
+[Footnote D: See the chapter on "Puck the Commentator," in the
+"Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii.; also p. 304 of the same volume.]
+
+A new race of jargonists, the barbarous metaphysicians of political
+economy, have struck at the essential existence of the productions of
+genius in literature and art; for, appreciating them by their own
+standard, they have miserably degraded the professors. Absorbed in the
+contemplation of material objects, and rejecting whatever does not enter
+into their own restricted notion of "utility," these cold arithmetical
+seers, with nothing but millions in their imagination; and whose choicest
+works of art are spinning-jennies, have valued the intellectual tasks of
+the library and the studio by "the demand and the supply." They have sunk
+these pursuits into the class of what they term "unproductive labour;" and
+by another result of their line and level system, men of letters, with
+some other important characters, are forced down into the class "of
+buffoons, singers, opera-dancers, &c." In a system of political economy it
+has been discovered that "that _unprosperous race_ of men, called _men of
+letters_, must _necessarily_ occupy their present _forlorn state_ in
+society much as formerly, when a scholar and a beggar seem to have been
+terms very nearly synonymous."[A] In their commercial, agricultural, and
+manufacturing view of human nature, addressing society by its most
+pressing wants and its coarsest feelings, these theorists limit the moral
+and physical existence of man by speculative tables of population, planing
+and levelling society down in their carpentry of human nature. They would
+yoke and harness the loftier spirits to one common and vulgar destination.
+Man is considered only as he wheels on the wharf, or as he spins in the
+factory; but man, as a recluse being of meditation, or impelled to action
+by more generous passions, has been struck out of the system of our
+political economists. It is, however, only among their "unproductive
+labourers" that we shall find those men of leisure, whose habitual
+pursuits are consumed in the development of thought and the gradual
+accessions of knowledge; those men of whom the sage of Judea declares,
+that "It is he who hath little business who shall become wise: how can he
+get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and whose talk is of bullocks? But
+THEY,"--the men of leisure and study,--"WILL MAINTAIN THE STATE OF THE
+WORLD!" The prosperity and the happiness of a people include something
+more evident and more permanent than "the Wealth of a Nation."[B]
+
+[Footnote A: "Wealth of Nations," i. 182.]
+
+[Footnote B: Since this murmur has been uttered against the degrading
+views of some of those theorists, it afforded me pleasure to observe that
+Mr. Malthus has fully sanctioned its justness. On this head, at least, Mr.
+Malthus has amply confuted his stubborn and tasteless brothers. Alluding
+to the productions of genius, this writer observes, that, "to estimate the
+value of NEWTON'S discoveries, or the delight communicated by SHAKSPEAKE
+and MILTON, by the _price_ at which their works have sold, would be but a
+poor measure of the degree in which they have elevated and enchanted their
+country."--_Principles of Pol. Econ._ p. 48. And hence he acknowledges,
+that "_some unproductive labour is of much more use and importance_ than
+productive labour, but is incapable of being the subject of the gross
+calculations which relate to national wealth; contributing to _other
+sources of happiness_ besides those which are derived from matter."
+Political economists would have smiled with contempt on the querulous
+PORSON, who once observed, that "it seemed to him very hard, that with all
+his critical knowledge of Greek, he could not get a hundred pounds." They
+would have demonstrated to the learned Grecian, that this was just as it
+ought to be; the same occurrence had even happened to HOMER in his own
+country, where Greek ought to have fetched a higher price than in England;
+but, that both might have obtained this hundred pounds, had the Grecian
+bard and the Greek professor been employed at the same stocking-frame
+together, instead of the "Iliad."]
+
+There is a more formidable class of men of genius who are heartless to the
+interests of literature. Like CORNELIUS AGRIPPA, who wrote on "the vanity
+of the arts and sciences," many of these are only tracing in the arts
+which they have abandoned their own inconstant tempers, their feeble
+tastes, and their disordered judgments. But, with others of this class,
+study has usually served as the instrument, not as the object, of their
+ascent; it was the ladder which they once climbed, but it was not the
+eastern star which guided and inspired. Such literary characters were
+WARBURTON,[A] WATSON, and WILKES, who abandoned their studies when their
+studies had served a purpose.
+
+[Footnote A: For a full disquisition of the character and career of
+Warburton, see the essay in "Quarrels of Authors."]
+
+WATSON gave up his pursuits in chemistry the instant he obtained their
+limited reward, and the laboratory closed when the professorship was
+instituted. Such was the penurious love he bore for the science which he
+had adopted, that the extraordinary discoveries of thirty years subsequent
+to his own first essays could never excite even an idle inquiry. He tells
+us that he preferred "his larches to his laurels:" the wretched jingle
+expressed the mere worldliness that dictated it. In the same spirit of
+calculation with which he had at first embraced science and literature, he
+abandoned them; and his ingenuous confession is a memorable example of
+that egotistic pride which betrayed in the literary character the creature
+of selfism and political ambition.
+
+We are accustomed to consider WILKES merely as a political adventurer, and
+it may surprise to find this "city chamberlain" ranked among professed
+literary characters: yet in his variable life there was a period when he
+cherished the aspirations of a votary. Once he desired Lloyd to announce
+the edition of Churchill, which he designed to enrich by a commentary; and
+his correspondence on this subject, which has never appeared, would, as he
+himself tells us, afford a variety of hints and communications. Wilkes was
+then warmed by literary glory; for on his retirement into Italy, he
+declared, "I mean to give myself entirely to our friend's work, and to my
+History of England. I wish to equal the dignity of Livy: I am sure the
+greatness and majesty of our nation demand an historian equal to him."
+They who have only heard of the intriguing demagogue, and witnessed the
+last days of the used voluptuary, may hardly imagine that Wilkes had ever
+cherished such elevated projects; but mob-politics made this adventurer's
+fortune, which fell to the lot of an epicurean: and the literary glory he
+once sought he lived to ridicule, in the immortal diligence of Lord
+Chatham and of Gibbon. Dissolving life away, and consuming all his
+feelings on himself, Wilkes left his nearest relatives what he left the
+world--the memory of an anti-social being! This wit, who has bequeathed to
+us no wit; this man of genius, who has formed no work of genius; this
+bold advocate for popular freedom, who sunk his patriotism in the
+chamberlainship; was indeed desirous of leaving behind him some trace of
+the life of an _escroc_ in a piece of autobiography, which, for the
+benefit of the world, has been thrown to the flames.
+
+Men who have ascended into office through its gradations, or have been
+thrown upwards by accident, are apt to view others in a cloud of passions
+and politics. They who once commanded us by their eloquence, come at
+length to suspect the eloquent; and in their "pride of office" would now
+drive us by that single force of despotism which is the corruption of
+political power. Our late great Minister, Pitt, has been reproached even
+by his friends for the contemptuous indifference with which he treated
+literary men. Perhaps BURKE himself, long a literary character, might
+incur some portion of this censure, by involving the character itself in
+the odium of a monstrous political sect. These political characters
+resemble Adrian VI., who, obtaining the tiara as the reward of his
+studies, afterwards persecuted literary men, and, say the Italians,
+dreaded lest his brothers might shake the Pontificate itself.[A]
+
+Worst fares it with authors when minds of this cast become the arbiters of
+public opinion; for the greatest of writers may unquestionably be forced
+into ridiculous attitudes by the well-known artifices practised by modern
+criticism. The elephant, no longer in his forest struggling with his
+hunters, but falling entrapped by a paltry snare, comes at length, in the
+height of ill-fortune, to dance on heated iron at the bidding of the
+pantaloon of a fair. Whatever such critics may plead to mortify the
+vanity of authors, at least it requires as much vanity to give effect to
+their own polished effrontery.[B] Scorn, sarcasm, and invective, the
+egotism of the vain, and the irascibility of the petulant, where they
+succeed in debilitating genius of the consciousness of its powers, are
+practising the witchery of that ancient superstition of "tying the knot,"
+which threw the youthful bridegroom into utter despair by its ideal
+forcefulness.[C]
+
+[Footnote A: It has been suspected that Adrian VI. has been calumniated,
+for that this pontiff was only too sudden to begin the reform he
+meditated. But Adrian VI. was a scholastic whose austerity turned away
+with contempt from all ancient art, and was no brother to contemporary
+genius. He was one of the _cui bono_ race, a branch of our political
+economists. When they showed him the Laocoön, Adrian silenced their
+raptures by the frigid observation, that all such things were _idola
+antiquorum_: and ridiculed the _amena letteratura_ till every man of
+genius retreated from his court. Had Adrian's reign extended beyond its
+brief period, men of taste in their panic imagined that in his zeal the
+Pontiff would have calcined the fine statues of ancient art, to expedite
+the edifice of St. Peter.]
+
+[Footnote B: Listen to a confession and a recantation of an illustrious
+sinner; the Coryphæus of the amusing and new-found art, or artifice, of
+modern criticism. In the character of BURNS, the Edinburgh Reviewer, with
+his peculiar felicity of manner, attacked the character of the man of
+genius; but when Mr. Campbell vindicated his immortal brother with all the
+inspiration of the family feeling, our critic, who is one of those great
+artists who acquire at length the utmost indifference even for their own
+works, generously avowed that, "a certain tone of exaggeration is
+incidental _we fear to the sort of writing in which we are engaged_.
+Reckoning a little too much on the dulness of our readers, we are often
+led to _overstate our sentiments_: when a little _controversial warmth_ is
+added to a little _love of effect_, an excess of colouring steals over the
+canvas, which ultimately offends no eye so much as our own." But what if
+this _love of effect_ in the critic has been too often obtained at the
+entire cost of the literary characters, the fruits of whose studious days
+at this moment lie withering in oblivion, or whose genius the critic has
+deterred from pursuing the career it had opened for itself! To have
+silenced the learned, and to have terrified the modest, is the barbarous
+triumph of a Hun or a Vandal; and the vaunted freedom of the literary
+republic departed from us when the vacillating public blindly consecrated
+the edicts of the demagogues of literature, whoever they may be.
+
+A reaction appears in the burlesque or bantering spirit. While one faction
+drives out another, the abuse of extraordinary powers is equally fatal.
+Thus we are consoled while we are afflicted, and we are protected while we
+are degraded.]
+
+[Footnote C: _Nouer l'aiguillette_, of which the extraordinary effect is
+described by Montaigne, is an Oriental custom still practised.--_Mr.
+Hobhouse's Journey through Albania_, p. 528.]
+
+That spirit of levity which would shake the columns of society, by
+detracting from or burlesquing the elevating principles which have
+produced so many illustrious men, has recently attempted to reduce the
+labours of literature to a mere curious amusement: a finished composition
+is likened to a skilful game of billiards, or a piece of music finely
+executed; and curious researches, to charades and other insignificant
+puzzles. With such, an author is an idler who will not be idle, amusing or
+fatiguing others who are completely so. The result of a work of genius
+is contracted to the art of writing; but this art is only its last
+perfection. Inspiration is drawn from a deeper source; enthusiasm is
+diffused through contagious pages; and without these movements of the
+soul, how poor and artificial a thing is that sparkling composition which
+flashes with the cold vibrations of mere art or artifice! We have been
+recently told, on critical authority, that "a great genius should never
+allow himself to be sensible to his own celebrity, nor deem his pursuits
+of much consequence, however important or successful." A sort of catholic
+doctrine, to mortify an author into a saint, extinguishing the glorious
+appetite of fame by one Lent all the year, and self-flagellation every
+day! BUFFON and GIBBON, VOLTAIRE and POPE,[A] who gave to literature
+all the cares, the industry, and the glory of their lives, assuredly
+were too "sensible to their celebrity, and deemed their pursuits of
+much consequence," particularly when "important and successful." The
+self-possession of great authors sustains their own genius by a sense of
+their own glory.
+
+Such, then, are some of the domestic treasons of the literary character
+against literature--"Et tu, Brute!" But the hero of literature outlives
+his assassins, and might address them in that language of poetry
+and affection with which a Mexican king reproached his traitorous
+counsellors:--"You were the feathers of my wings, and the eyelids of my
+eyes."
+
+[Footnote A: The claims of Pope to the title of a great poet were denied
+in the days of Byron; and occasioned a warm and noble defence of him by
+that poet. It has since been found necessary to do the same for Byron,
+whom some transcendentalists have attacked.--ED.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Of artists, in the history of men of literary genius.--Their habits and
+pursuits analogous.--The nature of their genius is similar in their
+distinct works.--Shown by their parallel eras, and by a common end pursued
+by both.
+
+
+Artists and literary men, alike insulated in their studies, pass through
+the same permanent discipline; and thus it has happened that the same
+habits and feelings, and the same fortunes, have accompanied men who have
+sometimes unhappily imagined their pursuits not to be analogous.
+
+ Let the artist share
+The palm; he shares the peril, and dejected
+Faints o'er the labour unapproved--alas!
+Despair and genius!--
+
+The congenial histories of literature and art describe the same periodical
+revolutions and parallel eras. After the golden age of Latinity, we
+gradually slide into the silver, and at length precipitately descend into
+the iron. In the history of painting, after the splendid epoch of Raphael,
+Titian, and Correggio, we meet with pleasure the Oarraccis, Domenichino,
+Guido, and Albano; as we read Paterculus, Quintilian, Seneca, Juvenal, and
+Silius Italicus, after their immortal masters, Cicero, Livy, Virgil, and
+Horace.
+
+It is evident that MILTON, MICHAEL ANGELO, and HANDEL, belong to the same
+order of minds; the same imaginative powers, and the same sensibility, are
+only operating with different materials. LANZI, the delightful historian
+of the _Storia Pittorica_, is prodigal of his comparisons of the painters
+with the poets; his delicacy of perception discerned the refined analogies
+which for ever unite the two sisters, and he fondly dwelt on the
+transplanted flowers of the two arts: "_Chi sente che sia Tibullo nel
+poetare sente chi sia Andrea (del Sarto) nel dipingere_;" he who feels
+what TIBULLUS is in poetry, feels what ANDREA is in painting. MICHAEL
+ANGELO, from his profound conception of the terrible and the difficult in
+art, was called its DANTE; from the Italian poet the Italian sculptor
+derived the grandeur of his ideas; and indeed the visions of the bard had
+deeply nourished the artist's imagination; for once he had poured about
+the margins of his own copy their ethereal inventions, in the rapid
+designs of his pen. And so Bellori informs us of a very curious volume in
+manuscript, composed by RUBENS, which contained, among other topics
+concerning art, descriptions of the passions and actions of men, drawn
+from the poets, and demonstrated to the eye by the painters. Here were
+battles, shipwrecks, sports, groups, and other incidents, which were
+transcribed from Virgil and other poets, and by their side RUBENS had
+copied what he had met with on those subjects from Raphael and the
+antique.[A]
+
+The poet and the painter are only truly great by the mutual influences of
+their studies, and the jealousy of glory has only produced an idle
+contest. This old family-quarrel for precedence was renewed by our
+estimable President, in his brilliant "Rhymes on Art;" where he maintains
+that "the narrative of an action is not comparable to the action itself
+before the eyes;" while the enthusiast BARRY considers painting "as poetry
+realised."[B] This error of genius, perhaps first caught from Richardson's
+bewildering pages, was strengthened by the extravagant principle adopted
+by Darwin, who, to exalt his solitary talent of descriptive poetry,
+asserted that "the essence of poetry was picture." The philosophical
+critic will find no difficulty in assigning to each, sister-art her
+distinct province; and it is only a pleasing delirium, in the enthusiasm
+of artists, which has confused the boundaries of these arts. The dread
+pathetic story of Dante's "Ugolino," under the plastic hand of Michael
+Angelo, formed the subject of a basso-relievo; and Reynolds, with his
+highest effort, embodied the terrific conception of the poet as much as
+his art permitted: but assuredly both these great artists would never have
+claimed the precedence of the Dantesc genius, and might have hesitated at
+the rivalry.
+
+[Footnote A: Rubens was an ardent collector of works of antique art; and
+in the "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 398, will be found an
+interesting account of his museum at Antwerp.--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: The late Sir Martin Archer Shee, P.R.A. This accomplished
+artist, who possessed a large amount of poetical and literary power, asks,
+"What is there of _intellectual_ in the operations of the poet which the
+painter does not equal? What is there of _mechanical_ which he does not
+surpass? The advantage which poetry possesses over painting in continued
+narration and successive impression, cannot be advanced as a peculiar
+merit of the poet, since it results from the nature of language, and is
+common to prose." Poetry he values as the earliest of arts, painting as
+the latest and most refined.--ED.]
+
+Who has not heard of that one common principle which unites the
+intellectual arts, and who has not felt that the nature of their genius is
+similar in their distinct works? Hence curious inquiries could never
+decide whether the group of the Laocoön in sculpture preceded or was
+borrowed from that in poetry. Lessing conjectures that the sculptor copied
+the poet. It is evident that the agony of Laocoön was the common end where
+the sculptor and the poet were to meet; and we may observe that the
+artists in marble and in verse skilfully adapted their variations to their
+respective art: the one having to prefer the _nude_, rejected the veiling
+fillet from the forehead, that he might not conceal its deep expression,
+and the drapery of the sacrificial robe, that he might display the human
+form in visible agony; but the other, by the charm of verse, could invest
+the priest with the pomp of the pontifical robe without hiding from us the
+interior sufferings of the human victim. We see they obtained by different
+means, adapted to their respective arts, that common end which each
+designed; but who will decide which invention preceded the other, or who
+was the greater artist?
+
+This approximation of men apparently of opposite pursuits is so natural,
+that when Gesner, in his inspiring letter on landscape-painting,[A]
+recommends to the young painter a constant study of poetry and literature,
+the impatient artist is made to exclaim, "Must we combine with so many
+other studies those which belong to literary men? Must we read as well as
+paint?" "It is useless to reply to this question; for some important
+truths must be instinctively felt, perhaps the fundamental ones in the
+arts." A truly imaginative artist, whose enthusiasm was never absent when
+he meditated on the art he loved, BARRY, thus vehemently broke forth: "Go
+home from the academy, light up your lamps, and exercise yourselves in the
+creative part of your art, with Homer, with Livy, and all the great
+characters, ancient and modern, for your companions and counsellors." This
+genial intercourse of literature with art may be proved by painters who
+have suggested subjects to poets, and poets who have selected them for
+painters. GOLDSMITH suggested the subject of the tragic and pathetic
+picture of Ugolino to the pencil of REYNOLDS.
+
+All the classes of men in society have their peculiar sorrows and
+enjoyments, as they have their peculiar habits and characteristics. In
+the history of men of genius we may often open the secret story of their
+minds, for they have above others the privilege of communicating their
+own feelings; and every life of a man of genius, composed by himself,
+presents us with the experimental philosophy of the mind. By living with
+their brothers, and contemplating their masters, they will judge from
+consciousness less erroneously than from discussion; and in forming
+comparative views and parallel situations, they will discover certain
+habits and feelings, and find these reflected in themselves.
+
+SYDENHAM has beautifully said, "Whoever describes a violet exactly as to
+its colour, taste, smell, form, and other properties, will find the
+description agree in most particulars with all the violets in the
+universe."
+
+[Footnote A: Few writers were so competent to instruct in art as Gesner,
+who was not only an author and a poet, but an artist who decorated his
+poems by designs as graceful as their subject.--ED.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Of natural genius.--Minds constitutionally different cannot have an equal
+aptitude.--Genius not the result of habit and education.--Originates in
+peculiar qualities of the mind.--The predisposition of genius.--A
+substitution for the white paper of Locke.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: In the second edition of this work in 1818, I touched on some
+points of this inquiry in the second chapter: I almost despaired to find
+any philosopher sympathise with the subject, so invulnerable, they
+imagine, are the entrenchments of their theories. I was agreeably
+surprised to find these ideas taken up in the _Edinburgh Review_ for
+August, 1820, in an entertaining article on Reynolds. I have, no doubt,
+profited by the perusal, though this chapter was prepared before I met
+with that spirited vindication of "an inherent difference in the organs or
+faculties to receive impressions of any kind."]
+
+That faculty in art which individualises the artist, belonging to him and
+to no other, and which in a work forms that creative part whose likeness
+is not found in any other work--is it inherent in the constitutional
+dispositions of the Creator, or can it be formed by patient acquisition?
+
+Astonished at their own silent and obscure progress, some have imagined
+that they have formed their genius solely by their own studies; when they
+generated, they conceived that they had acquired; and, losing the
+distinction between nature and habit, with fatal temerity the idolatry of
+philosophy substituted something visible and palpable, yet shaped by the
+most opposite fancies, called a Theory, for Nature herself! Men of genius,
+whose great occupation is to be conversant with the inspirations of
+Nature, made up a factitious one among themselves, and assumed that they
+could operate without the intervention of the occult original. But Nature
+would not be mocked; and whenever this race of idolaters have worked
+without her agency, she has afflicted them with the most stubborn
+sterility.
+
+Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our own philosophical
+times; ages of genius had passed away, and they left no other record than
+their works; no preconcerted theory described the workings of the
+imagination to be without imagination, nor did they venture to teach how
+to invent invention.
+
+The character of genius, viewed as the effect of habit and education, on
+the principle of the equality of the human mind, infers that men have an
+equal aptitude for the work of genius: a paradox which, with a more fatal
+one, came from the French school, and arose probably from an equivocal
+expression.
+
+Locke employed the well-known comparison of the mind with "white paper
+void of all characters," to free his famous "Inquiry" from that powerful
+obstacle to his system, the absurd belief of "innate ideas," of notions of
+objects before objects were presented to observation. Our philosopher
+considered that this simple analogy sufficiently described the manner in
+which he conceived the impressions of the senses write themselves on the
+mind. His French pupils, the amusing Helvetius, or Diderot, for they
+were equally concerned in the paradoxical "L'Esprit," inferred that this
+blank paper served also as an evidence that men had _an equal aptitude for
+genius_, just as the blank paper reflects to us whatever characters we
+trace on it. This _equality of minds_ gave rise to the same monstrous
+doctrine in the science of metaphysics which that of another verbal
+misconception, _the equality of men_, did in that of politics. The
+Scottish metaphysicians powerfully combined to illustrate the mechanism of
+the mind,--an important and a curious truth; for as rules and principles
+exist in the nature of things, and when discovered are only thence drawn
+out, genius unconsciously conducts itself by a uniform process; and
+when this process had been traced, they inferred that what was done by
+some men, under the influence of fundamental laws which regulate the
+march of the intellect, must also be in the reach of others, who, in the
+same circumstances, apply themselves to the same study. But these
+metaphysicians resemble anatomists, under whose knife all men are alike.
+They know the structure of the bones, the movement of the muscles, and
+where the connecting ligaments lie! but the invisible principle of life
+flies from their touch. It is the practitioner on the living body who
+studies in every individual that peculiarity of constitution which forms
+the idiosyncrasy.
+
+Under the influence of such novel theories of genius, JOHNSON defined it
+as "A Mind of large general powers ACCIDENTALLY determined by some
+_particular direction_." On this principle we must infer that the
+reasoning LOCKE, or the arithmetical DE MOIVRE, could have been the
+musical and fairy SPENSER.[A] This conception of the nature of genius
+became prevalent. It induced the philosophical BECCARIA to assert that
+every individual had an equal degree of genius for poetry and eloquence;
+it runs through the philosophy of the elegant Dugald Stewart; and
+REYNOLDS, the pupil of Johnson in literature, adopting the paradox,
+constructed his automatic system on this principle of _equal aptitude_. He
+says, "this excellence, however expressed by genius, taste, or the gift of
+Heaven, I am confident may be _acquired_." Reynolds had the modesty to
+fancy that so many rivals, unendowed by nature, might have equalled the
+magic of his own pencil: but his theory of industry, so essential to
+genius, yet so useless without it, too long stimulated the drudges of art,
+and left us without a Correggio or a Raphael! Another man of genius caught
+the fever of the new system. CURRIE, in his eloquent "Life of Burns,"
+swells out the scene of genius to a startling magnificence; for he asserts
+that, "the talents necessary to the construction of an 'Iliad,' under
+different discipline and application, might have led armies to victory or
+kingdoms to prosperity; might have wielded the thunder of eloquence, or
+discovered and enlarged the sciences." All this we find in the _text_; but
+in the clear intellect of this man of genius a vast number of intervening
+difficulties started up, and in a copious _note_ the numerous exceptions
+show that the assumed theory requires no other refutation than what the
+theorist has himself so abundantly and so judiciously supplied. There is
+something ludicrous in the result of a theory of genius which would
+place HOBBES and ERASMUS, those timid and learned recluses, to open a
+campaign with the military invention and physical intrepidity of a
+Marlborough; or conclude that the romantic bard of the "Fairy Queen,"
+amidst the quickly-shifting scenes of his visionary reveries, could have
+deduced, by slow and patient watchings of the mind, the system and the
+demonstrations of Newton.
+
+[Footnote A: It is more dangerous to define than to describe: a dry
+definition excludes so much, an ardent description at once appeals to our
+sympathies. How much more comprehensible our great critic becomes when he
+nobly describes genius, "as the power of mind that collects, combines,
+amplifies, and animates; the energy without which judgment is cold, and
+knowledge is inert!" And it is this POWER OF MIND, this primary faculty
+and native aptitude, which we deem may exist separately from education and
+habit, since these are often found unaccompanied by genius.]
+
+Such theorists deduce the faculty called genius from a variety of exterior
+or secondary causes: zealously rejecting the notion that genius may
+originate in constitutional dispositions, and be only a mode of the
+individual's existence, they deny that minds are differently constituted.
+Habit and education, being more palpable and visible in their operations,
+and progressive in the development of the intellectual faculties, have
+been imagined fully sufficient to make the creative faculty a subject of
+acquirement.
+
+But when these theorists had discovered the curious fact, that we have
+owed to _accident_ several men of genius, and when they laid open some
+sources which influenced genius in its progress, they did not go one step
+further, they did not inquire whether such sources and such accidents had
+ever supplied the _want of genius_ in the individual. Effects were here
+again mistaken for causes. Could Spenser have kindled a poet in Cowley,
+Richardson a painter in Reynolds, and Descartes a metaphysician in
+Malebranche, if those master-minds, pointed out as having been such from
+_accident_, had not first received the indelible mint-stamp struck by the
+hand of Nature, and which, to give it a name, we may be allowed to call
+the _predisposition_ of genius? The _accidents_ so triumphantly held
+forth, which are imagined to have created the genius of these men, have
+occurred to a thousand who have run the same career; but how does it
+happen that the multitude remain a multitude, and the man of genius
+arrives alone at the goal?
+
+This theory, which long dazzled its beholders, was in time found to stand
+in contradiction with itself, and perpetually with their own experience.
+Reynolds pared down his decision in the progress of his lectures, often
+wavered, often altered, and grew more confused as he lived longer to look
+about him.[A] The infirm votaries of the new philosophy, with all their
+sources of genius open before them, went on multiplying mediocrity, while
+inherent genius, true to nature, still continued rare in its solitary
+independence.
+
+[Footnote A: I transcribe the last opinions of Mr. Edgeworth. "As to
+original genius, and the effect of education in forming taste or directing
+talent, the last revisal of his opinions was given by himself, in the
+introduction to the second edition of 'Professional Education.' He was
+strengthened in his belief, that many of the great differences of
+intellect which appear in men, depend more upon the early cultivating the
+habit of attention than upon any disparity between the powers of one
+individual and another. Perhaps, he latterly allowed that there is more
+difference than he had formerly admitted between the _natural powers_ of
+different persons; but not so great as is generally supposed."--
+_Edgeworth's Memoirs_, ii. 388.]
+
+Others have strenuously denied that we are born with any peculiar species
+of mind, and resolve the mysterious problem into _capacity_, of which men
+only differ in the degree. They can perceive no distinction between the
+poetical and the mathematical genius; and they conclude that a man of
+genius, possessing a general capacity, may become whatever he chooses, but
+is determined by his first acquired habit to be what he is.[A]
+
+In substituting the term _capacity_ for that of _genius_, the origin or
+nature remains equally occult. How is it acquired, or how is it inherent?
+To assert that any man of genius may become what he wills, those most
+fervently protest against who feel that the character of genius is such
+that it cannot be other than it is; that there is an identity of minds,
+and that there exists an interior conformity as marked and as perfect as
+the exterior physiognomy. A Scotch metaphysician has recently declared
+that "Locke or Newton might have been as eminent poets as Homer or Milton,
+had they given themselves early to the study of poetry." It is well to
+know how far this taste will go. We believe that had these philosophers
+obstinately, against nature, persisted in the attempt, as some have
+unluckily for themselves, we should have lost two great philosophers, and
+have obtained two supernumerary poets.[B]
+
+It would be more useful to discover another source of genius for
+philosophers and poets, less fallible than the gratuitous assumptions of
+these theorists. An adequate origin for peculiar qualities in the mind may
+be found in that constitutional or secret propensity which adapts some for
+particular pursuits, and forms the _predisposition_ of genius.
+
+[Footnote A: Johnson once asserted, that "the supposition of one man
+having more imagination, another more judgment, is not true; it is only
+one man has _more mind_ than another. He who has vigour may walk to the
+east as well as the west, if he happens to turn his head that way." Godwin
+was persuaded that all genius is a mere _acquisition_, for he hints at
+"infusing it," and making it a thing "heritable." A reversion which has
+been missed by the many respectable dunces who have been sons of men of
+genius.]
+
+[Footnote B: This very Scotch metaphysician, at the instant he lays down
+this postulate, acknowledges that "Dr. Beattie had talents for a _poet_,
+but apparently not for a _philosopher_." It is amusing to learn another
+result of his ungenial metaphysics. This sage demonstrates and concludes
+in these words, "It will therefore be found, with little exception, that
+_a great poet is but an ordinary genius_." Let this sturdy Scotch
+metaphysician never approach Pegasus--he has to fear, not his wings, but
+his heels. If some have written on genius with a great deal too much,
+others have written without any.]
+
+Not that we are bound to demonstrate what our adversaries have failed
+in proving; we may still remain ignorant of the nature of genius, and
+yet be convinced that they have not revealed it. The phenomena of
+_predisposition_ in the mind are not more obscure and ambiguous than
+those which have been assigned as the sources of genius in certain
+individuals. For is it more difficult to conceive that a person bears in
+his constitutional disposition a germ of native aptitude which is
+developing itself to a predominant character of genius, which breaks forth
+in the temperament and moulds the habits, than to conjecture that these
+men of genius could not have been such but from _accident_, or that they
+differ only in their _capacity_?
+
+Every class of men of genius has distinct habits; all poets resemble one
+another, as all painters and all mathematicians. There is a conformity in
+the cast of their minds, and the quality of each is distinct from the
+other, and the very faculty which fits them for one particular pursuit, is
+just the reverse required for another. If these are truisms, as they may
+appear, we need not demonstrate that from which we only wish to draw our
+conclusion. Why does this remarkable similarity prevail through the
+classes of genius? Because each, in their favourite production, is working
+with the same appropriate organ. The poetical eye is early busied with
+imagery; as early will the reveries of the poetical mind be busied with
+the passions; as early will the painter's hand be copying forms and
+colours; as early will the young musician's ear wander in the creation of
+sounds, and the philosopher's head mature its meditations. It is then the
+aptitude of the appropriate organ, however it varies in its character, in
+which genius seems most concerned, and which is connatural and connate
+with the individual, and, as it was expressed in old days, is _born_ with
+him. There seems no other source of genius; for whenever this has been
+refused by nature, as it is so often, no theory of genius, neither habit
+nor education, have ever supplied its want. To discriminate between the
+_habit_ and the _predisposition_ is quite impossible; because whenever
+great genius discovers itself, as it can only do by continuity, it has
+become a habit with the individual; it is the fatal notion of habit having
+the power of generating genius, which has so long served to delude the
+numerous votaries of mediocrity. Natural or native power is enlarged by
+art; but the most perfect art has but narrow limits, deprived of natural
+disposition.
+
+A curious decision on this obscure subject may be drawn from an admirable
+judge of the nature of genius. AKENSIDE, in that fine poem which forms its
+history, tracing its source, sang,
+
+ From Heaven my strains begin, from Heaven descends
+ The flame of genius to _the human breast_.
+
+But in the final revision of that poem, which he left many years after,
+the bard has vindicated the solitary and independent origin of genius, by
+the mysterious epithet,
+
+ THE CHOSEN BREAST.
+
+The veteran poet was, perhaps, schooled by the vicissitudes of his own
+poetical life, and those of some of his brothers.
+
+Metaphors are but imperfect illustrations in metaphysical inquiries:
+usually they include too little or take in too much. Yet fanciful
+analogies are not willingly abandoned. The iconologists describe Genius as
+a winged child with a flame above its head; the wings and the flame
+express more than some metaphysical conclusions. Let me substitute
+for "the white paper" of Locke, which served the philosopher in his
+description of the operations of the senses on the mind, a less artificial
+substance. In the soils of the earth we may discover that variety of
+primary qualities which we believe to exist in human minds. The botanist
+and the geologist always find the nature of the strata indicative of its
+productions; the meagre light herbage announces the poverty of the soil it
+covers, while the luxuriant growth of plants betrays the richness of the
+matrix in which the roots are fixed. It is scarcely reasoning by analogy
+to apply this operating principle of nature to the faculties of men.
+
+But while the origin and nature of that faculty which we understand by the
+term Genius remain still wrapt up in its mysterious bud, may we not trace
+its history in its votaries? If Nature overshadow with her wings her first
+causes, still the effects lie open before us, and experience and
+observation will often deduce from consciousness what we cannot from
+demonstration. If Nature, in some of her great operations, has kept back
+her last secrets; if Newton, even in the result of his reasonings, has
+religiously abstained from penetrating into her occult connexions, is it
+nothing to be her historian, although we cannot be her legislator?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Youth of genius.--Its first impulses may be illustrated by its subsequent
+actions.--Parents have another association of the man of genius than
+we.--Of genius, its first habits.--Its melancholy.--Its reveries.--Its
+love of solitude.--Its disposition to repose.--Of a youth distinguished
+by his equals.--Feebleness of its first attempts.--Of genius not
+discoverable even in manhood.--The education of the youth may not be
+that of his genius.--An unsettled impulse, querulous till it finds its
+true occupation.--With some, curiosity as intense a faculty as invention.
+--What the youth first applies to is commonly his delight afterwards.
+--Facts of the decisive character of genius.
+
+
+We are entering into a fairy land, touching only shadows, and chasing the
+most changeable lights; many stories we shall hear, and many scenes will
+open on us; yet though realities are but dimly to be traced in this
+twilight of imagination and tradition, we think that the first impulses of
+genius may be often illustrated by the subsequent actions of the
+individual; and whenever we find these in perfect harmony, it will be
+difficult to convince us that there does not exist a secret connexion
+between those first impulses and these last actions.
+
+Can we then trace in the faint lines of his youth an unsteady outline of
+the man? In the temperament of genius may we not reasonably look for
+certain indications or predispositions, announcing the permanent
+character? Is not great sensibility born with its irritable fibres? Will
+not the deep retired character cling to its musings? And the unalterable
+being of intrepidity and fortitude, will he not, commanding even amidst
+his sports, lead on his equals? The boyhood of Cato was marked by the
+sternness of the man, observable in his speech, his countenance, and his
+puerile amusements; and BACON, DESCARTES, HOBBES, GRAY, and others,
+betrayed the same early appearance of their intellectual vigour and
+precocity of character.
+
+The virtuous and contemplative BOYLE imagined that he had discovered in
+childhood that disposition of mind which indicated an instinctive
+ingenuousness. An incident which he relates, evinced, as he thought, that
+even then he preferred to aggravate his fault rather than consent to
+suppress any part of the truth, an effort which had been unnatural to his
+mind. His fanciful, yet striking illustration may open our inquiry. "This
+trivial passage," the little story alluded to, "I have mentioned now, not
+that I think that in itself it deserves a relation, but because as the sun
+is seen best at his rising and his setting, so men's native dispositions
+are clearliest perceived whilst they are children, and when they are
+dying. These little sudden actions are the greatest discoverers of men's
+true humours."
+
+ALFIERI, that historian of the literary mind, was conscious that even in
+his childhood the peculiarity and the melancholy of his character
+prevailed: a boyhood passed in domestic solitude fed the interior feelings
+of his impassioned character; and in noticing some incidents of a childish
+nature, this man of genius observes, "Whoever will reflect on these inept
+circumstances, and explore into the seeds of the passions of man, possibly
+may find these neither so laughable nor so puerile as they may appear."
+His native genius, or by whatever other term we may describe it, betrayed
+the wayward predispositions of some of his poetical brothers: "Taciturn
+and placid for the most part, but at times loquacious and most vivacious,
+and usually in the most opposite extremes; stubborn and impatient against
+force, but most open to kindness, more restrained by the dread of
+reprimand than by anything else, susceptible of shame to excess, but
+inflexible if violently opposed." Such is the portrait of a child of seven
+years old, a portrait which induced the great tragic bard to deduce this
+result from his own self-experience, that "_man_ is a continuation of the
+_child_."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: See in his Life, chap. iv., entitled _Sviluppo dell' indole
+indicato da vari fattarelli_. "Development of genius, or natural
+inclination, indicated by various little matters."]
+
+That the dispositions of genius in early life presage its future
+character, was long the feeling of antiquity. CICERO, in his "Dialogue on
+Old Age," employs a beautiful analogy drawn from Nature, marking her
+secret conformity in all things which have life and come from her hands;
+and the human mind is one of her plants. "Youth is the vernal season of
+life, and the blossoms it then puts forth are indications of those future
+fruits which are to be gathered in the succeeding periods." One of the
+masters of the human mind, after much previous observation of those who
+attended his lectures, would advise one to engage in political studies,
+then exhorted another to compose history, elected these to be poets, and
+those to be orators; for ISOCRATES believed that Nature had some concern
+in forming a man of genius, and endeavoured to guess at her secret by
+detecting the first energetic inclination of the mind. This also was the
+principle which guided the Jesuits, those other great masters in the art
+of education. They studied the characteristics of their pupils with such
+singular care, as to keep a secret register in their colleges, descriptive
+of their talents, and the natural turn of their dispositions. In some
+cases they guessed with remarkable felicity. They described Fontenelle,
+_adolescens omnibus numeris absolutus et inter discipulos princeps_, "a
+youth accomplished in every respect, and the model for his companions;"
+but when they describe the elder Crébillon, _puer ingeniosus sed insignis
+nebulo_, "a shrewd boy, but a great rascal," they might not have erred so
+much as they appear to have done; for an impetuous boyhood showed the
+decision of a character which might not have merely and misanthropically
+settled in imaginary scenes of horror, and the invention of characters of
+unparalleled atrocity.
+
+In the old romance of King Arthur, when a cowherd comes to the king to
+request he would make his son a knight--"It is a great thing thou askest,"
+said Arthur, who inquired whether this entreaty proceeded from him or his
+son. The old man's answer is remarkable--"Of my son, not of me; for I have
+thirteen sons, and all these will fall to that labour I put them; but this
+child will not labour for me, for anything that I and my wife will do; but
+always he will be shooting and casting darts, and glad for to see battles,
+and to behold knights, and always day and night he desireth of me to be
+made a knight." The king commanded the cowherd to fetch all his sons;
+"they were all shapen much like the poor man; but Tor was not like none of
+them in shape and in countenance, for he was much more than any of them.
+And so Arthur knighted him." This simple tale is the history of genius--
+the cowherd's twelve sons were like himself, but the unhappy genius in the
+family, who perplexed and plagued the cowherd and his wife and his twelve
+brothers, was the youth averse to the common labour, and dreaming of
+chivalry amidst a herd of cows.
+
+A man of genius is thus dropped among the people, and has first to
+encounter the difficulties of ordinary men, unassisted by that feeble
+ductility which adapts itself to the common destination. Parents are too
+often the victims of the decided propensity of a son to a Virgil or a
+Euclid; and the first step into life of a man of genius is disobedience
+and grief. LILLY, our famous astrologer, has described the frequent
+situation of such a youth, like the cowherd's son who would be a knight.
+Lilly proposed to his father that he should try his fortune in the
+metropolis, where he expected that his learning and his talents would
+prove serviceable to him; the father, quite incapable of discovering the
+latent genius of his son in his studious disposition, very willingly
+consented to get rid of him, for, as Lilly proceeds, "I could not work,
+drive the plough, or endure any country labour; my father oft would say I
+was _good for nothing_,"--words which the fathers of so many men of genius
+have repeated.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: The father of Sir Joshua Reynolds reproached him frequently
+in his boyish days for his constant attention to drawing, and wrote on the
+back of one of his sketches the condemnatory words, "Done by Joshua out of
+pure idleness." Mignard distressed his father the surgeon, by sketching
+the expressive faces of his patients instead of attending to their
+diseases; and our own Opie, when a boy, and working with his father at his
+business as a carpenter, used frequently to excite his anger by drawing
+with red chalk on the deal boards he had carefully planed for his trade.
+--ED.]
+
+In reading the memoirs of a man of genius, we often reprobate the domestic
+persecutions of those who opposed his inclinations. No poet but is moved
+with indignation at the recollection of the tutor at the Port Royal thrice
+burning the romance which RACINE at length got by heart; no geometrician
+but bitterly inveighs against the father of PASCAL for not suffering him
+to study Euclid, which he at length understood without studying. The
+father of PETRARCH cast to the flames the poetical library of his son,
+amidst the shrieks, the groans, and the tears of the youth. Yet this
+burnt-offering neither converted Petrarch into a sober lawyer, nor
+deprived him of the Roman laurel. The uncle of ALFIERI for more than
+twenty years suppressed the poetical character of this noble bard; he was
+a poet without knowing how to write a verse, and Nature, like a hard
+creditor, exacted, with redoubled interest, all the genius which the uncle
+had so long kept from her. These are the men whose inherent impulse no
+human opposition, and even no adverse education, can deter from proving
+them to be great men.
+
+Let us, however, be just to the parents of a man of genius; they have
+another association of ideas respecting him than ourselves. We see a great
+man, they a disobedient child; we track him through his glory, they are
+wearied by the sullen resistance of one who is obscure and seems useless.
+The career of genius is rarely that of fortune or happiness; and the
+father, who himself may not be insensible to glory, dreads lest his
+son be found among that obscure multitude, that populace of mean artists,
+self-deluded yet self-dissatisfied, who must expire at the barriers of
+mediocrity.
+
+If the youth of genius be struggling with a concealed impulse, he will
+often be thrown into a train of secret instruction which no master can
+impart. Hippocrates profoundly observed, that "our _natures_ have not been
+taught us by any master." The faculty which the youth of genius displays
+in after-life may exist long ere it is perceived; and it will only make
+its own what is homogeneous with itself. We may often observe how the mind
+of this youth stubbornly rejects whatever is contrary to its habits, and
+alien to its affections. Of a solitary character, for solitariness is the
+wild nurse of his contemplations, he is fancifully described by one of the
+race--and here fancies are facts:
+
+ He is retired as noon-tide dew,
+ Or fountain in a noon-day grove.
+
+The romantic SIDNEY exclaimed, "Eagles fly alone, and they are but sheep
+which always herd together."
+
+As yet this being, in the first rudiments of his sensations, is touched by
+rapid emotions, and disturbed by a vague restlessness; for him the images
+of nature are yet dim, and he feels before he thinks; for imagination
+precedes reflection. One truly inspired unfolds the secret story--
+
+ Endow'd with all that Nature can bestow,
+ The child of fancy oft in silence bends
+ O'er the mixt treasures of his pregnant breast
+ With conscious pride. From thence he oft resolves
+ To frame he knows not what excelling things;
+ And win he knows not what sublime reward
+ Of praise and wonder!
+
+But the solitude of the youth of genius has a local influence; it is full
+of his own creations, of his unmarked passions, and his uncertain
+thoughts. The titles which he gives his favourite haunts often intimate
+the bent of his mind--its employment, or its purpose; as PETRARCH called
+his retreat _Linternum_, after that of his hero Scipio; and a young poet,
+from some favourite description in Cowley, called a spot he loved to muse
+in, "Cowley's Walk."
+
+A temperament of this kind has been often mistaken for melancholy.[A]
+"When the intermission of my studies allowed me leisure for recreation,"
+says BOYLE of his early life, "I would very often steal away from all
+company, and spend four or five hours alone in the fields, and think at
+random; making my delighted imagination the busy scene where some romance
+or other was daily acted." This circumstance alarmed his friends, who
+concluded that he was overcome with a growing melancholy. ALFIERI found
+himself in this precise situation, and experienced these undefinable
+emotions, when, in his first travels at Marseilles, his lonely spirit only
+haunted the theatre and the seashore: the tragic drama was then casting
+its influences over his unconscious genius. Almost every evening, after
+bathing in the sea, it delighted him to retreat to a little recess where
+the land jutted out; there would he sit, leaning his hack against a high
+rock, which he tells us, "concealed from my sight every part of the land
+behind me, while before and around me I beheld nothing but the sea and the
+heavens: the sun, sinking into the waves, was lighting up and embellishing
+these two immensities; there would I pass a delicious hour of fantastic
+ruminations, and there I should have composed many a poem, had I then
+known to write either in verse or prose in any language whatever."
+
+[Footnote A: This solemnity of manner was aped in the days of Elizabeth
+and James I. by such as affected scholar-like habits, and is frequently
+alluded to by the satirists of the time. BEN JONSON, in his "Every Man in
+his Humour," delineates the "country gull," Master Stephen, as affecting
+"to be mightily given to melancholy," and receiving the assurance, "It's
+your only fine humour, sir; your true melancholy breeds your perfect fine
+wit, sir."--ED.]
+
+An incident of this nature is revealed to us by the other noble and mighty
+spirit of our times, who could most truly exhibit the history of the youth
+of genius, and he has painted forth the enthusiasm of the boy TASSO:--
+
+ --From my very birth
+ My soul was drunk with love, which did pervade
+ And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth;
+ Of objects all inanimate I made
+ Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers
+ And rocks whereby they grew, a paradise,
+ Where I did lay me down within the shade
+ Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours,
+ Though I was chid for wandering.
+
+The youth of genius will be apt to retire from the active sports of his
+mates. BEATTIE paints himself in his own Minstrel:
+
+ Concourse, and noise, and toil he ever fled,
+ Nor cared to mingle in the clamorous fray
+ Of squabbling imps; but to the forest sped.
+
+BOSSUET would not join his young companions, and flew to his solitary
+task, while the classical boys avenged themselves by a schoolboy's
+villanous pun: stigmatising the studious application of Bossuet by the
+_bos suetus aratro_ which frequent flogging had made them classical enough
+to quote.
+
+The learned HUET has given an amusing detail of the inventive persecutions
+of his schoolmates, to divert him from his obstinate love of study. "At
+length, in order to indulge my own taste, I would rise with the sun, while
+they were buried in sleep, and hide myself in the woods, that I might read
+and study in quiet;" but they beat the bushes, and started in his burrow
+the future man of erudition. Sir WILLIAM JONES was rarely a partaker in
+the active sports of Harrow; it was said of GRAY that he was never a boy;
+the unhappy CHATTERTON and BURNS were singularly serious in youth;[A] as
+were HOBBES and BACON. MILTON has preserved for us, in solemn numbers, his
+school-life--
+
+ When I was yet a child, no childish play
+ To me was pleasing: all my mind was set
+ Serious to learn and know, and thence to do
+ What might be public good: myself I thought
+ Born to that end, born to promote all truth,
+ All righteous things.
+
+[Footnote A: Dr. Gregory says of Chatterton, "Instead of the thoughtless
+levity of childhood, he possessed the pensiveness, gravity, and melancholy
+of maturer life. He was frequently so lost in contemplation, that for many
+days together he would say but very little, and that apparently by
+constraint. His intimates in the school were few, and those of the most
+serious cast." Of Burns, his schoolmaster, Mr. Murdoch, says--"Robert's
+countenance was generally grave, and expressive of a serious,
+contemplative, and thoughtful mind:"--Ed.]
+
+It is remarkable that this love of repose and musing is retained
+throughout life. A man of fine genius is rarely enamoured of common
+amusements or of robust exercises; and he is usually unadroit where
+dexterity of hand or eye, or trivial elegances, are required. This
+characteristic of genius was discovered by HORACE in that Ode which
+schoolboys often versify. BEATTIE has expressly told us of his Minstrel,
+
+ The exploit of strength, dexterity or speed
+ To him nor vanity nor joy could bring.
+
+ALFIERI said he could never be taught by a French dancing-master, whose
+art made him at once shudder and laugh. HORACE, by his own confession, was
+a very awkward rider, and the poet could not always secure a seat on his
+mule: METASTASIO humorously complains of his gun; the poetical sportsman
+could only frighten the hares and partridges; the, truth was, as an elder
+poet sings,
+
+ Instead of hounds that make the wooded hills
+ Talk in a hundred voices to the rills,
+ I, like the pleasing cadence of a line,
+ Struck by the concert of the sacred Nine.
+
+And we discover the true "humour" of the indolent contemplative race in
+their great representatives VIRGIL and HORACE. When they accompanied
+Mecænas into the country, while the minister amused himself at tennis,
+the two bards reposed on a vernal bank amidst the freshness of the shade.
+The younger Pliny, who was so perfect a literary character, was charmed by
+the Roman mode of hunting, or rather fowling by nets, which admitted him
+to sit a whole day with his tablets and stylus; so, says he, "should I
+return with empty nets, my tablets may at least be full." THOMSON was the
+hero of his own "Castle of Indolence;" and the elegant WALLER infuses into
+his luxurious verses the true feeling:
+
+ Oh, low I long my careless limbs to lay
+ Under the plantane shade, and all the day
+ Invoke the Muses and improve my vein.
+
+The youth of genius, whom Beattie has drawn after himself, and I after
+observation, a poet of great genius, as I understand, has declared to be
+"too effeminate and timid, and too much troubled with delicate nerves. The
+_greatest poets_ of all countries," he continues, "have been men eminently
+endowed with _bodily powers_, and rejoiced and excelled in all _manly
+exercises_." May not our critic of northern habits have often mistaken
+the art of the great poets in _describing_ such "manly exercises or bodily
+powers," for the proof of their "rejoicing and excelling in them?" Poets
+and artists, from their habits, are not usually muscular and robust.[A]
+Continuity of thought, absorbing reverie, and sedentary habits, will not
+combine with corporeal skill and activity. There is also a constitutional
+delicacy which is too often the accompaniment of a fine intellect.
+The inconveniences attached to the inferior sedentary labourers are
+participated in by men of genius; the analogy is obvious, and their fate
+is common. Literary men may be included in Ramazzini's "Treatise on the
+Diseases of Artizans." ROSSEAU has described the labours of the closet as
+enervating men, and weakening the constitution, while study wears the
+whole machinery of man, exhausts the spirits, destroys his strength, and
+renders him pusillanimous.[B] But there is a higher principle which guides
+us to declare, that men of genius should not _excel_ in "all manly
+exercises." SENECA, whose habits were completely literary, admonishes the
+man of letters that "Whatever amusement he chooses, he should not slowly
+return from those of the body to the mind, while he should be exercising
+the latter night and day." Seneca was aware that "to rejoice and excel in
+all manly exercises," would in some cases intrude into the habits of a
+literary man, and sometimes be even ridiculous. MORTIMER, once a
+celebrated artist, was tempted by his athletic frame to indulge in
+frequent violent exercises; and it is not without reason suspected, that
+habits so unfavourable to thought and study precluded that promising
+genius from attaining to the maturity of his talents, however he might
+have succeeded in invigorating his physical powers.
+
+[Footnote A: Dr. Currie, in his "Life of Burns," has a passage which may
+be quoted here: "Though by nature of an athletic form, Burns had in his
+constitution the peculiarities and the delicacies that belong to the
+temperament of genius. He was liable, from a very early period of life, to
+that interruption in the process of digestion which arises from deep and
+anxious thought, and which is sometimes the effect, and sometimes the
+cause, of depression of spirits."--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: In the Preface to the "Narcisse."]
+
+But to our solitude. So true is it that this love of loneliness is an
+early passion, that two men of genius of very opposite characters, the one
+a French wit and the other a French philosopher, have acknowledged that
+they have felt its influence, and even imagined that they had discovered
+its cause. The Abbé DE ST. PIERRE, in his political annals, tells us, "I
+remember to have heard old SEGRAIS remark, that most young people of both
+sexes had at one time of their lives, generally about seventeen or
+eighteen years of age, an inclination to retire from the world. He
+maintained this to be a species of melancholy, and humorously called it
+the small-pox of the mind, because scarce one in a thousand escaped the
+attack. I myself have had this distemper, but am not much marked with it."
+
+But if the youth of genius be apt to retire from the ordinary sports of
+his mates, he will often substitute for them others, which are the
+reflections of those favourite studies which are haunting his young
+imagination, as men in their dreams repeat the conceptions which have
+habitually interested them. The amusements of such an idler have often
+been analogous to his later pursuits. ARIOSTO, while yet a schoolboy,
+seems to have been very susceptible of poetry, for he composed a sort of
+tragedy from the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, to be represented by his
+brothers and sisters, and at this time also delighted himself in
+translating the old French and Spanish romances. Sir WILLIAM JONES, at
+Harrow, divided the fields according to a map of Greece, and to each
+schoolfellow portioned out a dominion; and when wanting a copy of the
+_Tempest_ to act from, he supplied it from his memory; we must confess
+that the boy Jones was reflecting in his amusements the cast of mind he
+displayed in his after-life, and evincing that felicity of memory and
+taste so prevalent in his literary character. FLORIAN'S earliest years
+were passed in shooting birds all day, and reading every evening an old
+translation of the Iliad: whenever he got a bird remarkable for its size
+or its plumage, he personified it by one of the names of his heroes, and
+raising a funeral pyre, consumed the body: collecting the ashes in an
+urn, he presented them to his grandfather, with a narrative of his
+Patroclus or Sarpedon. We seem here to detect, reflected in his boyish
+sports, the pleasing genius of the author of Numa Pompilius, Gonsalvo of
+Cordova, and William Tell. BACON, when a child, was so remarkable for
+thoughtful observation, that Queen Elizabeth used to call him "the young
+lord-keeper." The boy made a remarkable reply, when her Majesty,
+inquiring of him his age, he said, that "He was two years younger than
+her Majesty's happy reign." The boy may have been tutored; but this
+mixture of gravity, and ingenuity, and political courtiership,
+undoubtedly caught from his father's habits, afterwards characterised
+Lord Bacon's manhood. I once read the letter of a contemporary of HOBBES,
+where I found that this great philosopher, when a lad, used to ride on
+packs of skins to market, to sell them for his father, who was a
+fellmonger; and that in the market-place he thus early began to vent his
+private opinions, which long afterwards so fully appeared in his
+writings.
+
+For a youth to be distinguished by his equals is perhaps a criterion of
+talent. At that moment of life, with no flattery on the one side, and no
+artifice on the other, all emotion and no reflection, the boy who has
+obtained a predominance has acquired this merely by native powers. The
+boyhood of NELSON was characterised by events congenial with those of his
+after-days; and his father understood his character when he declared that,
+"in whatever station he might be placed, he would climb, if possible, to
+the top of the tree." Some puerile anecdotes which FRANKLIN remembered of
+himself, betray the invention and the firm intrepidity of his character,
+and even perhaps his carelessness of means to obtain a purpose. In boyhood
+he felt a desire for adventure; but as his father would not consent to a
+sea life, he made the river near him represent the ocean: he lived on the
+water, and was the daring Columbus of a schoolboy's boat. A part where he
+and his mates stood to angle, in time became a quagmire: in the course of
+one day, the infant projector thought of a wharf for them to stand on, and
+raised it with a heap of stones deposited there for the building of a
+house. With that sort of practical wisdom, or Ulyssean cunning, which
+marked his mature character, Franklin raised his wharf at the expense of
+another's house. His contrivances to aid his puny labourers, with his
+resolution not to quit the great work till it was effected, seem to strike
+out to us the invention and decision of his future character. But the
+qualities which would attract the companions of a schoolboy may not be
+those which are essential to fine genius. The captain or leader of his
+schoolmates is not to be disregarded; but it is the sequestered boy who
+may chance to be the artist or the literary character. Some facts which
+have been recorded of men of genius at this period are remarkable. We are
+told by Miss Stewart that JOHNSON, when a boy at the free-school, appeared
+"a huge overgrown, misshapen stripling;" but was considered as a
+stupendous stripling: "for even at that early period of life, Johnson
+maintained his opinions with the same sturdy, dogmatical, and arrogant
+fierceness." The puerile characters of Lord BOLINGBROKE and Sir ROBERT
+WALPOLE, schoolfellows and rivals, were observed to prevail through their
+after-life; the liveliness and brilliancy of Bolingbroke appeared in his
+attacks on Walpole, whose solid and industrious qualities triumphed by
+resistance. A parallel instance might be pointed out in two great
+statesmen of our own days; in the wisdom of the one, and the wit of the
+other--men whom nature made rivals, and time made friends or enemies, as
+it happened. A curious observer, in looking over a collection of the
+Cambridge poems, which were formerly composed by its students, has
+remarked that "Cowley from the first was quaint, Milton sublime, and
+Barrow copious." If then the characteristic disposition may reveal itself
+thus early, it affords a principle which ought not to be neglected at this
+obscure period of youth.
+
+Is there then a period in youth which yields decisive marks of the
+character of genius? The natures of men are as various as their fortunes.
+Some, like diamonds, must wait to receive their splendour from the slow
+touches of the polisher, while others, resembling pearls, appear at once
+born with their beauteous lustre.
+
+Among the inauspicious circumstances is the feebleness of the first
+attempts; and we must not decide on the talents of a young man by his
+first works. DRYDEN and SWIFT might have been deterred from authorship had
+their earliest pieces decided their fate. SMOLLETT, before he knew which
+way his genius would conduct him, had early conceived a high notion of his
+talents for dramatic poetry: his tragedy of the _Regicide_ was refused by
+Garrick, whom for a long time he could not forgive, but continued to abuse
+our Roscius, through his works of genius, for having discountenanced his
+first work, which had none. RACINE'S earliest composition, as we may judge
+by some fragments his son has preserved, remarkably contrasts with his
+writings; for these fragments abound with those points and conceits which
+he afterwards abhorred. The tender author of "Andromache" could not have
+been discovered while exhausting himself in running after _concetti_ as
+surprising as the worst parts of Cowley, in whose spirit alone he could
+have hit on this perplexing _concetto_, descriptive of Aurora: "Fille du
+Jour, qui nais devant ton père!"--"Daughter of Day, but born before thy
+father!" GIBBON betrayed none of the force and magnitude of his powers in
+his "Essay on Literature," or his attempted "History of Switzerland,"
+JOHNSON'S cadenced prose is not recognisable in the humbler simplicity of
+his earliest years. Many authors have begun unsuccessfully the walk they
+afterwards excelled in. RAPHAEL, when he first drew his meagre forms under
+Perugino, had not yet conceived one line of that ideal beauty which one
+day he of all men could alone execute. Who could have imagined, in
+examining the _Dream_ of Raphael, that the same pencil could hereafter
+have poured out the miraculous _Transfiguration?_ Or that, in the
+imitative pupil of Hudson, our country was at length to pride herself on
+another Raphael?[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Hudson was the fashionable portrait-painter who succeeded
+Kneller, and made a great reputation and fortune; but he was a very mean
+artist, who merely copied the peculiarities of his predecessor without his
+genius. His stiff hard style was formality itself; but was approved in an
+age of formalism; the earlier half of the last century.--ED.]
+
+Even the manhood of genius may pass unobserved by his companions, and,
+like. Æneas, he may be hidden in a cloud amidst his associates. The
+celebrated FABIUS MAXIMUS in his boyhood was called in derision "the
+little sheep," from the meekness and gravity of his disposition. His
+sedateness and taciturnity, his indifference to juvenile amusements, his
+slowness and difficulty in learning, and his ready submission to his
+equals, induced them to consider him as one irrecoverably stupid. The
+greatness of mind, unalterable courage, and invincible character, which
+Fabius afterwards displayed, they then imagined had lain concealed under
+the apparent contrary qualities. The boy of genius may indeed seem slow
+and dull even to the phlegmatic; for thoughtful and observing dispositions
+conceal themselves in timorous silent characters, who have not yet
+experienced their strength; and that assiduous love, which cannot tear
+itself away from the secret instruction it is perpetually imbibing, cannot
+be easily distinguished from the pertinacity of the mere plodder. We often
+hear, from the early companions of a man of genius, that at school he
+appeared heavy and unpromising. Rousseau imagined that the childhood of
+some men is accompanied by this seeming and deceitful dulness, which is
+the sign of a profound genius; and Roger Ascham has placed among "the best
+natures for learning, the sad-natured and hard-witted child;" that is, the
+thoughtful, or the melancholic, and the slow. The young painters, to
+ridicule the persevering labours of DOMENICHINO, which were at first heavy
+and unpromising, called him "the great ox;" and Passeri, while he has
+happily expressed the still labours of his concealed genius, _sua
+taciturna lentezza_, his silent slowness, expresses his surprise at the
+accounts he received of the early life of this great artist. "It is
+difficult to believe, what many assert, that, from the beginning, this
+great painter had a ruggedness about him which entirely incapacitated him
+from learning his profession; and they have heard from himself that he
+quite despaired of success. Yet I cannot comprehend how such vivacious
+talents, with a mind so finely organised, and accompanied with such
+favourable dispositions for the art, would show such signs of utter
+incapacity; I rather think that it is a mistake in the proper knowledge of
+genius, which some imagine indicates itself most decisively by its sudden
+vehemence, showing itself like lightning, and like lightning passing
+away."
+
+A parallel case we find in GOLDSMITH, who passed through an unpromising
+youth; he declared that he was never attached to literature till he
+was thirty; that poetry had no peculiar charms for him till that age;[A]
+and, indeed, to his latest hour he was surprising his friends by
+productions which they had imagined he was incapable of composing. HUME
+was considered, for his sobriety and assiduity, as competent to become a
+steady merchant; and it was said of BOILEAU that he had no great
+understanding, but would speak ill of no one. This circumstance of the
+character in youth being entirely mistaken, or entirely opposite to the
+subsequent one of maturer life, has been noticed of many. Even a
+discerning parent or master has entirely failed to develope the genius of
+the youth, who has afterwards ranked among eminent men; we ought as little
+to decide from early unfavourable appearances, as from inequality of
+talent. The great ISAAC BARROW'S father used to say, that if it pleased
+God to take from him any of his children, he hoped it might be Isaac, as
+the least promising; and during the three years Barrow passed at the
+Charter-house, he was remarkable only for the utter negligence of his
+studies and of his person. The mother of SHERIDAN, herself a literary
+female, pronounced early that he was the dullest and most hopeless of her
+sons. BODMER, at the head of the literary class in Switzerland, who had so
+frequently discovered and animated the literary youths of his country,
+could never detect the latent genius of GESNER: after a repeated
+examination of the young man, he put his parents in despair with the
+hopeless award that a mind of so ordinary a cast must confine itself to
+mere writing and accompts. One fact, however, Bodmer had overlooked when
+he pronounced the fate of our poet and artist--the dull youth, who could
+not retain barren words, discovered an active fancy in the image of
+things. While at his grammar lessons, as it happened to Lucian, he was
+employing tedious hours in modelling in wax, groups of men, animals, and
+other figures, the rod of the pedagogue often interrupted the fingers of
+our infant moulder, who never ceased working to amuse his little sisters
+with his waxen creatures, which constituted all his happiness. Those arts
+of imitation were already possessing the soul of the boy Gesner, to which
+afterwards it became so entirely devoted.
+
+[Footnote A: This is a remarkable expression from Goldsmith: but it is
+much more so when we hear it from Lord Byron. See a note in the following
+chapter, on "The First Studies," p. 56.]
+
+Thus it happens that in the first years of life the education of the youth
+may not be the education of his genius; he lives unknown to himself and
+others. In all these cases nature had dropped the seeds in the soil: but
+even a happy disposition must be concealed amidst adverse circumstances: I
+repeat, that genius can only make that its own which is homogeneous with
+its nature. It has happened to some men of genius during a long period of
+their lives, that an unsettled impulse, unable to discover the object of
+its aptitude, a thirst and fever in the temperament of too sentient a
+being, which cannot find the occupation to which only it can attach
+itself, has sunk into a melancholy and querulous spirit, weary with the
+burthen of existence; but the instant the latent talent had declared
+itself, his first work, the eager offspring of desire and love, has
+astonished the world at once with the birth and the maturity of genius.
+
+We are told that PELEGRINO TIBALDI, who afterwards obtained the glorious
+title of "the reformed Michael Angelo," long felt the strongest internal
+dissatisfaction at his own proficiency, and that one day, in melancholy
+and despair, he had retired from the city, resolved to starve himself to
+death: his friend discovered him, and having persuaded him to change his
+pursuits from painting to architecture, he soon rose to eminence. This
+story D'Argenville throws some doubt over; but as Tibaldi during twenty
+years abstained from his pencil, a singular circumstance seems explained
+by an extraordinary occurrence. TASSO, with feverish anxiety pondered on
+five different subjects before he could decide in the choice of his epic;
+the same embarrassment was long the fate of GIBBON on the subject of his
+history. Some have sunk into a deplorable state of utter languishment,
+from the circumstance of being deprived of the means of pursuing their
+beloved study, as in the case of the chemist BERGMAN. His friends, to gain
+him over to the more lucrative professions, deprived him of his books of
+natural history; a plan which nearly proved fatal to the youth, who with
+declining health quitted the university. At length ceasing to struggle
+with the conflicting desire within him, his renewed enthusiasm for his
+favourite science restored the health he had lost in abandoning it.
+
+It was the view of the tomb of Virgil which so powerfully influenced the
+innate genius of BOCCACCIO, and fixed his instant decision. As yet young,
+and in the neighbourhood of Naples, wandering for recreation, he reached
+the tomb of the Mantuan. Pausing before it, his youthful mind began to
+meditate. Struck by the universal glory of that great name, he lamented
+his own fortune to be occupied by the obscure details of merchandise;
+already he sighed to emulate the fame of the Roman, and as Villani tells
+us, from that day he abandoned for ever the occupations of commerce,
+dedicating himself to literature. PROCTOR, the lost Phidias of our
+country, would often say, that he should never have quitted his mercantile
+situation, but for the accidental sight of Barry's picture of "Venus
+rising from the Sea;" a picture which produced so immediate an effect on
+his mind, that it determined him to quit a lucrative occupation. Surely we
+cannot account for such sudden effusions of the mind, and such instant
+decisions, but by the principle of that predisposition which only waits
+for an occasion to declare itself.
+
+Abundant facts exhibit genius unequivocally discovering itself in youth.
+In general, perhaps, a master-mind exhibits precocity. "Whatever a young
+man at first applies himself to, is commonly his delight afterwards." This
+remark was made by HARTLEY, who has related an anecdote of the infancy of
+his genius, which indicated the manhood. He declared to his daughter that
+the intention of writing a book upon the nature of man, was conceived in
+his mind when he was a very little boy--when swinging backwards and
+forwards upon a gate, not more than nine or ten years old; he was then
+meditating upon the nature of his own mind, how man was made, and for what
+future end. Such was the true origin, in a boy of ten years old, of his
+celebrated book on "The Frame, the Duty, and the Expectation of Man." JOHN
+HUNTER conceived his notion of the principle of life, which to his last
+day formed the subject of his inquiries and experiments, when he was very
+young; for at that period of life, Mr. Abernethy tells us, he began his
+observations on the incubated egg, which suggested or corroborated his
+opinions.
+
+A learned friend, and an observer of men of science, has supplied me with
+a remark highly deserving notice. It is an observation that will generally
+hold good, that the most important systems of theory, however late they
+may be published, have been formed at a very early period of life. This
+important observation may be verified by some striking facts. A most
+curious one will be found in Lord BACON'S letter to Father Fulgentio,
+where he gives an account of his projecting his philosophy thirty years
+before, during his youth. MILTON from early youth mused on the composition
+of an epic. DE THOU has himself told us, that from his tender youth his
+mind was full of the idea of composing a history of his own times; and his
+whole life was passed in preparation, and in a continued accession of
+materials for a future period. From the age of twenty, MONTESQUIEU was
+preparing the materials of _L'Esprit des Loix_, by extracts from the
+immense volumes of civil law. TILLEMONT'S vast labours were traced out in
+his mind at the early age of nineteen, on reading Baronius; and some of
+the finest passages in RACINE'S tragedies were composed while a pupil,
+wandering in the woods of the Port-Royal. So true is it that the seeds of
+many of our great literary and scientific works were lying, for many years
+antecedent to their being given to the world, in a latent state of
+germination.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: I need not to be reminded, that I am not worth mentioning
+among the illustrious men who have long formed the familiar subjects of my
+delightful researches. But with the middling as well as with the great,
+the same habits must operate. Early in life, I was struck by the inductive
+philosophy of Bacon, and sought after a Moral Experimental Philosophy; and
+I had then in my mind an observation of Lord Bolingbroke's, for I see I
+quoted it thirty years ago, that "Abstract or general propositions, though
+never so true, appear obscure or doubtful to us very often till they are
+explained by examples." So far back as in 1793 I published "A Dissertation
+on Anecdotes," with the simplicity of a young votary; there I deduced
+results, and threw out a magnificent project not very practicable. From
+that time to the hour I am now writing, my metal has been running in this
+mould, and I still keep casting philosophy into anecdotes, and anecdotes
+into philosophy. As I began I fear I shall end.]
+
+The predisposition of genius has declared itself in painters and poets,
+who were such before they understood the nature of colours and the arts of
+verse; and this vehement propensity, so mysteriously constitutional, may
+be traced in other intellectual characters besides those which belong to
+the class of imagination. It was said that PITT was _born_ a minister; the
+late Dr. SHAW I always considered as one _born_ a naturalist, and I know a
+great literary antiquary who seems to me to have been also _born_ such;
+for the passion of _curiosity_ is as intense a faculty, or instinct, with
+some casts of mind, as is that of _invention_ with poets and painters: I
+confess that to me it is _genius_ in a form in which genius has not yet
+been suspected to appear. One of the biographers of Sir HANS SLOANE
+expresses himself in this manner:--"Our author's _thirst_ for knowledge
+seems to have been _born_ with him, so that his _Cabinet of Rarities_ may
+be said to have commenced with _his being_." This strange metaphorical
+style has only confused an obscure truth. SLOANE, early in life, felt an
+irresistible impulse which inspired him with the most enlarged views of
+the productions of nature, and he exulted in their accomplishment; for in
+his will he has solemnly recorded, that his collections were the fruits of
+his early devotion, _having had from my youth a strong inclination to the
+study of plants and all other productions of nature_. The vehement passion
+of PEIRESC for knowledge, according to accounts which Gassendi received
+from old men who had known him as a child, broke out as soon as he had
+been taught his alphabet; for then his delight was to be handling books
+and papers, and his perpetual inquiries after their contents obliged
+them to invent something to quiet the child's insatiable curiosity,
+who was hurt when told that he had not the capacity to understand them. He
+did not study as an ordinary scholar, for he never read but with
+perpetual researches. At ten years of age, his passion for the studies of
+antiquity was kindled at the sight of some ancient coins dug up in his
+neighbourhood; then that vehement passion for knowledge "began to burn
+like fire in a forest," as Gassendi happily describes the fervour and
+amplitude of the mind of this man of vast learning. Bayle, who was an
+experienced judge in the history of genius, observes on two friars, one of
+whom was haunted by a strong disposition to _genealogical_, and the other
+to _geographical_ pursuits, that, "let a man do what he will, if nature
+incline us to certain things, there is no preventing the gratification of
+our desire, though it lies hid under a monk's frock." It is not,
+therefore, as the world is apt to imagine, only poets and painters for
+whom is reserved this restless and impetuous propensity for their
+particular pursuits; I claim it for the man of science as well as for the
+man of imagination. And I confess that I consider this strong bent of the
+mind in men eminent in pursuits in which imagination is little concerned,
+and whom men of genius have chosen to remove so far from their class, as
+another gifted aptitude. They, too, share in the glorious fever of genius,
+and we feel how just was the expression formerly used, of "their _thirst_
+for knowledge."
+
+But to return to the men of genius who answer more strictly to the popular
+notion of inventors. We have BOCCACCIO'S own words for a proof of his
+early natural tendency to tale-writing, in a passage of his genealogy of
+the gods:--"Before seven years of age, when as yet I had met with no
+stories, was without a master, and hardly knew my letters, I had a natural
+talent for fiction, and produced some little tales." Thus the "Decamerone"
+was appearing much earlier than we suppose. DESCARTES, while yet a boy,
+indulged such habits of deep meditation, that he was nicknamed by his
+companions "The Philosopher," always questioning, and ever settling the
+cause and the effect. He was twenty-five years of age before he left the
+army, but the propensity for meditation had been early formed; and he has
+himself given an account of the pursuits which occupied his youth, and of
+the progress of his genius; of the secret struggle which he so long
+maintained with his own mind, wandering in concealment over the world for
+more than twenty years, and, as he says of himself, like the statuary
+labouring to draw out a Minerva from the marble block. MICHAEL ANGELO, as
+yet a child, wherever he went, busied himself in drawing; and when his
+noble parents, hurt that a man of genius was disturbing the line of their
+ancestry, forced him to relinquish the pencil, the infant artist flew to
+the chisel: the art which was in his soul would not allow of idle hands.
+LOPE DE VEGA, VELASQUEZ, ARIOSTO, and TASSO, are all said to have betrayed
+at their school-tasks the most marked indications of their subsequent
+characteristics.
+
+This decision of the impulse of genius is apparent in MURILLO. This young
+artist was undistinguished at the place of his birth. A brother artist
+returning home from London, where he had studied under Van Dyk, surprised
+MURILLO by a chaste, and to him hitherto unknown, manner. Instantly he
+conceived the project of quitting his native Seville and flying to Italy
+--the fever of genius broke forth with all its restlessness. But he was
+destitute of the most ordinary means to pursue a journey, and forced to an
+expedient, he purchased a piece of canvas, which dividing into parts, he
+painted on each figures of saints, landscapes, and flowers--an humble
+merchandise of art adapted to the taste and devout feelings of the times,
+and which were readily sold to the adventurers to the Indies. With these
+small means he departed, having communicated his project to no one except
+to a beloved sister, whose tears could not prevail to keep the lad at
+home; the impetuous impulse had blinded him to the perils and the
+impracticability of his wild project. He reached Madrid, where the great
+VELASQUEZ, his countryman, was struck by the ingenuous simplicity of the
+youth, who urgently requested letters for Rome; but when that noble genius
+understood the purport of this romantic journey, VELASQUEZ assured him
+that he need not proceed to Italy to learn the art he loved. The great
+master opened the royal galleries to the youth, and cherished his studies.
+MURILLO returned to his native city, where, from his obscurity, he had
+never been missed, having ever lived a retired life of silent labour; but
+this painter of nature returned to make the city which had not noticed his
+absence the theatre of his glory.
+
+The same imperious impulse drove CALLOT, at the age of twelve years, from
+his father's roof. His parents, from prejudices of birth, had conceived
+that the art of engraving was one beneath the studies of their son; but
+the boy had listened to stories of the miracles of Italian art, and with a
+curiosity predominant over any self-consideration, one morning the genius
+flew away. Many days had not elapsed, when finding himself in the utmost
+distress, with a gang of gipsies he arrived at Florence. A merchant of
+Nancy discovered him, and returned the reluctant boy of genius to his
+home. Again he flies to Italy, and again his brother discovers him, and
+reconducts him to his parents. The father, whose patience and forgiveness
+were now exhausted, permitted his son to become the most original genius
+of French art--one who, in his vivacious groups, the touch of his graver,
+and the natural expression of his figures, anticipated the creations of
+Hogarth.
+
+Facts of this decisive character are abundant. See the boy NANTEUIL biding
+himself in a tree to pursue the delightful exercise of his pencil, while
+his parents are averse to their son practising his young art! See
+HANDEL, intended for a doctor of the civil laws, and whom no parental
+discouragement could deprive of his enthusiasm, for ever touching
+harpsichords, and having secretly conveyed a musical instrument to a
+retired apartment, listen to him when, sitting through the night, he
+awakens his harmonious spirit! Observe FERGUSON, the child of a peasant,
+acquiring the art of reading without any one suspecting it, by listening
+to his father teaching his brother; observe him making a wooden watch
+without the slightest knowledge of mechanism; and while a shepherd,
+studying, like an ancient Chaldean, the phenomena of the heavens, on a
+celestial globe formed by his own hand. That great mechanic, SMEATON, when
+a child, disdained the ordinary playthings of his age; he collected the
+tools of workmen, observed them at their work, and asked questions till he
+could work himself. One day, having watched some millwrights, the child
+was shortly after, to the distress of the family, discovered in a
+situation of extreme danger, fixing up at the top of a barn a rude
+windmill. Many circumstances of this nature occurred before his sixth
+year. His father, an attorney, sent him up to London to be brought up to
+the same profession; but he declared that "the study of the law did not
+suit the _bent of his genius_"--a term he frequently used. He addressed a
+strong memorial to his father, to show his utter incompetency to study
+law; and the good sense of the father abandoned Smeaton "to the bent of
+his genius in his own way." Such is the history of the man who raised the
+Eddystone Lighthouse, in the midst of the waves, like the rock on which it
+stands.
+
+Can we hesitate to believe that in such minds there was a resistless and
+mysterious propensity, "growing with the growth" of these youths, who seem
+to have been placed out of the influence of that casual excitement, or any
+other of those sources of genius, so frequently assigned for its
+production?
+
+Yet these cases are not more striking than one related of the Abbé LA
+CAILLE, who ranked among the first astronomers of the age. La Caille was
+the son of the parish clerk of a village. At the age of ten years his
+father sent him every evening to ring the church bell, but the boy always
+returned home late: his father was angry, and beat him, and still the boy
+returned an hour after he had rung the bell. The father, suspecting
+something mysterious in his conduct, one evening watched him. He saw his
+son ascend the steeple, ring the bell as usual, and remain there during an
+hour. When the unlucky boy descended, he trembled like one caught in the
+fact, and on his knees confessed that the pleasure he took in watching the
+stars from the steeple was the real cause which detained him from home. As
+the father was not born to be an astronomer, he flogged his son severely.
+The youth was found weeping in the streets by a man of science, who, when
+he discovered in a boy of ten years of age a passion for contemplating
+the stars at night, and one, too, who had discovered an observatory
+in a steeple, decided that the seal of Nature had impressed itself
+on the genius of that boy. Relieving the parent from the son, and the son
+from the parent, he assisted the young LA CAILLE in his passionate
+pursuit, and the event completely justified the prediction. How children
+feel a predisposition for the studies of astronomy, or mechanics, or
+architecture, or natural history, is that secret in nature we have not
+guessed. There may be a virgin thought as well as a virgin habit--nature
+before education--which first opens the mind, and ever afterwards is
+shaping its tender folds. Accidents may occur to call it forth, but
+thousands of youths have found themselves in parallel situations with
+SMEATON, FERGUSON, and LA CAILLE, without experiencing their energies.
+
+The case of CLAIRON, the great French tragic actress, who seems to have
+been an actress before she saw a theatre, deserves attention. This female,
+destined to be a sublime tragedian, was of the lowest extraction; the
+daughter of a violent and illiterate woman, who, with blows and menaces,
+was driving about the child all day to manual labour. "I know not," says
+Clairon, "whence I derive my disgust, but I could not bear the idea to be
+a mere workwoman, or to remain inactive in a corner." In her eleventh
+year, being locked up in a room as a punishment, with the windows
+fastened, she climbed upon a chair to look about her. A new object
+instantly absorbed her attention. In the house opposite she observed a
+celebrated actress amidst her family; her daughter was performing her
+dancing lesson: the girl Clairon, the future Melpomene, was struck by the
+influence of this graceful and affectionate scene. "All my little being
+collected itself into my eyes; I lost not a single motion; as soon as the
+lesson ended, all the family applauded, and the mother embraced the
+daughter. The difference of her fate and mine filled me with profound
+grief; my tears hindered me from seeing any longer, and when the
+palpitations of my heart allowed me to re-ascend the chair, all had
+disappeared." This scene was a discovery; from that moment Clairon knew no
+rest, and rejoiced when she could get her mother to confine her in that
+room. The happy girl was a divinity to the unhappy one, whose susceptible
+genius imitated her in every gesture and every motion; and Clairon soon
+showed the effect of her ardent studies. She betrayed in the common
+intercourse of life, all the graces she had taught herself; she charmed
+her friends, and even softened her barbarous mother; in a word, the
+enthusiastic girl was an actress without knowing what an actress was.
+
+In this case of the youth of genius, are we to conclude that the
+accidental view of a young actress practising her studies imparted the
+character of Clairon? Could a mere chance occurrence have given birth to
+those faculties which produced a sublime tragedian? In all arts there are
+talents which may be acquired by imitation and reflection,--and thus far
+may genius be educated; but there are others which are entirely the result
+of native sensibility, which often secretly torment the possessor, and
+which may even be lost from the want of development, dissolved into a
+state of languor from which many have not recovered. Clairon, before she
+saw the young actress, and having yet no conception of a theatre--for she
+had never entered one--had in her soul that latent faculty which creates a
+dramatic genius. "Had I not felt like Dido," she once exclaimed, "I could
+not have thus personified her!"
+
+The force of impressions received in the warm susceptibility of the
+childhood of genius, is probably little known to us; but we may perceive
+them also working in the _moral character_, which frequently discovers
+itself in childhood, and which manhood cannot always conceal, however it
+may alter. The intellectual and the moral character are unquestionably
+closely allied. ERASMUS acquaints us, that Sir THOMAS MORE had something
+ludicrous in his aspect, tending to a smile,--a feature which his
+portraits preserve; and that he was more inclined to pleasantry and
+jesting, than to the gravity of the chancellor. This circumstance he
+imputes to Sir Thomas More "being from a child so delighted with humour,
+that he seemed to be even born for it." And we know that he died as he had
+lived, with a jest on his lips. The hero, who came at length to regret
+that he had but one world to conquer, betrayed the majesty of his restless
+genius when but a youth. Had Aristotle been nigh when, solicited to join
+in the course, the princely boy replied, that "He would run in no career
+where kings were not the competitors," the prescient tutor might have
+recognised in his pupil the future and successful rival of Darius and
+Porus.
+
+A narrative of the earliest years of Prince Henry, by one of his
+attendants, forms an authentic collection of juvenile anecdotes, which
+made me feel very forcibly that there are some children who deserve to
+have a biographer at their side; but anecdotes of children are the rarest
+of biographies, and I deemed it a singular piece of good fortune to have
+recovered such a remarkable evidence of the precocity of character.[A]
+Professor Dugald Stewart has noticed a fact in ARNAULD'S infancy, which,
+considered in connexion with his subsequent life, affords a good
+illustration of the force of impressions received in the first dawn of
+reason. ARNAULD, who, to his eightieth year, passed through a life of
+theological controversy, when a child, amusing himself in the library of
+the Cardinal Du Perron, requested to have a pen given to him. "For what
+purpose?" inquired the cardinal. "To write books, like you, against the
+Huguenots." The cardinal, then aged and infirm, could not conceal his joy
+at the prospect of so hopeful a successor; and placing the pen in his
+hand, said, "I give it you as the dying shepherd, Damcetas, bequeathed his
+pipe to the little Corydon." Other children might have asked for a pen--
+but to write against the Huguenots evinced a deeper feeling and a wider
+association of ideas, indicating the future polemic.
+
+[Footnote A: I have preserved this manuscript narrative in "Curiosities of
+Literature," vol. ii.]
+
+Some of these facts, we conceive, afford decisive evidence of that
+instinct in genius, that primary quality of mind, sometimes called
+organization, which has inflamed a war of words by an equivocal term. We
+repeat that this faculty of genius can exist independent of education, and
+where it is wanting, education can never confer it: it is an impulse, an
+instinct always working in the character of "the chosen mind;"
+
+ One with our feelings and our powers,
+ And rather part of us, than ours.
+
+In the history of genius there are unquestionably many secondary causes of
+considerable influence in developing, or even crushing the germ--these
+have been of late often detected, and sometimes carried to a ridiculous
+extreme; but among them none seem more remarkable than the first studies
+and the first habits.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The first studies.--The self-educated are marked by stubborn
+peculiarities.--Their errors.--Their improvement from the neglect or
+contempt they incur.--The history of self-education in Moses Mendelssohn.
+--Friends usually prejudicial in the youth of genius.--A remarkable
+interview between Petrarch in his first studies, and his literary
+adviser.--Exhortation.
+
+
+The first studies form an epoch in the history of genius, and
+unquestionably have sensibly influenced its productions. Often have the
+first impressions stamped a character on the mind adapted to receive one,
+as the first step into life has often determined its walk. But this, for
+ourselves, is a far distant period in our existence, which is lost in the
+horizon of our own recollections, and is usually unobserved by others.
+Many of those peculiarities of men of genius which are not fortunate, and
+some which have hardened the character in its mould, may, however, be
+traced to this period. Physicians tell us that there is a certain point in
+youth at which the constitution is formed, and on which the sanity of life
+revolves; the character of genius experiences a similar dangerous period.
+Early bad tastes, early peculiar habits, early defective instructions, all
+the egotistical pride of an untamed intellect, are those evil spirits
+which will dog genius to its grave. An early attachment to the works of
+Sir Thomas Browne produced in JOHNSON an excessive admiration of that
+Latinised English, which violated the native graces of the language; and
+the peculiar style of Gibbon is traced by himself "to the constant habit
+of speaking one language, and writing another." The first studies of
+REMBRANDT affected his after-labours. The peculiarity of shadow which
+marks all his pictures, originated in the circumstance of his father's
+mill receiving light from an aperture at the top, which habituated the
+artist afterwards to view all objects as if seen in that magical light.
+The intellectual POUSSIN, as Nicholas has been called, could never, from
+an early devotion to the fine statues of antiquity, extricate his genius
+on the canvas from the hard forms of marble: he sculptured with his
+pencil; and that cold austerity of tone, still more remarkable in his last
+pictures, as it became mannered, chills the spectator on a first glance.
+When POPE was a child, he found in his mother's closet a small library of
+mystical devotion; but it was not suspected, till the fact was discovered,
+that the effusions of love and religion poured forth in his "Eloisa" were
+caught from the seraphic raptures of those erotic mystics, who to the last
+retained a place in his library among the classical bards of antiquity.
+The accidental perusal of Quintus Curtius first made BOYLE, to use his own
+words, "in love with other than pedantic books, and conjured up in him an
+unsatisfied appetite of knowledge; so that he thought he owed more to
+Quintus Curtius than did Alexander." From the perusal of Rycaut's folio of
+Turkish history in childhood, the noble and impassioned bard of our times
+retained those indelible impressions which gave life and motion to the
+"Giaour," "the Corsair," and "Alp." A voyage to the country produced the
+scenery. Rycaut only communicated the impulse to a mind susceptible of the
+poetical character; and without this Turkish history we should still have
+had the poet.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: The following manuscript note by Lord Byron on this passage,
+cannot fail to interest the lovers of poetry, as well as the inquirers
+into the history of the human mind. His lordship's recollections of his
+first readings will not alter the tendency of my conjecture; it only
+proves that he had read much more of Eastern history and manners than
+Rycaut's folio, which probably led to this class of books:
+
+"Knolles--Cantemir--De Tott--Lady M.W. Montagu--Hawkins's translation from
+Mignot's History of the Turks--the Arabian Nights--all travels or
+histories or books upon the East I could meet with, I had read, as well as
+Rycaut, before I was _ten years old_. I think the Arabian Nights first.
+After these I preferred the history of naval actions, Don Quixote, and
+Smollett's novels, particularly Roderick Random, and I was passionate for
+the Roman History.
+
+"When a boy I could never bear to read any poetry whatever without
+disgust and reluctance."--_MS. note by Lord Byron._ Latterly Lord Byron
+acknowledged in a conversation held in Greece with Count Gamba, not long
+before he died, "The Turkish History was one of the first books that gave
+me pleasure when a child; and I believe it had much influence on my
+subsequent wishes to visit the Levant; and gave perhaps the Oriental
+colouring which is observed in my poetry."
+
+I omitted the following note in my last edition, but I shall now preserve
+it, as it may enter into the history of his lordship's character:
+
+"When I was in Turkey I was oftener tempted to turn Mussulman than poet,
+and have often regretted since that I did not. 1818."]
+
+The influence of first studies in the formation of the character of genius
+is a moral phenomenon which has not sufficiently attracted our notice.
+FRANKLIN acquaints us that, when young and wanting books, he accidentally
+found De Foe's "Essay on Projects," from which work impressions were
+derived which afterwards influenced some of the principal events of his
+life. The lectures of REYNOLDS probably originated in the essays of
+Richardson. It is acknowledged that these first made him a painter, and
+not long afterwards an author; and it is said that many of the principles
+in his lectures may be traced in those first studies. Many were the
+indelible and glowing impressions caught by the ardent Reynolds from those
+bewildering pages of enthusiasm! Sir WALTER RAWLEIGH, according to a
+family tradition, when a young man, was perpetually reading and conversing
+on the discoveries of Columbus, and the conquests of Cortez and Pizarro.
+His character, as well as the great events of his life, seem to have been
+inspired by his favourite histories; to pass beyond the discoveries of the
+Spaniards became a passion, and the vision of his life. It is formally
+testified that, from a copy of Vegetius _de Re Militari_, in the school
+library of St. Paul's, MARLBOROUGH imbibed his passion for a military
+life. If he could not understand the text, the prints were, in such a
+mind, sufficient to awaken the passion for military glory. ROUSSEAU in
+early youth, full of his Plutarch, while he was also devouring the trash
+of romances, could only conceive human nature in the colossal forms, or be
+affected by the infirm sensibility of an imagination mastering all his
+faculties; thinking like a Roman, and feeling like a Sybarite. The same
+circumstance happened to CATHERINE MACAULEY, who herself has told us how
+she owed the bent of her character to the early reading of the Roman
+historians; but combining Roman admiration with English faction, she
+violated truth in English characters, and exaggerated romance in her
+Roman. But the permanent effect of a solitary bias in the youth of genius,
+impelling the whole current of his after-life, is strikingly displayed in
+the remarkable character of Archdeacon BLACKBURNE, the author of the
+famous "Confessional," and the curious "Memoirs of Hollis," written with
+such a republican fierceness.
+
+I had long considered the character of our archdeacon as a _lusus
+politicus et theologicus_. Having subscribed to the Articles, and enjoying
+the archdeaconry, he was writing against subscription and the whole
+hierarchy, with a spirit so irascible and caustic, that one would have
+suspected that, like Prynne and Bastwick, the archdeacon had already lost
+both his ears; while his antipathy to monarchy might have done honour to a
+Roundhead of the Rota Club. The secret of these volcanic explosions was
+only revealed in a letter accidentally preserved. In the youth of our
+spirited archdeacon, when fox-hunting was his deepest study, it happened
+at the house of a relation, that on a rainy day he fell, among other
+garret lumber, on some worm-eaten volumes which had once been the careful
+collections of his great-grandfather, an Oliverian justice. "These," says
+he, "I conveyed to my lodging-room, and there became acquainted with the
+manners and principles of many excellent old Puritans, and then laid the
+foundation of my own." The enigma is now solved! Archdeacon BLACKBURNE, in
+his seclusion in Yorkshire amidst the Oliverian justice's library, shows
+that we are in want of a Cervantes but not of a Quixote, and Yorkshire
+might yet be as renowned a country as La Mancha; for political romances,
+it is presumed, may be as fertile of ridicule as any of the folios of
+chivalry.
+
+We may thus mark the influence through life of those first unobserved
+impressions on the character of genius, which every author has not
+recorded.
+
+Education, however indispensable in a cultivated age, produces nothing on
+the side of genius. Where education ends, genius often begins. GRAY was
+asked if he recollected when he first felt the strong predilection to
+poetry; he replied that, "he believed it was when he began to read Virgil
+for his own amusement, and not in school hours as a task." Such is the
+force of self-education in genius, that the celebrated physiologist, JOHN
+HUNTER, who was entirely self-educated, evinced such penetration in his
+anatomical discoveries, that he has brought into notice passages from
+writers he was unable to read, and which had been overlooked by profound
+scholars.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Life of John Hunter, by Dr. Adams, p. 59, where the case is
+curiously illustrated. [The writer therein defends Hunter from a charge of
+plagiarism from the Greek writers, who had studied accurately certain
+phases of disease, which had afterwards been "overlooked by the most
+profound scholars for nearly two thousand years," until John Hunter by his
+own close observation had assumed similar conclusions.]]
+
+That the education of genius must be its own work, we may appeal to every
+one of the family. It is not always fortunate, for many die amidst a waste
+of talents and the wreck of mind.
+
+ Many a soul sublime
+ Has felt the influence of malignant star.
+
+An unfavourable position in society is a usual obstruction in the
+course of this self-education; and a man of genius, through half his
+life, has held a contest with a bad, or with no education. There is a race
+of the late-taught, who, with a capacity of leading in the first
+rank, are mortified to discover themselves only on a level with their
+contemporaries. WINCKELMANN, who passed his youth in obscure misery as a
+village schoolmaster, paints feelings which strikingly contrast with his
+avocations. "I formerly filled the office of a schoolmaster with the
+greatest punctuality; and I taught the A, B, C, to children with filthy
+heads, at the moment I was aspiring after the knowledge of the beautiful,
+and meditating, low to myself, on the similes of Homer; then I said to
+myself, as I still say, 'Peace, my soul, thy strength shall surmount thy
+cares.'" The obstructions of so unhappy a self-education essentially
+injured his ardent genius, and long he secretly sorrowed at this want of
+early patronage, and these habits of life so discordant with the habits of
+his mind. "I am unfortunately one of those whom the Greeks named [Greek:
+opsimatheis], _sero sapientes_, the late-learned, for I have appeared too
+late in the world and in Italy. To have done something, it was necessary
+that I should have had an education analogous to my pursuits, and at your
+age." This class of the _late-learned_ is a useful distinction. It is so
+with a sister-art; one of the greatest musicians of our country assures
+me that the ear is as latent with many; there are the late-learned even
+in the musical world. BUDÆUS declared that he was both "self-taught and
+late-taught."
+
+The SELF-EDUCATED are marked by stubborn peculiarities. Often abounding
+with talent, but rarely with talent in its place, their native prodigality
+has to dread a plethora of genius and a delirium of wit: or else, hard but
+irregular students rich in acquisition, they find how their huddled
+knowledge, like corn heaped in a granary, for want of ventilation and
+stirring, perishes in its own masses. Not having attended to the process
+of their own minds, and little acquainted with that of other men, they
+cannot throw out their intractable knowledge, nor with sympathy awaken by
+its softening touches the thoughts of others. To conduct their native
+impulse, which had all along driven them, is a secret not always
+discovered, or else discovered late in life. Hence it has happened with
+some of this race, that their first work has not announced genius, and
+their last is stamped with it. Some are often judged by their first
+work, and when they have surpassed themselves, it is long ere it is
+acknowledged. They have improved themselves by the very neglect or even
+contempt which their unfortunate efforts were doomed to meet; and when
+once they have learned what is beautiful, they discover a living but
+unsuspected source in their own wild but unregarded originality. Glorying
+in their strength at the time that they are betraying their weakness, yet
+are they still mighty in that enthusiasm which is only disciplined by its
+own fierce habits. Never can the native faculty of genius with its
+creative warmth be crushed out of the human soul; it will work itself out
+beneath the encumbrance of the most uncultivated minds, even amidst the
+deep perplexed feelings and the tumultuous thoughts of the most visionary
+enthusiast, who is often only a man of genius misplaced.[A] We may find a
+whole race of these self-taught among the unknown writers of the old
+romances, and the ancient ballads of European nations; there sleep many a
+Homer and Virgil--legitimate heirs of their genius, though possessors of
+decayed estates. BUNYAN is the Spenser of the people. The fire burned
+towards Heaven, although the altar was rude and rustic.
+
+[Footnote A: "One assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my own
+experience, that there exist folios on the human understanding and the
+nature of man which would have a far juster claim to their high rank and
+celebrity, if in the whole huge volume there could be found as much
+fulness of heart and intellect as burst forth in many a simple page of
+George Fox and Jacob Behmen."--_Mr. Coleridge's Biographia Litteraria_, i.
+143.]
+
+BARRY, the painter, has left behind him works not to be turned over by
+the connoisseur by rote, nor the artist who dares not be just. That
+enthusiast, with a temper of mind resembling Rousseau's, but with coarser
+feelings, was the same creature of untamed imagination consumed by
+the same passions, with the same fine intellect disordered, and the
+same fortitude of soul; but he found his self-taught pen, like his
+pencil, betray his genius.[B] A vehement enthusiasm breaks through his
+ill-composed works, throwing the sparks of his bold conceptions into the
+soul of the youth of genius. When, in his character of professor, he
+delivered his lectures at the academy, at every pause his auditors rose in
+a tumult, and at every close their hands returned to him the proud
+feelings he adored. This gifted but self-educated man, once listening to
+the children of genius whom he had created about him, exclaimed, "Go it,
+go it, my boys! they did so at Athens." This self-formed genius could
+throw up his native mud into the very heaven of his invention!
+
+[Footnote B: Like Hogarth, when he attempted to engrave his own works, his
+originality of style made them differ from the tamer and more mechanical
+labours of the professional engraver. They have consequently less beauty,
+but greater vigour.--ED.]
+
+But even such pages as those of BARRY'S are the aliment of young genius.
+Before we can discern the beautiful, must we not be endowed with the
+susceptibility of love? Must not the disposition be formed before even the
+object appears? I have witnessed the young artist of genius glow and start
+over the reveries of the uneducated BARRY, but pause and meditate, and
+inquire over the mature elegance of REYNOLDS; in the one he caught the
+passion for beauty, and in the other he discovered the beautiful; with the
+one he was warm and restless, and with the other calm and satisfied.
+
+Of the difficulties overcome in the self-education of genius, we have a
+remarkable instance in the character of MOSES MENDELSSOHN, on whom
+literary Germany has bestowed the honourable title of "the Jewish
+Socrates."[A] So great apparently were the invincible obstructions which
+barred out Mendelssohn from the world of literature and philosophy, that,
+in the history of men of genius, it is something like taking in the
+history of man the savage of Aveyron from his woods--who, destitute of a
+human language, should at length create a model of eloquence; who, without
+the faculty of conceiving a figure, should at length be capable of adding
+to the demonstrations of Euclid; and who, without a complex idea and with
+few sensations, should at length, in the sublimest strain of metaphysics,
+open to the world a new view of the immortality of the soul!
+
+[Footnote A: I composed the life of MENDELSSOHN so far back as in 1798, in
+a periodical publication, whence our late biographers have drawn their
+notices; a juvenile production, which happened to excite the attention of
+the late BARRY, then not personally known to me; and he gave all the
+immortality his poetical pencil could bestow on this man of genius, by
+immediately placing in his Elysium of Genius MENDELSSOHN shaking hands
+with ADDISON, who wrote on the truth of the Christian religion, and near
+LOCKE, the English master of MENDELSSOHN'S mind.]
+
+Mendelssohn, the son of a poor rabbin, in a village in Germany, received
+an education completely rabbinical, and its nature must be comprehended,
+or the term of _education_ would be misunderstood. The Israelites in
+Poland and Germany live with all the restrictions of their ceremonial law
+in an insulated state, and are not always instructed in the language of
+the country of their birth. They employ for their common intercourse a
+barbarous or _patois_ Hebrew; while the sole studies of the young rabbins
+are strictly confined to the Talmud, of which the fundamental principle,
+like the Sonna of the Turks, is a pious rejection of every species of
+profane learning. This ancient jealous spirit, which walls in the
+understanding and the faith of man, was to shut out what the imitative
+Catholics afterwards called heresy. It is, then, these numerous folios of
+the Talmud which the true Hebraic student contemplates through all the
+seasons of life, as the Patuecos in their low valley imagine their
+surrounding mountains to be the confines of the universe.
+
+Of such a nature was the plan of Mendelssohn's first studies; but even in
+his boyhood this conflict of study occasioned an agitation of his spirits,
+which affected his life ever after. Rejecting the Talmudical dreamers, he
+caught a nobler spirit from the celebrated Maimonides; and his native
+sagacity was already clearing up the surrounding darkness. An enemy not
+less hostile to the enlargement of mind than voluminous legends, presented
+itself in the indigence of his father, who was compelled to send away the
+youth on foot to Berlin, to find labour and bread.
+
+At Berlin, Mendelssohn becomes an amanuensis to another poor rabbin, who
+could only still initiate him into the theology, the jurisprudence, and
+the scholastic philosophy of his people. Thus, he was as yet no farther
+advanced in that philosophy of the mind in which he was one day to be the
+rival of Plato and Locke, nor in that knowledge of literature which was
+finally to place him among the first polished critics of Germany.
+
+Some unexpected event occurs which gives the first great impulse to the
+mind of genius. Mendelssohn received this from the companion of his misery
+and his studies, a man of congenial but maturer powers. He was a Polish
+Jew, expelled from the communion of the orthodox, and the calumniated
+student was now a vagrant, with more sensibility than fortitude. But this
+vagrant was a philosopher, a poet, a naturalist, and a mathematician.
+Mendelssohn, at a distant day, never alluded to him without tears. Thrown
+together into the same situation, they approached each other by the same
+sympathies, and communicating in the only language which Mendelssohn could
+speak, the Polander voluntarily undertook his literary education.
+
+Then was seen one of the most extraordinary spectacles in the history of
+modern literature. Two houseless Hebrew youths might be discovered, in the
+moonlit streets of Berlin, sitting in retired corners, or on the steps of
+some porch, the one instructing the other, with a Euclid in his hand; but
+what is more extraordinary, it was a Hebrew version, composed by the
+master for a pupil who knew no other language. Who could then have
+imagined that the future Plato of Germany was sitting on those steps!
+
+The Polander, whose deep melancholy had settled on his heart, died--yet he
+had not lived in vain, since the electric spark that lighted up the soul
+of Mendelssohn had fallen from his own.
+
+Mendelssohn was now left alone; his mind teeming with its chaos, and still
+master of no other language than that barren idiom which was incapable of
+expressing the ideas he was meditating on. He had scarcely made a step
+into the philosophy of his age, and the genius of Mendelssohn had probably
+been lost to Germany, had not the singularity of his studies and the cast
+of his mind been detected by the sagacity of Dr. Kisch. The aid of this
+physician was momentous; for he devoted several hours every day to the
+instruction of a poor youth, whose strong capacity he had the discernment
+to perceive, and the generous temper to aid. Mendelssohn was soon enabled
+to read Locke in a Latin version; but with such extreme pain, that,
+compelled to search for every word, and to arrange their Latin order, and
+at the same time to combine metaphysical ideas, it was observed that he
+did not so much translate, as guess by the force of meditation.
+
+This prodigious effort of his intellect retarded his progress, but
+invigorated his habit, as the racer, by running against the hill, at
+length courses with facility.
+
+A succeeding effort was to master the living languages, and chiefly the
+English, that he might read his favourite Locke in his own idiom. Thus a
+great genius for metaphysics and languages was forming itself alone,
+without aid.
+
+It is curious to detect, in the character of genius, the effects of local
+and moral influences. There resulted from Mendelssohn's early situation
+certain defects in his Jewish education, and numerous impediments in his
+studies. Inheriting but one language, too obsolete and naked to serve the
+purposes of modern philosophy, he perhaps overvalued his new acquisitions,
+and in his delight of knowing many languages, he with difficulty escaped
+from remaining a mere philologist; while in his philosophy, having adopted
+the prevailing principles of Wolf and Baumgarten, his genius was long
+without the courage or the skill to emancipate itself from their rusty
+chains. It was more than a step which had brought him into their circle,
+but a step was yet wanting to escape from it.
+
+At length the mind of Mendelssohn enlarged in literary intercourse: he
+became a great and original thinker in many beautiful speculations in
+moral and critical philosophy; while he had gradually been creating a
+style which the critics of Germany have declared to be their first
+luminous model of precision and elegance. Thus a Hebrew vagrant, first
+perplexed in the voluminous labyrinth of Judaical learning, in his middle
+age oppressed by indigence and malady, and in his mature life wrestling
+with that commercial station whence he derived his humble independence,
+became one of the master-writers in the literature of his country. The
+history of the mind of Mendelssohn is one of the noblest pictures of the
+self-education of genius.
+
+Friends, whose prudential counsels in the business of life are valuable in
+our youth, are usually prejudicial in the youth of genius. The multitude
+of authors and artists originates in the ignorant admiration of their
+early friends; while the real genius has often been disconcerted and
+thrown into despair by the false judgments of his domestic circle. The
+productions of taste are more unfortunate than those which depend on a
+chain of reasoning, or the detail of facts; these are more palpable to the
+common judgments of men; but taste is of such rarity, that a long life may
+be passed by some without once obtaining a familiar acquaintance with a
+mind so cultivated by knowledge, so tried by experience, and so practised
+by converse with the literary world, that its prophetic feeling can
+anticipate the public opinion. When a young writer's first essay is shown,
+some, through mere inability of censure, see nothing but beauties; others,
+from mere imbecility, can see none; and others, out of pure malice, see
+nothing but faults. "I was soon disgusted," says Gibbon, "with the modest
+practice of reading the manuscript to my friends. Of such friends some
+will praise for politeness, and some will criticise for vanity." Had
+several of our first writers set their fortunes on the cast of their
+friends' opinions, we might have lost some precious compositions.
+The friends of Thompson discovered nothing but faults in his early
+productions, one of which happened to be his noblest, the "Winter;" they
+just could discern that these abounded with luxuriances, without being
+aware that, they were the luxuriances of a poet. He had created a new
+school in art--and appealed from his circle to the public. From a
+manuscript letter of our poet's, written when employed on his "Summer," I
+transcribe his sentiments on his former literary friends in Scotland--he
+is writing to Mallet: "Far from defending these two lines, I damn them to
+the lowest depth of the poetical Tophet, prepared of old for Mitchell,
+Morrice, Rook, Cook, Beckingham, and a long &c. Wherever I have evidence,
+or think I have evidence, which is the same thing, I'll be as obstinate as
+all the mules in Persia." This poet of warm affections felt so irritably
+the perverse criticisms of his learned friends, that they were to share
+alike a poetic Hell--probably a sort of _Dunciad_, or lampoons. One of
+these "blasts" broke out in a vindictive epigram on Mitchell, whom he
+describes with a "blasted eye;" but this critic literally having one, the
+poet, to avoid a personal reflection, could only consent to make the
+blemish more active--
+
+ Why all not faults, injurious Mitchell! why
+ Appears one beauty to thy _blasting_ eye?
+
+He again calls him "the planet-blasted Mitchell." Of another of these
+critical friends he speaks with more sedateness, but with a strong
+conviction that the critic, a very sensible man, had no sympathy with the
+poet. "Aikman's reflections on my writings are very good, but he does not
+in them regard the turn of my genius enough; should I alter my way, I
+would write poorly. I must choose what appears to me the most significant
+epithet, or I cannot with any heart proceed." The "Mirror,"[A] when
+periodically published in Edinburgh, was "fastidiously" received, as all
+"home-productions" are: but London avenged the cause of the author. When
+SWIFT introduced PARNELL to Lord Bolingbroke, and to the world, he
+observes, in his Journal, "it is pleasant to see one who hardly passed for
+anything in Ireland, make his way here with a little friendly forwarding."
+MONTAIGNE has honestly told us that in his own province they considered
+that for him to attempt to become an author was perfectly ludicrous: at
+home, says he, "I am compelled to purchase printers; while at a distance,
+printers purchase me." There is nothing more trying to the judgment of the
+friends of a young man of genius than the invention of a new manner:
+without a standard to appeal to, without bladders to swim, the ordinary
+critic sinks into irretrievable distress; but usually pronounces against
+novelty. When REYNOLDS returned from Italy, warm with all the excellence
+of his art, and painted a portrait, his old master, Hudson, viewing it,
+and perceiving no trace of his own manner, exclaimed that he did not paint
+so well as when he left England; while another, who conceived no higher
+excellence than Kneller, treated with signal contempt the future Raphael
+of England.
+
+[Footnote A: This weekly journal was chiefly supported by the abilities of
+the rising young men of the Scottish Bar. Henry Mackenzie, the author of
+the "Man of Feeling," was the principal contributor. The publication was
+commenced in January, 1779, and concluded May, 1790.--ED.]
+
+If it be dangerous for a young writer to resign himself to the opinions of
+his friends, he also incurs some peril in passing them with inattention.
+He wants a Quintilian. One mode to obtain such an invaluable critic is the
+cultivation of his own judgment in a round of reading and meditation. Let
+him at once supply the marble and be himself the sculptor: let the
+great authors of the world be his gospels, and the best critics their
+expounders; from the one he will draw inspiration, and from the others he
+will supply those tardy discoveries in art which he who solely depends on
+his own experience may obtain too late. Those who do not read criticism
+will rarely merit to be criticised; their progress is like those who
+travel without a map of the country. The more extensive an author's
+knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his powers in knowing
+what to do. To obtain originality, and effect discovery, sometimes
+requires but a single step, if we only know from what point to set
+forwards. This important event in the life of genius has too often
+depended on chance and good fortune, and many have gone down to their
+graves without having discovered their unsuspected talent. CURRAN'S
+predominant faculty was an exuberance of imagination when excited by
+passion; but when young he gave no evidence of this peculiar faculty, nor
+for several years, while a candidate for public distinction, was he aware
+of his particular powers, so slowly his imagination had developed itself.
+It was when assured of the secret of his strength that his confidence, his
+ambition, and his industry were excited.
+
+Let the youth preserve his juvenile compositions, whatever these may be;
+they are the spontaneous growth, and like the plants of the Alps, not
+always found in other soils; they are his virgin fancies. By contemplating
+them, he may detect some of his predominant habits, resume a former manner
+more happily, invent novelty from an old subject he had rudely designed,
+and often may steal from himself some inventive touches, which, thrown
+into his most finished compositions, may seem a happiness rather than an
+art. It was in contemplating on some of their earliest and unfinished
+productions, that more than one artist discovered with WEST that "there
+were inventive touches of art in his first and juvenile essay, which, with
+all his subsequent knowledge and experience, he had not been able to
+surpass." A young writer, in the progress of his studies, should often
+recollect a fanciful simile of Dryden--
+
+ As those who unripe veins in mines explore
+ On the rich bed again the warm turf lay,
+ Till time digests the yet imperfect ore;
+ And know it will be gold another day.
+
+The youth of genius is that "age of admiration" as sings the poet of
+"Human Life," when the spell breathed into our ear by our genius,
+fortunate or unfortunate, is--"Aspire!" Then we adore art and the artists.
+It was RICHARDSON'S enthusiasm which gave REYNOLDS the raptures he caught
+in meditating on the description of a great painter; and REYNOLDS thought
+RAPHAEL the most extraordinary man the world had ever produced. WEST, when
+a youth, exclaimed that "A painter is a companion for kings and emperors!"
+This was the feeling which rendered the thoughts of obscurity painful and
+insupportable to their young minds.
+
+But this sunshine of rapture is not always spread over the spring of the
+youthful year. There is a season of self-contest, a period of tremors, and
+doubts, and darkness. These frequent returns of melancholy, sometimes of
+despondence, which is the lot of inexperienced genius, is a secret history
+of the heart, which has been finely conveyed to us by Petrarch, in a
+conversation with John of Florence, to whom the young poet often resorted
+when dejected, to reanimate his failing powers, to confess his faults, and
+to confide to him his dark and wavering resolves. It was a question with
+Petrarch, whether he should not turn away from the pursuit of literary
+fame, by giving another direction to his life.
+
+"I went one day to John of Florence in one of those ague-fits of
+faint-heartedness which often happened to me; he received me with his
+accustomed kindness. 'What ails you?' said he, 'you seem oppressed with
+thought: if I am not deceived, something has happened to you.' 'You do not
+deceive yourself, my father (for thus I used to call him), and yet nothing
+newly has happened to me; but I come to confide to you that my old
+melancholy torments me more than usual. You know its nature, for my heart
+has always been opened to you; you know all which I have done to draw
+myself out of the crowd, and to acquire a name; and surely not without
+some success, since I have your testimony in my favour. Are you not the
+truest man, and the best of critics, who have never ceased to bestow on me
+your praise--and what need I more? Have you not often told me that I am
+answerable to God for the talents he has endowed me with, if I neglected
+to cultivate them? Your praises were to me as a sharp spur: I applied
+myself to study with more ardour, insatiable even of my moments.
+Disdaining the beaten paths, I opened a new road; and I flattered myself
+that assiduous labour would lead to something great; but I know not how,
+when I thought myself highest, I feel myself fallen; the spring of my mind
+has dried up; what seemed easy once, now appears to me above my strength;
+I stumble at every step, and am ready to sink for ever into despair. I
+return to you to teach me, or at least advise me. Shall I for ever quit my
+studies? Shall I strike into some new course of life? My father, have pity
+on me! draw me out of the frightful state in which I am lost.' I could
+proceed no farther without shedding tears. 'Cease to afflict yourself, my
+son,' said that good man; 'your condition is not so bad as you think: the
+truth is, you knew little at the time you imagined you knew much. The
+discovery of your ignorance is the first great step you have made towards
+true knowledge. The veil is lifted up, and you now view those deep shades
+of the soul which were concealed from you by excessive presumption. In
+ascending an elevated spot, we gradually discover many things whose
+existence before was not suspected by us. Persevere in the career which
+you entered with my advice; feel confident that God will not abandon you:
+there are maladies which the patient does not perceive; but to be aware of
+the disease, is the first step towards the cure.'"
+
+This remarkable literary interview is here given, that it may perchance
+meet the eye of some kindred youth at one of those lonely moments when a
+Shakspeare may have thought himself no poet, and a Raphael believed
+himself no painter. Then may the tender wisdom of a John of Florence, in
+the cloudy despondency of art, lighten up the vision of its glory!
+
+INGENUOUS YOUTH! if, in a constant perusal of the master-writers, you see
+your own sentiments anticipated--if, in the tumult of your mind, as it
+comes in contact with theirs, new sentiments arise--if, sometimes, looking
+on the public favourite of the hour, you feel that within which prompts
+you to imagine that you could rival or surpass him--if, in meditating
+on the confessions of every man of genius, for they all have their
+confessions, you find you have experienced the same sensations from the
+same circumstances, encountered the same difficulties and overcome them by
+the same means; then let not your courage be lost in your admiration, but
+listen to that "still small voice" in your heart which cries with
+CORREGGIO and with MONTESQUIEU, "Ed io anche son pittore!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Of the irritability of genius.--Genius in society often in a state of
+suffering.--Equality of temper more prevalent among men of letters.--Of
+the occupation of making a great name.--Anxieties of the most successful.
+--Of the inventors.--Writers of learning.--Writers of taste.--Artists.
+
+
+The modes of life of a man of genius, often tinctured by eccentricity and
+enthusiasm, maintain an eternal conflict with the monotonous and imitative
+habits of society, as society is carried on in a great metropolis, where
+men are necessarily alike, and where, in perpetual intercourse, they shape
+themselves to one another.
+
+The occupations, the amusements, and the ardour of the man of genius are
+at discord with the artificial habits of life: in the vortexes of
+business, or the world of pleasure, crowds of human beings are only
+treading in one another's steps. The pleasures and the sorrows of this
+active multitude are not his, while his are not obvious to them; and his
+favourite occupations strengthen his peculiarities, and increase his
+sensibility. Genius in society is often in a state of suffering.
+Professional characters, who are themselves so often literary, yielding to
+their predominant interests, conform to that assumed urbanity which levels
+them with ordinary minds; but the man of genius cannot leave himself
+behind in the cabinet he quits; the train of his thoughts is not stopped
+at will, and in the range of conversation the habits of his mind will
+prevail: the poet will sometimes muse till he modulates a verse; the
+artist is sketching what a moment presents, and a moment changes; the
+philosophical historian is suddenly absorbed by a new combination of
+thought, and, placing his hands over his eyes, is thrown back into the
+Middle Ages. Thus it happens that an excited imagination, a high-toned
+feeling, a wandering reverie, a restlessness of temper, are perpetually
+carrying the man of genius out of the processional line of the mere
+conversationists. Like all solitary beings, he is much too sentient, and
+prepares for defence even at a random touch or a chance hit. His
+generalising views take things only in masses, while in his rapid emotions
+he interrogates, and doubts, and is caustic; in a word, he thinks he
+converses while he is at his studies. Sometimes, apparently a complacent
+listener, we are mortified by detecting the absent man: now he appears
+humbled and spiritless, ruminating over some failure which probably may be
+only known to himself; and now haughty and hardy for a triumph he has
+obtained, which yet remains a secret to the world. No man is so apt to
+indulge the extremes of the most opposite feelings: he is sometimes
+insolent, and sometimes querulous; now the soul of tenderness and
+tranquillity,--then stung by jealousy, or writhing in aversion! A fever
+shakes his spirit; a fever which has sometimes generated a disease, and
+has even produced a slight perturbation of the faculties.[A] In one of
+those manuscript notes by Lord BYRON on this work, which I have wished to
+preserve, I find his lordship observing on the feelings of genius, that
+"the depreciation of the lowest of mankind is more painful than the
+applause of the highest is pleasing." Such is the confession of genius,
+and such its liability to hourly pain.
+
+[Footnote A: I have given a history of _literary quarrels from personal
+motives_, in "Quarrels of Authors," p. 529. There we find how many
+controversies, in which the public get involved, have sprung from some
+sudden squabbles, some neglect of petty civility, some unlucky epithet, or
+some casual observation dropped without much consideration, which
+mortified or enraged the _genus irritabile_; a title which from ancient
+days has been assigned to every description of authors. The late Dr.
+WELLS, who had some experience in his intercourse with many literary
+characters, observed, that "in whatever regards the fruits of their mental
+labours, this is universally acknowledged to be true. Some of the
+malevolent passions indeed frequently become in learned men more than
+ordinarily strong, from want of that restraint upon their excitement which
+society imposes." A puerile critic has reproached me for having drawn my
+description entirely from my own fancy:--I have taken it from life!
+See further symptoms of this disease at the close of the chapter on
+_Self-praise_ in the present work.]
+
+Once we were nearly receiving from the hand of genius the most curious
+sketches of the temper, the irascible humours, the delicacy of soul, even
+to its shadowiness, from the warm _sbozzos_ of BURNS, when he began a
+diary of the heart,--a narrative of characters and events, and a
+chronology of his emotions. It was natural for such a creature of
+sensation and passion to project such a regular task, but quite impossible
+for him to get through it. The paper-book that he conceived would have
+recorded all these things turns out, therefore, but a very imperfect
+document. Imperfect as it was, it has been thought proper not to give it
+entire. Yet there we view a warm original mind, when he first stepped
+into the polished circles of society, discovering that he could no
+longer "pour out his bosom, his every thought and floating fancy, his very
+inmost soul, with unreserved confidence to another, without hazard of
+losing part of that respect which man deserves from man; or, from the
+unavoidable imperfections attending human nature, of one day repenting his
+confidence." This was the first lesson he learned at Edinburgh, and it was
+as a substitute for such a human being that he bought a paper-book to keep
+under lock and key: "a security at least equal," says he, "to the bosom of
+any friend whatever." Let the man of genius pause over the fragments of
+this "paper-book;"--it will instruct as much as any open confession of a
+criminal at the moment he is about to suffer. No man was more afflicted
+with that miserable pride, the infirmity of men of imagination, which is
+so jealously alive, even among their best friends, as to exact a perpetual
+acknowledgment of their powers. Our poet, with all his gratitude and
+veneration for "the noble Glencairn," was "wounded to the soul" because
+his lordship showed "so much attention, engrossing attention, to the only
+blockhead at table; the whole company consisted of his lordship,
+Dunderpate, and myself." This Dunderpate, who dined with Lord Glencairn,
+might have been a useful citizen, who in some points is of more value than
+an irritable bard. Burns was equally offended with another patron, who was
+also a literary brother, Dr. Blair. At the moment, he too appeared to be
+neglecting the irritable poet "for the mere carcass of greatness, or when
+his eye measured the difference of their point of elevation; I say to
+myself, with scarcely any emotion," (he might have added, except a good
+deal of painful contempt,) "what do I care for him or his pomp either?"
+--"Dr. Blair's vanity is proverbially known among his acquaintance," adds
+Burns, at the moment that the solitary haughtiness of his own genius had
+entirely escaped his self-observation.
+
+This character of genius is not singular. Grimm tells of MARIVAUX, that
+though a good man, there was something dark and suspicious in his
+character, which made it difficult to keep on terms with him; the most
+innocent word would wound him, and he was always inclined to think that
+there was an intention to mortify him; this disposition made him unhappy,
+and rendered his acquaintance too painful to endure.
+
+What a moral paradox, but what an unquestionable fact, is the wayward
+irritability of some of the finest geniuses, which is often weak to
+effeminacy, and capricious to childishness! while minds of a less delicate
+texture are not frayed and fretted by casual frictions; and plain sense
+with a coarser grain, is sufficient to keep down these aberrations of
+their feelings. How mortifying is the list of--
+
+ Fears of the brave and follies of the wise!
+
+Many have been sore and implacable on an allusion to some personal defect
+--on the obscurity of their birth--on some peculiarity of habit; and have
+suffered themselves to be governed in life by nervous whims and chimeras,
+equally fantastic and trivial. This morbid sensibility lurks in the
+temperament of genius, and the infection is often discovered where it is
+not always suspected. Cumberland declared that the sensibility of some men
+of genius is so quick and captious, that you must first consider whom they
+can be happy with, before you can promise yourself any happiness with
+them: if you bring uncongenial humours into contact with each other, all
+the objects of society will be frustrated by inattention to the proper
+grouping of the guests. Look round on our contemporaries; every day
+furnishes facts which confirm our principle. Among the vexations of POPE
+was the libel of "the pictured shape;"[A] and even the robust mind of
+JOHNSON could not suffer to be exhibited as "blinking Sam."[B] MILTON must
+have delighted in contemplating his own person; and the engraver not
+having reached our sublime bard's ideal grace, he has pointed his
+indignation in four iambics. The praise of a skipping ape raised the
+feeling of envy in that child of nature and genius, GOLDSMITH. VOITURE,
+the son of a vintner, like our PRIOR, was so mortified whenever reminded
+of his original occupation, that it was bitterly said, that wine, which
+cheered the hearts of all men, sickened the heart of Voiture. AKENSIDE
+ever considered his lameness as an unsupportable misfortune, for it
+continually reminded him of the fall of the cleaver from one of his
+father's blocks. BECCARIA, invited to Paris by the literati, arrived
+melancholy and silent, and abruptly returned home. At that moment this
+great man was most miserable from a fit of jealousy: a young female had
+extinguished all his philosophy. The poet ROUSSEAU was the son of a
+cobbler; and when his honest parent waited at the door of the theatre to
+embrace his son on the success of his first piece, genius, whose
+sensibility is not always virtuous, repulsed the venerable father with
+insult and contempt. But I will no longer proceed from folly to crime.
+
+[Footnote A: He was represented as an ill-made monkey in the frontispiece
+to a satire noted in "Quarrels of Authors," p. 286 (last edition).--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: Johnson was displeased at the portrait Reynolds painted of
+him which dwelt on his nearsightedness; declaring that "a man's defects
+should never be painted." The same defect was made the subject of a
+caricature particularly allusive to critical prejudices in his "Lives of
+the Poets," in which he is pictured as an owl "blinking at the stars."
+--ED.]
+
+Those who give so many sensations to others must themselves possess an
+excess and a variety of feelings. We find, indeed, that they are censured
+for their extreme irritability; and that happy equality of temper so
+prevalent among MEN OF LETTERS, and which is conveniently acquired by men
+of the world, has been usually refused to great mental powers, or to
+fervid dispositions--authors and artists. The man of wit becomes petulant,
+the profound thinker morose, and the vivacious ridiculously thoughtless.
+
+When ROUSSEAU once retired to a village, he had to learn to endure its
+conversation; for this purpose he was compelled to invent an expedient to
+get rid of his uneasy sensations. "Alone, I have never known ennui,
+even when perfectly unoccupied: my imagination, filling the void, was
+sufficient to busy me. It is only the inactive chit-chat of the room, when
+every one is seated face to face, and only moving their tongues, which I
+never could support. There to be a fixture, nailed with one hand on the
+other, to settle the state of the weather, or watch the flies about
+one, or, what is worse, to be bandying compliments, this to me is not
+bearable." He hit on the expedient of making lace-strings, carrying his
+working cushion in his visits, to keep the peace with the country gossips.
+
+Is the occupation of making a great name less anxious and precarious than
+that of making a great fortune? the progress of a man's capital is
+unequivocal to him, but that of the fame of authors and artists is for the
+greater part of their lives of an ambiguous nature. They become whatever
+the minds or knowledge of others make them; they are the creatures of the
+prejudices and the predispositions of others, and must suffer from those
+precipitate judgments which are the result of such prejudices and such
+predispositions. Time only is the certain friend of literary worth, for
+time makes the world disagree among themselves; and when those who condemn
+discover that there are others who approve, the weaker party loses itself
+in the stronger, and at length they learn that the author was far more
+reasonable than their prejudices had allowed them to conceive. It is thus,
+however, that the regard which men of genius find in one place they lose
+in another. We may often smile at the local gradations of genius; the
+fervid esteem in which an author is held here, and the cold indifference,
+if not contempt, he encounters in another place; here the man of learning
+is condemned as a heavy drone, and there the man of wit annoys the unwitty
+listener.
+
+And are not the anxieties of even the most successful men of genius
+renewed at every work--often quitted in despair, often returned to with
+rapture? the same agitation of the spirits, the same poignant delight, the
+same weariness, the same dissatisfaction, the same querulous languishment
+after excellence? Is the man of genius an INVENTOR? the discovery is
+contested, or it is not comprehended for ten years after, perhaps not
+during his whole life; even men of science are as children before him. Sir
+Thomas Bodley wrote to Lord Bacon, remonstrating with him on his _new mode
+of philosophising_. It seems the fate of all originality of thinking to be
+immediately opposed; a contemporary is not prepared for its comprehension,
+and too often cautiously avoids it, from the prudential motive which turns
+away from a new and solitary path. BACON was not at all understood at home
+in his own day; his reputation--for it was not celebrity--was confined to
+his history of Henry VII., and his Essays; it was long after his death
+before English writers ventured to quote Bacon as an authority; and with
+equal simplicity and grandeur, BACON called himself "the servant of
+posterity." MONTESQUIEU gave his _Esprit des Loix_ to be read by that man
+in France, whom he conceived to be the best judge, and in return received
+the most mortifying remarks. The great philosopher exclaimed in despair,
+"I see my own age is not ripe enough to understand my work; however, it
+shall be published!" When KEPLER published the first rational work on
+comets, it was condemned, even by the learned, as a wild dream. COPERNICUS
+so much dreaded the prejudice of mankind against his treatise on "The
+Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies," that, by a species of continence of
+all others most difficult to a philosopher, says Adam Smith, he detained
+it in his closet for thirty years together. LINNÆUS 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 LINNÆUS could
+endure, but that his botany should become the object of ridicule for all
+Stockholm, shook the nerves of this great inventor in his science. Let him
+speak for himself. "No one cared how many sleepless nights and toilsome
+hours I had passed, while all with one voice declared, that Siegesbeck had
+annihilated me. I took my leave of Flora, who bestows on me nothing but
+Siegesbecks; and condemned my too numerous observations a thousand times
+over to eternal oblivion. What a fool have I been to waste so much time,
+to spend my days in a study which yields no better fruit, and makes me the
+laughing stock of the world." Such are the cries of the irritability of
+genius, and such are often the causes. The world was in danger of losing a
+new science, had not LINNÆUS returned to the discoveries which he had
+forsaken in the madness of the mind! The great SYDENHAM, who, like our
+HARVEY and our HUNTER, effected a revolution in the science of medicine,
+and led on alone by the independence of his genius, attacked the most
+prevailing prejudices, so highly provoked the malignant emulation of his
+rivals, that a conspiracy was raised against the father of our modern
+practice to banish him out of the college, as "guilty of medical heresy."
+JOHN HUNTER was a great discoverer in his own science; but one who well
+knew him has told us, that few of his contemporaries perceived the
+ultimate object of his pursuits; and his strong and solitary genius
+laboured to perfect his designs without the solace of sympathy, without
+one cheering approbation. "We bees do not provide honey for ourselves,"
+exclaimed VAN HELMONT, when worn out by the toils of chemistry, and still
+contemplating, amidst tribulation and persecution, and approaching death,
+his "Tree of Life," which he imagined he had discovered in the cedar. But
+with a sublime melancholy his spirit breaks out; "My mind breathes some
+unheard-of thing within; though I, as unprofitable for this life, shall be
+buried!" Such were the mighty but indistinct anticipations of this
+visionary inventor, the father of modern chemistry!
+
+I cannot quit this short record of the fates of the inventors in science,
+without adverting to another cause of that irritability of genius which is
+so closely connected with their pursuits. If we look into the history of
+theories, we shall be surprised at the vast number which have "not left a
+rack behind." And do we suppose that the inventors themselves were not at
+times alarmed by secret doubts of their soundness and stability? They
+felt, too often for their repose, that the noble architecture which they
+had raised might be built on moveable sands, and be found only in the dust
+of libraries; a cloudy day, or a fit of indigestion, would deprive an
+inventor of his theory all at once; and as one of them said, "after
+dinner, all that I have written in the morning appears to me dark,
+incongruous, nonsensical." At such moments we should find this man of
+genius in no pleasant mood. The true cause of this nervous state cannot,
+nay, must not, be confided to the world: the honour of his darling theory
+will always be dearer to his pride than the confession of even slight
+doubts which may shake its truth. It is a curious fact which we have
+but recently discovered, that ROUSSEAU was disturbed by a terror he
+experienced, and which we well know was not unfounded, that his theories
+of education were false and absurd. He could not endure to read a page in
+his own "Emile"[A] without disgust after the work had been published! He
+acknowledged that there were more suffrages against his notions than for
+them. "I am not displeased," says he, "with myself on the style and
+eloquence, but I still dread that my writings are good for nothing at the
+bottom, and that all my theories are full of extravagance." [_Je crains
+toujours que je pèche par le fond, et que tous mes systèmes ne sont que
+des extravagances._] HARTLEY with his "Vibrations and Vibrationeles,"
+LEIBNITZ with his "Monads," CUDWORTH with his "Plastic Natures,"
+MALEBRANCHE with his paradoxical doctrine of "Seeing all things in God,"
+and BURNET with his heretical "Theory of the Earth," must unquestionably
+at times have betrayed an irritability which those about them may have
+attributed to temper, rather than to genius.
+
+[Footnote A: In a letter by Hume to Blair, written in 1766, apparently
+first published in the _Literary Gazette_, Nov. 17, 1821.]
+
+Is our man of genius--not the victim of fancy, but the slave of truth--a
+learned author? Of the living waters of human knowledge it cannot be said
+that "If a man drink thereof, he shall never thirst again." What volumes
+remain to open! what manuscript but makes his heart palpitate! There is no
+term in researches which new facts may not alter, and a single date may
+not dissolve. Truth! thou fascinating, but severe mistress, thy adorers
+are often broken down in thy servitude, performing a thousand unregarded
+task-works! Now winding thee through thy labyrinth with a single thread,
+often unravelling--now feeling their way in darkness, doubtful if it be
+thyself they are touching. How much of the real labour of genius and
+erudition must remain concealed from the world, and never be reached by
+their penetration! MONTESQUIEU has described this feeling after its agony:
+"I thought I should have killed myself these three months to finish a
+_morceau_ (for his great work), which I wished to insert, on the origin
+and revolutions of the civil laws in France. You will read it in three
+hours; but I do assure you that it cost me so much labour that it has
+whitened my hair." Mr. Hallam, stopping to admire the genius of GIBBON,
+exclaims, "In this, as in many other places, the masterly boldness and
+precision of his outline, which astonish those who have trodden parts of
+the same field, is apt to escape an uninformed reader." Thrice has my
+learned friend, SHARON TURNER, recomposed, with renewed researches, the
+history of our ancestors, of which Milton and Hume had despaired--thrice,
+amidst the self-contests of ill-health and professional duties!
+
+The man of erudition in closing his elaborate work is still exposed to the
+fatal omissions of wearied vigilance, or the accidental knowledge of some
+inferior mind, and always to the reigning taste, whatever it chance to be,
+of the public. Burnet criticised VARILLAS unsparingly;[A] but when he
+wrote history himself, Harmer's "Specimen of Errors in Burnet's History,"
+returned Burnet the pangs which he had inflicted on another. NEWTON'S
+favourite work was his "Chronology," which he had written over fifteen
+times, yet he desisted from its publication during his life-time, from the
+ill-usage of which he complained. Even the "Optics" of Newton had no
+character at home till noticed in France. The calm temper of our great
+philosopher was of so fearful a nature in regard to criticism, that
+Whiston declares that he would not publish his attack on the "Chronology,"
+lest it might have killed our philosopher; and thus Bishop STILLINGFLEET'S
+end was hastened by LOCKE's confutation of his metaphysics. The feelings
+of Sir JOHN MARSHAM could hardly be less irritable when he found his great
+work tainted by an accusation that it was not friendly to revelation.[B]
+When the learned POCOCK published a specimen of his translation of
+Abulpharagias, an Arabian historian, in 1649, it excited great interest;
+but in 1663, when he gave the world the complete version, it met with no
+encouragement: in the course of those thirteen years, the genius of the
+times had changed, and Oriental studies were no longer in request.
+
+[Footnote A: For an account of this work, and Burnet's _exposé_ of it, see
+"Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 132.--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: This great work the _Canon Chronicus_, was published in 1672,
+and was the first attempt to make the Egyptian chronology clear and
+intelligible, and to reconcile the whole to the Scripture chronology; a
+labour he had commenced in _Diatriba Chronologica_, published in 1649.
+--ED.]
+
+The great VERULAM profoundly felt the retardment of his fame; for he has
+pathetically expressed this sentiment in his testament, where he bequeaths
+his name to posterity, AFTER SOME GENERATIONS SHALL BE past. BRUCE sunk
+into his grave defrauded of that just fame which his pride and vivacity
+perhaps too keenly prized, at least for his happiness, and which he
+authoritatively exacted from an unwilling public. Mortified and indignant
+at the reception of his great labour by the cold-hearted scepticism of
+little minds, and the maliciousness of idling wits, he, whose fortitude
+had toiled through a life of difficulty and danger, could not endure the
+laugh and scorn of public opinion; for BRUCE there was a simoon more
+dreadful than the Arabian, and from which genius cannot hide its head. Yet
+BRUCE only met with the fate which MARCO POLO had before encountered;
+whose faithful narrative had been contemned by his contemporaries, and who
+was long thrown aside among legendary writers.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: His stories of the wealth and population of China, which he
+described as consisting of _millions_ obtained for him the nickname of
+_Marco Milione_ among the Venetians and other small Italian states, who
+were unable to comprehend the greatness of his truthful narratives of
+Eastern travel. Upon his death-bed he was adjured by his friends to
+retract his statements, which he indignantly refused. It was long after
+ere his truthfulness was established by other travellers; the Venetian
+populace gave his house the name _La Corte di Milioni_: and a vulgar
+caricature of the great traveller was always introduced in their
+carnivals, who was termed _Marco Milione_; and delighted them with the
+most absurd stories, in, which everything was computed by millions.--ED.]
+
+HARVEY, though his life was prolonged to his eightieth year, hardly lived
+to see his great discovery of the circulation of the blood established: no
+physician adopted it; and when at length it was received, one party
+attempted to rob Harvey of the honour of the discovery, while another
+asserted that it was so obvious, that they could only express their
+astonishment that it had ever escaped observation. Incredulity and envy
+are the evil spirits which have often dogged great inventors to their
+tomb, and there only have vanished.--But I seem writing the "calamities of
+authors," and have only begun the catalogue.
+
+The reputation of a writer of taste is subject to more difficulties than
+any other. Similar was the fate of the finest ode-writers in our poetry.
+On their publication, the odes of COLLINS could find no readers; and those
+of GRAY, though ushered into the reading world by the fashionable press of
+Walpole, were condemned as failures. When RACINE produced his "Athalie,"
+it was not at all relished: Boileau indeed declared that he understood
+these matters better than the public, and prophesied that the public would
+return to it: they did so; but it was sixty years afterwards; and Racine
+died without suspecting that "Athalie" was his masterpiece. I have heard
+one of our great poets regret that he had devoted so much of his life to
+the cultivation of his art, which arose from a project made in the golden
+vision of his youth: "at a time," said he, "when I thought that the
+fountain could never be dried up."--"Your baggage will reach posterity,"
+was observed.--"There is much to spare," was the answer.
+
+Every day we may observe, of a work of genius, that those parts which have
+all the raciness of the soil, and as such are most liked by its admirers,
+are those which are the most criticised. Modest critics shelter themselves
+under that general amnesty too freely granted, that tastes are allowed to
+differ; but we should approximate much nearer to the truth, if we were to
+say, that but few of mankind are prepared to relish the beautiful with
+that enlarged taste which comprehends all the forms of feeling which
+genius may assume; forms which may be necessarily associated with defects.
+A man of genius composes in a state of intellectual emotion, and the magic
+of his style consists in the movements of his soul; but the art of
+conveying those movements is far separated from the feeling which inspires
+them. The idea in the mind is not always found under the pen, any more
+than the artist's conception can always breathe in his pencil. Like
+FIAMINGO'S image, which he kept polishing till his friend exclaimed, "What
+perfection would you have?"--"Alas!" exclaimed the sculptor, "the original
+I am labouring to come up to is in my head, but not yet in my hand."
+
+The writer toils, and repeatedly toils, to throw into our minds that
+sympathy with which we hang over the illusion of his pages, and become
+himself. ARIOSTO wrote sixteen different ways the celebrated stanza
+descriptive of a tempest, as appears by his MSS. at Ferrara; and the
+version he preferred was the last of the sixteen. We know that PETRARCH
+made forty-four alterations of a single verse: "whether for the thought,
+the expression, or the harmony, it is evident that as many operations in
+the heart, the head, or the ear of the poet occurred," observes a man of
+genius, Ugo Foscolo. Quintilian and Horace dread the over-fondness of an
+author for his compositions: alteration is not always improvement. A
+picture over-finished fails in its effect. If the hand of the artist
+cannot leave it, how much beauty may it undo! yet still he is lingering,
+still strengthening the weak, still subduing the daring, still searching
+for that single idea which awakens so many in the minds of others, while
+often, as it once happened, the dash of despair hangs the foam on the
+horse's nostrils. I have known a great sculptor, who for twenty years
+delighted himself with forming in his mind the nymph his hand was always
+creating. How rapturously he beheld her! what inspiration! what illusion!
+Alas! the last five years spoiled the beautiful which he had once reached,
+and could not stop and finish!
+
+The art of composition, indeed, is of such slow attainment, that a man of
+genius, late in life, may discover how its secret conceals itself in the
+habit; how discipline consists in exercise, how perfection comes from
+experience, and how unity is the last effort of judgment. When Fox
+meditated on a history which should last with the language, he met his
+evil genius in this new province. The rapidity and the fire of his
+elocution were extinguished by a pen unconsecrated by long and previous
+study; he saw that he could not class with the great historians of every
+great people; he complained, while he mourned over the fragment of genius
+which, after such zealous preparation, he dared not complete. CURRAN, an
+orator of vehement eloquence, often strikingly original, when late in life
+he was desirous of cultivating literary composition, unaccustomed to its
+more gradual march, found a pen cold, and destitute of every grace.
+ROUSSEAU has glowingly described the ceaseless inquietude by which he
+obtained the seductive eloquence of his style; and has said, that with
+whatever talent a man may be born, the art of writing is not easily
+obtained. The existing manuscripts of ROUSSEAU display as many erasures as
+those of Ariosto or Petrarch; they show his eagerness to dash down his
+first thoughts, and the art by which he raised them to the impassioned
+style of his imagination. The memoir of GIBBON was composed seven or nine
+times, and, after all, was left unfinished; and BUFFON tells us that he
+wrote his "Epoques de la Nature" eighteen times before it satisfied his
+taste. BURNS'S anxiety in finishing his poems was great; "all my poetry,"
+said he, "is the effect of easy composition, but of laborious correction."
+
+POPE, when employed on the _Iliad_, found it not only occupy his thoughts
+by day, but haunting his dreams by night, and once wished himself hanged,
+to get rid of Homer: and that he experienced often such literary agonies,
+witness his description of the depressions and elevations of genius:
+
+ Who pants for glory, finds but short repose;
+ A breath revives him, or a breath o'erthrows!
+
+When ROMNEY undertook to commence the first subject for the Shakspeare
+Gallery, in the rapture of enthusiasm, amidst the sublime and pathetic
+labouring in his whole mind, arose the terror of failure. The subject
+chosen was "The Tempest;" and, as Hayley truly observes, it created many a
+tempest in the fluctuating spirits of Romney. The vehement desire of that
+perfection which genius conceives, and cannot always execute, held a
+perpetual contest with that dejection of spirits which degrades the
+unhappy sufferer, and casts him, grovelling among the mean of his class.
+In a national work, a man of genius pledges his honour to the world for
+its performance; but to redeem that pledge, there is a darkness in the
+uncertain issue, and he is risking his honour for ever. By that work he
+will always be judged, for public failures are never forgotten, and it is
+not then a party, but the public itself, who become his adversaries. With
+ROMNEY it was "a fever of the mad;" and his friends could scarcely inspire
+him with sufficient courage to proceed with his arduous picture, which
+exercised his imagination and his pencil for several years. I have heard
+that he built a painting-room purposely for this picture; and never did an
+anchorite pour fourth a more fervent orison to Heaven, than Romney when
+this labour was complete. He had a fine genius, with all its solitary
+feelings, but he was uneducated, and incompetent even to write a letter;
+yet on this occasion, relieved from his intense anxiety under so long a
+work, he wrote one of the most eloquent. It is a document in the history
+of genius, and reveals all those feelings which are here too faintly
+described.[A] I once heard an amiable author, whose literary career has
+perhaps not answered the fond hopes of his youth, half in anger and in
+love, declare that he would retire to some solitude, where, if any
+one would follow him, he would found a new order--the order of THE
+DISAPPOINTED.
+
+[Footnote A: "My DEAR FRIEND,--Your kindness in rejoicing so heartily at
+the birth of my picture has given me great satisfaction.
+
+"There has been an anxiety labouring in my mind the greater part of the
+last twelvemonth. At times it had nearly overwhelmed me. I thought I
+should absolutely have sunk into despair. O! what a kind friend is in
+those times! I thank God, whatever my picture may be, I can say thus much,
+I am a greater philosopher and a better Christian."]
+
+Thus the days of a man of genius are passed in labours as unremitting and
+exhausting as those of the artisan. The world is not always aware, that to
+some, meditation, composition, and even conversation, may inflict pains
+undetected by the eye and the tenderness of friendship. Whenever ROUSSEAU
+passed a morning in society, it was observed, that in the evening he was
+dissatisfied and distressed; and JOHN HUNTER, in a mixed company, found
+that conversation fatigued, instead of amusing him. HAWKESWORTH, in the
+second paper of the "Adventurer," has drawn, from his own feelings, an
+eloquent comparative estimate of intellectual with corporeal labour; it
+may console the humble mechanic; and Plato, in his work on "Laws," seems
+to have been aware of this analogy, for he consecrates all working men or
+artisans to Vulcan and Minerva, because both those deities alike are hard
+labourers. Yet with genius all does not terminate, even with the most
+skilful labour. What the toiling Vulcan and the thoughtful Minerva may
+want, will too often be absent--the presence of the Graces. In the
+allegorical picture of the School of Design, by Carlo Maratti, where the
+students are led through their various studies, in the opening clouds
+above the academy are seen the Graces, hovering over their pupils, with an
+inscription they must often recollect--_Senza di noi ogni fatica è vana_.
+
+The anxious uncertainty of an author for his compositions resembles the
+anxiety of a lover when he has written to a mistress who has not yet
+decided on his claims; he repents his labour, for he thinks he has written
+too much, while he is mortified at recollecting that he had omitted some
+things which he imagines would have secured the object of his wishes.
+Madame DE STAEL, who has often entered into feelings familiar to a
+literary and political family, in a parallel between ambition and genius,
+has distinguished them in this; that while "ambition _perseveres_ in the
+desire of acquiring power, genius _flags_ of itself. Genius in the midst
+of society is a pain, an internal fever which would require to be treated
+as a real disease, if the records of glory did not soften the sufferings
+it produces."--"Athenians! what troubles have you not cost me," exclaimed
+DEMOSTHENES, "that I may be talked of by you!"
+
+These moments of anxiety often darken the brightest hours of genius.
+RACINE had extreme sensibility; the pain inflicted by a severe criticism
+outweighed all the applause he received. He seems to have felt, what he
+was often reproached with, that his Greeks, his Jews, and his Turks, were
+all inmates of Versailles. He had two critics, who, like our Dennis with
+Pope and Addison, regularly dogged his pieces as they appeared[A].
+Corneille's objections he would attribute to jealousy--at his pieces when
+burlesqued at the Italian theatre[B] he would smile outwardly, though sick
+at heart; but his son informs us, that a stroke of raillery from his witty
+friend Chapelle, whose pleasantry hardly sheathed its bitterness, sunk
+more deeply into his heart than the burlesques at the Italian theatre, the
+protest of Corneille, and the iteration of the two Dennises. More than
+once MOLIERE and Racine, in vexation of spirit, resolved to abandon their
+dramatic career; it was BOILEAU who ceaselessly animated their languor:
+"Posterity," he cried, "will avenge the injustice of our age!" And
+CONGREVE'S comedies met with such moderate success, that it appears the
+author was extremely mortified, and on the ill reception of _The Way of
+the World_, determined to write no more for the stage. When he told
+Voltaire, on the French wit's visit, that Voltaire must consider him as a
+private gentleman, and not as an author,--which apparent affectation
+called down on Congreve the sarcastic severity of the French author,[C]
+--more of mortification and humility might have been in Congreve's
+language than of affectation or pride.
+
+[Footnote A: See the article "On the Influence of a bad temper in
+Criticism" in "Calamities of Authors," for a notice of Dennis and his
+career.--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: See the article on "The Sensibility of Racine" in "Literary
+Miscellanies," (in the present volume) and that on "Parody," in
+"Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p. 459.--ED.]
+
+[Footnote C: Voltaire quietly said he should not have troubled himself to
+visit him if he had been merely a private gentleman.--ED.]
+
+The life of TASSO abounds with pictures of a complete exhaustion of this
+kind. His contradictory critics had perplexed him with the most intricate
+literary discussions, and either occasioned or increased a mental
+alienation. In one of his letters, we find that he repents the composition
+of his great poem, for although his own taste approved of that marvellous,
+which still forms a noble part of its creation, yet he confesses that his
+cold reasoning critics have decided that the history of his hero, Godfrey,
+required another species of conduct. "Hence," cries the unhappy bard,
+"doubts torment me; but for the past, and what is done, I know of no
+remedy;" and he longs to precipitate the publication, that "he may be
+delivered from misery and agony." He solemnly swears--"Did not the
+circumstances of my situation compel me, I would not print it, even
+perhaps during my life, I so much doubt of its success." Such was the
+painful state of fear and doubt experienced by the author of the
+"Jerusalem Delivered," when he gave it to the world; a state of suspense,
+among the children of imagination, in which none are more liable to
+participate than the true sensitive artist. We may now inspect the severe
+correction of Tasso's muse, in the fac-simile of a page of his manuscripts
+in Mr. Dibdin's late "Tour." She seems to have inflicted tortures on his
+pen, surpassing even those which may be seen in the fac-simile page which,
+thirty years ago, I gave of Pope's Homer.[A] At Florence may still be
+viewed the many works begun and abandoned by the genius of MICHAEL ANGELO;
+they are preserved inviolate--"so sacred is the terror of Michael Angelo's
+genius!" exclaims Forsyth. These works are not always to be considered as
+failures of the chisel; they appear rather to have been rejected for
+coming short of the artist's first conceptions: yet, in a strain
+of sublime poetry, he has preserved his sentiments on the force of
+intellectual labour; he thought that there was nothing which the
+imagination conceived, that could not be made visible in marble, if the
+hand were made to obey the mind:--
+
+ Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto,
+ Ch' un marmo solo in se non circoseriva
+ Col suo soverchio, e solo a quello arriva
+ La man che obbedisce all' intelletto.
+
+ IMITATED.
+
+ The sculptor never yet conceived a thought
+ That yielding marble has refused to aid;
+ But never with a mastery he wrought--
+ Save when the hand the intellect obeyed.
+
+[Footnote A: It now forms the frontispiece to vol. ii. of the last edition
+of the "Curiosities of Literature."--ED.]
+
+An interesting domestic story has been preserved of GESNER, who so
+zealously devoted his graver and his pencil to the arts. His sensibility
+was ever struggling after that ideal excellence which he could not attain.
+Often he sunk into fits of melancholy, and, gentle as he was, the
+tenderness of his wife and friends could not soothe his distempered
+feelings; it was necessary to abandon him to his own thoughts, till, after
+a long abstinence from his neglected works, in a lucid moment, some
+accident occasioned him to return to them. In one of these hypochondria of
+genius, after a long interval of despair, one morning at breakfast with
+his wife, his eye fixed on one of his pictures: it was a group of fauns
+with young shepherds dancing at the entrance of a cavern shaded with
+vines; his eye appeared at length to glisten; and a sudden return
+to good humour broke out in this lively apostrophe--"Ah! see those
+playful children, they always dance!" This was the moment of gaiety and
+inspiration, and he flew to his forsaken easel.
+
+La Harpe, an author by profession, observes, that as it has been shown
+that there are some maladies peculiar to artisans[A]--there are also some
+sorrows peculiar to them, and which the world can neither pity nor soften,
+because they do not enter into their experience. The querulous language of
+so many men of genius has been sometimes attributed to causes very
+different from the real ones--the most fortunate live to see their talents
+contested and their best works decried. Assuredly many an author has sunk
+into his grave without the consciousness of having obtained that fame for
+which he had sacrificed an arduous life. The too feeling SMOLLETT has left
+this testimony to posterity:--"Had some of those, who are pleased to call
+themselves my friends, been at any pains to deserve the character, and
+told me ingenuously what I had to expect in the capacity of an _author_, I
+should, in all probability, have spared myself the _incredible labour_ and
+_chagrin_ I have since undergone." And Smollett was a popular writer!
+POPE'S solemn declaration in the preface to his collected works comes by
+no means short of Smollett's avowal. HUME'S philosophical indifference
+could often suppress that irritability which Pope and Smollett fully
+indulged.
+
+[Footnote A: See Ramazini, "De Morbis Artificium Diatriba," which Dr.
+James translated in 1750. It is a sad reflection, resulting from this
+curious treatise, that the arts entail no small mischief upon their
+respective workmen; so that the means by which they live are too often the
+occasion of their being hurried out of the world.]
+
+But were the feelings of HUME more obtuse, or did his temper, gentle as it
+was by constitution, bear, with a saintly patience, the mortifications his
+literary life so long endured? After recomposing two of his works, which
+incurred the same neglect in their altered form, he raised the most
+sanguine hopes of his History, but he tells us, "miserable was my
+disappointment!" Although he never deigned to reply to his opponents, yet
+they haunted him; and an eye-witness has thus described the irritated
+author discovering in conversation his suppressed resentment--"His
+forcible mode of expression, the brilliant quick movements of his eyes,
+and the gestures of his body," these betrayed the pangs of contempt, or of
+aversion! HOGARTH, in a fit of the spleen, advertised that he had
+determined not to give the world any more original works, and intended to
+pass the rest of his days in painting portraits. The same advertisement is
+marked by farther irritability. He contemptuously offers the purchasers of
+his "Analysis of Beauty," to present them _gratis_ with "an eighteenpenny
+pamphlet," published by Ramsay the painter, written in opposition to
+Hogarth's principles. So untameable was the irritability of this great
+inventor in art, that he attempts to conceal his irritation by offering to
+dispose gratuitously of the criticism which had disturbed his nights.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Hogarth was not without reason for exasperation. He was
+severely attacked for his theories about the curved line of beauty, which
+was branded as a foolish attempt to prove crookedness elegant, and himself
+vulgarly caricatured. It was even asserted that the theory was stolen from
+Lomazzo. ED.]
+
+Parties confederate against a man of genius,--as happened to Corneille, to
+D'Avenant,[A] and Milton; and a Pradon and a Settle carry away the meed of
+a Racine and a Dryden. It was to support the drooping spirit of his friend
+Racine on the opposition raised against Phædra, that Boileau addressed to
+him an epistle "On the Utility to be drawn from the Jealousy of the
+Envious." The calm dignity of the historian DE THOU, amidst the passions
+of his times, confidently expected that justice from posterity which his
+own age refused to his early and his late labour. That great man was,
+however, compelled by his injured feelings, to compose a poem under the
+name of another, to serve as his apology against the intolerant court of
+Rome, and the factious politicians of France; it was a noble subterfuge to
+which a great genius was forced. The acquaintances of the poet COLLINS
+probably complained of his wayward humours and irritability; but how could
+they sympathise with the secret mortification of the poet, who imagined
+that he had composed his Pastorals on wrong principles, or when, in the
+agony of his soul, he consigned to the flames with his own hands his
+unsold, but immortal odes? Can we forget the dignified complaint of the
+Rambler, with which he awfully closes his work, appealing to posterity?
+
+[Footnote A: See "Quarrels of Authors," p. 403, on the confederacy of
+several wits against D'Avenant, a great genius; where I discovered that a
+volume of poems, said "to be written by the author's friends," which had
+hitherto been referred to as a volume of panegyrics, contains nothing but
+irony and satire, which had escaped the discovery of so many transcribers
+of title-pages, frequently miscalled literary historians.]
+
+Genius contracts those peculiarities of which it is so loudly accused
+in its solitary occupations--that loftiness of spirit, those quick
+jealousies, those excessive affections and aversions which view everything
+as it passes in its own ideal world, and rarely as it exists in the
+mediocrity of reality. If this irritability of genius be a malady which
+has raged even among philosophers, we must not be surprised at the
+temperament of poets. These last have abandoned their country; they have
+changed their name; they have punished themselves with exile in the rage
+of their disorder. No! not poets only. DESCARTES sought in vain, even in
+his secreted life, for a refuge for his genius; he thought himself
+persecuted in France, he thought himself calumniated among strangers, and
+he went and died in Sweden; and little did that man of genius think that
+his countrymen would beg to have his ashes restored to them. Even the
+reasoning HUME once proposed to change his name and his country; and I
+believe did. The great poetical genius of our own times has openly
+alienated himself from the land of his brothers. He becomes immortal in
+the language of a people whom he would contemn.[A] Does he accept with
+ingratitude the fame he loves more than life?
+
+[Footnote A: I shall preserve a manuscript note of Lord BYRON on this
+passage; not without a hope that we shall never receive from him the
+genius of Italian poetry, otherwise than in the language of his "_father
+land_"; an expressive term, which I adopted from the Dutch language some
+years past, and which I have seen since sanctioned by the pens of Lord
+Byron and of Mr. Southey.
+
+His lordship has here observed, "It is not my fault that I am obliged to
+write in English. If I understood my present language equally well, I
+would write in it; but this will require ten years at least to form a
+style: no tongue so easy to acquire a little of, or so difficult to master
+thoroughly, as Italian." On the same page I find the following note: "What
+was rumoured of me in that language? If true, I was unfit for England: if
+false, England was unfit for me:--'There is a world elsewhere.' I have
+never regretted for a moment that country, but often that I ever returned
+to it at all."]
+
+Such, then, is that state of irritability in which men of genius
+participate, whether they be inventors, men of learning, fine writers, or
+artists. It is a state not friendly to equality of temper. In the various
+humours incidental to it, when they are often deeply affected, the cause
+escapes all perception of sympathy. The intellectual malady eludes even
+the tenderness of friendship. At those moments, the lightest injury to the
+feelings, which at another time would make no impression, may produce a
+perturbed state of feeling in the warm temper, or the corroding chagrin of
+a self-wounded spirit. These are moments which claim the encouragements of
+a friendship animated by a high esteem for the intellectual excellence of
+the man of genius; not the general intercourse of society; not the
+insensibility of the dull, nor the levity of the volatile.
+
+Men of genius are often reverenced only where they are known by their
+writings--intellectual beings in the romance of life; in its history, they
+are men! ERASMUS compared them to the great figures in tapestry-work,
+which lose their effect when not seen at a distance. Their foibles and
+their infirmities are obvious to their associates, often only capable of
+discerning these qualities. The defects of great men are the consolation
+of the dunces.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The spirit of literature and the spirit of society.--The Inventors.
+--Society offers seduction and not reward to men of genius.--The notions
+of persons of fashion of men of genius.--The habitudes of the man of
+genius distinct from those of the man of society.--Study, meditation, and
+enthusiasm, the progress of genius.--The disagreement between the men of
+the world and the literary character.
+
+
+The Inventors, who inherited little or nothing from their predecessors,
+appear to have pursued their insulated studies in the full independence of
+their mind and development of their inventive faculty; they stood apart,
+in seclusion, the solitary lights of their age. Such were the founders of
+our literature--Bacon and Hobbes, Newton and Milton. Even so late as the
+days of Dryden, Addison, and Pope, the man of genius drew his circle round
+his intimates; his day was uniform, his habits unbroken; and he was never
+too far removed, nor too long estranged from meditation and reverie: his
+works were the sources of his pleasure ere they became the labours of his
+pride.
+
+But when a more uniform light of knowledge illuminates from all sides, the
+genius of society, made up of so many sorts of genius, becomes greater
+than the genius of the individual who has entirely yielded himself up
+to his solitary art. Hence the character of a man of genius becomes
+subordinate. A conversation age succeeds a studious one; and the family of
+genius, the poet, the painter, and the student, are no longer recluses.
+They mix with their rivals, who are jealous of equality, or with others
+who, incapable of valuing them for themselves alone, rate them but as
+parts of an integral.
+
+The man of genius is now trammelled with the artificial and mechanical
+forms of life; and in too close an intercourse with society, the
+loneliness and raciness of thinking is modified away in its seductive
+conventions. An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life
+constitutes the great interests of a luxuriant and opulent age; but of
+late, while the arts of assembling in large societies have been practised,
+varied by all forms, and pushed on to all excesses, it may become a
+question whether by them our happiness is as much improved, or our
+individual character as well formed as in a society not so heterogeneous
+and unsocial as that crowd termed, with the sort of modesty peculiar to
+our times, "a small party:" the simplicity of parade, the humility of
+pride engendered by the egotism which multiplies itself in proportion to
+the numbers it assembles.
+
+It may, too, be a question whether the literary man and the artist are not
+immolating their genius to society when, in the shadowiness of assumed
+talents--that counterfeiting of all shapes--they lose their real form,
+with the mockery of Proteus. But nets of roses catch their feet, and a
+path, where all the senses are flattered, is now opened to win an
+Epictetus from his hut. The art of multiplying the enjoyments of society
+is discovered in the morning lounge, the evening dinner, and the midnight
+coterie. In frivolous fatigues, and vigils without meditation, perish the
+unvalued hours which, true genius knows, are always too brief for art, and
+too rare to catch its inspirations. Hence so many of our contemporaries,
+whose card-racks are crowded, have produced only flashy fragments.
+Efforts, but not works--they seem to be effects without causes; and as a
+great author, who is not one of them, once observed to me, "They waste a
+barrel of gunpowder in squibs."
+
+And yet it is seduction, and not reward, which mere fashionable society
+offers the man of true genius. He will be sought for with enthusiasm, but
+he cannot escape from his certain fate--that of becoming tiresome to his
+pretended admirers.
+
+At first the idol--shortly he is changed into a victim. He forms,
+indeed, a figure in their little pageant, and is invited as a sort of
+_improvisatore_; but the esteem they concede to him is only a part of the
+system of politeness; and should he be dull in discovering the favourite
+quality of their self-love, or in participating in their volatile tastes,
+he will find frequent opportunities of observing, with the sage at the
+court of Cyprus, that "what he knows is not proper for this place, and
+what is proper for this place he knows not." This society takes little
+personal interest in the literary character. HORACE WALPOLE lets us into
+this secret when writing to another man of fashion, on such a man of
+genius as GRAY--"I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about
+Gray; he is the worst company in the world. From a melancholy turn, from
+living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses
+easily; all his words are measured and chosen, and formed into sentences:
+his writings are admirable--he himself is not agreeable." This volatile
+being in himself personified the quintessence of that society which is
+called "the world," and could not endure that equality of intellect which
+genius exacts. He rejected Chatterton, and quarrelled with every literary
+man and every artist whom he first invited to familiarity--and then hated.
+Witness the fates of Bentley, of Muntz, of Gray, of Cole, and others. Such
+a mind was incapable of appreciating the literary glory on which the
+mighty mind of BURKE was meditating. WALPOLE knew BURKE at a critical
+moment of his life, and he has recorded his own feelings:--"There was a
+young Mr. BURKE who wrote a book, in the style of Lord Bolingbroke, that
+was much admired. He is a sensible man, but has not _worn off his
+authorism yet_, and thinks there is nothing so charming as writers, and to
+be one: _he will know better one of these days_" GRAY and BURKE! What
+mighty men must be submitted to the petrifying sneer--that indifference of
+selfism for great sympathies--of this volatile and heartless man of
+literature and rank!
+
+ That thing of silk,
+ Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk!
+
+The confidential confession of RACINE to his son is remarkable:--"Do not
+think that I am sought after by the great for my dramas; Corneille
+composes nobler verses than mine, but no one notices him, and he only
+pleases by the mouth of the actors. I never allude to my works when with
+men of the world, but I amuse them about matters they like to hear. My
+talent with them consists, not in making them feel that I have any, but in
+showing them that they have." Racine treated the great like the children
+of society; CORNEILLE would not compromise for the tribute he exacted, but
+he consoled himself when, at his entrance into the theatre, the audience
+usually rose to salute him. The great comic genius of France, who indeed
+was a very thoughtful and serious man, addressed a poem to the painter
+MIONARD, expressing his conviction that "the court," by which a Frenchman
+of the court of Louis XIV. meant the society we call "fashionable," is
+fatal to the perfection of art--
+
+ Qui se donne à la cour se dérobe à son art;
+ Un esprit partagé rarement se consomme,
+ Et les emplois de feu demandent tout l'homme.
+
+Has not the fate in society of our reigning literary favourites been
+uniform? Their mayoralty hardly exceeds the year: they are pushed aside to
+put in their place another, who, in his turn, must descend. Such is the
+history of the literary character encountering the perpetual difficulty of
+appearing what he really is not, while he sacrifices to a few, in a
+certain corner of the metropolis, who have long fantastically styled
+themselves "the world," that more dignified celebrity which makes an
+author's name more familiar than his person. To one who appeared
+astonished at the extensive celebrity of BUFFON, the modern Pliny replied,
+"I have passed fifty years at my desk." HAYDN would not yield up to
+society more than those hours which were not devoted to study. These were
+indeed but few: and such were the uniformity and retiredness of his life,
+that "He was for a long time the only musical man in Europe who was
+ignorant of the celebrity of Joseph Haydn." And has not one, the most
+sublime of the race, sung,
+
+ --che seggendo in piuma,
+ In Fama non si vien, nè sotto coltre;
+ Sanza la qual chi sua vita consuma
+ Cotal vestigio in terra di se lascia
+ Qual fummo in aere, ed in acqua la schiuma
+
+ For not on downy plumes, nor under shade
+ Of canopy reposing, Fame is won:
+ Without which, whosoe'er consumes his days,
+ Leaveth such vestige of himself on earth
+ As smoke in air, or foam upon the wave.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Cary's Dante, Canto xxiv.]
+
+But men of genius, in their intercourse with persons of fashion, have a
+secret inducement to court that circle. They feel a perpetual want of
+having the reality of their talents confirmed to themselves, and they
+often step into society to observe in what degree they are objects of
+attention; for, though ever accused of vanity, the greater part of men of
+genius feel that their existence, as such, must depend on the opinion of
+others. This standard is in truth always problematical and variable; yet
+they cannot hope to find a more certain one among their rivals, who at all
+times are adroitly depreciating their brothers, and "dusking" their
+lustre. They discover among those cultivators of literature and the arts
+who have recourse to them for their pleasure, impassioned admirers, rather
+than unmerciful judges--judges who have only time to acquire that degree
+of illumination which is just sufficient to set at ease the fears of these
+claimants of genius.
+
+When literary men assemble together, what mimetic friendships, in their
+mutual corruption! Creatures of intrigue, they borrow other men's eyes,
+and act by feelings often even contrary to their own: they wear a mask on
+their face, and only sing a tune they have caught. Some hierophant in
+their mysteries proclaims their elect whom they have to initiate, and
+their profane who are to stand apart under their ban. They bend to the
+spirit of the age, but they do not elevate the public to them; they care
+not for truth, but only study to produce effect, and they do nothing for
+fame but what obtains an instant purpose. Yet their fame is not therefore
+the more real, for everything connected with fashion becomes obsolete. Her
+ear has a great susceptibility of weariness, and her eye rolls for
+incessant novelty. Never was she earnest for anything. Men's minds with
+her become tarnished and old-fashioned as furniture. But the steams of
+rich dinners, the eye which sparkles with the wines of France, the
+luxurious night which flames with more heat and brilliancy than God has
+made the day, this is the world the man of coterie-celebrity has chosen;
+and the Epicurean, as long as his senses do not cease to act, laughs at
+the few who retire to the solitary midnight lamp. Posthumous fame is--a
+nothing! Such men live like unbelievers in a future state, and their
+narrow calculating spirit coldly dies in their artificial world: but true
+genius looks at a nobler source of its existence; it catches inspiration
+in its insulated studies; and to the great genius, who feels how his
+present is necessarily connected with his future celebrity, posthumous
+fame is a reality, for the sense acts upon him!
+
+The habitudes of genius, before genius loses its freshness in this
+society, are the mould in which the character is cast; and these, in spite
+of all the disguise of the man, will make him a distinct being from the
+man of society. Those who have assumed the literary character often for
+purposes very distinct from literary ones, imagine that their circle is
+the public; but in this factitious public all their interests, their
+opinions, and even their passions, are temporary, and the admirers with
+the admired pass away with their season. "It is not sufficient that we
+speak the same language," says a witty philosopher, "but we must learn
+their dialect; we must think as they think, and we must echo their
+opinions, as we act by imitation." Let the man of genius then dread to
+level himself to the mediocrity of feeling and talent required in such
+circles of society, lest he become one of themselves; he will soon find
+that to think like them will in time become to act like them. But he who
+in solitude adopts no transient feelings, and reflects no artificial
+lights, who is only himself, possesses an immense advantage: he has not
+attached importance to what is merely local and fugitive, but listens to
+interior truths, and fixes on the immutable nature of things. He is the
+man of every age. Malebranche has observed, that "It is not indeed thought
+to be charitable to disturb common opinions, because it is not truth which
+unites society as it exists so much as opinion and custom:" a principle
+which the world would not, I think, disagree with; but which tends to
+render folly wisdom itself, and to make error immortal.
+
+Ridicule is the light scourge of society, and the terror of genius.
+Ridicule surrounds him with her chimeras, which, like the shadowy monsters
+opposing æneas, are impalpable to his strokes: but remember when the sibyl
+bade the hero proceed without noticing them, he found these airy nothings
+as harmless as they were unreal. The habits of the literary character
+will, however, be tried by the men and women of the world by their own
+standard: they have no other; the salt of ridicule gives a poignancy to
+their deficient comprehension, and their perfect ignorance, of the persons
+or things which are the subjects of their ingenious animadversions. The
+habits of the literary character seem inevitably repulsive to persons of
+the world. VOLTAIRE, and his companion, the scientific Madame DE CHATELET,
+she who introduced Newton to the French nation, lived entirely devoted to
+literary pursuits, and their habits were strictly literary. It happened
+once that this learned pair dropped unexpectedly into a fashionable circle
+in the _château_ of a French nobleman. A Madame de Staël, the _persifleur_
+in office of Madame Du Deffand, has copiously narrated the whole affair.
+They arrived at midnight like two famished spectres, and there was some
+trouble to put them to supper and bed. They are called apparitions,
+because they were never visible by day, only at ten at night; for the one
+is busied in describing great deeds, and the other in commenting on
+Newton. Like other apparitions, they are uneasy companions: they will
+neither play nor walk; they will not dissipate their mornings with the
+charming circle about them, nor allow the charming circle to break into
+their studies. Voltaire and Madame de Chatelet would have suffered the
+same pain in being forced to an abstinence of their regular studies, as
+this circle of "agréables" would have at the loss of their meals and their
+airings. However, the _persifleur_ declares they were ciphers "en
+société," adding no value to the number, and to which their learned
+writings bear no reference.
+
+But if this literary couple would not play, what was worse, Voltaire
+poured out a vehement declamation against a fashionable species of
+gambling, which appears to have made them all stare. But Madame de
+Chatelet is the more frequent victim of our _persifleur_. The learned lady
+would change her apartment--for it was too noisy, and it had smoke without
+fire--which last was her emblem. "She is reviewing her _Principia_; an
+exercise she repeats every year, without which precaution they might
+escape from her, and get so far away that she might never find them again.
+I believe that her head in respect to them is a house of imprisonment
+rather than the place of their birth; so that she is right to watch them
+closely; and she prefers the fresh air of this occupation to our
+amusements, and persists in her invisibility till night-time. She has six
+or seven tables in her apartments, for she wants them of all sizes;
+immense ones to spread out her papers, solid ones to hold her instruments,
+lighter ones, &c. Yet with all this she could not escape from the accident
+which happened to Philip II., after passing the night in writing, when a
+bottle of ink fell over the despatches; but the lady did not imitate the
+moderation of the prince; indeed, she had not written on State affairs,
+and what was spoilt in her room was algebra, much more difficult to
+copy out." Here is a pair of portraits of a great poet and a great
+mathematician, whose habits were discordant with the fashionable circle in
+which they resided--the representation is just, for it is by one of the
+coterie itself.
+
+Study, meditation, and enthusiasm,--this is the progress of genius, and
+these cannot be the habits of him who lingers till he can only live among
+polished crowds; who, if he bear about him the consciousness of genius,
+will still be acting under their influences. And perhaps there never was
+one of this class of men who had not either first entirely formed himself
+in solitude, or who amidst society will not be often breaking out to seek
+for himself. WILKES, no longer touched by the fervours of literary and
+patriotic glory, suffered life to melt away as a domestic voluptuary; and
+then it was that he observed with some surprise of the great Earl of
+CHATHAM, that he sacrificed every pleasure of social life, even in youth,
+to his great pursuit of eloquence. That ardent character studied Barrow's
+Sermons so often as to repeat them from memory, and could even read twice
+from beginning to end Bailey's Dictionary; these are little facts which
+belong only to great minds! The earl himself acknowledged an artifice he
+practised in his intercourse with society, for he said, "when he was
+young, he always came late into company, and left it early." VITTORIO
+ALFIERI, and a brother-spirit, our own noble poet, were rarely seen amidst
+the brilliant circle in which they were born. The workings of their
+imagination were perpetually emancipating them, and one deep loneliness of
+feeling proudly insulated them among the unimpassioned triflers of their
+rank. They preserved unbroken the unity of their character, in constantly
+escaping from the processional _spectacle_ of society.[A] It is no trivial
+observation of another noble writer, Lord SHAFTESBURY, that "it may happen
+that a person may be so much the worse author, for being the finer
+gentleman."
+
+[Footnote A: In a note which Lord BYRON has written in a copy of this work
+his lordship says, "I fear this was not the case; I have been but too much
+in that circle, especially in 1812-13-14."
+
+To the expression of "one deep loneliness of feeling," his lordship has
+marked in the margin "True." I am gratified to confirm the theory of my
+ideas of the man of genius, by the practical experience of the greatest of
+our age.]
+
+An extraordinary instance of this disagreement between the man of the
+world and the literary character, we find in a philosopher seated on a
+throne. The celebrated JULIAN stained the imperial purple with an author's
+ink; and when he resided among the Antiochians, his unalterable character
+shocked that volatile and luxurious race. He slighted the plaudits of
+their theatre, he abhorred their dances and their horse-races, he was
+abstinent even at a festival, and incorrupt himself, perpetually
+admonished the dissipated citizens of their impious abandonment of the
+laws of their country. The Antiochians libelled their emperor, and
+petulantly lampooned his beard, which the philosopher carelessly wore
+neither perfumed nor curled. Julian, scorning to inflict a sharper
+punishment, pointed at them his satire of "the Misopogon, or the
+Antiochian; the Enemy of the Beard," where, amidst irony and invective,
+the literary monarch bestows on himself many exquisite and characteristic
+touches. All that the persons of fashion alleged against the literary
+character, Julian unreservedly confesses--his undressed beard and
+awkwardness, his obstinacy, his unsociable habits, his deficient tastes,
+while at the same time he represents his good qualities as so many
+extravagances. But, in this Cervantic pleasantry of self-reprehension, the
+imperial philosopher has not failed to show this light and corrupt people
+that the reason he could not possibly resemble them, existed in the
+unhappy circumstance of having been subject to too strict an education
+under a family tutor, who had never suffered him to swerve from the one
+right way, and who (additional misfortune!) had inspired him with such a
+silly reverence for Plato and Socrates, Aristotle and Theophrastus, that
+he had been induced to make them his models. "Whatever manners," says the
+emperor, "I may have previously contracted, whether gentle or boorish, it
+is impossible for me now to alter or unlearn. Habit is said to be a second
+nature; to oppose it is irksome, but to counteract _the study of more than
+thirty years_ is extremely difficult, especially when it has been imbibed
+with so much attention."
+
+And what if men of genius, relinquishing their habits, could do this
+violence to their nature, should we not lose the original for a factitious
+genius, and spoil one race without improving the other? If nature and
+habit, that second nature which prevails even over the first, have created
+two beings distinctly different, what mode of existence shall ever
+assimilate them? Antipathies and sympathies, those still occult causes,
+however concealed, will break forth at an unguarded moment. Clip the wings
+of an eagle that he may roost among domestic fowls,--at some unforeseen
+moment his pinions will overshadow and terrify his tiny associates, for
+"the feathered king" will be still musing on the rock and the cloud.
+
+The man of genius will be restive even in his trammelled paces. Too
+impatient amidst the heartless courtesies of society, and little practised
+in the minuter attentions, he has rarely sacrificed to the unlaughing
+graces of Lord Chesterfield. Plato ingeniously compares Socrates to the
+gallipots of the Athenian apothecaries; the grotesque figures of owls and
+apes were painted on their exterior, but they contained within precious
+balsams. The man of genius amidst many a circle may exclaim with
+Themistocles, "I cannot fiddle, but I can make a little village a great
+city;" and with Corneille, he may be allowed to smile at his own
+deficiencies, and even disdain to please in certain conventional manners,
+asserting that "wanting all these things, he was not the less Corneille."
+
+But with the great thinkers and students, their character is still more
+obdurate. ADAM SMITH could never free himself from the embarrassed manners
+of a recluse; he was often absent, and his grave and formal conversation
+made him seem distant and reserved, when in fact no man had warmer
+feelings for his intimates. One who knew Sir ISAAC NEWTON tells us, that
+"he would sometimes be silent and thoughtful, and look all the while as if
+he were saying his prayers." A French princess, desirous of seeing the
+great moralist NICOLLE, experienced an inconceivable disappointment when
+the moral instructor, entering with the most perplexing bow imaginable,
+silently sank into his chair. The interview promoted no conversation, and
+the retired student, whose elevated spirit might have endured martyrdom,
+shrunk with timidity in the unaccustomed honour of conversing with a
+princess and having nothing to say. Observe Hume thrown into a most
+ridiculous attitude by a woman of talents and coterie celebrity. Our
+philosopher was called on to perform his part in one of those inventions
+of the hour to which the fashionable, like children in society, have
+sometimes resorted to attract their world by the rumour of some new
+extravagance. In the present, poor HUME was to represent a sultan on a
+sofa, sitting between two slaves, who were the prettiest and most
+vivacious of Parisians. Much was anticipated from this literary
+exhibition. The two slaves were ready at repartee, but the utter
+simplicity of the sultan displayed a blockishness which blunted all edge.
+The phlegmatic metaphysician and historian only gave a sign of life by
+repeating the same awkward gesture, and the same ridiculous exclamation,
+without end. One of the fair slaves soon discovered the unchangeable
+nature of the forlorn philosopher, impatiently exclaiming, "I guessed as
+much, never was there such a calf of a man!"--"Since this affair," adds
+Madame d'Epinay, "Hume is at present banished to the class of spectators."
+The philosopher, indeed, had formed a more correct conception of his own
+character than the volatile sylphs of the Parisian circle, for in writing
+to the Countess de Boufflers, on an invitation to Paris, he said, "I have
+rusted on amid books and study; have been little engaged in the active,
+and not much in the pleasurable, scenes of life; and am more accustomed to
+a select society than to general companies." If Hume made a ridiculous
+figure in these circles, the error did not lie on the side of that
+cheerful and profound philosopher.--This subject leads our inquiries to
+the nature of _the conversations of men of genius_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Conversations of men of genius.--Their deficient agreeableness may result
+from qualities which conduce to their greatness.--Slow-minded men not the
+dullest.--The conversationists not the ablest writers.--Their true
+excellence in conversation consists of associations with their pursuits.
+
+
+In conversation the sublime DANTE was taciturn or satirical; BUTLER sullen
+or caustic; GRAY and ALFIERI seldom talked or smiled; DESCARTES, whose
+habits had formed him for solitude and meditation, was silent; ROUSSEAU
+was remarkably trite in conversation, not an idea, not a word of fancy or
+eloquence warmed him; ADDISON and MOLIERE in society were only observers;
+and DRYDEN has very honestly told us, "My conversation is slow and dull,
+my humour saturnine and reserved; in short, I am none of those who
+endeavour to break jests in company, or make repartees." POPE had lived
+among "the great," not only in rank but in intellect, the most delightful
+conversationists; but the poet felt that he could not contribute to these
+seductive pleasures, and at last confessed that he could amuse and
+instruct himself much more by another means: "As much company as I have
+kept, and as much as I love it, I love reading better, and would rather be
+employed in reading, than in the most agreeable conversation." Pope's
+conversation, as preserved by Spence, was sensible; and it would seem that
+he had never said but one witty thing in his whole life, for only one has
+been recorded. It was ingeniously said of VAUCANSON, that he was as much
+an automaton as any which he made. HOGARTH and SWIFT, who looked on the
+circles of society with eyes of inspiration, were absent in company; but
+their grossness and asperity did not prevent the one from being the
+greatest of comic painters, nor the other as much a creator of manners in
+his way. Genius, even in society, is pursuing its own operations, and it
+would cease to be itself were it always to act like others.
+
+Men of genius who are habitually eloquent, who have practised conversation
+as an art, for some, even sacrifice their higher pursuits to this
+perishable art of acting, have indeed excelled, and in the most opposite
+manner. HORNE TOOKE finely discriminates the wit in conversation of
+SHERIDAN and CURRAN, after having passed an evening in their company.
+"Sheridan's wit was like steel highly polished and sharpened for display
+and use; Curran's was a mine of virgin gold, incessantly crumbling away
+from its own richness." CHARLES BUTLER, whose reminiscences of his
+illustrious contemporaries are derived from personal intercourse, has
+correctly described the familiar conversations of PITT, FOX, and BURKE:
+"The most intimate friends of Mr. Fox complained of his too frequent
+ruminating silence. Mr. Pitt talked, and his talk was fascinating. Mr.
+Burke's conversation was rambling, but splendid and instructive beyond
+comparison." Let me add, that the finest genius of our times, is also the
+most delightful man; he is that rarest among the rare of human beings,
+whom to have known is nearly to adore; whom to have seen, to have heard,
+forms an era in our life; whom youth remembers with enthusiasm, and whose
+presence the men and women of "the world" feel like a dream from which
+they would not awaken. His _bonhomie_ attaches our hearts to him by its
+simplicity; his legendary conversation makes us, for a moment, poets like
+himself.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: This was written under the inspiration of a night's
+conversation, or rather listening to Sir WALTER SCOTT.--I cannot bring
+myself to erase what now, alas! has closed in the silence of a swift
+termination of his glorious existence.]
+
+But that deficient agreeableness in social life with which men of genius
+have been often reproached, may really result from the nature of those
+qualities which conduce to the greatness of their public character. A
+thinker whose mind is saturated with knowledge on a particular subject,
+will be apt to deliver himself authoritatively; but he will then pass for
+a dogmatist: should he hesitate, that he may correct an equivocal
+expression, or bring nearer a remote idea, he is in danger of sinking
+into pedantry or rising into genius. Even the fulness of knowledge
+has its tediousness. "It is rare," said MALEBRANCHE, "that those who
+meditate profoundly can explain well the objects they have meditated on;
+for they hesitate when they have to speak; they are scrupulous to convey
+false ideas or use inaccurate terms. They do not choose to speak, like
+others, merely for the sake of talking." A vivid and sudden perception of
+truth, or a severe scrutiny after it, may elevate the voice, and burst
+with an irruptive heat on the subdued tone of conversation. These men are
+too much in earnest for the weak or the vain. Such seriousness kills their
+feeble animal spirits. SMEATON, a creative genius of his class, had a
+warmth of expression which seemed repulsive to many: it arose from an
+intense application of mind, which impelled him to break out hastily when
+anything was said that did not accord with his ideas. Persons who are
+obstinate till they can give up their notions with a safe conscience, are
+troublesome intimates. Often too the cold tardiness of decision is only
+the strict balancing of scepticism or candour, while obscurity as
+frequently may arise from the deficiency of previous knowledge in the
+listener. It was said that NEWTON in conversation did not seem to
+understand his own writings, and it was supposed that his memory had
+decayed. The fact, however, was not so; and Pemberton makes a curious
+distinction, which accounts for Newton _not always being ready to speak_
+on subjects of which he was the sole master. "Inventors seem to treasure
+up in their own minds what they have found out, after another manner than
+those do the same things that have not this inventive faculty. The former,
+when they have occasion to produce their knowledge, in some means are
+obliged immediately to investigate part of what they want. For this they
+are not equally fit at all times; and thus it has often happened, that
+such as retain things chiefly by means of a very strong memory, have
+appeared off-hand more expert than the discoverers themselves."
+
+A peculiar characteristic in the conversations of men of genius, which has
+often injured them when the listeners were not intimately acquainted with
+the men, are those sports of a vacant mind, those sudden impulses to throw
+out paradoxical opinions, and to take unexpected views of things in some
+humour of the moment. These fanciful and capricious ideas are the
+grotesque images of a playful mind, and are at least as frequently
+misrepresented as they are misunderstood. But thus the cunning Philistines
+are enabled to triumph over the strong and gifted man, because in the hour
+of confidence, and in the abandonment of the mind, he had laid his head in
+the lap of wantonness, and taught them how he might be shorn of his
+strength. Dr. JOHNSON appears often to have indulged this amusement, both
+in good and ill humour. Even such a calm philosopher as ADAM SMITH, as
+well as such a child of imagination as BURNS, were remarked for this
+ordinary habit of men of genius; which, perhaps, as often originates in a
+gentle feeling of contempt for their auditors, as from any other cause.
+Many years after having written the above, I discovered two recent
+confessions which confirm the principle. A literary character, the late
+Dr. LEYDEN, acknowledged, that "in conversation I often verge so nearly on
+absurdity, that I know it is perfectly easy to misconceive me, as well as
+to misrepresent me." And Miss Edgeworth, in describing her father's
+conversation, observes that, "his openness went too far, almost to
+imprudence; exposing him not only to be misrepresented, but to be
+misunderstood. Those who did not know him intimately, often took literally
+what was either said in sport, or spoken with the intention of making a
+strong impression for some good purpose." CUMBERLAND, whose conversation
+was delightful, happily describes the species I have noticed. "Nonsense
+talked by men of wit and understanding in the hour of relaxation is of the
+very finest essence of conviviality, and a treat delicious to those who
+have the sense to comprehend it; but it implies a trust in the company not
+always to be risked." The truth is, that many, eminent for their genius,
+have been remarkable in society for a simplicity and playfulness almost
+infantine. Such was the gaiety of Hume, such the _bonhomie_ of Fox; and
+one who had long lived in a circle of men of genius in the last age, was
+disposed to consider this infantine simplicity as characteristic of
+genius. It is a solitary grace, which can never lend its charm to a man of
+the world, whose purity of mind has long been lost in a hacknied
+intercourse with everything exterior to himself.
+
+But above all, what most offends, is that freedom of opinion which a man
+of genius can no more divest himself of, than of the features of his face.
+But what if this intractable obstinacy be only resistance of character?
+Burns never could account to himself why, "though when he had a mind he
+was pretty generally beloved, he could never get the art of commanding
+respect," and imagined it was owing to his deficiency in what Sterne calls
+"that understrapping virtue of discretion;" "I am so apt to a _lapsus
+linguæ_" says this honest sinner. Amidst the stupidity of a formal
+circle, and the inanity of triflers, however such men may conceal their
+impatience, one of them has forcibly described the reaction of this
+suppressed feeling: "The force with which it burst out when the pressure
+was taken off, gave the measure of the constraint which had been endured."
+Erasmus, that learned and charming writer, who was blessed with the genius
+which could enliven a folio, has well described himself, _sum naturâ
+propensior ad jocos quam fortasse deceat_:--more constitutionally inclined
+to pleasantry than, as he is pleased to add, perhaps became him. We know
+in his intimacy with Sir Thomas More, that Erasmus was a most exhilarating
+companion; yet in his intercourse with the great he was not fortunate. At
+the first glance he saw through affectation and parade, his praise of
+folly was too ironical, and his freedom carried with it no pleasantry for
+those who knew not to prize a laughing sage.
+
+In conversation the operations of the intellect with some are habitually
+slow, but there will be found no difference between the result of
+their perceptions and those of a quicker nature; and hence it is that
+slow-minded men are not, as men of the world imagine, always the dullest.
+NICOLLE said of a scintillant wit, "He vanquishes me in the drawing-room,
+but surrenders to me at discretion on the stairs." Many a great wit has
+thought the wit it was too late to speak, and many a great reasoner has
+only reasoned when his opponent has disappeared. Conversation with such
+men is a losing game; and it is often lamentable to observe how men of
+genius are reduced to a state of helplessness from not commanding their
+attention, while inferior intellects habitually are found to possess what
+is called "a ready mind." For this reason some, as it were in despair,
+have shut themselves up in silence. A lively Frenchman, in describing the
+distinct sorts of conversation of his literary friends, among whom was Dr.
+Franklin, energetically hits off that close observer and thinker, wary,
+even in society, by noting down "the silence of the celebrated Franklin."
+We learn from Cumberland that Lord Mansfield did not promote that
+conversation which gave him any pains to carry on. He resorted to
+society for simple relaxation, and could even find a pleasure in dulness
+when accompanied with placidity. "It was a kind of cushion to his
+understanding," observes the wit. CHAUCER, like LA FONTAINE, was more
+facetious in his tales than in his conversation; for the Countess of
+Pembroke used to rally him, observing that his silence was more agreeable
+to her than his talk. TASSO'S conversation, which his friend Manso has
+attempted to preserve for us, was not agreeable. In company he sat
+absorbed in thought, with a melancholy air; and it was on one of these
+occasions that a person present observing that this conduct was indicative
+of madness, that TASSO, who had heard him, looking on him without emotion,
+asked whether he was ever acquainted with a madman who knew when to hold
+his tongue! Malebranche tells us that one of these mere men of learning,
+who can only venture to praise antiquity, once said, "I have seen
+DESCARTES; I knew him, and frequently have conversed with him; he was a
+good sort of man, and was not wanting in sense, but he had nothing
+extraordinary in him." Had Aristotle spoken French instead of Greek, and
+had this man frequently conversed with him, unquestionably he would not
+have discovered, even in this idol of antiquity, anything extraordinary.
+Two thousand years would have been wanting for our learned critic's
+perceptions.
+
+It is remarkable that the conversationists have rarely proved to be the
+abler writers. He whose fancy is susceptible of excitement in the presence
+of his auditors, making the minds of men run with his own, seizing on the
+first impressions, and touching the shadows and outlines of things--with a
+memory where all lies ready at hand, quickened by habitual associations,
+and varying with all those extemporary changes and fugitive colours which
+melt away in the rainbow of conversation; with that wit, which is only wit
+in one place, and for a time; with that vivacity of animal spirits which
+often exists separately from the more retired intellectual powers--this
+man can strike out wit by habit, and pour forth a stream of phrase which
+has sometimes been imagined to require only to be written down to be read
+with the same delight with which it was heard; but he cannot print his
+tone, nor his air and manner, nor the contagion of his hardihood. All the
+while we were not sensible of the flutter of his ideas, the incoherence of
+his transitions, his vague notions, his doubtful assertions, and his
+meagre knowledge. A pen is the extinguisher of this luminary.
+
+A curious contrast occurred between BUFFON and his friend MONTBELLIARD,
+who was associated in his great work. The one possessed the reverse
+qualities of the other: BUFFON, whose style in his composition is
+elaborate and declamatory, was in conversation coarse and careless.
+Pleading that conversation with him was only a relaxation, he rather
+sought than avoided the idiom and slang of the mob, when these seemed
+expressive and facetious; while MONTBELLIARD threw every charm of
+animation over his delightful talk: but when he took his seat at the rival
+desk of Buffon, an immense interval separated them; he whose tongue
+dropped the honey and the music of the bee, handled a pen of iron; while
+Buffon's was the soft pencil of the philosophical painter of nature.
+COWLEY and KILLEGREW furnish another instance. COWLEY was embarrassed in
+conversation, and had no quickness in argument or reply: a mind pensive
+and elegant could not be struck at to catch fire: while with KILLEGREW the
+sparkling bubbles of his fancy rose and dropped.[A] When the delightful
+conversationist wrote, the deception ceased. Denham, who knew them both,
+hit off the difference between them:
+
+ Had Cowley ne'er spoke, Killegrew ne'er writ,
+ Combined in one they had made a matchless wit.
+
+[Footnote A: Killegrew's eight plays, upon which his character as an
+author rests, have not been republished with one exception--_the Parson's
+Wedding_--which is given in Dodsley's collection; and which is sufficient
+to satisfy curiosity. He was a favourite with Charles the Second, and had
+great influence with him. Some of his witty court jests are preserved, but
+are too much imbued with the spirit of the age to be quoted here. He was
+sometimes useful by devoting his satiric sallies to urge the king to his
+duties.--ED.]
+
+Not, however, that a man of genius does not throw out many things in
+conversation which have only been found admirable when the public
+possessed them. The public often widely differ from the individual, and a
+century's opinion may intervene between them. The fate of genius is
+sometimes that of the Athenian sculptor, who submitted his colossal
+Minerva to a private party for inspection. Before the artist they trembled
+for his daring chisel, and the man of genius smiled; behind him they
+calumniated, and the man of genius forgave. Once fixed in a public place,
+in the eyes of the whole city, the statue was the Divinity! There is a
+certain distance at which opinions, as well as statues, must be viewed.
+
+But enough of those defects of men of genius which often attend their
+conversations. Must we then bow to authorial dignity, and kiss hands,
+because they are inked? Must we bend to the artist, who considers us as
+nothing unless we are canvas or marble under his hands? Are there not men
+of genius the grace of society and the charm of their circle? Fortunate
+men! more blest than their brothers; but for this, they are not the more
+men of genius, nor the others less. To how many of the ordinary intimates
+of a superior genius who complain of his defects might one say, "Do his
+productions not delight and sometimes surprise you?--You are silent! I beg
+your pardon; the _public_ has informed you of a great name; you would not
+otherwise have perceived the precious talent of your neighbour: you know
+little of your friend but his _name_." The personal familiarity of
+ordinary minds with a man of genius has often produced a ludicrous
+prejudice. A Scotchman, to whom the name of _a_ Dr. Robertson had
+travelled down, was curious to know who he was.--"Your neighbour!"--But he
+could not persuade himself that the man whom he conversed with was the
+great historian of his country. Even a good man could not believe in the
+announcement of the Messiah, from the same sort of prejudice: "Can there
+anything good come out of Nazareth?"
+
+Suffer a man of genius to be such as nature and habit have formed him, and
+he will then be the most interesting companion; then will you see nothing
+but his character. AKENSIDE, in conversation with select friends, often
+touched by a romantic enthusiasm, would pass in review those eminent
+ancients whom he loved; he imbued with his poetic faculty even the details
+of their lives; and seemed another Plato while he poured libations to
+their memory in the language of Plato, among those whose studies and
+feelings were congenial with his own. ROMNEY, with a fancy entirely his
+own, would give vent to his effusions, uttered in a hurried accent and
+elevated tone, and often accompanied by tears, to which by constitution he
+was prone; thus Cumberland, from personal intimacy, describes the
+conversation of this man of genius. Even the temperate sensibility
+of HUME was touched by the bursts of feeling of ROUSSEAU; who, he says,
+"in conversation kindles often to a degree of heat which looks like
+inspiration." BARRY, that unhappy genius! was the most repulsive of men in
+his exterior. The vehemence of his language, the wildness of his glance,
+his habit of introducing vulgar oaths, which, by some unlucky association
+of habit, served him as expletives and interjections, communicated even a
+horror to some. A pious and a learned lady, who had felt intolerable
+uneasiness in his presence, did not, however, leave this man of genius
+that very evening without an impression that she had never heard so divine
+a man in her life. The conversation happening to turn on that principle of
+benevolence which pervades Christianity, and on the meekness of the
+Founder, it gave BARRY an opportunity of opening on the character of Jesus
+with that copiousness of heart and mind which, once heard, could never be
+forgotten. That artist indeed had long in his meditations an ideal head of
+Christ, which he was always talking of executing: "It is here!" he would
+cry, striking his head. That which baffled the invention, as we are told,
+of Leonardo da Vinci, who left his Christ headless, having exhausted his
+creative faculty among the apostles, this imaginative picture of the
+mysterious union of a divine and human nature, never ceased, even when
+conversing, to haunt the reveries of BARRY.
+
+There are few authors and artists who are not eloquently instructive on
+that class of knowledge or that department of art which reveals the
+mastery of their life. Their conversations of this nature affect the mind
+to a distant period of life. Who, having listened to such, has forgotten
+what a man of genius has said at such moments? Who dwells not on the
+single thought or the glowing expression, stamped in the heat of the
+moment, which came from its source? Then the mind of genius rises as the
+melody of the Æolian harp, when the winds suddenly sweep over the strings
+--it comes and goes--and leaves a sweetness beyond the harmonies of art.
+
+The _Miscellanea_ of POLITIAN are not only the result of his studies in
+the rich library of Lorenzo de' Medici, but of conversations which had
+passed in those rides which Lorenzo, accompanied by Politian, preferred to
+the pomp of cavalcades. When the Cardinal de Cabassolle strayed with
+PETRARCH about his valley in many a wandering discourse, they sometimes
+extended their walks to such a distance, that the servant sought them in
+vain to announce the dinner-hour, and found them returning in the evening.
+When HELVETIUS enjoyed the social conversation of a literary friend, he
+described it as "a chase of ideas." Such are the literary conversations
+which HORNE TOOKE alluded to, when he said "I assure you, we find more
+difficulty to finish than to begin our conversations."
+
+The natural and congenial conversations of men of letters and of artists
+must then be those which are associated with their pursuits, and these are
+of a different complexion with the talk of men of the world, the objects
+of which are drawn from the temporary passions of party-men, or the
+variable _on dits_ of triflers--topics studiously rejected from these more
+tranquillising conversations. Diamonds can only be polished by their own
+dust, and are only shaped by the friction of other diamonds; and so it
+happens with literary men and artists.
+
+A meeting of this nature has been recorded by CICERO, which himself and
+ATTICUS had with VARRO in the country. Varro arriving from Rome in their
+neighbourhood somewhat fatigued, had sent a messenger to his friends. "As
+soon as we had heard these tidings," says Cicero, "we could not delay
+hastening to see one who was attached to us by the same pursuits and by
+former friendship." They set off, but found Varro half way, urged by the
+same eager desire to join them. They conducted him to Cicero's villa.
+Here, while Cicero was inquiring after the news of Rome, Atticus
+interrupted the political rival of Cæsar, observing, "Let us leave off
+inquiring after things which cannot be heard without pain. Rather ask
+about what we know, for Varro's muses are longer silent than they used to
+be, yet surely he has not forsaken them, but rather conceals what he
+writes."--"By no means!" replied Varro, "for I deem him to be a whimsical
+man to write what he wishes to suppress. I have indeed a great work in
+hand (on the Latin language), long designed for Cicero." The conversation
+then took its natural turn by Atticus having got rid of the political
+anxiety of Cicero. Such, too, were the conversations which passed at the
+literary residence of the Medici family, which was described, with as
+much truth as fancy, as "the Lyceum of philosophy, the Arcadia of poets,
+and the Academy of painters." We have a pleasing instance of such a
+meeting of literary friends in those conversations which passed in POPE'S
+garden, where there was often a remarkable union of nobility and literary
+men. There Thomson, Mallet, Gay, Hooke, and Glover met Cobham, Bathurst,
+Chesterfield, Lyttleton, and other lords; there some of these poets found
+patrons, and POPE himself discovered critics. The contracted views of
+Spence have unfortunately not preserved these literary conversations, but
+a curious passage has dropped from the pen of Lord BOLINGBROKE, in what
+his lordship calls "a letter to Pope," often probably passed over among
+his political tracts. It breathes the spirit of those delightful
+conversations. "My thoughts," writes his lordship, "in what order soever
+they flow, shall be communicated to you just _as they pass through my
+mind_--just as they used to be when _we conversed together_ on these or
+any other subject; when _we sauntered alone_, or as we have often done
+with good Arbuthnot, and the jocose Dean of St. Patrick, among the
+_multiplied scenes of your little garden._ The theatre is large enough for
+my ambition." Such a scene opens a beautiful subject for a curious
+portrait-painter. These literary groups in the garden of Pope, sauntering,
+or divided in confidential intercourse, would furnish a scene of literary
+repose and enjoyment among some of the most illustrious names in our
+literature.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Literary solitude.--Its necessity.--Its pleasures.--Of visitors by
+profession.--Its inconveniences.
+
+
+The literary character is reproached with an extreme passion for
+retirement, cultivating those insulating habits, which, while they are
+great interruptions, and even weakeners, of domestic happiness, induce at
+the same time in public life to a secession from its cares, and an
+avoidance of its active duties. Yet the vacancies of retired men are
+eagerly filled by the many unemployed men of the world happily framed for
+its business. We do not hear these accusations raised against the painter
+who wears away his days by his easel, or the musician by the side of his
+instrument; and much less should we against the legal and the commercial
+character; yet all these are as much withdrawn from public and private
+life as the literary character. The desk is as insulating as the library.
+Yet the man who is working for his individual interest is more highly
+estimated than the retired student, whose disinterested pursuits are at
+least more profitable to the world than to himself. La Bruyère discovered
+the world's erroneous estimate of literary labour: "There requires a
+better name," he says, "to be bestowed on the leisure (the idleness he
+calls it) of the literary character,--to meditate, to compose, to read and
+to be tranquil, should be called _working_." But so invisible is the
+progress of intellectual pursuits and so rarely are the objects palpable
+to the observers, that the literary character appears to be denied for his
+pursuits, what cannot be refused to every other. That unremitting
+application and unbroken series of their thoughts, admired in every
+profession, is only complained of in that one whose professors with so
+much sincerity mourn over the brevity of life, which has often closed on
+them while sketching their works.
+
+It is, however, only in solitude that the genius of eminent men has been
+formed. There their first thoughts sprang, and there it will become them
+to find their last: for the solitude of old age--and old age must be often
+in solitude--may be found the happiest with the literary character.
+Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the true parent of
+genius. In all ages solitude has been called for--has been flown to. No
+considerable work was ever composed till its author, like an ancient
+magician, first retired to the grove, or to the closet, to invocate. When
+genius languishes in an irksome solitude among crowds, that is the moment
+to fly into seclusion and meditation. There is a society in the deepest
+solitude; in all the men of genius of the past
+
+ First of your kind, Society divine!
+
+and in themselves; for there only can they indulge in the romances of
+their soul, and there only can they occupy themselves in their dreams and
+their vigils, and, with the morning, fly without interruption to the
+labour they had reluctantly quitted. If there be not periods when they
+shall allow their days to melt harmoniously into each other, if they do
+not pass whole weeks together in their study, without intervening
+absences, they will not be admitted into the last recess of the Muses.
+Whether their glory come from researches, or from enthusiasm, time, with
+not a feather ruffled on his wings, time alone opens discoveries and
+kindles meditation. This desert of solitude, so vast and so dreary to the
+man of the world, to the man of genius is the magical garden of Armida,
+whose enchantments arose amidst solitude, while solitude was everywhere
+among those enchantments.
+
+Whenever MICHAEL ANGELO, that "divine madman," as Richardson once wrote on
+the back of one of his drawings, was meditating on some great design, he
+closed himself up from the world, "Why do you lead so solitary a life?"
+asked a friend. "Art," replied the sublime artist, "Art is a jealous god;
+it requires the whole and entire man." During his mighty labour in the
+Sistine Chapel, he refused to have any communication with any person even
+at his own house. Such undisturbed and solitary attention is demanded even
+by undoubted genius as the price of performance. How then shall we deem of
+that feebler race who exult in occasional excellence, and who so often
+deceive themselves by mistaking the evanescent flashes of genius for that
+holier flame which burns on its altar, because the fuel is incessantly
+supplied?
+
+We observe men of genius, in public situations, sighing for this solitude.
+Amidst the impediments of the world, they are doomed to view their
+intellectual banquet often rising before them, like some fairy delusion,
+never to taste it. The great VERULAM often complained of the disturbances
+of his public life, and rejoiced in the occasional retirement he stole
+from public affairs. "And now, because I am in the country, I will send
+you some of my country fruits, which with me are good meditations; when I
+am in the city, they are choked with business." Lord CLARENDON, whose life
+so happily combined the contemplative with the active powers of man,
+dwells on three periods of retirement which he enjoyed; he always took
+pleasure in relating the great tranquillity of spirit experienced during
+his solitude at Jersey, where for more than two years, employed on his
+history, he daily wrote "one sheet of large paper with his own hand." At
+the close of his life, his literary labours in his other retirements are
+detailed with a proud satisfaction. Each of his solitudes occasioned a new
+acquisition; to one he owed the Spanish, to another the French, and to a
+third the Italian literature. The public are not yet acquainted with the
+fertility of Lord Clarendon's literary labours. It was not vanity that
+induced Scipio to declare of solitude, that it had no loneliness for him,
+since he voluntarily retired amidst a glorious life to his Linternum.
+CICERO was uneasy amid applauding Rome, and has distinguished his numerous
+works by the titles of his various villas. AULUS GELLIUS marked his
+solitude by his "Attic Nights." The "Golden Grove" of JEREMY TAYLOR is the
+produce of his retreat at the Earl of Carberry's seat in Wales; and the
+"Diversions of Purley" preserved a man of genius for posterity. VOLTAIRE
+had talents well adapted for society; but at one period of his life he
+passed five years in the most secret seclusion, and indeed usually lived
+in retirement. MONTESQUIEU quitted the brilliant circles of Paris for his
+books and his meditations, and was ridiculed by the gay triflers he
+deserted; "but my great work," he observes in triumph, "avance à pas de
+géant." Harrington, to compose his "Oceana," severed himself from the
+society of his friends. DESCARTES, inflamed by genius, hires an obscure
+house in an unfrequented quarter at Paris, and there he passes two years,
+unknown to his acquaintance. ADAM SMITH, after the publication of his
+first work, withdrew into a retirement that lasted ten years: even Hume
+rallies him for separating himself from the world; but by this means the
+great political inquirer satisfied the world by his great work. And thus
+it was with men of genius long ere Petrarch withdrew to his Val chiusa.
+
+The interruption of visitors by profession has been feelingly lamented by
+men of letters. The mind, maturing its speculations, feels the unexpected
+conversation of cold ceremony chilling as March winds over the blossoms of
+the Spring. Those unhappy beings who wander from house to house,
+privileged by the charter of society to obstruct the knowledge they cannot
+impart, to weary because they are wearied, or to seek amusement at the
+cost of others, belong to that class of society which have affixed no
+other idea to time than that of getting rid of it. These are judges not
+the best qualified to comprehend the nature and evil of their depredations
+in the silent apartment of the studious, who may be often driven to
+exclaim, in the words of the Psalmist, "Verily I have cleansed my heart in
+vain, and washed my hands in innocency: _for all the day long have I been
+plagued, and chastened every morning._"
+
+When Montesquieu was deeply engaged in his great work, he writes to a
+friend:--"The favour which your friend Mr. Hein, often does me to pass his
+mornings with me, occasions great damage to my work as well by his impure
+French as the length of his details."--"We are afraid," said some of those
+visitors to BAXTER, "that we break in upon your time."--"To be sure you
+do," replied the disturbed and blunt scholar. To hint as gently as he
+could to his friends that he was avaricious of time, one of the learned
+Italians had a prominent inscription over the door of his study,
+intimating that whoever remained there must join in his labours. The
+amiable MELANCTHON, incapable of a harsh expression, when he received
+these idle visits, only noted down the time he had expended, that he might
+reanimate his industry, and not lose a day. EVELYN, continually importuned
+by morning visitors, or "taken up by other impertinencies of my life in
+the country," stole his hours from his night rest "to redeem his losses."
+The literary character has been driven to the most inventive shifts to
+escape the irruption of a formidable party at a single rush, who enter,
+without "besieging or beseeching," as Milton has it. The late Mr. Ellis, a
+man of elegant tastes and poetical temperament, on one of these occasions,
+at his country-house, assured a literary friend, that when driven to the
+last, he usually made his escape by a leap out of the window; and Boileau
+has noticed a similar dilemma when at the villa of the President
+Lamoignon, while they were holding their delightful conversations in his
+grounds.
+
+ Quelquefois de fâcheux arrivent trois volées,
+ Que du parc à l'instant assiègent les allées;
+ Alors sauve qui peut, et quatre fois heureux
+ Qui sait s'échapper, à quelque autre ignoré d'eux.
+
+BRAND HOLLIS endeavoured to hold out "the idea of singularity as a
+shield;" and the great ROBERT BOYLE was compelled to advertise in a
+newspaper that he must decline visits on certain days, that he might have
+leisure to finish some of his works.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: This curious advertisement is preserved in Dr. Birch's "Life
+of Boyle," p. 272. Boyle's labours were so exhausting to his naturally
+weak frame, and so continuous from his eager desire for investigation,
+that this advertisement was concocted by the advice of his physician, "to
+desire to be excused from receiving visits (unless upon occasions very
+extraordinary) two days in the week, namely, on the forenoon of Tuesdays
+and Fridays (both foreign post days), and on Wednesdays and Saturdays in
+the afternoons, that he may have some time, both to recruit his spirits,
+to range his papers, and fill up the _lacunæ_ of them, and to take some
+care of his affairs in Ireland, which are very much disordered and have
+their face often changed by the public calamities there." He ordered
+likewise a board to be placed over his door, with an inscription
+signifying when he did, and when he did not receive visits.--ED.]
+
+BOCCACCIO has given an interesting account of the mode of life of the
+studious Petrarch, for on a visit he found that Petrarch would not suffer
+his hours of study to be broken into even, by the person whom of all men
+he loved most, and did not quit his morning studies for his guest, who
+during that time occupied himself by reading or transcribing the works of
+his master. At the decline of day, Petrarch quitted his study for his
+garden, where he delighted to open his heart in mutual confidence.
+
+But this solitude, at first a necessity, and then a pleasure, at length is
+not borne without repining. To tame the fervid wildness of youth to the
+strict regularities of study, is a sacrifice performed by the votary; but
+even MILTON appears to have felt this irksome period of life; for in the
+preface to "Smectymnuus" he says:--"It is but justice not to defraud of
+due esteem the _wearisome labours_ and _studious watchings_ wherein I have
+spent and _tired out_ almost a whole youth." COWLEY, that enthusiast for
+seclusion, in his retirement calls himself "the Melancholy Cowley." I have
+seen an original letter of this poet to Evelyn, where he expresses his
+eagerness to see Sir George Mackenzie's "Essay on Solitude;" for a copy of
+which he had sent over the town, without obtaining one, being "either all
+bought up, or burnt in the fire of London."[A]--"I am the more desirous,"
+he says, "because it is a subject in which I am most deeply interested."
+Thus Cowley was requiring a book to confirm his predilection, and we know
+he made the experiment, which did not prove a happy one. We find even
+GIBBON, with all his fame about him, anticipating the dread he entertained
+of solitude in advanced life. "I feel, and shall continue to feel, that
+domestic solitude, however it may be alleviated by the world, by study,
+and even by friendship, is a comfortless state, which will grow more
+painful as I descend in the vale of years." And again:--"Your visit has
+only served to remind me that man, however amused or occupied in his
+closet, was not made to live alone."
+
+[Footnote A: This event happening when London was the chief emporium of
+books, occasioned many printed just before the time to be excessively
+rare. The booksellers of Paternoster-row had removed their stock to the
+vaults below St. Paul's for safety as the fire approached them. Among the
+stock was Prynne's records, vol. iii., which were all burnt, except a few
+copies which had been sent into the country, a perfect set has been valued
+in consequence at one hundred pounds. The rarity of all books published
+about the era of the great fire of London induced one curious collector,
+Dr. Bliss, of Oxford, to especially devote himself to gathering such in
+his library.--ED.]
+
+Had the mistaken notions of Sprat not deprived us of Cowley's
+correspondence, we doubtless had viewed the picture of lonely genius
+touched by a tender pencil.[A] But we have SHENSTONE, and GRAY, and
+SWIFT. The heart of Shenstone bleeds in the dead oblivion of solitude:
+--"Now I am come from a visit, every little uneasiness is sufficient to
+introduce my whole train of melancholy considerations, and to make me
+utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life I foresee I
+shall lead. I am angry, and envious, and dejected, and frantic, and
+disregard all present things, as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely
+pleased, though it is a gloomy joy, with the application of Dr. Swift's
+complaint, that he is forced to die in a rage, like a rat in a poisoned
+hole." Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture throughout the year,
+in this stanza, by the same amiable but suffering poet:--
+
+ Tedious again to curse the drizzling day,
+ Again to trace the wintry tracks of snow,
+ Or, soothed by vernal airs, again survey
+ The self-same hawthorns bud, and cowslips blow.
+
+Swift's letters paint with terrifying colours a picture of solitude;
+and at length his despair closed with idiotism. Even the playful muse
+of GRESSET throws a sombre querulousness over the solitude of men of
+genius:--
+
+ --Je les vois, victimes du génie,
+ Au foible prix d'un éclat passager,
+ Vivre isolés, sans jouir de la vie!
+ Vingt ans d'ennuis pour quelques jours de gloire.
+
+Such are the necessity, the pleasures, and the inconveniences of solitude!
+It ceases to be a question whether men of genius should blend with the
+masses of society; for whether in solitude, or in the world, of all others
+they must learn to live with themselves. It is in the world that they
+borrow the sparks of thought that fly upwards and perish but the flame of
+genius can only be lighted in their own solitary breast.
+
+[Footnote A: See the article on Cowley in "Calamities of Authors."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The meditations of genius.--A work on the art of meditation not yet
+produced.--Predisposing the mind.--Imagination awakens imagination.
+--Generating feelings by music.--Slight habits.--Darkness and silence, by
+suspending the exercise of our senses, increase the vivacity of our
+conceptions.--The arts of memory.--Memory the foundation of genius.
+--Inventions by several to preserve their own moral and literary
+character.--And to assist their studies.--The meditations of genius depend
+on habit.--Of the night-time.--A day of meditation should precede a day of
+composition.--Works of magnitude from slight conceptions.--Of thoughts
+never written.--The art of meditation exercised at all hours and places.
+--Continuity of attention the source of philosophical discoveries.
+--Stillness of meditation the first state of existence in genius.
+
+
+A continuity of attention, a patient quietness of mind, forms one of the
+characteristics of genius. To think, and to feel, constitute the two
+grand divisions of men of genius--the men of reasoning and the men of
+imagination. There is a thread in our thoughts, as there is a pulse in our
+hearts; he who can hold the one, knows how to think; and he who can move
+the other, knows how to feel.
+
+A work on the art of meditation has not yet been produced; yet such a work
+might prove of immense advantage to him who never happened to have more
+than one solitary idea. The pursuit of a single principle has produced a
+great system. Thus probably we owe ADAM SMITH to the French economists.
+And a loose hint has conducted to a new discovery. Thus GIRARD, taking
+advantage of an idea first started by Fenelon, produced his "Synonymes."
+But while, in every manual art, every great workman improves on his
+predecessor, of the art of the mind, notwithstanding the facility of
+practice, and our incessant experience, millions are yet ignorant of the
+first rudiments; and men of genius themselves are rarely acquainted with
+the materials they are working on. Certain constituent principles of the
+mind itself, which the study of metaphysics curiously developes, offer
+many important regulations in this desirable art. We may even suspect,
+since men of genius in the present age have confided to us the secrets of
+their studies, that this art may be carried on by more obvious means than
+at first would appear, and even by mechanical contrivances and practical
+habits. A mind well organised may be regulated by a single contrivance, as
+by a bit of lead we govern the fine machinery by which we track the flight
+of time. Many secrets in this art of the mind yet remain as insulated
+facts, which may hereafter enter into an experimental history.
+
+Johnson has a curious observation on the Mind itself. He thinks it obtains
+a stationary point, from whence it can never advance, occurring before the
+middle of life. "When the powers of nature have attained their intended
+energy, they can be no more advanced. The shrub can never become a tree.
+Nothing then remains but _practice_ and _experience_; and perhaps _why
+they do so little may be worth inquiry_."[A] The result of this inquiry
+would probably lay a broader foundation for this art of the mind than we
+have hitherto possessed, ADAM FERGUSON has expressed himself with
+sublimity:--"The lustre which man casts around him, like the flame
+of a meteor, shines only while his motion continues; the moments of rest
+and of obscurity are the same." What is this art of meditation, but the
+power of withdrawing ourselves from the world, to view that world moving
+within ourselves, while we are in repose? As the artist, by an optical
+instrument, reflects and concentrates the boundless landscape around him,
+and patiently traces all nature in that small space.
+
+[Footnote A: I recommend the reader to turn to the whole passage, in
+Johnson's "Betters to Mrs. Thrale," vol. i. p. 296.]
+
+There is a government of our thoughts. The mind of genius can be made to
+take a particular disposition or train of ideas. It is a remarkable
+circumstance in the studies of men of genius, that previous to composition
+they have often awakened their imagination by the imagination of their
+favourite masters. By touching a magnet, they become a magnet. A
+circumstance has been, recorded of GRAY, by Mr. Mathias, "as worthy of all
+acceptation among the higher votaries of the divine art, when they are
+assured that Mr. Gray never sate down to compose any poetry without
+previously, and for a considerable time, reading the works of Spenser."
+But the circumstance was not unusual with Malherbe, Corneille, and Racine;
+and the most fervid verses of Homer, and the most tender of Euripides,
+were often repeated by Milton. Even antiquity exhibits the same exciting
+intercourse of the mind of genius. Cicero informs us how his eloquence
+caught inspiration from a constant study of the Latin and Grecian poetry;
+and it has been recorded of Pompey, who was great even in his youth, that
+he never undertook any considerable enterprise without animating his
+genius by having read to him the character of Achilles in the first
+_Iliad_; although he acknowledged that the enthusiasm he caught came
+rather from the poet than the hero. When BOSSUET had to compose a funeral
+oration, he was accustomed to retire for several days to his study, to
+ruminate over the pages of Homer; and when asked the reason of this habit,
+he exclaimed, in these lines--
+
+ --magnam mihi mentem, animumque
+ Delius inspiret Vates.
+
+It is on the same principle of predisposing the mind, that many have first
+generated their feelings by the symphonies of music. ALFIERI often before
+he wrote prepared his mind by listening to music: "Almost all my tragedies
+were sketched in my mind either in the act of hearing music, or a few
+hours after"--a circumstance which has been recorded of many others. Lord
+BACON had music often played in the room adjoining his study: MILTON
+listened to his organ for his solemn inspiration, and music was even
+necessary to WARBURTON. The symphonies which awoke in the poet sublime
+emotions, might have composed the inventive mind of the great critic in
+the visions of his theoretical mysteries. A celebrated French preacher,
+Bourdaloue or Massillon, was once found playing on a violin, to screw his
+mind up to the pitch, preparatory for his sermon, which within a short
+interval he was to preach before the court. CURRAN'S favourite mode of
+meditation was with his violin in his hand; for hours together would
+he forget himself, running voluntaries over the strings, while his
+imagination in collecting its tones was opening all his faculties for the
+coming emergency at the bar. When LEONARDO DA VINCI was painting his
+"Lisa," commonly called _La Joconde_, he had musicians constantly in
+waiting, whose light harmonies, by their associations, inspired feelings
+of
+
+ Tipsy dance and revelry.
+
+There are slight habits which may be contracted by genius, which assist
+the action of the mind; but these are of a nature so trivial, that they
+seem ridiculous when they have not been experienced: but the imaginative
+race exist by the acts of imagination. HAYDN would never sit down to
+compose without being in full dress, with his great diamond ring, and the
+finest paper to write down his musical compositions. ROUSSEAU has told
+us, when occupied by his celebrated romance, of the influence of the
+rose-coloured knots of ribbon which tied his portfolio, his fine paper,
+his brilliant ink, and his gold sand. Similar facts are related of many.
+Whenever APOSTOLO ZENO, the predecessor of Metastasio, prepared himself to
+compose a new drama, he used to say to himself, "_Apostolo! recordati che
+questa è la prima opera che dai in luce._"--"Apostolo! remember that this
+is the first opera you are presenting to the public." We are scarcely
+aware how we may govern our thoughts by means of our sensations: DE LUC
+was subject to violent bursts of passion; but he calmed the interior
+tumult by the artifice of filling his mouth with sweets and comfits. When
+GOLDONI found his sleep disturbed by the obtrusive ideas still floating
+from the studies of the day, he contrived to lull himself to rest by
+conning in his mind a vocabulary of the Venetian dialect, translating some
+word into Tuscan and French; which being a very uninteresting occupation,
+at the third or fourth version this recipe never failed. This was an art
+of withdrawing attention from the greater to the less emotion; by which,
+as the interest weakened, the excitement ceased. MENDELSSOHN, whose feeble
+and too sensitive frame was often reduced to the last stage of suffering
+by intellectual exertion, when engaged in any point of difficulty, would
+in an instant contrive a perfect cessation from thinking, by mechanically
+going to the window, and counting the tiles upon the roof of his
+neighbour's house. Such facts show how much art may be concerned in the
+government of our thoughts.
+
+It is an unquestionable fact that some profound thinkers cannot pursue
+their intellectual operations amidst the distractions of light and noise.
+With them, attention to what is passing within is interrupted by the
+discordant impressions from objects pressing and obtruding on the
+external senses. There are indeed instances, as in the case of Priestley
+and others, of authors who have pursued their literary works amidst
+conversation and their family; but such minds are not the most original
+thinkers, and the most refined writers; or their subjects are of a nature
+which requires little more than judgment and diligence. It is the mind
+only in its fulness which can brood over thoughts till the incubation
+produces vitality. Such is the feeling in this act of study. In Plutarch's
+time they showed a subterraneous place of study built by Demosthenes, and
+where he often continued for two or three months together. Malebranche,
+Hobbes, Corneille, and others, darkened their apartment when they wrote,
+to concentrate their thoughts, as Milton says of the mind, "in the
+spacious circuits of her musing." It is in proportion as we can suspend
+the exercise of all our other senses that the liveliness of our conception
+increases--this is the observation of the most elegant metaphysician of
+our times; and when Lord Chesterfield advised that his pupil--whose
+attention wandered on every passing object, which unfitted him for study
+--should be instructed in a darkened apartment, he was aware of this
+principle; the boy would learn, and retain what he learned, ten times as
+well. We close our eyes whenever we would collect our mind together, or
+trace more distinctly an object which seems to have faded away in our
+recollection. The study of an author or an artist would be ill placed in
+the midst of a beautiful landscape; the "Penseroso" of Milton, "hid from
+day's garish eye," is the man of genius. A secluded and naked apartment,
+with nothing but a desk, a chair, and a single sheet of paper, was for
+fifty years the study of BUFFON; the single ornament was a print of Newton
+placed before his eyes--nothing broke into the unity of his reveries.
+Cumberland's liveliest comedy, _The West Indian_, was written in an
+unfurnished apartment, close in front of an Irish turf-stack; and our
+comic writer was fully aware of the advantages of the situation. "In all
+my hours of study," says that elegant writer, "it has been through life my
+object so to locate myself as to have little or nothing to distract my
+attention, and therefore brilliant rooms or pleasant prospects I have ever
+avoided. A dead wall, or, as in the present case, an Irish turf-stack, are
+not attractions that can call off the fancy from its pursuits; and whilst
+in these pursuits it can find interest and occupation, it wants no outward
+aid to cheer it. My father, I believe, rather wondered at my choice." The
+principle ascertained, the consequences are obvious.
+
+The arts of memory have at all times excited the attention of the
+studious; they open a world of undivulged mysteries, where every one seems
+to form some discovery of his own, rather exciting his astonishment than
+enlarging his comprehension. LE SAGE, a modern philosopher, had a memory
+singularly defective. Incapable of acquiring languages, and deficient in
+all those studies which depend on the exercise of the memory, it became
+the object of his subsequent exertions to supply this deficiency by the
+order and method he observed in arranging every new fact or idea he
+obtained; so that in reality with a very bad memory, it appears that he
+was still enabled to recall at will any idea or any knowledge which he had
+stored up. JOHN HUNTER happily illustrated the advantages which every one
+derives from putting his thoughts in writing, "it resembles a tradesman
+taking stock; without which he never knows either what he possesses, or in
+what he is deficient." The late WILLIAM HUTTON, a man of an original cast
+of mind, as an experiment in memory, opened a book which he had divided
+into 365 columns, according to the days of the year: he resolved to try to
+recollect an anecdote, for every column, as insignificant and remote as he
+was able, rejecting all under ten years of age; and to his surprise, he
+filled those spaces for small reminiscences, within ten columns; but till
+this experiment had been made, he never conceived the extent of his
+faculty. WOLF, the German metaphysician, relates of himself that he had,
+by the most persevering habit, in bed and amidst darkness, resolved his
+algebraic problems, and geometrically composed all his methods merely by
+the aid of his imagination and memory; and when in the daytime he verified
+the one and the other of these operations, he had always found them
+true. Unquestionably, such astonishing instances of a well-regulated
+memory depend on the practice of its art gradually formed by frequent
+associations. When we reflect that whatever we know, and whatever we feel,
+are the very smallest portions of all the knowledge we have been
+acquiring, and all the feelings we have experienced through life, how
+desirable would be that art which should again open the scenes which have
+vanished, and revivify the emotions which other impressions have effaced?
+But the faculty of memory, although perhaps the most manageable of all
+others, is considered a subordinate one; it seems only a grasping and
+accumulating power, and in the work of genius is imagined to produce
+nothing of itself; yet is memory the foundation of Genius, whenever this
+faculty is associated with imagination and passion; with men of genius it
+is a chronology not merely of events, but of emotions; hence they remember
+nothing that is not interesting to their feelings. Persons of inferior
+capacity have imperfect recollections from feeble impressions. Are not the
+incidents of the great novelist often founded on the common ones of life?
+and the personages so admirably alive in his fictions, were they not
+discovered among the crowd? The ancients have described the Muses as the
+daughters of Memory; an elegant fiction, indicating the natural and
+intimate connexion between imagination and reminiscence.
+
+The arts of memory will form a saving-bank of genius, to which it may have
+recourse, as a wealth which it can accumulate imperceptibly amidst the
+ordinary expenditure. LOCKE taught us the first rudiments of this art,
+when he showed us how he stored his thoughts and his facts, by an
+artificial arrangement; and Addison, before he commenced his "Spectators,"
+had amassed three folios of materials. But the higher step will be the
+volume which shall give an account of a man to himself, in which a single
+observation immediately becomes a clue of past knowledge, restoring to him
+his lost studies, and his evanescent existence. Self-contemplation makes
+the man more nearly entire: and to preserve the past, is half of
+immortality.
+
+The worth of the diary must depend on the diarist; but "Of the things
+which concern himself," as MARCUS ANTONINUS entitles his celebrated work
+--this volume, reserved for solitary contemplation, should be considered
+as a future relic of ourselves. The late Sir SAMUEL ROMILLY commenced,
+even in the most occupied period of his life, a diary of his last twelve
+years; which he declares in his will, "I bequeath to my children, as it
+may be serviceable to them." Perhaps in this Romilly bore in mind the
+example of another eminent lawyer, the celebrated WHITELOCKE, who
+had drawn up a great work, entitled "Remembrances of the Labours of
+Whitelocke, in the Annals of his Life, for the Instruction of his
+Children." That neither of these family books has appeared, is our common
+loss. Such legacies from such men ought to become the inheritance of their
+countrymen.
+
+To register the transactions of the day, with observations on what, and on
+whom, he had seen, was the advice of Lord KAIMES to the late Mr. CURWEN;
+and for years his head never reached its pillow without performing a task
+which habit had made easy. "Our best and surest road to knowledge," said
+Lord Kaimes, "is by profiting from the labours of others, and making their
+experience our own." In this manner Curwen tells us he acquired by habit
+_the art of thinking_; and he is an able testimony of the practicability
+and success of the plan, for he candidly tells us, "Though many would
+sicken at the idea of imposing such a task upon themselves, yet the
+attempt, persevered in for a short time, would soon become a custom more
+irksome to omit than it was difficult to commence."
+
+Could we look into the libraries of authors, the studios of artists, and
+the laboratories of chemists, and view what they have only sketched, or
+what lie scattered in fragments, and could we trace their first and last
+thoughts, we might discover that we have lost more than we possess. There
+we might view foundations without superstructures, once the monuments of
+their hopes! A living architect recently exhibited to the public an
+extraordinary picture of his mind, in his "Architectural Visions of Early
+Fancy in the Gay Morning of Youth," and which now were "dreams in the
+evening of life." In this picture he had thrown together all the
+architectural designs his imagination had conceived, but which remained
+unexecuted. The feeling is true, however whimsical such unaccomplished
+fancies might appear when thrown together into one picture. In literary
+history such instances have occurred but too frequently: the imagination
+of youth, measuring neither time nor ability, creates what neither time
+nor ability can execute. ADAM SMITH, in the preface to the first edition
+of his "Theory of Sentiments," announced a large work on law and
+government; and in a late edition he still repeated the promise, observing
+that "Thirty years ago I entertained no doubt of being able to execute
+everything which it announced." The "Wealth of Nations" was but a fragment
+of this greater work. Surely men of genius, of all others, may mourn over
+the length of art and the brevity of life!
+
+Yet many glorious efforts, and even artificial inventions, have been
+contrived to assist and save its moral and literary existence in that
+perpetual race which genius holds with time. We trace its triumph in the
+studious days of such men as GIBBON, Sir WILLIAM JONES, and PRIESTLEY. An
+invention by which the moral qualities and the acquisitions of the
+literary character were combined and advanced together, is what Sir
+WILLIAM JONES ingeniously calls his "Andrometer." In that scale of human
+attainments and enjoyments which ought to accompany the eras of human
+life, it reminds us of what was to be learned, and what to be practised,
+assigning to stated periods their appropriate pursuits. An occasional
+recurrence, even to so fanciful a standard, would be like looking on a
+clock to remind the student how he loiters, or how he advances in the
+great day's work. Such romantic plans have been often invented by the
+ardour of genius. There was no communication between Sir WILLIAM JONES and
+Dr. FRANKLIN; yet, when young, the self-taught philosopher of America
+pursued the same genial and generous devotion to his own moral and
+literary excellence.
+
+"It was about this time I conceived," says Franklin, "the bold and arduous
+project of arriving at moral perfection," &c. He began a daily journal, in
+which against thirteen virtues accompanied by seven columns to mark the
+days of the week, he dotted down what he considered to be his failures; he
+found himself fuller of faults than he had imagined, but at length his
+blots diminished. This self-examination, or this "Faultbook," as Lord
+Shaftesbury would have called it, was always carried about him. These
+books still exist. An additional contrivance was that of journalising his
+twenty-four hours, of which he has furnished us both with descriptions and
+specimens of the method; and he closes with a solemn assurance, that "It
+may be well my posterity should be informed, that to this _little
+artifice_ their ancestor owes the constant felicity of his life." Thus we
+see the fancy of Jones and the sense of Franklin, unconnected either by
+character or communication, but acted on by the same glorious feeling to
+create their own moral and literary character, inventing similar although
+extraordinary methods.
+
+The memorials of Gibbon and Priestley present us with the experience and
+the habits of the literary character. "What I have known," says Dr.
+Priestley, "with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my
+admiration and my contempt of others. Could we have entered into the mind
+of Sir Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by which he produced
+his great works, we might see nothing very extraordinary in the process."
+Our student, with an ingenuous simplicity, opens to us that "variety of
+mechanical expedients by which he secured and arranged his thoughts," and
+that discipline of the mind, by means of a peculiar arrangement of his
+studies for the day and for the year, in which he rivalled the calm and
+unalterable system pursued by Gibbon, Buffon, and Voltaire, who often only
+combined the knowledge they obtained by humble methods. They knew what to
+ask for; and where what is wanted may be found: they made use of an
+intelligent secretary; aware, as Lord Bacon has expressed it, that some
+books "may be read by deputy."
+
+Buffon laid down an excellent rule to obtain originality, when he advised
+the writer first to exhaust his own thoughts, before he attempted to
+consult other writers; and Gibbon, the most experienced reader of all our
+writers, offers the same important advice to an author. When engaged on a
+particular subject, he tells us, "I suspended my perusal of any new book
+on the subject, till I had reviewed all that I knew, or believed, or had
+thought on it, that I might be qualified to discern how much the authors
+added to my original stock." The advice of Lord Bacon, that we should
+pursue our studies in whatever disposition the mind may be, is excellent.
+If happily disposed, we shall gain a great step; and if indisposed, we
+"shall work out the knots and strands of the mind, and make the middle
+times the more pleasant." Some active lives have passed away in incessant
+competition, like those of Mozart, Cicero, and Voltaire, who were
+restless, perhaps unhappy, when their genius was quiescent. To such minds
+the constant zeal they bring to their labour supplies the absence of that
+inspiration which cannot always be the same, nor always at its height.
+
+Industry is the feature by which the ancients so frequently describe an
+eminent character; such phrases as "_incredibili industria; diligentia
+singulars_" are usual. We of these days cannot conceive the industry of
+Cicero; but he has himself told us that he suffered no moments of his
+leisure to escape from him. Not only his spare hours were consecrated to
+his books; but even on days of business he would take a few turns in his
+walk, to meditate or to dictate; many of his letters are dated before
+daylight, some from the senate, at his meals, and amid his morning levées.
+The dawn of day was the summons of study to Sir William Jones. John
+Hunter, who was constantly engaged in the search and consideration of
+new facts, described what was passing in his mind by a remarkable
+illustration:--he said to Abernethy, "My mind is like a bee-hive." A
+simile which was singularly correct; "for," observes Abernethy, "in the
+midst of buzz and apparent confusion there was great order, regularity of
+structure, and abundant food, collected with incessant industry from the
+choicest stores of nature." Thus one man of genius is the ablest
+commentator on the thoughts and feelings of another. When we reflect on
+the magnitude of the labours of Cicero and the elder Pliny, on those of
+Erasmus, Petrarch, Baronius, Lord Bacon, Usher, and Bayle, we seem at the
+base of these monuments of study, we seem scarcely awake to admire. These
+were the laborious instructors of mankind; their age has closed.
+
+Yet let not those other artists of the mind, who work in the airy looms of
+fancy and wit, imagine that they are weaving their webs, without the
+direction of a principle, and without a secret habit which they have
+acquired, and which some have imagined, by its quickness and facility, to
+be an instinct. "Habit," says Reid, "differs from instinct, not in its
+nature, but in its origin; the last being natural, the first acquired."
+What we are accustomed to do, gives a facility and proneness to do on like
+occasions; and there may be even an art, unperceived by themselves, in
+opening and pursuing a scene of pure invention, and even in the happiest
+turns of wit. One who had all the experience of such an artist has
+employed the very terms we have used, of "mechanical" and "habitual." "Be
+assured," says Goldsmith, "that wit is in some measure mechanical; and
+that a man long habituated to catch at even its resemblance, will at last
+be happy enough to possess the substance. By a long habit of writing he
+acquires a justness of thinking, and a mastery of manner which holiday
+writers, even with ten times his genius, may vainly attempt to equal." The
+wit of BUTLER was not extemporaneous, but painfully elaborated from notes
+which he incessantly accumulated; and the familiar _rime_ of BERNT, the
+burlesque poet, his existing manuscripts will prove, were produced by
+perpetual re-touches. Even in the sublime efforts of imagination, this
+art of meditation may be practised; and ALFIERI has shown us, that in
+those energetic tragic dramas which were often produced in a state of
+enthusiasm, he pursued a regulated process. "All my tragedies have been
+composed three times;" and he describes the three stages of conception,
+development, and versifying. "After these three operations, I proceed,
+like other authors, to publish, correct, or amend."
+
+"All is habit in mankind, even virtue itself!" exclaimed METASTASIO;
+and we may add, even the meditations of genius. Some of its boldest
+conceptions, are indeed fortuitous, starting up and vanishing almost in
+the perception; like that giant form, sometimes seen amidst the glaciers,
+afar from the opposite traveller, moving as he moves, stopping as he
+stops, yet, in a moment lost, and perhaps never more seen, although but
+his own reflection! Often in the still obscurity of the night, the ideas,
+the studies, the whole history of the day, is acted over again. There are
+probably few mathematicians who have not dreamed of an interesting
+problem, observes Professor Dugald Stewart. In these vivid scenes we are
+often so completely converted into spectators, that a great poetical
+contemporary of our country thinks that even his dreams should not pass
+away unnoticed, and keeps what he calls a register of nocturnals. TASSO
+has recorded some of his poetical dreams, which were often disturbed by
+waking himself in repeating a verse aloud. "This night I awaked with this
+verse in my mouth--
+
+ "_E i duo che manda il nero adusto suolo_.
+ The two, the _dark_ and burning soil has sent."
+
+He discovered that the epithet _black_ was not suitable; "I again fell
+asleep, and in a dream I read in Strabo that the sand of Ethiopia and
+Arabia is extremely _white_, and this morning I have found the place. You
+see what learned dreams I have."
+
+But incidents of this nature are not peculiar to this great bard. The
+_improvvisatori_ poets, we are told, cannot sleep after an evening's
+effusion; the rhymes are still ringing in their ears, and imagination, if
+they have any, will still haunt them. Their previous state of excitement
+breaks into the calm of sleep; for, like the ocean, when its swell is
+subsiding, the waves still heave and beat. A poet, whether a Milton or a
+Blackmore, will ever find that his muse will visit his "slumbers nightly."
+His fate is much harder than that of the great minister, Sir Robert
+Walpole, who on retiring to rest could throw aside his political intrigues
+with his clothes; but Sir Robert, to judge by his portrait and anecdotes
+of him, had a sleekiness and good-humour, and an unalterable equanimity of
+countenance, not the portion of men of genius: indeed one of these has
+regretted that his sleep was so profound as not to be interrupted by
+dreams; from a throng of fantastic ideas he imagined that he could have
+drawn new sources of poetic imagery. The historian DE THOU was one of
+those great literary characters who, all his life, was preparing to write
+the history which he afterwards composed; omitting nothing in his travels
+and his embassies, which went to the formation of a great man. DE THOU has
+given a very curious account of his dreams. Such was his passion for
+study, and his ardent admiration of the great men whom he conversed with,
+that he often imagined in his sleep that he was travelling in Italy,
+Germany, and in England, where he saw and consulted the learned, and
+examined their curious libraries. He had all his lifetime these literary
+dreams, but more particularly in his travels they reflected these images
+of the day.
+
+If memory do not chain down these hurrying fading children of the
+imagination, and
+
+ Snatch the faithless fugitives to light
+
+with the beams of the morning, the mind suddenly finds itself forsaken and
+solitary.[A] ROUSSEAU has uttered a complaint on this occasion. Full of
+enthusiasm, he devoted to the subject of his thoughts, as was his custom,
+the long sleepless intervals of his nights. Meditating in bed with his
+eyes closed, he turned over his periods in a tumult of ideas; but when he
+rose and had dressed, all was vanished; and when he sat down to his
+breakfast he had nothing to write. Thus genius has its vespers and its
+vigils, as well as its matins, which we have been so often told are the
+true hours of its inspiration; but every hour may be full of inspiration
+for him who knows to meditate. No man was more practised in this art of
+the mind than POPE, and even the night was not an unregarded portion of
+his poetical existence, not less than with LEONARDO DA VINCI, who tells us
+how often he found the use of recollecting the ideas of what he had
+considered in the day after he had retired to bed, encompassed by the
+silence and obscurity of the night. Sleepless nights are the portion of
+genius when engaged in its work; the train of reasoning is still pursued;
+the images of fancy catch a fresh illumination; and even a happy
+expression shall linger in the ear of him who turns about for the soft
+composure to which his troubled spirit cannot settle.
+
+[Footnote A: One of the most extraordinary instances of inspiration in
+dreams is told of Tartini, the Italian musician, whose "Devil's Sonata" is
+well known to musicians. He dreamed that the father of evil played this
+piece to him, and upon waking he put it on paper. It is a strange wild
+performance, possessing great originality and vigour.--ED.]
+
+But while with genius so much seems fortuitous, in its great operations
+the march of the mind appears regular, and requires preparation. The
+intellectual faculties are not always co-existent, or do not always act
+simultaneously. Whenever any particular faculty is highly active, while
+the others are languid, the work, as a work of genius, may be very
+deficient. Hence the faculties, in whatever degree they exist, are
+unquestionably enlarged by _meditation_. It seems trivial to observe that
+meditation should precede composition, but we are not always aware of its
+importance; the truth is, that it is a difficulty unless it be a habit. We
+write, and we find we have written ill; we re-write, and feel we have
+written well: in the second act of composition we have acquired the
+necessary meditation. Still we rarely carry on our meditation so far as
+its practice would enable us. Many works of mediocrity might have
+approached to excellence, had this art of the mind been exercised. Many
+volatile writers might have reached even to deep thinking, had they
+bestowed a day of meditation before a day of composition, and thus
+engendered their thoughts. Many productions of genius have originally been
+enveloped in feebleness and obscurity, which have only been brought to
+perfection by repeated acts of the mind. There is a maxim of Confucius,
+which in the translation seems quaint, but which is pregnant with sense--
+
+ Labour, but slight not meditation;
+ Meditate, but slight not labour.
+
+Few works of magnitude presented themselves at once, in their extent
+and with their associations, to their authors. Two or three striking
+circumstances, unobserved before, are perhaps all which the man of genius
+perceives. It is in revolving the subject that the whole mind becomes
+gradually agitated; as a summer landscape, at the break of day, is wrapped
+in mist: at first, the sun strikes on a single object, but the light and
+warmth increasing, the whole scene glows in the noonday of imagination.
+How beautifully this state of the mind, in the progress of composition,
+is described by DRYDEN, alluding to his work, "when it was only a confused
+mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy
+was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards
+the light, there to be distinguished, and then either to be chosen or
+rejected by the judgment!" At that moment, he adds, "I was in that
+eagerness of imagination which, by over-pleasing fanciful men, flatters
+them into the danger of writing." GIBBON tells us of his history, "At the
+onset all was dark and doubtful; even the title of the work, the true era
+of the decline and fall of the empire, &c. I was often tempted to cast
+away the labour of seven years." WINCKELMANN was long lost in composing
+his "History of Art;" a hundred fruitless attempts were made, before he
+could discover a plan amidst the labyrinth. Slight conceptions kindle
+finished works. A lady asking for a few verses on rural topics of the Abbé
+de Lille, his specimens pleased, and sketches heaped on sketches produced
+"Les Jardins." In writing the "Pleasures of Memory," as it happened with
+"The Rape of the Lock," the poet at first proposed a simple description in
+a few lines, till conducted by meditation the perfect composition of
+several years closed in that fine poem. That still valuable work, _L'Art
+de Penser_ of the Port-Royal, was originally projected to teach a young
+nobleman all that was practically useful in the art of logic in a few
+days, and was intended to have been written in one morning by the great
+ARNAULD; but to that profound thinker so many new ideas crowded in that
+slight task, that he was compelled to call in his friend NICOLLE; and thus
+a few projected pages closed in a volume so excellent, that our elegant
+metaphysician has recently declared, that "it is hardly possible to
+estimate the merits too highly." Pemberton, who knew NEWTON intimately,
+informs us that his Treatise on Natural Philosophy, full of a variety of
+profound inventions, was composed by him from scarcely any other materials
+than the _few propositions he had set down several years before_, and
+which having resumed, occupied him in writing one year and a half. A
+curious circumstance has been preserved in the life of the other immortal
+man in philosophy, Lord BACON. When young, he wrote a letter to Father
+Fulgentio concerning an Essay of his, to which he gave the title of "The
+Greatest Birth of Time," a title which he censures as too pompous. The
+Essay itself is lost, but it was the first outline of that great design
+which he afterwards pursued and finished in his "Instauration of the
+Sciences." LOCKE himself has informed us, that his great work on "The
+Human Understanding," when he first put pen to paper, he thought "would
+have been contained in one sheet, but that the farther he went on, the
+larger prospect he had." In this manner it would be beautiful to trace the
+history of the human mind, and observe how a NEWTON and a BACON and a
+LOCKE were proceeding for thirty years together, in accumulating truth
+upon truth, and finally building up these fabrics of their invention.
+
+Were it possible to collect some thoughts of great thinkers, which were
+never written, we should discover vivid conceptions, and an originality
+they never dared to pursue in their works! Artists have this advantage
+over authors, that their virgin fancies, their chance felicities, which
+labour cannot afterwards produce, are constantly perpetuated; and those
+"studies," as they are called, are as precious to posterity as their more
+complete designs. In literature we possess one remarkable evidence of
+these fortuitous thoughts of genius. POPE and SWIFT, being in the country
+together, observed, that if contemplative men were to notice "the thoughts
+which suddenly present themselves to their minds when walking in the
+fields, &c., they might find many as well worth preserving as some of
+their more deliberate reflections." They made a trial, and agreed to write
+down such involuntary thoughts as occurred during their stay there. These
+furnished out the "Thoughts" in Pope's and Swift's Miscellanies.[A] Among
+Lord Bacon's Remains, we find a paper entitled "_Sudden Thoughts,_ set
+down for Profit." At all hours, by the side of VOLTAIRE'S bed, or on his
+table, stood his pen and ink with slips of paper. The margins of his books
+were covered with his "sudden thoughts." CICERO, in reading, constantly
+took notes and made comments. There is an art of reading, as well as an
+art of thinking, and an art of writing.
+
+[Footnote A: This anecdote is found in Ruffhead's "Life of Pope,"
+evidently given by Warburton, as was everything of personal knowledge in
+that tasteless volume of a mere lawyer, who presumed to write the life of
+a poet.]
+
+The art of meditation may be exercised at all hours, and in all places;
+and men of genius, in their walks, at table, and amidst assemblies,
+turning the eye of the mind inwards, can form an artificial solitude;
+retired amidst a crowd, calm amidst distraction, and wise amidst folly.
+When DOMENICHINO was reproached for his dilatory habits, in not finishing
+a great picture for which he had contracted, his reply described this
+method of study: _Eh! lo la sto continuamente dipingendo entro di me_--I
+am continually painting it within myself. HOGARTH, with an eye always
+awake to the ridiculous, would catch a character on his thumb-nail.
+LEONARDO DA VINCI has left a great number of little books which lie
+usually carried in his girdle, that he might instantly sketch whatever he
+wished to recal to his recollection; and Amoretti discovered, that, in
+these light sketches, this fine genius was forming a system of physiognomy
+which he frequently inculcated to his pupils.[A] HAYDN carefully noted
+down in a pocket-book the passages and ideas which came to him in his
+walks or amid company. Some of the great actions of men of this habit of
+mind were first meditated on amidst the noise of a convivial party, or the
+music of a concert. The victory of Waterloo might have been organized in
+the ball-room at Brussels: and thus RODNEY, at the table of Lord Sandwich,
+while the bottle was briskly circulating, being observed arranging bits of
+cork, and his solitary amusement having excited inquiry, said that he was
+practising a plan to annihilate an enemy's fleet. This proved to be that
+discovery of breaking the line, which the happy audacity of the hero
+afterwards executed. What situation is more common than a sea-voyage,
+where nothing presents itself to the reflections of most men than irksome
+observations on the desert of waters? But the constant exercise of the
+mind by habitual practice is the privilege of a commanding genius, and, in
+a similar situation, we discover CICERO and Sir WILLIAM JONES acting
+alike. Amidst the Oriental seas, in a voyage of 12,000 miles, the mind of
+JONES kindled with delightful enthusiasm, and he has perpetuated those
+elevating feelings in his discourse to the Asiatic Society; so CICERO on
+board a ship, sailing slowly along the coast, passing by a town where his
+friend Trebatius resided, wrote a work which the other had expressed a
+wish to possess, and of which wish the view of the town had reminded him.
+
+[Footnote A: A collection of sixty-four of these sketches were published
+at Paris in 1730. They are remarkable as delineations of mental character
+in feature as strongly felt as if done under the direction of Larater
+himself.--ED.]
+
+To this habit of continuity of attention, tracing the first simple idea to
+its remoter consequences, the philosophical genius owes many of its
+discoveries. It was one evening in the cathedral of Pisa that GALILEO
+observed the vibrations of a brass lustre pendent from the vaulted roof,
+which had been left swinging by one of the vergers. The habitual
+meditation of genius combined with an ordinary accident a new idea of
+science, and hence conceived the invention of measuring time by the medium
+of a pendulum. Who but a genius of this order, sitting in his orchard,
+and observing the descent of an apple, could have discovered a new quality
+in matter, and have ascertained the laws of attraction, by perceiving
+that the same causes might perpetuate the regular motions of the planetary
+system; who but a genius of this order, while viewing boys blowing
+soap-bladders, could have discovered the properties of light and colours,
+and then anatomised a ray? FRANKLIN, on board a ship, observing a partial
+stillness in the waves when they threw down water which had been used for
+culinary purposes, by the same principle of meditation was led to the
+discovery of the wonderful property in oil of calming the agitated ocean;
+and many a ship has been preserved in tempestuous weather, or a landing
+facilitated on a dangerous surf, by this solitary meditation of genius.
+
+Thus meditation draws out of the most simple truths the strictness
+of philosophical demonstration, converting even the amusements of
+school-boys, or the most ordinary domestic occurrences, into the principle
+of a new science. The phenomenon of galvanism was familiar to students;
+yet was there but one man of genius who could take advantage of an
+accident, give it his name, and fix it as a science. It was while lying in
+his bath, but still meditating on the means to detect the fraud of the
+goldsmith who had made Hiero's crown, that the most extraordinary
+philosopher of antiquity was led to the investigation of a series of
+propositions demonstrated in the two books of ARCHIMEDES, _De insidentibus
+in fluido,_ still extant; and which a great mathematician admires both for
+the strictness and elegance of the demonstrations. To as minute a domestic
+occurrence as GALVANI'S we owe the steam-engine. When the Marquis of
+WORCESTER was a State prisoner in the Tower, he one day observed, while
+his meal was preparing in his apartment, that the cover of the vessel
+being tight, was, by the expansion of the steam, suddenly forced off, and
+driven up the chimney. His inventive mind was led on in a train of thought
+with reference to the practical application of steam as a first mover. His
+observations, obscurely exhibited in his "Century of Inventions," were
+successively wrought out by the meditations of others, and an incident, to
+which one can hardly make a formal reference without a risible emotion,
+terminated in the noblest instance of mechanical power.
+
+Into the stillness of meditation the mind of genius must be frequently
+thrown; it is a kind of darkness which hides from us all surrounding
+objects, even in the light of day. This is the first state of existence in
+genius. In Cicero's "Treatise on Old Age," we find Cato admiring Caius
+Sulpitius Gallus, who, when he sat down to write in the morning, was
+surprised by the evening; and when he took up his pen in the evening, was
+surprised by the appearance of the morning. SOCRATES sometimes remained a
+whole day in immovable meditation, his eyes and countenance directed to
+one spot, as if in the stillness of death. LA FONTAINE, when writing his
+comic tales, has been observed early in the morning and late in the
+evening in the same recumbent posture under the same tree. This quiescent
+state is a sort of enthusiasm, and renders everything that surrounds us as
+distant as if an immense interval separated us from the scene. Poggius has
+told us of DANTE, that he indulged his meditations more strongly than any
+man he knew; for when deeply busied in reading, he seemed to live only in
+his ideas. Once the poet went to view a public procession; having entered
+a bookseller's shop, and taken up a book, he sunk into a reverie; on his
+return he declared that he had neither seen nor heard a single occurrence
+in the public exhibition, which had passed unobserved before him. It has
+been told of a modern astronomer, that one summer night, when he was
+withdrawing to his chamber, the brightness of the heavens showed a
+phenomenon: he passed the whole night in observing it; and when they came
+to him early in the morning, and found him in the same attitude, he said,
+like one who had been recollecting his thoughts for a few moments, "It
+must be thus; but I'll go to bed before it is late." He had gazed the
+entire night in meditation, and was not aware of it. Abernethy has finely
+painted the situation of NEWTON in this state of mind. I will not change
+his words, for his words are his feelings. "It was this power of mind
+--which can contemplate the greatest number of facts or propositions with
+accuracy--that so eminently distinguished Newton from other men. It was
+this power that enabled him to arrange the whole of a treatise in his
+thoughts before he committed a single idea to paper. In the exercise of
+this power, he was known occasionally to have passed a whole night or day,
+entirely inattentive to surrounding objects."
+
+There is nothing incredible in the stories related of some who have
+experienced this entranced state in study, where the mind, deliciously
+inebriated with the object it contemplates, feels nothing, from the excess
+of feeling, as a philosopher well describes it. The impressions from our
+exterior sensations are often suspended by great mental excitement.
+ARCHIMEDES, involved in the investigation of mathematical truth, and the
+painters PROTOGENES and PARMEGIANO, found their senses locked up as it
+were in meditation, so as to be incapable of withdrawing themselves from
+their work, even in the midst of the terrors and storming of the place by
+the enemy. MARINO was so absorbed in the composition of his "Adonis," that
+he suffered his leg to be burned before the painful sensation grew
+stronger than the intellectual pleasure of his imagination. Monsieur
+THOMAS, a modern French writer, and an intense thinker, would sit for
+hours against a hedge, composing with a low voice, taking the same pinch
+of snuff for half an hour together without being aware that it had long
+disappeared. When he quitted his apartment, after prolonging his studies
+there, a visible alteration was observed in his person, and the agitation
+of his recent thoughts was still traced in his air and manner. With
+eloquent truth BUFFON described those reveries of the student, which
+compress his day, and mark the hours by the sensations of minutes!
+"Invention depends on patience: contemplate your subject long; it will
+gradually unfold till a sort of electric spark convulses for a moment the
+brain, and spreads down to the very heart a glow of irritation. Then come
+the luxuries of genius, the true hours for production and composition
+--hours so delightful, that I have spent twelve or fourteen successively
+at my writing-desk, and still been in a state of pleasure." Bishop HORNE,
+whose literary feelings were of the most delicate and lively kind, has
+beautifully recorded them in his progress through a favourite and
+lengthened work--his Commentary on the Psalms. He alludes to himself in
+the third person; yet who but the self-painter could have caught those
+delicious emotions which are so evanescent in the deep occupation of
+pleasant studies? "He arose fresh in the morning to his task; the silence
+of the night invited him to pursue it; and he can truly say, that food and
+rest were not preferred before it. Every part improved infinitely upon his
+acquaintance with it, and no one gave him uneasiness but the last, for
+then he grieved that his work was done."
+
+This eager delight of pursuing study, this impatience of interruption, and
+this exultation in progress, are alike finely described by MILTON in a
+letter to his friend Diodati.
+
+"Such is the character of my mind, that no delay, none of the ordinary
+cessations for rest or otherwise, I had nearly said care or thinking of
+the very subject, can hold me back from being hurried on to the destined
+point, and from completing the great circuit, as it were, of the study in
+which I am engaged."
+
+Such is the picture of genius viewed in the stillness of MEDITATION; but
+there is yet a more excited state, when, as if consciousness were mixing
+with its reveries, in the allusion of a scene, of a person, of a passion,
+the emotions of the soul affect even the organs of sense. This excitement
+is experienced when the poet in the excellence of invention, and the
+philosopher in the force of intellect, alike share in the hours of
+inspiration and the ENTHUSIASM of genius.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The enthusiasm of genius.--A state of mind resembling a waking dream
+distinct from reverie.--The ideal presence distinguished from the real
+presence.--The senses are really affected in the ideal world, proved by a
+variety of instances.--Of the rapture or sensation of deep study in art,
+in science, and literature.--Of perturbed feelings in delirium.--In
+extreme endurance of attention.--And in visionary illusions.--Enthusiasts
+in literature and art--of their self-immolations.
+
+
+We left the man of genius in the stillness of meditation. We have now
+to pursue his history through that more excited state which occurs in
+the most active operations of genius, and which the term _reverie_
+inadequately indicates. Metaphysical distinctions but ill describe it, and
+popular language affords no terms for those faculties and feelings which
+escape the observation of the multitude not affected by the phenomenon.
+
+The illusion produced by a drama on persons of great sensibility, when all
+the senses are awakened by a mixture of reality with imagination, is the
+effect experienced by men of genius in their own vivified ideal world.
+Real emotions are raised by fiction. In a scene, apparently passing in
+their presence, where the whole train of circumstances succeeds in all the
+continuity of nature, and where a sort of real existences appear to rise
+up before them, they themselves become spectators or actors. Their
+sympathies are excited, and the exterior organs of sense are visibly
+affected--they even break out into speech, and often accompany their
+speech with gestures.
+
+In this equivocal state the enthusiast of genius produces his
+masterpieces. This waking dream is distinct from reverie, where, our
+thoughts wandering without connexion, the faint impressions are so
+evanescent as to occur without even being recollected. A day of _reverie_
+is beautifully painted by ROUSSEAU as distinct from a day of _thinking_:
+"J'ai des journées délicieuses, errant sans souci, sans projet, sans
+affaire, de bois en bois, et de rocher en rocher, _rêvant toujours et ne
+pensant point."_ Far different, however, is one closely-pursued act of
+meditation, carrying the enthusiast of genius beyond the precinct of
+actual existence. The act of contemplation then creates the thing
+contemplated. He is now the busy actor in a world which he himself only
+views; alone, he hears, he sees, he touches, he laughs, he weeps; his
+brows and lips, and his very limbs move.
+
+Poets and even painters, who, as Lord Bacon describes witches, "are
+imaginative," have often involuntarily betrayed, in the act of
+composition, those gestures which accompany this enthusiasm. Witness
+DOMENICHINO enraging himself that he might portray anger. Nor were these
+creative gestures quite unknown to QUINTILIAN, who has nobly compared them
+to the lashings of the lion's tail, rousing him to combat. Actors of
+genius have accustomed themselves to walk on the stage for an hour before
+the curtain was drawn, that they might fill their minds with all the
+phantoms of the drama, and so suspend all communion with the external
+world. The great actress of our age, during representation, always had the
+door of her dressing-room open, that she might listen to, and if possible
+watch the whole performance, with the same attention as was experienced by
+the spectators. By this means she possessed herself of all the illusion of
+the scene; and when she herself entered on the stage, her dreaming
+thoughts then brightened into a vision, where the perceptions of the soul
+were as firm and clear as if she were really the Constance or the
+Katherine whom she only represented.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: The late Mrs. SIDDONS. She herself communicated this striking
+circumstance to me.]
+
+Aware of this peculiar faculty, so prevalent in the more vivid exercise of
+genius, Lord KAIMES seems to have been the first who, in a work on
+criticism, attempted to name _the ideal presence_, to distinguish it from
+the _real presence_ of things. It has been called the representative
+faculty, the imaginative state, and many other states and faculties. Call
+it what we will, no term opens to us the invisible mode of its operations,
+no metaphysical definition expresses its variable nature. Conscious of the
+existence of such a faculty, our critic perceived that the conception of
+it is by no means clear when described in words.
+
+Has not the difference between an actual thing, and its image in a glass,
+perplexed some philosophers? and it is well known how far the ideal
+philosophy has been carried by so fine a genius as Bishop BERKELEY. "All
+are pictures, alike painted on the retina, or optical sensorium!"
+exclaimed the enthusiast BARRY, who only saw pictures in nature, and
+nature in pictures. This faculty has had a strange influence over the
+passionate lovers of statues. We find unquestionable evidence of the
+vividness of the representative faculty, or the ideal presence, vying with
+that of reality. EVELYN has described one of this cast of mind, in the
+librarian of the Vatican, who haunted one of the finest collections at
+Rome. To these statues he would frequently talk as if they were living
+persons, often kissing and embracing them. A similar circumstance might be
+recorded of a man of distinguished talent and literature among ourselves.
+Wondrous stories are told of the amatorial passion for marble statues; but
+the wonder ceases, and the truth is established, when the irresistible
+ideal presence is comprehended; the visions which now bless these lovers
+of statues, in the modern land of sculpture, Italy, had acted with equal
+force in ancient Greece. "The Last Judgment," the stupendous ideal
+presence of MICHAEL ANGELO, seems to have communicated itself to some of
+his beholders: "As I stood before this picture," a late traveller tells
+us, "my blood chilled as if the reality were before me, and the very sound
+of the trumpet seemed to pierce my ears."
+
+Cold and barren tempers without imagination, whose impressions of objects
+never rise beyond those of memory and reflection, which know only to
+compare, and not to excite, will smile at this equivocal state of the
+ideal presence; yet it is a real one to the enthusiast of genius, and it
+is his happiest and peculiar condition. Destitute of this faculty, no
+metaphysical aid, no art to be taught him, no mastery of talent will
+avail him: unblest with it, the votary will find each sacrifice lying cold
+on the altar, for no accepting flame from heaven shall kindle it.
+
+This enthusiasm indeed can only be discovered by men of genius themselves;
+yet when most under its influence, they can least perceive it, as the eye
+which sees all things cannot view itself; or, rather, such an attempt
+would be like searching for the principle of life, which were it found
+would cease to be life. From an enchanted man we must not expect a
+narrative of his enchantment; for if he could speak to us reasonably, and
+like one of ourselves, in that case he would be a man in a state of
+disenchantment, and then would perhaps yield us no better account than we
+may trace by our own observations.
+
+There is, however, something of reality in this state of the ideal
+presence; for the most familiar instances will show how the nerves of each
+external sense are put in motion by the idea of the object, as if the real
+object had been presented to it. The difference is only in the degree. The
+senses are more concerned in the ideal world than at first appears. The
+idea of a thing will make us shudder; and the bare imagination of it will
+often produce a real pain. A curious consequence may be deduced from this
+principle; MILTON, lingering amid the freshness of nature in Eden, felt
+all the delights of those elements which he was creating; his nerves moved
+with the images which excited them. The fierce and wild DANTE, amidst the
+abysses of his "Inferno," must often have been startled by its horrors,
+and often left his bitter and gloomy spirit in the stings he inflicted on
+the great criminal. The moveable nerves, then, of the man of genius are a
+reality, he sees, he hears, he feels, by each. How mysterious to us is the
+operation of this faculty!
+
+A HOMER and a RICHARDSON,[A] like nature, open a volume large as life
+itself--embracing a circuit of human existence! This state of the mind has
+even a reality in it for the generality of persons. In a romance or a
+drama, tears are often seen in the eyes of the reader or the spectator,
+who, before they have time to recollect that the whole is fictitious, have
+been surprised for a moment by a strong conception of a present and
+existing scene.
+
+[Footnote A: Richardson assembles a family about him, writing down what
+they said, seeing their very manner of saying, living with them as often
+and as long as he wills--with such a personal unity, that an ingenious
+lawyer once told me that he required no stronger evidence of a fact in any
+court of law than a circumstantial scene in Richardson.]
+
+Can we doubt of the reality of this faculty, when the visible and outward
+frame of the man of genius bears witness to its presence? When FIELDING
+said, "I do not doubt but the most pathetic and affecting scenes have been
+writ with tears," he probably drew that discovery from an inverse feeling
+to his own. Fielding would have been gratified to have confirmed the
+observation by facts which never reached him. Metastasio, in writing the
+ninth scene of the second act of his _Olympiad_, found himself suddenly
+moved--shedding tears. The imagined sorrows had inspired real tears; and
+they afterwards proved contagious. Had our poet not perpetuated his
+surprise by an interesting sonnet, the circumstance had passed away with
+the emotion, as many such have. Pope could never read Priam's speech for
+the loss of his son without tears, and frequently has been observed to
+weep over tender and melancholy passages. ALFIERI, the most energetic poet
+of modern times, having composed, without a pause, the whole of an act,
+noted in the margin--"Written under a paroxysm of enthusiasm, and while
+shedding a flood of tears." The impressions which the frame experiences in
+this state, leave deeper traces behind them than those of reverie. A
+circumstance accidentally preserved has informed us of the tremors of
+DRYDEN after having written that ode,[A] which, as he confessed, he had
+pursued without the power of quitting it; but these tremors were not
+unusual with him--for in the preface to his "Tales," he tells us, that "in
+translating Homer he found greater pleasure than in Virgil; but it was not
+a pleasure without pain; the continual agitation of the spirits must needs
+be a weakener to any constitution, especially in age, and many pauses are
+required for refreshment betwixt the heats."
+
+[Footnote A: This famous and unparalleled ode was probably afterwards
+retouched; but Joseph Warton discovered in it the rapidity of the
+thoughts, and the glow and the expressiveness of the images; which are the
+certain marks of the _first sketch_ of a master.]
+
+We find Metastasio, like others of the brotherhood, susceptible of this
+state, complaining of his sufferings during the poetical æstus. "When I
+apply with attention, the nerves of my sensorium are put into a violent
+tumult; I grow as red as a drunkard, and am obliged to quit my work." When
+BUFFON was absorbed on a subject which presented great objections to his
+opinions, he felt his head burn, and saw his countenance flushed; and this
+was a warning for him to suspend his attention. GRAY could never compose
+voluntarily: his genius resembled the armed apparition in Shakspeare's
+master-tragedy. "He would not be commanded." When he wished to compose the
+Installation Ode, for a considerable time he felt himself without the
+power to begin it: a friend calling on him, GRAY flung open his door
+hastily, and in a hurried voice and tone, exclaiming in the first verse of
+that ode--
+
+ Hence, avaunt! 'tis holy ground!--
+
+his friend started at the disordered appearance of the bard,
+whose orgasm had disturbed his very air and countenance.
+
+Listen to one labouring with all the magic of the spell. Madame ROLAND has
+thus powerfully described the ideal presence in her first readings of
+Telemachus and Tassot:--"My respiration rose, I felt a rapid fire
+colouring my face, and my voice changing had betrayed my agitation. I was
+Eucharis for Telemachus, and Erminia for Tancred. However, during this
+perfect transformation, I did not yet think that I myself was anything,
+for any one: the whole had no connexion with myself. I sought for nothing
+around me; I was they; I saw only the objects which existed for them; it
+was a dream, without being awakened."
+
+The description which so calm and exquisite an investigator of taste and
+philosophy as our sweet and polished REYNOLDS has given of himself at one
+of these moments, is too rare not to be recorded in his own words.
+Alluding to the famous "Transfiguration," our own RAFFAELLE says--"When I
+have stood looking at that picture from figure to figure, the eagerness,
+the spirit, the close unaffected attention of each figure to the principal
+action, my thoughts have carried me away, that I have forgot myself; and
+for that time might be looked upon as an enthusiastic madman; for I could
+really fancy the whole action was passing before my eyes."
+
+The effect which the study of Plutarch's Illustrious Men produced on the
+mighty mind of ALFIERI, during a whole winter, while he lived as it were
+among the heroes of antiquity, he has himself described. Alfieri wept and
+raved with grief and indignation that he was born under a government which
+favoured no Roman heroes and sages. As often as he was struck with the
+great deeds of these great men, in his extreme agitation he rose from his
+seat as one possessed. The feeling of genius in Alfieri was suppressed for
+more than twenty years, by the discouragement of his uncle: but as the
+natural temperament cannot be crushed out of the soul of genius, he was a
+poet without writing a single verse; and as a great poet, the ideal
+presence at times became ungovernable, verging to madness. In traversing
+the wilds of Arragon, his emotions would certainly have given birth to
+poetry, could he have expressed himself in verse. It was a complete state
+of the imaginative existence, or this ideal presence; for he proceeded
+along the wilds of Arragon in a reverie, weeping and laughing by turns. He
+considered this as a folly, because it ended in nothing but in laughter
+and tears. He was not aware that he was then yielding to a demonstration,
+could he have judged of himself, that he possessed those dispositions of
+mind and that energy of passion which form the poetical character.
+
+Genius creates by a single conception; the statuary conceives the statue
+at once, which he afterwards executes by the slow process of art; and the
+architect contrives a whole palace in an instant. In a single principle,
+opening as it were on a sudden to genius, a great and new system of things
+is discovered. It has happened, sometimes, that this single conception,
+rushing over the whole concentrated spirit, has agitated the frame
+convulsively. It comes like a whispered secret from Nature. When
+MALEBRANCHE first took up Descartes's Treatise on Man, the germ of his own
+subsequent philosophic system, such was his intense feeling, that a
+violent palpitation of the heart, more than once, obliged him to lay down
+the volume. When the first idea of the "Essay on the Arts and Sciences"
+rushed on the mind of ROUSSEAU, a feverish symptom in his nervous system
+approached to a slight delirium. Stopping under an oak, he wrote with a
+pencil the Proso-popeia of Fabricius. "I still remember my solitary
+transport at the discovery of a philosophical argument against the
+doctrine of transubstantiation," exclaimed GIBBON in his Memoirs.
+
+This quick sensibility of genius has suppressed the voice of poets in
+reciting their most pathetic passages. THOMSON was so oppressed by a
+passage in Virgil or Milton when he attempted to read, that "his voice
+sunk in ill-articulated sounds from the bottom of his breast." The
+tremulous figures of the ancient Sibyl appear to have been viewed in the
+land of the Muses, by the energetic description which Paulus Jovius gives
+us of the impetus and afflatus of one of the Italian improvvisatori, some
+of whom, I have heard from one present at a similar exhibition, have not
+degenerated in poetic inspiration, nor in its corporeal excitement. "His
+eyes fixed downwards, kindle as he gives utterance to his effusions, the
+moist drops flow down his cheeks, the veins of his forehead swell, and
+wonderfully his learned ear, as it were, abstracted and intent, moderates
+each impulse of his flowing numbers."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: The passage is curious:--"Canenti defixi exardent oculi,
+sudores manant, frontis venæ contumescunt, et quod mirum est, eruditæ
+aures, tanquam alienæ et intentæ, omnem impetum profluentium numerorum
+exactissimâ ratione moderantur."]
+
+This enthusiasm throws the man of genius amid Nature into absorbing
+reveries when the senses of other men are overcome at the appearance of
+destruction; he continues to view only Nature herself. The mind of PLINY,
+to add one more chapter to his mighty scroll, sought Nature amidst the
+volcano in which he perished. VERNET was on board a ship in a raging
+tempest where all hope was given up. The astonished captain beheld the
+artist of genius, his pencil in his hand, in calm enthusiasm sketching the
+terrible world of waters--studying the wave that was rising to devour
+him.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Vernet was the artist whose sea-ports of France still
+decorate the Louvre. He was marine painter to Louis XV. and grandfather of
+the celebrated Horace Vernet, whose recent death has deprived France of
+her best painter of battle-scenes.--ED.]
+
+There is a tender enthusiasm in the elevated studies of antiquity. Then
+the ideal presence or the imaginative existence prevails, by its perpetual
+associations, or as the late Dr. Brown has, perhaps, more distinctly
+termed them, _suggestions._ "In contemplating antiquity, the mind itself
+becomes antique," was finely observed by Livy, long ere our philosophy of
+the mind existed as a system. This rapture, or sensation of deep study,
+has been described by one whose imagination had strayed into the occult
+learning of antiquity, and in the hymns of Orpheus it seemed to him that
+he had lifted the veil from Nature. His feelings were associated with her
+loneliness. I translate his words:--"When I took these dark mystical hymns
+into my hands, I appeared as it were to be descending into an abyss of the
+mysteries of venerable antiquity; at that moment, the world in silence and
+the stars and moon only, watching me." This enthusiasm is confirmed by Mr.
+Mathias, who applies this description to his own emotions on his first
+opening the manuscript volumes of the poet Gray on the philosophy of
+Plato; "and many a learned man," he adds, "will acknowledge as his own the
+feelings of this animated scholar."
+
+Amidst the monuments of great and departed nations, our Imagination is
+touched by the grandeur of local impressions, and the vivid associations,
+or suggestions, of the manners, the arts, and the individuals, of a great
+people. The classical author of Anacharsis, when in Italy, would often
+stop as if overcome by his recollections. Amid camps, temples, circuses,
+hippodromes, and public and private edifices, he, as it were, held an
+interior converse with the manes of those who seemed hovering about the
+capital of the old world; as if he had been a citizen of ancient Rome
+travelling in the modern. So men of genius have roved amid the awful ruins
+till the ideal presence has fondly built up the city anew, and have become
+Romans in the Rome of two thousand years past. POMPONOIUS LETUS, who
+devoted his life to this study, was constantly seen wandering amidst the
+vestiges of this "throne of the world." There, in many a reverie, as his
+eye rested on the mutilated arch and the broken column, abstracted and
+immovable, he dropped tears in the ideal presence of Rome and of the
+Romans.[A] Another enthusiast of this class was BOSIUS, who sought beneath
+Rome for another Rome, in those catacombs built by the early Christians
+for their asylum and their sepulchre. His work of "Roma Sotteranea" is the
+production of a subterraneous life, passed in fervent and perilous
+labours. Taking with him a hermit's meal for the week, this new Pliny
+often descended into the bowels of the earth, by lamp-light, clearing away
+the sand and ruins till a tomb broke forth, or an inscription became
+legible. Accompanied by some friend whom his enthusiasm had inspired with
+his own sympathy, here he dictated his notes, tracing the mouldering
+sculpture, and catching the fading picture. Thrown back into the primitive
+ages of Christianity, amid the local impressions, the historian of the
+Christian catacombs collected the memorials of an age and of a race which
+were hidden beneath the earth.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: Shelley caught much of his poetry in wandering among the
+ruins of the palace of the Cæsars on the Palatine Hill; and the
+impression made by historic ruins on the mind of Byron is powerfully
+evinced in his "Childe Harold."--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: A large number of these important memorials have been since
+removed to the _Galleria Lapidaria_ of the Vatican, and arranged on the
+walls by Marini. They are invaluable as mementoes of the early Church at
+Rome. Aringhi has also devoted a work to their elucidation. The Rev. C.
+Maitland's "Church in the Catacombs" is an able general summary, clearly
+displaying their intrinsic historic value--ED.]
+
+The same enthusiasm surrounds the world of science with that creative
+imagination which has startled even men of science by its peculiar
+discoveries. WERNER, the mineralogist, celebrated for his lectures,
+appears, by some accounts transmitted by his auditors, to have exercised
+this faculty. Werner often said that "he always depended on the muse for
+inspiration." His unwritten lecture was a reverie--till kindling in his
+progress, blending science and imagination in the grandeur of his
+conceptions, at times, as if he had gathered about him the very elements
+of nature, his spirit seemed to be hovering over the waters and the
+strata. With the same enthusiasm of science, CUVIER meditated on some
+bones, and some fragments of bones, which could not belong to any known
+class of the animal kingdom. The philosopher dwelt on these animal ruins
+till he constructed numerous species which had disappeared from the globe.
+This sublime naturalist has ascertained and classified the fossil remains
+of animals whose existence can no longer be traced in the records of
+mankind. His own language bears testimony to the imagination which carried
+him on through a career so strange and wonderful. "It is a rational object
+of ambition in the mind of man, to whom only a short space of time is
+allotted upon earth, to have the glory of restoring the history of
+_thousands of ages which preceded the existence of his race, and of
+thousands of animals that never were contemporaneous with his species_."
+Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of
+genius. Even in the practical part of a science, painful to the operator
+himself, Mr. Abernethy has declared, and eloquently declared, that this
+enthusiasm is absolutely requisite. "We have need of enthusiasm, or some
+strong incentive, to induce us to spend our nights in study, and our days
+in the disgusting and health-destroying observation of human diseases,
+which alone can enable us to understand, alleviate, or remove them. On no
+other terms can we be considered as real students of our profession--to
+confer that which sick kings would fondly purchase with their diadem--that
+which wealth cannot purchase, nor state nor rank bestow--to alleviate the
+most insupportable of human afflictions." Such is the enthusiasm of the
+physiologist of genius, who elevates the demonstrations of anatomical
+inquiries by the cultivation of the intellectual faculties, connecting
+"man with the common Master of the universe."
+
+This enthusiasm inconceivably fills the mind of genius in all great and
+solemn operations. It is an agitation amidst calmness, and is required hot
+only in the fine arts, but wherever a great and continued exertion of the
+soul must be employed. The great ancients, who, if they were not always
+philosophers, were always men of genius, saw, or imagined they saw, a
+divinity within the man. This enthusiasm is alike experienced in the
+silence of study and amidst the roar of cannon, in painting a picture or
+in scaling a rampart. View DE THOU, the historian, after his morning
+prayers, imploring the Divinity to purify his heart from partiality and
+hatred, and to open his spirit in developing the truth, amidst the
+contending factions of his times; and HAYDN, employed in his "Creation,"
+earnestly addressing the Creator ere he struck his instrument. In moments
+like these, man becomes a perfect unity--one thought and one act,
+abstracted from all other thoughts and all other acts. This intensity of
+the mind was felt by GRAY in his loftiest excursions, and is perhaps the
+same power which impels the villager, when, to overcome his rivals in a
+contest for leaping, he retires hack some steps, collects all exertion
+into his mind, and clears the eventful bound. One of our admirals in the
+reign of Elizabeth held as a maxim, that a height of passion, amounting to
+frenzy, was necessary to qualify a man for the command of a fleet; and
+NELSON, decorated by all his honours about him, on the day of battle, at
+the sight of those emblems of glory emulated himself. This enthusiasm was
+necessary for his genius, and made it effective.
+
+But this enthusiasm, prolonged as it often has been by the operation of
+the imaginative existence, becomes a state of perturbed feeling, and can
+only be distinguished from a disordered intellect by the power of volition
+possessed by a sound mind of withdrawing from the ideal world into the
+world of sense. It is but a step which may carry us from the wanderings of
+fancy into the aberrations of delirium. The endurance of attention, even
+in minds of the highest order, is limited by a law of nature; and when
+thinking is goaded on to exhaustion, confusion of ideas ensues, as
+straining any one of our limbs by excessive exertion produces tremor and
+torpor.
+
+ With curious art the brain too finely wrought
+ Preys on herself and is destroyed by Thought;
+ Constant attention wears the active mind,
+ Blots out her powers, and leaves a blank behind--
+ The greatest genius to this fate may bow.
+
+Even minds less susceptible than high genius may become overpowered by
+their imagination. Often, in the deep silence around us, we seek to
+relieve ourselves by some voluntary noise or action which may direct our
+attention to an exterior object, and bring us back to the world, which we
+had, as it were, left behind us. The circumstance is sufficiently
+familiar; as well as another; that whenever we are absorbed in profound
+contemplation, a startling noise scatters the spirits, and painfully
+agitates the whole frame. The nerves are then in a state of the utmost
+relaxation. There may be an agony in thought which only deep thinkers
+experience. The terrible effect of metaphysical studies on BEATTIE has
+been told by himself. "Since the 'Essay on Truth' was printed in quarto, I
+have never _dared_ to read it over. I durst not even read the sheets to
+see whether there were any errors in the print, and was obliged to get a
+friend to do that office for me. These studies came in time to have
+dreadful effects upon my nervous system; and I cannot read what I then
+wrote without some degree of horror, because it recalls to my mind the
+horrors that I have sometimes felt after passing a long evening in those
+severe studies."
+
+GOLDONI, after a rash exertion of writing sixteen plays in a year,
+confesses he paid the penalty of the folly. He flew to Genoa, leading a
+life of delicious vacuity. To pass the day without doing anything, was all
+the enjoyment he was now capable of feeling. But long after he said, "I
+felt at that time, and have ever since continued to feel, the consequence
+of that exhaustion of spirits I sustained in composing my sixteen
+comedies."
+
+The enthusiasm of study was experienced by POPE in his self-education, and
+once it clouded over his fine intellect. It was the severity of his
+application which distorted his body; and he then partook of a calamity
+incidental to the family of genius, for he sunk into that state of
+exhaustion which SMOLLETT experienced during half a year, called a _coma
+vigil,_ an affection of the brain, where the principle of life is so
+reduced, that all external objects appear to be passing in a dream.
+BOERHAAVE has related of himself, that having imprudently indulged in
+intense thought on a particular subject, he did not close his eyes for six
+weeks after; and TISSOT, in his work on the health of men of letters,
+abounds in similar cases, where a complete stupor has affected the unhappy
+student for a period of six months.
+
+Assuredly the finest geniuses have not always the power to withdraw
+themselves from that intensely interesting train of ideas, which we have
+shown has not been removed from about them by even the violent stimuli of
+exterior objects; and the scenical illusion which then occurs, has been
+called the _hallucinatio studiosa,_ or false ideas in reverie. Such was
+the state in which PETRARCH found himself, in that minute narrative
+of a vision in which Laura appeared to him; and TASSO, in the lofty
+conversations he held with a spirit that glided towards him on the beams
+of the sun. In this state was MALEBRANCHE listening to the voice of God
+within him; and Lord HERBEBT, when, to know whether he should publish his
+book, he threw himself on his knees, and interrogated the Deity in the
+stillness of the sky.[A] And thus PASCAL started at times at a fiery gulf
+opening by his side. SPINELLO having painted the fall of the rebellious
+angels, had so strongly imagined the illusion, and more particularly the
+terrible features of Lucifer, that he was himself struck with such horror
+as to have been long afflicted with the presence of the demon to which his
+genius had given birth. The influence of the game ideal presence operated
+on the religious painter ANGELONI, who could never represent the
+sufferings of Jesus without his eyes overflowing with tears. DESCARTES,
+when young, and in a country seclusion, his brain exhausted with
+meditation, and his imagination heated to excess, heard a voice in the air
+which called him to pursue the search of truth; nor did he doubt the
+vision, and this delirious dreaming of genius charmed him even in his
+after-studies. Our COLLINS and COWPER were often thrown into that
+extraordinary state of mind, when the ideal presence converts us into
+visionaries; and their illusions were as strong as SEEDENBORG'S, who saw a
+terrestrial heaven in the glittering streets of his New Jerusalem; or
+JACOB BEHMEN'S, who listened to a celestial voice till he beheld the
+apparition of an angel; or CARDAN'S, when he so carefully observed a
+number of little armed men at his feet; or BENVENUTO CELLINI'S, whose
+vivid imagination and glorious egotism so frequently contemplated "a
+resplendent light hovering over his shadow."
+
+[Footnote A: In his curious autobiography he has given the prayer he used,
+ending "I am not satisfied whether I shall publish this book _de
+veritate_; if it be for thy glory, I beseech thee give me some sign from
+heaven; if not I shall suppress it." His lordships adds, "I had no sooner
+spoken these words but a loud, though gentle noise came from the heavens
+(for it was like nothing on earth) which did so comfort and cheer me, that
+I took my petition as granted, and that I had the sign I demanded,
+whereupon also I resolved to print my book. This (how strange soever it
+may seem) I protest before the eternal God is true, neither am I any way
+superstitiously deceived therein, since I did not only clearly hear the
+noise, but in the serenest sky that ever I saw, being without all cloud,
+did to my thinking see the place from whence it came."--ED.]
+
+Such minds identified themselves with their visions! If we pass them over
+by asserting that they were insane, we are only cutting the knot which we
+cannot untie. We have no right to deny what some maintain, that a sympathy
+of the corporeal with the incorporeal nature of man, his imaginative with
+his physical existence, is an excitement which appears to have been
+experienced by persons of a peculiar organization, and which
+metaphysicians in despair must resign to the speculations of enthusiasts
+themselves, though metaphysicians reason about phenomena far removed from
+the perceptions of the eye. The historian of the mind cannot omit this
+fact, unquestionable, however incomprehensible. According to our own
+conceptions, this state must produce a strange mysterious personage: a
+concentration of a human being within himself, endowed with inward eyes,
+ears which listen to interior sounds, and invisible hands touching
+impalpable objects, for whatever they act or however they are acted on, as
+far as respects themselves all must have passed within their own minds.
+The Platonic Dr. MORE flattered himself that he was an enthusiast without
+enthusiasm, which seems but a suspicious state of convalescence. "I must
+ingenuously confess," he says, "that I have a natural touch of enthusiasm,
+in my complexion, but such as I thank God was ever governable enough, and
+have found at length perfectly subduable. In virtue of which victory I
+know better what is in enthusiasts than they themselves; and therefore was
+able to write with life and judgment, and shall, I hope, contribute not a
+little to the peace and quiet of this kingdom thereby." Thus far one of
+its votaries: and all that he vaunts to have acquired by this mysterious
+faculty of enthusiasm is the having rendered it "at length perfectly
+subduable." Yet those who have written on "Mystical devotion," have
+declared that, "it is a sublime state of mind to which whole sects have
+aspired, and some individuals appear to have attained."[A] The histories
+of great visionaries, were they correctly detailed, would probably prove
+how their delusions consisted of the ocular _spectra_ of their brain and
+the accelerated sensations of their nerves. BAYLE has conjured up an
+amusing theory of apparitions, to show that HOBBES, who was subject to
+occasional terrors, might fear that a certain combination of atoms
+agitating his brain might so disorder his mind as to expose him to
+spectral visions; and so being very timid, and distrusting his own
+imagination, he was averse at times to be left alone. Apparitions often
+happen in dreams, but they may happen to a man when awake, for reading and
+hearing of them would revive their images, and these images might play
+even an incredulous philosopher some unlucky trick.
+
+[Footnote A: CHARLES BUTLER has drawn up a sensible essay on "Mystical
+Devotion." He was a Roman Catholic. NORRIS, and Dr. HENRY MORE, and Bishop
+BERKELEY, may be consulted by the curious.]
+
+But men of genius whose enthusiasm has not been past recovery, have
+experienced this extraordinary state of the mind, in those exhaustions of
+study to which they unquestionably are subject. Tissot, on "The Health of
+Men of Letters," has produced a terrifying number of cases. They
+see and hear what none but themselves do. Genius thrown into this
+peculiar state has produced some noble effusions. KOTZEBUE was once
+absorbed in hypochondriacal melancholy, and appears to have meditated on
+self-destruction; but it happened that he preserved his habit of dramatic
+composition, and produced one of his most energetic dramas--that of
+"Misanthropy and Repentance." He tells us that he had never experienced
+such a rapid flow of thoughts and images, and he believed, what a
+physiological history would perhaps show, that there are some maladies,
+those of the brain and the nerves, which actually stretch the powers of
+the mind beyond their usual reach. It is the more vivid world of ideal
+existence.
+
+But what is more evident, men of the finest genius have experienced these
+hallucinations in society acting on their moral habits. They have
+insulated the mind. With them ideas have become realities, and suspicions
+certainties; while events have been noted down as seen and heard, which in
+truth had never occurred. ROUSSEAU'S phantoms scarcely ever quitted him
+for a day. BARRY imagined that he was invisibly persecuted by the Royal
+Academy, who had even spirited up a gang of housebreakers. The vivid
+memoirs of ALFIERI will authenticate what DONNE, who himself had suffered
+from them, calls "these eclipses, sudden offuscations and darkening of the
+senses." Too often the man of genius, with a vast and solitary power,
+darkens the scene of life; he builds a pyramid between himself and the
+sun. Mocking at the expedients by which society has contrived to protect
+its feebleness, he would break down the institutions from which he has
+shrunk away in the loneliness of his feelings. Such is the insulating
+intellect in which some of the most elevated spirits have been reduced. To
+imbue ourselves with the genius of their works, even to think of them, is
+an awful thing! In nature their existence is a solecism, as their genius
+is a paradox; for their crimes seem to be without guilt, their curses have
+kindness in them, and if they afflict mankind it is in sorrow.
+
+Yet what less than enthusiasm is the purchase-price of high passion and
+invention? Perhaps never has there been a man of genius of this rare cast,
+who has not betrayed the ebullitions of imagination in some outward
+action, at that period when the illusions of life are more real to genius
+than its realities. There is a _fata morgana_, that throws into the air a
+pictured land, and the deceived eye trusts till the visionary shadows
+glide away. "I have dreamt of a golden land," exclaimed FUSELI, "and
+solicit in vain for the barge which is to carry me to its shore." A slight
+derangement of our accustomed habits, a little perturbation of the
+faculties, and a romantic tinge on the feelings, give no indifferent
+promise of genius; of that generous temper which knowing nothing of the
+baseness of mankind, with indefinite views carries on some glorious design
+to charm the world or to make it happier. Often we hear, from the
+confessions of men of genius, of their having in youth indulged the most
+elevating and the most chimerical projects; and if age ridicule thy
+imaginative existence, be assured that it is the decline of its genius.
+That virtuous and tender enthusiast, FÉNÉLON, in his early youth, troubled
+his friends with a classical and religious reverie. He was on the point of
+quitting them to restore the independence of Greece, with the piety of a
+missionary, and with the taste of a classical antiquary. The Peloponnesus
+opened to him the Church of Corinth where St. Paul preached, the Piræus
+where Socrates conversed; while the latent poet was to pluck laurels from
+Delphi, and rove amidst the amenities of Tempe. Such was the influence of
+the ideal presence; and barren will be his imagination, and luckless his
+fortune, who, claiming the honours of genius, has never been touched by
+such a temporary delirium.
+
+To this enthusiasm, and to this alone, can we attribute the
+self-immolation of men of genius. Mighty and laborious works have been
+pursued, as a forlorn hope, at the certain destruction of the fortune of
+the individual. Vast labours attest the enthusiasm which accompanied their
+progress. Such men have sealed their works with their blood: they have
+silently borne the pangs of disease; they have barred themselves from the
+pursuits of fortune; they have torn themselves away from all they loved in
+life, patiently suffering these self-denials, to escape from interruptions
+and impediments to their studies. Martyrs of literature and art, they
+behold in their solitude the halo of immortality over their studious
+heads--that fame which is "a life beyond life." VAN HELMONT, in his
+library and his laboratory, preferred their busy solitude to the honours
+and the invitations of Rodolphus II., there writing down what he daily
+experienced during thirty years; nor would the enthusiast yield up to the
+emperor one of those golden and visionary days! MILTON would not desist
+from proceeding with one of his works, although warned by the physician of
+the certain loss of his sight. He declared he preferred his duty to his
+eyes, and doubtless his fame to his comfort. ANTHONY WOOD, to preserve the
+lives of others, voluntarily resigned his own to cloistered studies; nor
+did the literary passion desert him in his last moments, when with his
+dying hands the hermit of literature still grasped his beloved papers, and
+his last mortal thoughts dwelt on his "Athenæ Oxonienses." MORERI, the
+founder of our great biographical collections, conceived the design with
+such enthusiasm, and found such seduction in the labour, that he willingly
+withdrew from the popular celebrity he had acquired as a preacher, and the
+preferment which a minister of state, in whose house he resided, would
+have opened to his views.[A] After the first edition of his "Historical
+Dictionary," he had nothing so much at heart as its improvement. His
+unyielding application was converting labour into death; but collecting
+his last renovated vigour, with his dying hands he gave the volume to the
+world, though he did not live to witness even its publication. All objects
+in life appeared mean to him, compared with that exalted delight of
+addressing, to the literary men of his age, the history of their brothers.
+Such are the men, as BACON says of himself, who are "the servants of
+posterity,"--
+
+ Who scorn delights, and live laborious days!
+
+[Footnote A: Louis Moreri was born in Provence in 1643, and died in 1680,
+at the early age of 37, while engaged on a second edition of his great
+work. The minister alluded to in the text was M. de Pomponne, Secretary of
+State to Louis XIV. until the year 1679.--ED.]
+
+The same enthusiasm inspires the pupils of art consumed by their own
+ardour. The young and classical sculptor who raised the statue of Charles
+II., placed in the centre of the Royal Exchange, was, in the midst of his
+work, advised by his medical friends to desist; for the energy of his
+labour, with the strong excitement of his feelings, already had made fatal
+inroads in his constitution: but he was willing, he said, to die at the
+foot of his statue. The statue was raised, and the young sculptor, with
+the shining eye and hectic flush of consumption, beheld it there--returned
+home--and died. DROUAIS, a pupil of David, the French painter, was a youth
+of fortune, but the solitary pleasure of his youth was his devotion to
+Raphael; he was at his studies from four in the morning till night.
+"Painting or nothing!" was the cry of this enthusiast of elegance; "First
+fame, then amusement," was another. His sensibility was great as his
+enthusiasm; and he cut in pieces the picture for which David declared he
+would inevitably obtain the prize. "I have had my reward in your
+approbation; but next year I shall feel more certain of deserving it," was
+the reply of this young enthusiast. Afterwards he astonished Paris with
+his "Marius;" but while engaged on a subject which he could never quit,
+the principle of life itself was drying up in his veins. HENRY HEADLEY and
+KIRKE WHITE were the early victims of the enthusiasm of study, and are
+mourned by the few who are organized like themselves.
+
+ 'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow,
+ And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low;
+ So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain,
+ No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
+ View'd his own feather on the fatal dart,
+ And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart;
+ Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel
+ He nursed the pinion which impell'd the steel,
+ While the same plumage that had warm'd his nest,
+ Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast,
+
+One of our former great students, when reduced in health by excessive
+study, was entreated to abandon it, and in the scholastic language of the
+day, not to _perdere substantiam propter accidentia_. With a smile the
+martyr of study repeated a verse from Juvenal:
+
+ Nec propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.
+ No! not for life lose that for which I live!
+
+Thus the shadow of death falls among those who are existing with more than
+life about them. Yet "there is no celebrity for the artist," said GESNER,
+"if the love of his own art do not become a vehement passion; if the hours
+he employs to cultivate it be not for him the most delicious ones of his
+life; if study become not his true existence and his first happiness; if
+the society of his brothers in art be not that which most pleases him; if
+even in the night-time the ideas of his art do not occupy his vigils or
+his dreams; if in the morning he fly not to his work, impatient to
+recommence what he left unfinished. These are the marks of him who labours
+for true glory and posterity; but if he seek only to please the taste of
+his age, his works will not kindle the desires nor touch the hearts of
+those who love the arts and the artists."
+
+Unaccompanied by enthusiasm, genius will produce nothing but uninteresting
+works of art; not a work of art resembling the dove of Archytas, which
+beautiful piece of mechanism, while other artists beheld flying, no one
+could frame such another dove to meet it in the air. Enthusiasm is that
+secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius,
+throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very
+ideal presence whence these works have really originated. A great work
+always leaves us in a state of musing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Of the jealousy of Genius.--Jealousy often proportioned to the degree of
+genius.--A perpetual fever among Authors and Artists.--Instances of its
+incredible excess among brothers and benefactors.--Of a peculiar species,
+where the fever consumes the sufferer, without its malignancy.
+
+
+Jealousy, long supposed to be the offspring of little minds, is not,
+however, confined to them. In the literary republic, the passion fiercely
+rages among the senators as well as among the people. In that curious
+self-description which LINNÆUS comprised in a single page, written with
+the precision of a naturalist, that great man discovered that his
+constitution was liable to be afflicted with jealousy. Literary jealousy
+seems often proportioned to the degree of genius, and the shadowy and
+equivocal claims of literary honour is the real cause of this terrible
+fear; for in cases where the object is more palpable and definite than
+intellectual excellence, jealousy does not appear so strongly to affect
+the claimant for admiration. The most beautiful woman, in the season of
+beauty, is more haughty than jealous; she rarely encounters a rival;
+and while her claims exist, who can contend with a fine feature or a
+dissolving glance? But a man of genius has no other existence than in the
+opinion of the world; a divided empire would obscure him, and a contested
+one might prove his annihilation.
+
+The lives of authors and artists exhibit a most painful disease in that
+jealousy which is the perpetual fever of their existence. Why does PLATO
+never mention XENOPHON, and why does XENOPHON inveigh against PLATO,
+studiously collecting every little rumour which may detract from his fame?
+They wrote on the same subject! The studied affectation of ARISTOTLE to
+differ from the doctrines of his master PLATO while he was following them,
+led him into ambiguities and contradictions which have been remarked. The
+two fathers of our poetry, CHAUCER and GOWER, suffered their friendship to
+be interrupted towards the close of their lives. Chaucer bitterly reflects
+on his friend for the indelicacy of some of his tales: "Of all such
+_cursed stories_ I say fy!" and GOWER, evidently in return, erased those
+verses in praise of his friend which he had inserted in the first copy of
+his "Confessio Amantis." Why did CORNEILLE, tottering to the grave, when
+RACINE consulted him on his first tragedy, advise the author never to
+write another? Why does VOLTAIRE continually detract from the sublimity of
+Corneille, the sweetness of Racine, and the fire of Crébillon? Why did
+DRYDEN never speak of OTWAY with kindness but when in his grave, then
+acknowledging that Otway excelled him in the pathetic? Why did LEIBNITZ
+speak slightingly of LOCKE's Essay, and meditate on nothing less than the
+complete overthrow of NEWTON'S system? Why, when Boccaccio sent to
+PETRARCH a copy of DANTE, declaring that the work was like a first light
+which had illuminated his mind, did Petrarch boldly observe that he had
+not been anxious to inquire after it, for intending himself to compose in
+the vernacular idiom, he had no wish to be considered as a plagiary? and
+he only allows Dante's superiority from having written in the vulgar
+idiom, which he did not consider an enviable merit. Thus frigidly Petrarch
+could behold the solitary Ætna before him, in the "Inferno," while he
+shrunk into himself with the painful consciousness of the existence of
+another poet, obscuring his own majesty. It is curious to observe Lord
+SHAFTESBURY treating with the most acrimonious contempt the great writers
+of his own times--Cowley, Dryden, Addison, and Prior. We cannot imagine
+that his lordship was so entirely destitute of every feeling of wit and
+genius as would appear by this damnatory criticism on all the wit and
+genius of his age. It is not, indeed, difficult to comprehend a different
+motive for this extravagant censure in the jealousy which even a great
+writer often experiences when he comes in contact with his living rivals,
+and hardily, if not impudently, practises those arts of critical
+detraction to raise a moment's delusion, which can gratify no one but
+himself.
+
+The moral sense has often been found too weak to temper the malignancy of
+literary jealousy, and has impelled some men of genius to an incredible
+excess. A memorable example offers in the history of the two brothers, Dr.
+WILLIAM and JOHN HUNTER, both great characters fitted to be rivals; but
+Nature, it was imagined, in the tenderness of blood, had placed a bar to
+rivalry. John, without any determined pursuit in his youth, was received
+by his brother at the height of his celebrity; the doctor initiated him
+into his school; they performed their experiments together; and William
+Hunter was the first to announce to the world the great genius of his
+brother. After this close connexion in all their studies and discoveries,
+Dr. William Hunter published his magnificent work--the proud favourite of
+his heart, the assertor of his fame. Was it credible that the genius of
+the celebrated anatomist, which had been nursed under the wing of his
+brother, should turn on that wing to clip it? John Hunter put in his claim
+to the chief discovery; it was answered by his brother. The Royal Society,
+to whom they appealed, concealed the documents of this unnatural feud. The
+blow was felt, and the jealousy of literary honour for ever separated the
+brothers--the brothers of genius.
+
+Such, too, was the jealousy which separated AGOSTINO and ANNIBAL CARRACCI,
+whom their cousin LUDOVICO for so many years had attempted to unite, and
+who, during the time their academy existed, worked together, combining
+their separate powers.[A] The learning and the philosophy of Agostino
+assisted the invention of the master genius, Annibal; but Annibal was
+jealous of the more literary and poetical character of Agostino, and, by
+his sarcastic humour, frequently mortified his learned brother. Alike
+great artists, when once employed on the same work, Agostino was thought
+to have excelled his brother. Annibal, sullen and scornful, immediately
+broke with him; and their patron, Cardinal Farnese, was compelled to
+separate the brothers. Their fate is striking: Agostino, divided from his
+brother Annibal, sunk into dejection and melancholy, and perished by a
+premature death, while Annibal closed his days not long after in a state
+of distraction. The brothers of Nature and Art could not live together,
+and could not live separate.
+
+[Footnote A: See an article on the Carracci in "Curiosities of
+Literature." vol. ii.]
+
+The history of artists abounds with instances of jealousy, perhaps more
+than that of any other class of men of genius. HUDSON, the master of
+REYNOLDS, could not endure the sight of his rising pupil, and would not
+suffer him to conclude the term of his apprenticeship; while even the mild
+and elegant Reynolds himself became so jealous of WILSON, that he took
+every opportunity of depreciating his singular excellence. Stung by the
+madness of jealousy, BARRY one day addressing Sir Joshua on his lectures,
+burst out, "Such poor flimsy stuff as your discourses!" clenching his fist
+in the agony of the convulsion. After the death of the great artist, BARRY
+bestowed on him the most ardent eulogium, and deeply grieved over the
+past. But the race of genius born too "near the sun" have found their
+increased sensibility flame into crimes of a deeper dye--crimes attesting
+the treachery and the violence of the professors of an art which, it
+appears, in softening the souls of others, does not necessarily mollify
+those of the artists themselves. The dreadful story of ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO
+seems not doubtful. Having been taught the discovery of painting in oil by
+Domenico Venetiano, yet, still envious of the merit of the generous friend
+who had confided that great secret to him, Andrea with his own hand
+secretly assassinated him, that he might remain without a rival. The
+horror of his crime only appeared in his confession on his death-bed.
+DOMENICHINO seems to have been poisoned for the preference he obtained
+over the Neapolitan artists, which raised them to a man against him, and
+reduced him to the necessity of preparing his food With his own hand. On
+his last return to Naples, Passeri says, "_Non fu mai più veduto da buon
+occhio da quelli Napoletani: e li Pittori lo detestavano perchè egli
+era ritornato--mori con qualche sospetto di veleno, e questo non è
+inverisimile perchè l'interesso è un perfido tiranno_." So that the
+Neapolitans honoured Genius at Naples by poison, which they might have
+forgotten had it flourished at Rome. The famous cartoon of the battle
+of Pisa, a work of Michael Angelo, which he produced in a glorious
+competition with the Homer of painting, Leonardo da Vinci, and in which he
+had struck out the idea of a new style, is only known by a print which has
+preserved the wonderful composition; for the original, it is said, was cut
+into pieces by the mad jealousy of BACCIO BANDINELLI, whose whole life was
+made miserable by his consciousness of a superior rival.
+
+In the jealousy of genius, however, there is a peculiar case where the
+fever silently consumes the sufferer, without possessing the malignant
+character of the disease. Even the gentlest temper declines under its slow
+wastings, and this infection may happen among dear friends, whenever a man
+of genius loses that self-opinion which animates his solitary labours and
+constitutes his happiness. Perhaps when at the height of his class, he
+suddenly views himself eclipsed by another genius--and that genius his
+friend! This is the jealousy, not of hatred, but of despair. Churchill
+observed the feeling, but probably included in it a greater degree of
+malignancy than I would now describe.
+
+ Envy which turns pale,
+ And sickens even if a friend prevail.
+
+SWIFT, in that curious poem on his own death, said of POPE that
+
+ --He can in one couplet fix
+ More sense than I can do in six.
+
+The Dean, perhaps, is not quite serious, but probably is in the next
+lines--
+
+ It gives me such a jealous fit,
+ I cry "Pox take him and his wit."
+
+If the reader pursue this hint throughout the poem, these compliments to
+his friends, always at his own expense, exhibit a singular mixture of the
+sensibility and the frankness of true genius, which Swift himself has
+honestly confessed.
+
+ What poet would not grieve to see
+ His brother write as well as he?[A]
+
+ADDISON experienced this painful and mixed emotion in his intercourse
+with POPE, to whose rising celebrity he soon became too jealously
+alive.[B] It was more tenderly, but not less keenly, felt by the Spanish
+artist CASTILLO, a man distinguished by every amiable disposition. He was
+the great painter of Seville; but when some of his nephew MURILLO'S
+paintings were shown to him, he stood in meek astonishmont before them,
+and turning away, he exclaimed with a sigh--"_Yà murio Castillo_!"
+Castillo is no more! Returning home, the stricken genius relinquished his
+pencil, and pined away, in hopelessness. The same occurrence happened to
+PIETRO PERUGINO, the master of Raphael, whose general character as a
+painter was so entirely eclipsed by his far-renowned scholar; yet, while
+his real excellences in the ease of his attitudes and the mild grace of
+his female countenances have been passed over, it is probable that
+Raphael himself might have caught from them his first feelings of ideal
+beauty.
+
+[Footnote A: The plain motive of all these dislikes is still more amusing,
+as given in this couplet of the same poem:--
+
+ "If with such genius heaven has blest 'em,
+ Have I not reason to detest 'em."--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: See article on Pope and Addison in "Quarrels of Authors." ]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Want of mutual esteem among men of genius often originates in a deficiency
+of analogous ideas.--It is not always envy or jealousy which induces men
+of genius to undervalue each other.
+
+
+Among men of genius, that want of mutual esteem, usually attributed to
+envy or jealousy, often originates in a deficiency of analogous ideas, or
+of sympathy, in the parties. On this principle, several curious phenomena
+in the history of genius may be explained.
+
+Every man of genius has a manner of his own; a mode of thinking and a
+habit of style, and usually decides on a work as it approximates or varies
+from his own. When one great author depreciates another, his depreciation
+has often no worse source than his own taste. The witty Cowley despised
+the natural Chaucer; the austere classical Boileau the rough sublimity of
+Créibillon; the refining Marivaux the familiar Molière. Fielding ridiculed
+Richardson, whose manner so strongly contrasted with his own; and
+Richardson contemned Fielding, and declared he would not last. Cumberland
+escaped a fit of unforgiveness, not living to read his own character by
+Bishop Watson, whose logical head tried the lighter elegancies of that
+polished man by his own nervous genius, destitute of the beautiful in
+taste. There was no envy in the breast of Johnson when he advised Mrs.
+Thrale not to purchase "Gray's Letters," as trifling and dull, no more
+than there was in Gray himself when he sunk the poetical character of
+Shenstone, and debased his simplicity and purity of feeling by an image of
+ludicrous contempt. I have heard that WILKES, a mere wit and elegant
+scholar, used to treat GIBBON as a mere bookmaker; and applied to that
+philosophical historian the verse by which Voltaire described, with so
+much caustic facetiousness, the genius of the Abbé Trablet--
+
+ Il a compilé, compilé, compilé.
+
+The deficient sympathy in these men of genius for modes of feeling
+opposite to their own was the real cause of their opinions; and thus it
+happens that even superior genius is so often liable to be unjust and
+false in its decisions.
+
+The same principle operates still more strikingly in the remarkable
+contempt of men of genius for those pursuits which require talents
+distinct from their own, and a cast of mind thrown by nature into another
+mould. Hence we must not be surprised at the poetical antipathies of
+Selden and Locke, as well as Longuerue and Buffon. Newton called poetry
+"ingenious nonsense." On the other side, poets undervalue the pursuits of
+the antiquary, the naturalist, and the metaphysician, forming their
+estimate by their own favourite scale of imagination. As we can only
+understand in the degree we comprehend, and feel in the degree in which we
+sympathize, we may be sure that in both these cases the parties will be
+found altogether deficient in those qualities of genius which constitute
+the excellence of the other. To this cause, rather than to the one the
+friends of MICKLE ascribed to ADAM SMITH, namely, a personal dislike to
+the poet, may we place the severe mortification which the unfortunate
+translator of Camoens suffered from the person to whom he dedicated "The
+Lusiad." The Duke of Buccleugh was the pupil of the great political
+economist, and so little valued an epic poem, that his Grace had not even
+the curiosity to open the leaves of the presentation copy.
+
+A professor of polite literature condemned the study of botany, as adapted
+to mediocrity of talent, and only demanding patience; but LINNÆUS showed
+how a man of genius becomes a creator even in a science which seems to
+depend only on order and method. It will not be a question with some
+whether a man must be endowed with the energy and aptitude of genius, to
+excel in antiquarianism, in natural history, and similar pursuits. The
+prejudices raised against the claims of such to the honours of genius have
+probably arisen from the secluded nature of their pursuits, and the little
+knowledge which the men of wit and imagination possess of these persons,
+who live in a society of their own. On this subject a very curious
+circumstance has been revealed respecting PEIRESC, whose enthusiasm for
+science was long felt throughout Europe. His name was known in every
+country, and his death was lamented in forty languages; yet was this great
+literary character unknown to several men of genius in his own country;
+Rochefoucauld declared he had never heard of his name, and Malherbe
+wondered why his death created so universal a sensation.
+
+Madame DE STÄEL was an experienced observer of the habits of the literary
+character, and she has remarked how one student usually revolts from
+the other when _their occupations are different_, because they are a
+reciprocal annoyance. The scholar has nothing to say to the poet, the
+poet to the naturalist; and even among men of science, those who are
+differently occupied avoid each other, taking little interest in what is
+out of their own circle. Thus we see the classes of literature, like the
+planets, revolving as distinct worlds; and it would not be less absurd for
+the inhabitants of Venus to treat with contempt the powers and faculties
+of those of Jupiter, than it is for the men of wit and imagination those
+of the men of knowledge and curiosity. The wits are incapable of exerting
+the peculiar qualities which give a real value to these pursuits, and
+therefore they must remain ignorant of their nature and their result.
+
+It is not then always envy or jealousy which induces men of genius to
+undervalue each other; the want of sympathy will sufficiently account for
+the want of judgment. Suppose NEWTON, QUINAULT, and MACHIAVEL accidentally
+meeting together, and unknown to each other, would they not soon have
+desisted from the vain attempt of communicating their ideas? The
+philosopher would have condemned the poet of the Graces as an intolerable
+trifler, and the author of "The Prince" as a dark political spy. Machiavel
+would have conceived Newton to be a dreamer among the stars, and a mere
+almanack-maker among men; and the other a rhymer, nauseously _doucereux_.
+Quinault might have imagined that he was seated between two madmen. Having
+annoyed each other for some time, they would have relieved their ennui by
+reciprocal contempt, and each have parted with a determination to avoid
+henceforward two such disagreeable companions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Self-praise of genius.--The love of praise instinctive in the nature of
+genius.--A high opinion of themselves necessary for their great designs.
+--The Ancients openly claimed their own praise.--And several Moderns.--An
+author knows more of his merits than his readers.--And less of his
+defects.--Authors versatile in their admiration and their malignity.
+
+
+Vanity, egotism, a strong sense of their own sufficiency, form another
+accusation against men of genius; but the complexion of self-praise must
+alter with the occasion; for the simplicity of truth may appear vanity,
+and the consciousness of superiority seem envy--to Mediocrity. It is we
+who do nothing, and cannot even imagine anything to be done, who are so
+much displeased with self-lauding, self-love, self-independence,
+self-admiration, which with the man of genius may often be nothing but an
+ostensible modification of the passion of glory.
+
+He who exults in himself is at least in earnest; but he who refuses to
+receive that praise in public for which he has devoted so much labour in
+his privacy, is not; for he is compelled to suppress the very instinct of
+his nature. We censure no man for loving fame, but only for showing us how
+much he is possessed by the passion: thus we allow him to create the
+appetite, but we deny him its aliment. Our effeminate minds are the
+willing dupes of what is called the modesty of genius, or, as it has been
+termed, "the polished reserve of modern times;" and this from the selfish
+principle that it serves at least to keep out of the company its painful
+pre-eminence. But this "polished reserve," like something as fashionable,
+the ladies' rouge, at first appearing with rather too much colour, will in
+the heat of an evening die away till the true complexion come out. What
+subterfuges are resorted to by these pretended modest men of genius, to
+extort that praise from their private circle which is thus openly denied
+them! They have been taken by surprise enlarging their own panegyric,
+which might rival Pliny's on Trajan, for care and copiousness; or
+impudently veiling themselves with the transparency of a third person; or
+never prefixing their name to the volume, which they would not easily
+forgive a friend to pass unnoticed.
+
+Self-love is a principle of action; but among no class of human beings has
+nature so profusely distributed this principle of life and action as
+through the whole sensitive family of genius. It reaches even to a
+feminine susceptibility. The love of praise is instinctive in their
+nature. Praise with them is the evidence of the past and the pledge of the
+future. The generous qualities and the virtues of a man of genius are
+really produced by the applause conferred on him. "To him whom the world
+admires, the happiness of the world must be dear," said Madame DE STÄEL.
+ROMNEY, the painter, held as a maxim that every diffident artist required
+"almost a daily portion of cheering applause." How often do such find
+their powers paralysed by the depression of confidence or the appearance
+of neglect! When the North American Indians, amid their circle, chant
+their gods and their heroes, the honest savages laud the living worthies,
+as well as their departed; and when, as we are told, an auditor hears the
+shout of his own name, he answers by a cry of pleasure and of pride. The
+savage and the man of genius are here true to nature, but pleasure and
+pride in his own name must raise no emotion in the breast of genius amidst
+a polished circle. To bring himself down to their usual mediocrity, he
+must start at an expression of regard, and turn away even from one of his
+own votaries. Madame De Stäel, an exquisite judge of the feelings of the
+literary character, was aware of this change, which has rather occurred in
+our manners than in men of genius themselves. "Envy," says that eloquent
+writer, "among the Greeks, existed sometimes between rivals; it has now
+passed to the spectators; and by a strange singularity the mass of men are
+jealous of the efforts which are tried to add to their pleasures or to
+merit their approbation."
+
+But this, it seems, is not always the case with men of genius, since the
+accusation we are noticing has been so often reiterated. Take from some
+that supreme confidence in themselves, that pride of exultation, and you
+crush the germ of their excellence. Many vast designs must have perished
+in the conception, had not their authors breathed this vital air of
+self-delight, this creative spirit, so operative in great undertakings. We
+have recently seen this principle in the literary character unfold itself
+in the life of the late Bishop of Landaff. Whatever he did, he felt it was
+done as a master: whatever he wrote, it was, as he once declared, the best
+work on the subject yet written. With this feeling he emulated Cicero in
+retirement or in action. "When I am dead, you will not soon meet with
+another JOHN HUNTER," said the great anatomist to one of his garrulous
+friends. An apology is formed by his biographer for relating the fact, but
+the weakness is only in the apology. When HOGARTH was engaged in his work
+of the _Marriage à-la-Mode_, he said to Reynolds, "I shall very soon
+gratify the world with such a sight as they have never seen equalled."
+--"One of his foibles," adds Northcote, "it is well known, was the
+excessive high opinion he had of his own abilities." So pronounced
+Northcote, who had not an atom of his genius. Was it a _foible_ in Hogarth
+to cast the glove, when he always more than redeemed the pledge?
+CORNEILLE has given a very noble full-length of the sublime egotism which
+accompanied him through life;[A] but I doubt, if we had any such author in
+the present day, whether he would dare to be so just to himself, and so
+hardy to the public. The self-praise of BUFFON at least equalled his
+genius; and the inscription beneath his statue in the library of the
+Jardin des Plantes, which I have been told was raised to him in his
+lifetime, exceeds all panegyric; it places him alone in nature, as the
+first and the last interpreter of her works. He said of the great geniuses
+of modern ages, that "there were not more than five; Newton, Bacon,
+Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and Myself." With this spirit he conceived and
+terminated his great works, and sat in patient meditation at his desk for
+half a century, till all Europe, even in a state of war, bowed to the
+modern Pliny.
+
+[Footnote A: See it versified in "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p.
+431.]
+
+Nor is the vanity of Buffon, and Voltaire, and Rousseau purely national;
+for men of genius in all ages have expressed a consciousness of the
+internal force of genius. No one felt this self-exultation more potent
+than our HOBBES; who has indeed, in his controversy with Wallis, asserted
+that there may be nothing more just than self-commendation.[A] There is a
+curious passage in the "Purgatorio" of DANTE, where, describing the
+transitory nature of literary fame, and the variableness of human opinion,
+the poet alludes with confidence to his own future greatness. Of two
+authors of the name of Guido, the one having eclipsed the other, the poet
+writes:--
+
+ Così ha tolto l'uno all'altro Guido
+ La gloria della lingua; e _forse è nato
+ Chi l'uno e l'altro caccerà di nido_.
+
+ Thus has one Guido from the other snatch'd
+ The letter'd pride; _and he perhaps is born
+ Who shall drive either from their nest_.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: See "Quarrels of Authors," p. 471.]
+
+[Footnote B: Cary.]
+
+DE THOU, one of the most noble-minded of historians, in the Memoirs of his
+own life, composed in the third person, has surprised and somewhat puzzled
+the critics, by that frequent distribution of self-commendation which they
+knew not how to reconcile with the modesty and gravity with which the
+President was so amply endowed. After his great and solemn labour, amidst
+the injustice of his persecutors, this eminent man had sufficient
+experience of his real worth to assert it. KEPLER, amidst his sublime
+discoveries, looks down like a superior being on other men. He breaks
+forth in glory and daring egotism: "I dare insult mankind by confessing
+that I am he who has turned science to advantage. If I am pardoned, I
+shall rejoice; if blamed, I shall endure. The die is cast; I have written
+this book, and whether it be read by posterity or by my contemporaries is
+of no consequence; it may well wait for a reader during one century, when
+God himself during six thousand years has not sent an observer like
+myself." He truly predicts that "his discoveries would be verified in
+succeeding ages," and prefers his own glory to the possession of the
+electorate of Saxony. It was this solitary majesty, this futurity of their
+genius, which hovered over the sleepless pillow of Bacon, of Newton, and
+of Montesquieu; of Ben Jonson, of Milton, and Corneille; and of Michael
+Angelo. Such men anticipate their contemporaries; they know they are
+creators, long before they are hailed as such by the tardy consent of the
+public. These men stand on Pisgah heights, and for them the sun shines on
+a land which none can view but themselves.
+
+There is an admirable essay in Plutarch, "On the manner by which we may
+praise ourselves without exciting envy in others." The sage seems to
+consider self-praise as a kind of illustrious impudence, and has one very
+striking image: he compares these eulogists to famished persons, who
+finding no other food, in their rage have eaten their own flesh, and thus
+shockingly nourished themselves by their own substance. He allows persons
+in high office to praise themselves, if by this they can repel calumny and
+accusation, as did Pericles before the Athenians: but the Romans found
+fault with Cicero, who so frequently reminded them of his exertions in the
+conspiracy of Catiline; while, when Scipio told them that "they should not
+presume to judge of a citizen to whom they owed the power of judging all
+men," the people covered themselves with flowers, and followed him to the
+capitol to join in a thanksgiving to Jove. "Cicero," adds Plutarch,
+"praised himself without necessity. Scipio was in personal danger, and
+this took away what is odious in self-praise." An author seems sometimes
+to occupy the situation of a person in high office; and there may be
+occasions when with a noble simplicity, if he appeal to his works, of
+which all men may judge, he may be permitted to assert or to maintain his
+claims. It has at least been the practice of men of genius, for in this
+very essay we find Timotheus, Euripides, and Pindar censured, though they
+deserved all the praise they gave themselves.
+
+EPICURUS, writing to a minister of state, declares, "If you desire glory,
+nothing can bestow it more than the letters I write to you:" and SENECA,
+in quoting these words, adds, "What Epicurus promised to his friend, that,
+my Lucilius, I promise you." _Orna me!_ was the constant cry of CICERO;
+and he desires the historian Lucceius to write separately the conspiracy
+of Catiline, and to publish quickly, that while he yet lived he might
+taste the sweetness of his glory. HORACE and OVID wore equally sensible to
+their immortality; but what modern poet would be tolerated with such an
+avowal? Yet DRYDEN honestly declares that it was better for him to own
+this failing of vanity, than the world to do it for him; and adds, "For
+what other reason have I spent my life in so unprofitable a study? Why am
+I grown old in seeking so barren a reward as fame? The same parts and
+application which have made me a poet might have raised me to any honours
+of the gown." Was not CERVANTES very sensible to his own merits when a
+rival started up? and did he not assert them too, and distinguish his own
+work by a handsome compliment? LOPE DE VEGA celebrated his own poetic
+powers under the pseudonyme of a pretended editor, Thomas Barguillos. I
+regret that his noble biographer, than whom no one can more truly
+sympathise with the emotions of genius, has censured the bard for
+his querulous or his intrepid tone, and for the quaint conceit of his
+title-page, where his detractor is introduced as a beetle in a _vega_ or
+garden, attacking its flowers, but expiring in the very sweetness he would
+injure. The inscription under BOILEAU'S portrait, which gives a preference
+to the French satirist over Juvenal and Horace, is known to have been
+written by himself. Nor was BUTLER less proud of his own merits;
+for he has done ample justice to his "Hudibras," and traced out, with
+great self-delight, its variety of excellences. RICHARDSON, the novelist,
+exhibits one of the most striking instances of what is called literary
+vanity, the delight of an author in his works; he has pointed out all the
+beauties of his three great works, in various manners.[A] He always taxed
+a visitor by one of his long letters. It was this intense self-delight
+which produced his voluminous labours.
+
+[Footnote A: I have observed them in "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii.
+p. 64.]
+
+There are certain authors whose very existence seems to require a high
+conception of their own talents; and who must, as some animals appear to
+do, furnish the means of life out of their own substance. These men of
+genius open their career with peculiar tastes, or with a predilection for
+some great work of no immediate interest; in a word, with many unpopular
+dispositions. Yet we see them magnanimous, though defeated, proceeding
+with the public feeling against them. At length we view them ranking with
+their rivals. Without having yielded up their peculiar tastes or their
+incorrigible viciousness, they have, however, heightened their individual
+excellences. No human opinion can change their self-opinion. Alive to the
+consciousness of their powers, their pursuits are placed above impediment,
+and their great views can suffer no contraction; _possunt quia posse
+videntur_. Such was the language Lord BACON once applied to himself when
+addressing a king. "I know," said the great philosopher, "that I am
+censured of some conceit of my ability or worth; but I pray your majesty
+impute it to desire--_possunt quia posse videntur_." These men of genius
+bear a charmed mail on their breast; "hopeless, not heartless," may be
+often the motto of their ensign; and if they do not always possess
+reputation, they still look onwards for fame; for these do not necessarily
+accompany each other.
+
+An author is more sensible of his own merits, as he also is of his labour,
+which is invisible to all others, while he is unquestionably much less
+sensible to his defects than most of his readers. The author not only
+comprehends his merits better, because they have passed through a long
+process in his mind, but he is familiar with every part, while the reader
+has but a vague notion of the whole. Why does an excellent work, by
+repetition, rise in interest? Because in obtaining this gradual intimacy
+with an author, we appear to recover half the genius which we had lost on
+a first perusal. The work of genius too is associated, in the mind of the
+author, with much more than it contains; and the true supplement, which he
+only can give, has not always accompanied the work itself. We find great
+men often greater than the books they write. Ask the man of genius if he
+have written all that he wished to have written? Has he satisfied himself
+in this work, for which you accuse his pride? Has he dared what required
+intrepidity to achieve? Has he evaded difficulties which he should have
+overcome? The mind of the reader has the limits of a mere recipient, while
+that of the author, even after his work, is teeming with creation. "On
+many occasions, my soul seems to know more than it can say, and to be
+endowed with a mind by itself, far superior to the mind I really have,"
+said MARIVAUX, with equal truth and happiness.
+
+With these explanations of what are called the vanity and egotism of
+Genius, be it remembered, that the sense of their own sufficiency is
+assumed by men at their own risk. The great man who thinks greatly of
+himself, is not diminishing that greatness in heaping fuel on his fire. It
+is indeed otherwise with his unlucky brethren, with whom an illusion of
+literary vanity may end in the aberrations of harmless madness; as it
+happened to PERCIVAL STOCKDALE. After a parallel between himself and
+Charles XII. of Sweden, he concludes that "some parts will be to _his_
+advantage, and some to _mine_;" but in regard to fame, the main object
+between himself and Charles XII., Percival imagined that "his own will not
+probably take its fixed and immovable station, and shine with its expanded
+and permanent splendour, till it consecrates his ashes, till it illumines
+his tomb." After this the reader, who may never have heard of the name of
+Percival Stockdale, must be told that there exist his own "Memoirs of his
+Life and Writings."[A] The memoirs of a scribbler who saw the prospects of
+life close on him while he imagined that his contemporaries were unjust,
+are instructive to literary men. To correct, and to be corrected, should
+be their daily practice, that they may be taught not only to exult in
+themselves, but to fear themselves.
+
+[Footnote A: I have sketched a character of PERCIVAL STOCKDALE, in
+"Calamities of Authors" (pp. 218--224); it was taken _ad vivum_.]
+
+It is hard to refuse these men of genius that _aura vitalis_, of which
+they are so apt to be liberal to others. Are they not accused of the
+meanest adulations? When a young writer experiences the notice of a person
+of some eminence, he has expressed himself in language which transcends
+that of mortality. A finer reason than reason itself inspires it. The
+sensation has been expressed with all its fulness by Milton:--
+
+ The debt immense of endless gratitude.
+
+Who ever pays an "immense debt" in small sums? Every man of genius has
+left such honourable traces of his private affections; from LOCKE, whose
+dedication of his great work is more adulative than could be imagined from
+a temperate philosopher, to CHURCHILL, whose warm eulogiums on his friends
+beautifully contrast with his satire. Even in advanced age, the man of
+genius dwells on the praise he caught in his youth from veteran genius,
+which, like the aloe, will flower at the end of life. When Virgil was yet
+a youth, it is said that Cicero heard one of his eclogues, and exclaimed
+with his accustomed warmth,
+
+ Magna spes altera Romæ!
+
+"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 Æneid, he applies these very words
+to Ascanius. So long had the accents of Cicero's praise lingered in the
+poet's ear!
+
+This extreme susceptibility of praise in men of genius is the same
+exuberant sensibility which is so alive to censure. I have elsewhere fully
+shown how some have died of criticism.[A] The self-love of genius is
+perhaps much more delicate than gross.
+
+But this fatal susceptibility is the cause of that strange facility which
+has often astonished the world, by the sudden transitions of sentiment
+which literary characters have frequently exhibited. They have eulogised
+men and events which they had reprobated, and reprobated what they had
+eulogised. The recent history of political revolutions has furnished some
+monstrous examples of this subservience to power. Guicciardini records one
+of his own times, which has been often repeated in ours. JOVIANUS
+PONTANUS, the secretary of Ferdinand, King of Naples, was also selected to
+be the tutor of the prince, his son. When Charles VIII. of France invaded
+Naples, Pontanus was deputed to address the French conqueror. To render
+himself agreeable to the enemies of his country, he did not avoid
+expatiating on the demerits of his expelled patrons: "So difficult it is,"
+adds the grave and dignified historian, "for ourselves to observe that
+moderation and those precepts which no man knew better than Pontanus, who
+was endowed with such copious literature, and composed with such facility
+in moral philosophy, and possessed such acquirements in universal
+erudition, that he had made himself a prodigy to the eye of the world."[B]
+The student, occupied by abstract pursuits, may not indeed always take
+much interest in the change of dynasties; and perhaps the famous cancelled
+dedication to Cromwell, by the learned orientalist Dr. CASTELL,[C] who
+supplied its place by another to Charles II., ought not to be placed to
+the account of political tergiversation. But the versatile adoration of
+the continental _savans_ of the republic or the monarchy, the consul or
+the emperor, has inflicted an unhealing wound on the literary character;
+since, like PONTANUS, to gratify their new master, they had not the
+greatness of mind to save themselves from ingratitude to their old.
+
+[Footnote A: In the article entitled "Anecdotes of Censured Authors," in
+vol. i. of "Curiosities of Literature."]
+
+[Footnote B: Guicciardini, Book II.]
+
+[Footnote C: For the melancholy history of this devoted scholar, see note
+to the article on "The Rewards of Oriental Students," in "Calamities of
+Authors," p. 189.]
+
+Their vengeance, as quickly kindled, lasts as long. Genius is a dangerous
+gift of nature. The same effervescent passions form a Catiline or a
+Cicero. Plato lays great stress on his man of genius possessing the most
+vehement passions, but he adds reason to restrain them. It is Imagination
+which by their side stands as their good or evil spirit. Glory or infamy
+is but a different direction of the same passion.
+
+How are we to describe symptoms which, flowing from one source, yet show
+themselves in such opposite forms as those of an intermittent fever, a
+silent delirium, or a horrid hypochondriasm? Have we no other opiate to
+still the agony, no other cordial to warm the heart, than the great
+ingredient in the recipe of Plato's visionary man of genius--calm
+reason? Must men, who so rarely obtain this tardy panacea, remain with all
+their tortured and torturing passions about them, often self-disgusted,
+self-humiliated? The enmities of genius are often connected with their
+morbid imagination. These originate in casual slights, or in unguarded
+expressions, or in hasty opinions, or in witty derision, or even in the
+obtruding goodness of tender admonition. The man of genius broods over the
+phantom that darkens his feelings: he multiplies a single object; he
+magnifies the smallest; and suspicions become certainties. It is in this
+unhappy state that he sharpens his vindictive fangs, in a libel called his
+"Memoirs," or in another species of public outrage, styled a "Criticism."
+
+We are told that COMINES the historian, when residing at the court of the
+Count de Charolois, afterwards Duke of Burgundy, one day returning from
+hunting, with inconsiderate jocularity sat down before the Count, and
+ordered the prince to pull off his boots. The Count would not affect
+greatness, and having executed his commission, in return for the princely
+amusement, the Count dashed the boot on Comines' nose, which bled; and
+from that time, he was mortified at the court of Burgundy, by retaining
+the nickname of _the booted head._ The blow rankled in the heart of the
+man of genius, and the Duke of Burgundy has come down to us in COMINE'S
+"Memoirs," blackened by his vengeance. Many, unknown to their readers,
+like COMINES, have had a booted head; but the secret poison is distilled
+on their lasting page, as we have recently witnessed in Lord Waldegrave's
+"Memoirs." Swift's perpetual malevolence to Dryden originated in that
+great poet's prediction, that "cousin Swift would never be a poet;" a
+prediction which the wit never could forget. I have elsewhere fully
+written a tale of literary hatred, where is seen a man of genius, in the
+character of GILBERT STUART, devoting a whole life to harassing the
+industry or the genius which he himself could not attain.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: See "Calamities of Authors," pp. 131--139.]
+
+A living Italian poet, of great celebrity, when at the court of Rome,
+presented a magnificent edition of his poetry to Pius VI. The bard, Mr.
+Hobhouse informs us, lived not in the good graces of his holiness, and
+although the pontiff accepted the volume, he did not forbear a severity of
+remark which could not fall unheeded by the modern poet; for on this
+occasion, repeating some verses of Metastasio, his holiness drily added,
+"No one now-a-days writes like that great poet." Never was this to be
+erased from memory: the stifled resentment of MONTI vehemently broke forth
+at the moment the French carried off Pius VI. from Rome. Then the long
+indignant secretary poured forth an invective more severe "against the
+great harlot," than was ever traced by a Protestant pen--MONTI now invoked
+the rock of Sardinia: the poet bade it fly from its base, that _the last
+of monsters_ might not find even a tomb to shelter him. Such was the curse
+of a poet on his former patron, now an object of misery--a return for
+"placing him below Metastasio!"
+
+The French Revolution affords illustrations of the worst human passions.
+When the wretched COLLOT D'HERBOIS was tossed up in the storm to the
+summit of power, a monstrous imagination seized him; he projected razing
+the city of Lyons and massacring its inhabitants. He had even the heart to
+commence, and to continue this conspiracy against human nature; the
+ostensible crime was royalism, but the secret motive is said to have been
+literary vengeance! As wretched a poet and actor as a man, D'Herbois had
+been hissed off the theatre at Lyons, and to avenge that ignominy, he had
+meditated over this vast and remorseless crime. Is there but one Collot
+D'Herbois in the universe? Long since this was written, a fact has been
+recorded of CHENIER, the French dramatic poet, which parallels the horrid
+tale of Collot D'Herbois, which some have been willing to doubt from its
+enormity. It is said, that this monster, in the revolutionary period, when
+he had the power to save the life of his brother André, while his father,
+prostrate before a wretched son, was imploring for the life of an innocent
+brother, remained silent; it is further said that he appropriated to
+himself a tragedy which he found among his brother's manuscripts.
+"Fratricide from literary jealousy," observes the relator of this
+anecdote, "was a crime reserved for a modern French revolutionist."[A]
+There are some pathethic stanzas which André was composing in his last
+moments, when awaiting his fate; the most pathetic of all stanzas is that
+one which he left unfinished--
+
+ Peut-être, avant que l'heure en cercle promenée
+ Ait posé, sur l'émail brillant,
+ Dans les soixante pas où sa route est bornée,
+ Son pied sonore et vigilant,
+ Le sommeil du tombeau pressera ma paupière--
+
+At this unfinished stanza was the pensive poet summoned to the guillotine!
+
+[Footnote A: _Edinburgh Review_, xxxv. 159]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+The domestic life of genius.--Defects of great compositions attributed to
+domestic infelicities.--The home of the literary character should be the
+abode of repose and silence.--Of the Father.--Of the Mother.--Of family
+genius.--Men of genius not more respected than other men in their domestic
+circle.--The cultivators of science and art do not meet on equal terms
+with others, in domestic life.--Their neglect of those around them.--Often
+accused of imaginary crimes.
+
+
+When the temper and the leisure of the literary character are alike
+broken, even his best works, the too faithful mirrors of his state of
+mind, will participate in its inequalities; and surely the incubations of
+genius, in its delicate and shadowy combinations, are not less sensible in
+their operation than the composition of sonorous bodies, where, while the
+warm metal is settling in the mould, even an unusual vibration of the air
+during the moment of fusion will injure the tone.
+
+Some of the conspicuous blemishes of several great compositions may be
+attributed to the domestic infelicities of their authors. The desultory
+life of CAMOENS is imagined to be perceptible in the deficient connexion
+of his epic; and MILTON'S blindness and divided family prevented that
+castigating criticism, which otherwise had erased passages which have
+escaped from his revising hand. He felt himself in the situation of his
+Samson Agonistes, whom he so pathetically describes--
+
+ His foes' derision, captive, poor, and blind.
+
+Even LOCKE complains of his "discontinued way of writing," and "writing by
+incoherent parcels," from the avocations of a busy and unsettled life,
+which undoubtedly produced a deficiency of method in the disposition of
+the materials of his great work. The careless rapid lines of DRYDEN
+are justly attributed to his distress, and indeed he pleads for his
+inequalities from his domestic circumstances. JOHNSON often silently, but
+eagerly, corrected the "Ramblers" in their successive editions, of which
+so many had been despatched in haste. The learned GREAVES offered some
+excuses for his errors in his edition of "Abulfeda," from "his being five
+years encumbered with lawsuits, and diverted from his studies." When at
+length he returned to them, he expresses his surprise "at the pains he had
+formerly undergone," but of which he now felt himself "unwilling, he knew
+not how, of again undergoing." GOLDONI, when at the bar, abandoned his
+comic talent for several years; and having resumed it, his first comedy
+totally failed: "My head," says he, "was occupied with my professional
+employment; I was uneasy in mind and in bad humour." A lawsuit, a
+bankruptcy, a domestic feud, or an indulgence in criminal or in foolish
+pursuits, have chilled the fervour of imagination, scattered into
+fragments many a noble design, and paralysed the finest genius. The
+distractions of GUIDO'S studies from his passion for gaming, and of
+PARMEGIANO'S for alchemy, have been traced in their works, which are often
+hurried over and unequal. It is curious to observe, that CUMBERLAND
+attributes the excellence of his comedy, _The West Indian_, to the
+peculiarly happy situation in which he found himself at the time of its
+composition, free from the incessant avocations which had crossed him in
+the writing of _The Brothers._ "I was master of my time, my mind was free,
+and I was happy in the society of the dearest friends I had on earth. The
+calls of office, the cavillings of angry rivals, and the gibings of
+newspaper critics, could not reach me on the banks of the Shannon, where
+all within-doors was love and affection. In no other period of my life
+have the same happy circumstances combined to cheer me in any of my
+literary labours."
+
+The best years of MENGS' life were embittered by his father, a poor
+artist, and who, with poorer feelings, converted his home into a
+prison-house, forced his son into the slavery of stipulated task-work,
+while bread and water were the only fruits of the fine arts. In this
+domestic persecution, the son contracted those morose and saturnine
+habits which in after-life marked the character of the ungenial MENGS.
+ALONSO CANO, a celebrated Spanish painter, would have carried his art to
+perfection, had not the unceasing persecution of the Inquisitors entirely
+deprived him of that tranquillity so necessary to the very existence of
+art. OVID, in exile on the barren shores of Tomos, deserted by his
+genius, in his copious _Tristia_ loses much of the luxuriance of his
+fancy.
+
+We have a remarkable evidence of domestic unhappiness annihilating the
+very faculty of genius itself, in the case of Dr. BROOK TAYLOR, the
+celebrated author of the "Linear Perspective." This great mathematician in
+early life distinguished himself as an inventor in science, and the most
+sanguine hopes of his future discoveries were raised both at home and
+abroad. Two unexpected events in domestic life extinguished his inventive
+faculties. After the loss of two wives, whom he regarded with no common
+affection, he became unfitted for profound studies; he carried his own
+personal despair into his favourite objects of pursuit, and abandoned
+them. The inventor of the most original work suffered the last fifteen
+years of his life to drop away, without hope, and without exertion; nor is
+this a solitary instance, where a man of genius, deprived of the idolised
+partner of his existence, has no longer been able to find an object in his
+studies, and where even fame itself has ceased to interest. The reason
+which ROUSSEAU alleges for the cynical spleen which so frequently breathes
+forth in his works, shows how the domestic character of the man of genius
+leaves itself in his productions. After describing the infelicity of his
+domestic affairs, occasioned by the mother of Theresa, and Theresa
+herself, both women of the lowest class and the worst dispositions, he
+adds, on this wretched marriage, "These unexpected disagreeable events, in
+a state of my own choice, plunged me into literature, to give a new
+direction and diversion to my mind; and in all my first works I scattered
+that bilious humour which had occasioned this very occupation." Our
+author's character in his works was the very opposite to the one in which
+he appeared to these low people. Feeling his degradation among them, for
+they treated his simplicity as utter silliness, his personal timidity
+assumed a tone of boldness and originality in his writings, while a strong
+personal sense of shame heightened his causticity, and he delighted to
+contemn that urbanity in which he had never shared, and which he knew not
+how to practise. His miserable subservience to these people was the real
+cause of his oppressed spirit calling out for some undefined freedom in
+society; and thus the real Rousseau, with all his disordered feelings,
+only appeared in his writings. The secrets of his heart were confided to
+his pen.
+
+"The painting-room must be like Eden before the Fall; no joyless
+turbulent passions must enter there"--exclaims the enthusiast RICHARDSON.
+The home of the literary character should be the abode of repose and of
+silence. There must he look for the feasts of study, in progressive and
+alternate labours; a taste "which," says GIBBON, "I would not exchange
+for the treasures of India." ROUSSEAU had always a work going on, for
+rainy days and spare hours, such as his "Dictionary of Music:" a variety
+of works never tired; it was the single one which exhausted. METASTASIO
+looks with delight on his variety, which resembled the fruits in the
+garden of Armida--
+
+ E mentre spunta l'un, l'altro mature.
+ While one matures, the other buds and blows.
+
+Nor is it always fame, or any lower motive, which may induce the literary
+character to hold an unwearied pen. Another equally powerful exists, which
+must remain inexplicable to him who knows not to escape from the
+listlessness of life--it is the passion for literary occupation. He whose
+eye can only measure the space occupied by the voluminous labours of the
+elder Pliny, of a Mazzuchelli, a Muratori, a Montfaucon, and a Gough, all
+men who laboured from the love of labour, and can see nothing in that
+space but the industry which filled it, is like him who only views a city
+at a distance--the streets and the edifices, and all the life and
+population within, he can never know. These literary characters projected
+their works as so many schemes to escape from uninteresting pursuits; and,
+in these folios, how many evils of life did they bury, while their
+happiness expanded with their volume! Aulus Gellius desired to live no
+longer than he was able to retain the faculty of writing and observing.
+The literary character must grow as impassioned with his subject as
+Ælian-with his "History of Animals;" "wealth and honour I might have
+obtained at the courts of princes; but I preferred the delight of
+multiplying my knowledge. I am aware that the avaricious and the ambitious
+will accuse me of folly; but I have always found most pleasure in
+observing the nature of animals, studying their character, and writing
+their history."
+
+Even with those who have acquired their celebrity, the love of literary
+labour is not diminished--a circumstance recorded by the younger Pliny of
+Livy. In a preface to one of his lost books, that historian had said that
+he had obtained sufficient glory by his former writings on the Roman
+history, and might now repose in silence; but his mind was so restless and
+so abhorrent of indolence, that it only felt its existence in literary
+exertion. In a similar situation the feeling was fully experienced by
+HUME. Our philosopher completed his history neither for money nor for
+fame, having then more than a sufficiency of both; but chiefly to indulge
+a habit as a resource against indolence.[A] These are the minds which are
+without hope if they are without occupation.
+
+[Footnote A: This appears in one of his interesting letters first
+published in the _Literary Gazette_, Oct. 20, 1821.--[It is addressed to
+Adam Smith, dated July 28, 1759, and he says, "I signed an agreement with
+Mr. Millar, where I mention that I proposed to write the History of
+England from the beginning till the accession of Henry VII.,; and he
+engages to give me 1400_l_. for the copy. This is the first previous
+agreement ever I made with a bookseller. I shall execute the work at
+leisure, without fatiguing myself by such ardent application as I have
+hitherto employed. It is chiefly as a resource against idleness that I
+shall undertake the work, for as to money I have enough: and as to
+reputation what I have wrote already will be sufficient, if it be good; if
+not, it is not likely I shall now write better."]]
+
+Amidst the repose and silence of study, delightful to the literary
+character, are the soothing interruptions of the voices of those whom he
+loves, recalling him from his abstractions into social existence. These
+re-animate his languor, and moments of inspiration are caught in the
+emotions of affection, when a father or a friend, a wife, a daughter, or a
+sister, become the participators of his own tastes, the companions of his
+studies, and identify their happiness with his fame. A beautiful incident
+in the domestic life of literature is one which Morellet has revealed of
+MARMONTEL. In presenting his collected works to his wife, she discovered
+that the author had dedicated his volumes to herself; but the dedication
+was not made painful to her modesty, for it was not a public one. Nor was
+it so concise as to be mistaken for a compliment. The theme was copious,
+for the heart overflowed in the pages consecrated to her domestic virtues;
+and MARMONTEL left it as a record, that their children might learn the
+gratitude of their father, and know the character of their mother, when
+the writer should be no more. Many readers were perhaps surprised to find
+in NECKER's _Comte rendu au Roi_, a political and financial work, a great
+and lovely character of domestic excellence in his wife. This was more
+obtrusive than Marmontel's private dedication; yet it was not the less
+sincere. If NECKER failed in the cautious reserve of private feelings, who
+will censure? Nothing seems misplaced which the heart dictates.
+
+If HORACE were dear to his friends, he declares they owed him to his
+father:--
+
+ --purus et insons
+ (Ut me collaudem) si vivo et carus amicis,
+ Causa fuit Pater his.
+
+ If pure and innocent, if dear (forgive
+ These little praises) to my friends I live,
+ My father was the cause.
+
+This intelligent father, an obscure tax-gatherer, discovered the
+propensity of Horace's mind; for he removed the boy of genius from a rural
+seclusion to the metropolis, anxiously attending on him to his various
+masters. GROTIUS, like Horace, celebrated in verse his gratitude to his
+excellent father, who had formed him not only to be a man of learning, but
+a great character. VITRUVIUS pours forth a grateful prayer to the memory
+of his parents, who had instilled into his soul a love for literary and
+philosophical subjects; and it is an amiable trait in PLUTARCH to have
+introduced his father in the Symposiacs, as an elegant critic and
+moralist, and his brother Lamprias, whose sweetness of disposition,
+inclining to cheerful raillery, the Sage of Cheronæa has immortalised.
+The father of GIBBON urged him to literary distinction, and the dedication
+of the "Essay on Literature" to that father, connected with his subsequent
+labour, shows the force of the excitement. The father of POPE lived long
+enough to witness his son's celebrity.
+
+ Tears such as tender fathers shed,
+ Warm from my eyes descend,
+ For joy, to think when I am dead,
+ My son shall have mankind his Friend.[A]
+
+
+The son of BUFFON one day surprised his father by the sight of a column,
+which he had raised to the memory of his father's eloquent genius. "It
+will do you honour," observed the Gallic sage.[B] And when that son in the
+revolution was led to the guillotine, he ascended in silence, so impressed
+with his father's fame, that he only told the people, "I am the son of
+Buffon!"
+
+[Footnote A: These lines have been happily applied by Mr. BOWLES to the
+father of POPE.--The poet's domestic affections were as permanent as they
+were strong.]
+
+[Footnote B: It still exists in the gardens of the old château at
+Montbard. It is a pillar of marble bearing this inscription:--"Excelsæ
+turris humilia columna, Parenti suo filius Buffon. 1785."--ED.]
+
+Fathers absorbed in their occupations can but rarely attract their
+offspring. The first durable impressions of our moral existence come from
+the mother. The first prudential wisdom to which Genius listens falls from
+her lips, and only her caresses can create the moments of tenderness. The
+earnest discernment of a mother's love survives in the imagination of
+manhood. The mother of Sir WILLIAM JONES, having formed a plan for the
+education of her son, withdrew from great connexions that she might live
+only for that son. Her great principle of education, was to excite by
+curiosity; the result could not fail to be knowledge. "Read, and you will
+know," she constantly replied to her filial pupil. And we have his own
+acknowledgment, that to this maxim, which produced the habit of study, he
+was indebted for his future attainments. KANT, the German metaphysician,
+was always fond of declaring that he owed to the ascendancy of his
+mother's character the severe inflexibility of his moral principles. The
+mother of BURNS kindled his genius by reciting the old Scottish ballads,
+while to his father he attributed his less pleasing cast of character.
+Bishop WATSON traced to the affectionate influence of his mother, the
+religious feelings which he confesses he inherited from her. The mother of
+EDGEWORTH, confined through life to her apartment, was the only person who
+studied his constitutional volatility. When he hastened to her death-bed,
+the last imperfect accents of that beloved voice reminded him of the past
+and warned him of the future, and he declares that voice "had a happy
+influence on his habits,"--as happy, at least, as his own volatile nature
+would allow. "To the manner in which my mother formed me at an early age,"
+said Napoleon, "I principally owe my subsequent elevation. My opinion is,
+that the future good or bad conduct of a child entirely depends upon the
+mother."
+
+There is this remarkable in the strong affections of the mother in the
+formation of the literary character, that, without even partaking of, or
+sympathising with the pleasures the child is fond of, the mother will
+often cherish those first decided tastes merely from the delight of
+promoting the happiness of her son; so that that genius, which some would
+produce on a preconceived system, or implant by stratagem, or enforce by
+application, with her may be only the watchful labour of love.[A] One of
+our most eminent antiquaries has often assured me that his great passion,
+and I may say his genius, for his curious knowledge and his vast
+researches, he attributes to maternal affection. When his early taste for
+these studies was thwarted by the very different one of his father, the
+mother silently supplied her son with the sort of treasures he languished
+for, blessing the knowledge, which indeed she could not share with him,
+but which she beheld imparting happiness to her youthful antiquary.
+
+[Footnote A: Kotzebue has noted the delicate attention of his mother in
+not only fostering his genius, but in watching its too rapid development.
+He says:--"If at any time my imagination was overheated, my mother always
+contrived to select something for my evening reading which might moderate
+this ardour, and make a gentler impression on my too irritable fancy."--
+ED.]
+
+There is, what may be called, FAMILY GENIUS. In the home of a man of
+genius is diffused an electrical atmosphere, and his own pre-eminence
+strikes out talents in all. "The active pursuits of my father," says the
+daughter of EDGEWORTH, "spread an animation through the house by
+connecting children with all that was going on, and allowing them to join
+in thought and conversation; sympathy and emulation excited mental
+exertion in the most agreeable manner." EVELYN, in his beautiful retreat
+at Saye's Court, had inspired his family with that variety of taste which
+he himself was spreading throughout the nation. His son translated Rapin's
+"Gardens," which poem the father proudly preserved in his "Sylva;" his
+lady, ever busied in his study, excelled in the arts her husband loved,
+and designed the frontispiece to his "Lucretius:" she was the cultivator
+of their celebrated garden, which served as "an example" of his great work
+on "forest trees." Cowley, who has commemorated Evelyn's love of books and
+gardens, has delightfully applied them to his lady, in whom, says the
+bard, Evelyn meets both pleasures:--
+
+ The fairest garden in her looks,
+ And in her mind the wisest books.
+
+The house of HALLER resembled a temple consecrated to science and the
+arts, and the votaries were his own family. The universal acquirements of
+Haller were possessed in some degree by every one under his roof; and
+their studious delight in transcribing manuscripts, in consulting authors,
+in botanising, drawing and colouring the plants under his eye, formed
+occupations which made the daughters happy and the sons eminent.[A] The
+painter STELLA inspired his family to copy his fanciful inventions, and
+the playful graver of Claudine Stella, his niece, animated his "Sports of
+Children." I have seen a print of COYPEL in his _studio_, and by his side
+his little daughter, who is intensely watching the progress of her
+father's pencil. The artist has represented himself in the act of
+suspending his labour to look on his child. At that moment, his thoughts
+were divided between two objects of his love. The character and the works
+of the late ELIZABETH HAMILTON were formed entirely by her brother.
+Admiring the man she loved, she imitated what she admired; and while the
+brother was arduously completing the version of the Persian Hedaya, the
+sister, who had associated with his morning tasks and his evening
+conversations, was recalling all the ideas, and pourtraying her fraternal
+master in her "Hindoo Rajah."
+
+[Footnote A: Haller's death (A.D. 1777) was as remarkable for its calm
+philosophy, as his life for its happiness. He was a professional surgeon,
+and continued to the last an attentive and rational observer of the
+symptoms of the disease which was bringing him to the grave. He
+transmitted to the University of Gottingen a scientific analysis of his
+case; and died feeling his own pulse.--ED.]
+
+Nor are there wanting instances where this FAMILY GENIUS has been carried
+down through successive generations: the volume of the father has been
+continued by a son, or a relative. The history of the family of the
+ZWINGERS is a combination of studies and inherited tastes. Theodore
+published, in 1697, a folio herbal, of which his son Frederic gave an
+enlarged edition in 1744; and the family was honoured by their name having
+been given to a genus of plants dedicated to their memory, and known in
+botany by the name of the _Zwingera_. In history and in literature, the
+family name was equally eminent; the same Theodore continued a great work,
+"The Theatre of Human Life," which had been begun by his father-in-law,
+and which for the third time was enlarged by another son. Among the
+historians of Italy, it is delightful to contemplate this family genius
+transmitting itself with unsullied probity among the three VILLANIS, and
+the MALASPINIS, and the two PORTAS. The history of the learned family of
+the STEPHENS presents a dynasty of literature; and to distinguish the
+numerous members, they have been designated as Henry I. and Henry II.,--as
+Robert I., the II., and the III.[A] Our country may exult in having
+possessed many literary families--the WARTONS, the father and two sons:
+the BURNEYS, more in number; and the nephews of Milton, whose humble torch
+at least was lighted at the altar of the great bard.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: For an account of them and their works, see "Curiosities of
+Literature," vol, i. p. 76.]
+
+[Footnote B: The Phillips.]
+
+No event in literary history is more impressive than the fate of
+QUINTILIAN; it was in the midst of his elaborate work, which was composed
+to form the literary character of a son, that he experienced the most
+terrible affliction in the domestic life of genius--the successive deaths
+of his wife and his only child. It was a moral earthquake with a single
+survivor amidst the ruins. An awful burst of parental and literary
+affliction breaks forth in Quintilian's lamentation,--"My wealth, and my
+writings, the fruits of a long and painful life, must now be reserved only
+for strangers; all I possess is for aliens, and no longer mine!" We feel
+the united agony of the husband, the father, and the man of genius!
+
+Deprived of these social consolations, we see JOHNSON call about him those
+whose calamities exiled them from society, and his roof lodges the blind,
+the lame, and the poor; for the heart must possess something it can call
+its own, to be kind to.
+
+In domestic life, the Abbé DE ST. PIERRE enlarged its moral vocabulary, by
+fixing in his language two significant words. One served to explain the
+virtue most familiar to him--_bienfaisance_; and that irritable vanity
+which magnifies its ephemeral fame, the sage reduced to a mortifying
+diminutive--_la gloriole!_
+
+It has often excited surprise that men of genius are not more reverenced
+than other men in their domestic circle. The disparity between the public
+and the private esteem of the same man is often striking. In privacy we
+discover that the comic genius is not always cheerful, that the sage is
+sometimes ridiculous, and the poet seldom delightful. The golden hour of
+invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius
+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 infirmities.
+
+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 immediate 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
+philosophers, from whom the nation had expected much, had badly
+administered the affairs of the state; for "knowing 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 of human nature; but,
+like the great geographer, may be apt to be lost in the wood which any one
+in the neighbourhood 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 MONTESQUIEU.
+The story told of a man of learning is probably 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 interrupted student. BACON sat at one end of
+his table wrapt in many a reverie, while at the other the creatures about
+him were trafficking with 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 Montbard, at the end
+of his garden,[A] 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
+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! 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 the last day; and whose unhappy life
+is attributed to this unnatural neglect:[B]--a lamentable domestic
+catastrophe, 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 have warmer
+sympathies. While the literary character burns with the ambition of
+raising a great literary name, he is too often forbidden to taste of this
+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."
+
+[Footnote A: For some account of this place, see the chapter on "Literary
+Residences" in vol. iii. p. 395, of "Curiosities of Literature."]
+
+[Footnote B: 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.]
+
+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
+diminutive as his person, ridiculed his philosophic relative, and turned
+to advantage his philosophic disposition. The daughter of ADDISON was
+educated with a perfect contempt of authors, and blushed to bear a name
+more illustrious than that of all the Warwicks, on her alliance 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, having enriched our national 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
+learned, that the daughter of Madame DE SÉVIGNÉ lived on ill terms
+with her mother, of whose enchanting genius she appears to have been
+insensible! The unquestionable documents 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
+Sévigné 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 tenderness, and
+genius.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Lettres inédites de Madame de Sévigné, pp. 201 and 203.]
+
+Some have been deemed disagreeable companions, because they felt the
+weariness of dulness, or the impertinence 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 attracted, are not acted on by its
+occult property.
+
+
+
+
+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 sometimes 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 comparison. 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
+annihilates 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 character has so
+closely interwoven and identified itself 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 admits of no such appraisement. In a country where "The
+Wealth of Nations" has been fixed as the first principle of political
+existence, 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 MONTFAUCON, a CALMET, a
+FLOREZ, and the still unfinished volumes of the BENEDICTINES. Often has
+the literary character, amidst the busied delights of study, sighed "to
+bid a farewell sweet" to the turbulence of society. It was not discontent,
+nor any 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 illustrious BOYLE. He
+proposed to form "A college where 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."[A] This abandonment 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.
+
+[Footnote A: This romantic literary retreat is one of those delightful
+reveries which the elegant taste of EVELYN abounded with. It may be found
+at full length in the fifth volume of Boyle's Works, not in the second, as
+the Biog. Brit. says. His 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 advantage to the economic
+part," &c.]
+
+A parallel circumstance occurred to the Abbé COTIN, the victim of a rhyme
+of the satirical Boileau. Studious, 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; his rents were not paid, and his
+creditors increased. Dragged 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 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 life of genius, is
+one in which the cares of property never intrude, and the want of wealth
+is never perceived. This is not indigence; that state which, however
+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--
+
+ Malesuada Fames, et turpis Egestas
+ Terribiles visu formæ.
+
+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
+BARRRY, 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
+Liffey; but let us not forget that BARRY, in the maturity of life,
+confidently began a labour of years,[A] 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, 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
+accounts showed how he had subsisted on a few pence a-day, and
+
+ Enjoy'd, spare feast! a radish and an egg.
+
+[Footnote A: His series of pictures for the walls of the meeting-room of
+the Society of Arts in the Adelphi.--ED.]
+
+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, ANQUETIL DE PERRON, is a recent example of the literary
+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 same state of unrepining poverty. Mr. Hobhouse has
+given us this self-portrait of the poet:--
+
+ Me, non nato a percotere
+ Le dure illustri porte,
+ Nudo accorra, ma libero
+ Il regno della morte.
+
+Naked, but free! A life of hard deprivations was long that of the
+illustrious LINNÆUS. Without fortune, to that great mind it never seemed
+necessary to acquire any. Perigrinating on foot with a stylus, a
+magnifying-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 Flors. Not that LINNÆUS was
+insensible to his situation, for he gave his name to a little flower in
+Lapland--the _Linnæa 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 overlooked." The want of
+fortune, however, did not deprive 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
+kingdoms 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 solitude such men are not separated from their fame; that is ever
+proceeding, ever raising a secret, but constant, triumph in their
+minds.[A]
+
+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 métier_." This in the _Journal de
+Sçavans_ he once attempted, but found himself quite inadequate to "the
+profession."[B] 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 AUDISON
+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!
+
+[Footnote A: Spagnoletto, while sign-painting at Rome, attracted by his
+ability the notice of a cardinal, who ultimately gave him a home in his
+palace; but the artist, feeling that his poverty was necessary to his
+industry and independence, fled to Naples, and recommenced a life of
+labour.--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: Twice he repeated this resolution. See his Works, vol. xxxi,
+p. 283; vol. xxxii. p. 90.]
+
+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 literature, by Osborn, Cave, and Miller, as when, in the
+honest triumph of Genius, he repelled a tardy adulation 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"[A]--the GUTHRIES, the RALPHS, and the AMHURSTS[B].
+"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.
+
+[Footnote 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."]
+
+[Footnote B: For some account of these men, see "Calamities of Authors."]
+
+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 _mollia 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 subjects, which choice is itself a
+sort of invention. A task-worker ceases to think his own thoughts. The
+stipulated price and time are 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 luxurious, another fever besides the thirst of glory
+torments him. Such insatiable desires create many fears, and a mind in
+fear is a mind in slavery. In one of SHAKSPEARE'S sonnets he pathetically
+laments this compulsion 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,--
+
+ 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 what 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
+waterbrooks; in the other, it pursues its miserable way, panting and
+jaded, with the dogs of hunger and necessity behind."[A] We trace the fate
+of all task-work in the history of POUSSIN, when called on to reside at
+the French court. Labouring without intermission, 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 bitterness, "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.
+
+[Footnote A: _Quarterly Review_, vol. viii. p. 538.]
+
+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,
+requiring 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;[A] and LINNÆUS sold his labours for a single ducat. The Abbé
+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 certain
+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 booksellers" as the standard of public
+opinion: "the measure of their liberality," he says, "is the least
+ambiguous 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 "patronage of booksellers" is
+frequently injurious to the great interests of literature.
+
+[Footnote A: The agreement made with Simmons, the publisher, was 5_l_.
+down, and 5_l_. more when 1500 copies were sold, the same sum to be paid
+for the second and third editions, each of the same number of copies.
+Milton only lived during the publication of two editions, and his widow
+parted with all her right in the work to the same bookseller for eight
+pounds. Her autograph receipt was in the possession of the late Dawson
+Turner.--ED.]
+
+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 produce hasty
+manufactures. A precious work on a recondite 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 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 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 eleemosynary 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.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: It was the late Sir WALTER SCOTT--if I could assign the
+_date_ of this conversation, it would throw some light on what might be
+then passing in his own mind.]
+
+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" to which I have already referred, he says, that
+"Before the invention of the art of printing, the only employment 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 preservation 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 character, of its independence, its
+influence, and its glory.
+
+I have projected a plan for the alleviation of the state of these 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 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 expatriated literary men flew to the shores of England, and the
+free provinces of Holland; and it was in Holland that this colony of
+_littérateurs_ 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 nonconformists 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. 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 booksellers, 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.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+Matrimony has often been considered as a condition not well suited to the
+domestic life of genius, accompanied as it must be by many embarrassments
+for the head and the heart. 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 consumed 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
+interruptions 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 married, told Sir Joshua that he was
+preparing to pursue 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, maintaining 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
+interrupted 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 necessarily institute a new order of
+celibacy. The sentence 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 precept," 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 deprivations have usually been the
+concealed cause of the querulous melancholy of the literary character.
+
+Such was the real occasion of SHENSTONE'S unhappiness. 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 that he first sketched
+his "Pastoral Ballad." SHENSTONE 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 plaintive love songs and elegies flowed from
+no fictitious source. "It is long since," said he, "I have considered
+myself as _undone_. The world will not perhaps consider me in that light
+entirely till I have married my maid."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: The melancholy tale of Shenstone's life is narrated in the
+third volume "Curiosities of Literature,"--ED.]
+
+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 my 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 which 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 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 "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 aching 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 the eve my lonely breast
+ _Seeks in vain for perfect rest,
+ Languishes for true content._
+
+If ever a man of letters lived in a state of energy and excitement which
+might raise him above the atmosphere of social love, it was assuredly the
+enthusiast, THOMAS HOLLIS, who, solely devoted to literature and to
+republicanism, 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 trodden 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 remainder 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 disorders_, 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;" 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 demonstrate 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 innocent papers. The wife of Bishop COOPER, while her husband was
+employed on his Lexicon, one day consigned the volume of many years to the
+flames, and obliged that scholar to begin a second siege of Troy in a
+second Lexicon. The wife of WHITELOCKE often destroyed 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 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
+disposition. 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 compelled 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! _Così fra mille crepacuori mori
+uno de' più eccellenti artefici del mundo; che oltre al suo valore
+pittorìco avrebbe più d'ogni altri maritato di viver sempre per l'onestà
+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 MOLIÈRE, so skilful in human life, married a girl from
+his own troop, who made him experience all those bitter disgusts and
+ridiculous embarrassments 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.[A] ROUSSEAU has honestly
+confessed his error. He had united himself 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 felt the
+intolerable tedium of a tête-à-tête; 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.
+
+[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," for anecdotes of "Literary
+Wives."]
+
+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 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 amplifications; 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 NEWTON. He 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 advantage,
+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 enthusiasm which has varied with the genius of
+different ages. It is the opinion of an elegant metaphysician, that the
+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 accommodate their minds to new situations. Politics, war,
+and learning, are equally objects of attainment to their delightful
+susceptibility. Love has the fancied transparency 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, transcribing 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 were opened to the sex, they acquired academic
+glory. The wives 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 taste 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
+_books_, 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 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 Hollers, the wife of Klopstock, in her
+German-English, describes to Richardson, 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 regarding 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 descended to us, touched
+by the domestic pencil of genius, in the susceptible CALPHUENIA, 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 gradually 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
+considerable influence over his compositions: "Often," said he, "when I
+cannot please myself, and am impatient at the disappointment, Madame de
+Buffon reanimates my 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, the person who had most
+contributed to develope them was his wife. She is unknown to the public;
+but the history of the mind of such a woman is discovered in the "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 his
+house in _la librairie_.[A] 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 of this
+business of life into the more elevated pursuits of her 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.
+
+[Footnote A: Gesner's father was a bookseller of Zurich; descended from a
+family of men learned in the exact sciences, he was apprenticed to a
+bookseller at Berlin, and afterwards entered into his father's business.
+The best edition of his "Idylls" is that published by himself, in two
+volumes, 4to, illustrated by his own engravings.--ED.]
+
+To know this incomparable woman we must hear her. "Consider your father's
+precepts as oracles of wisdom; they are 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 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, who has a great object in view, and whose country is the whole
+world, this disposition seems to be likely to produce 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
+reflecting on the immense labour and continued efforts which such
+masterpieces must have required, that I regained my courage and my
+ardour," she observes, "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
+imagination 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 confidence, 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
+sentimentality 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, I thought, 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 I am not much addicted to scenes of a sentimental turn; but to-day,
+while I considered your works, I could not 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 GESNERS! Will it now be a
+question whether matrimony be incompatible with the cultivation of the
+arts? A wife who reanimates the drooping genius of her husband, 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?
+
+
+
+
+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 excursive 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 in the same pursuits, but directed by an
+unequal experience, 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 FRESNOY, 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
+inseparables." The talents of the friends were different, but their
+studios were the same. Their days melted away together in drawing from the
+ancient statues and the basso-relievos, in studying in the galleries of
+paintings, or among the villas which embellish the environs of Rome. One
+roof sheltered them, and one table supplied their 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 sentiment which limited
+the views of "the Inseparables," for with them it was a perpetual source
+of mutual usefulness. 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 unsuccessful 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 succeeded in giving him a freer command and a more
+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
+passage from the Iliad or Odyssey, or the Æneid, 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 Arts Graphica;_[A] a poem, which Mason has made
+readable by his versification, and Reynolds even interesting by his
+invaluable commentary.
+
+[Footnote A: La Vie de Pierre Mignard, par L'Abbé de Monville, the work of
+an amateur.]
+
+In the poem COWLET 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 Ledæan stars, so famed for love,
+ Wonder'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 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 Laeli." "What the illustrious Scipio was to Laelius was
+the all-knowing and all-accomplished BURKE to REYNOLDS;" and what the
+elegant Laelius was to his master Panaetius, 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[A].
+
+[Footnote A: Reynolds's hospitality was unbounded to all literary men, and
+his evenings were devoted to their society. It was at his house they
+compared notes; and the President of the Royal Academy obtained that
+information which gave him a full knowledge of the outward world, which
+his ceaseless occupation could not else have allowed.--ED.]
+
+Count AZARA mourns with equal tenderness and force over the memory of the
+artist and the writer Mengs. "The most tender friendship 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 useless; and I would rather accomplish his wishes, in
+making known the author and his works."
+
+I am infinitely delighted by a circumstance communicated to me by one who
+had visited GLEIM, the German poet, who seems to have been a creature made
+up altogether 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 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 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 friendship can never be the lot of men of the world; for the source
+of these lies in the interior affections and the intellectual feelings.
+FONTENELLE describes with characteristic delicacy the conversations of
+such literary friends: "Our days passed like moments; thanks to those
+pleasures, which, however, are not included 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 peculiarity; the true
+philosophical spirit has learned to bear that shock of contrary opinions
+which minds less meditative are unequal to encounter. Men of genius live
+in the unrestrained communication of their ideas, and confide even their
+caprices with a freedom which sometimes startles ordinary observers. We
+see literary men, 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 reprimands nor exhortation,
+has often occurred in the intercourse 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 Valchiusa 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
+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 commands silence, but my
+indignation speaks. How has it happened that Silvanus (under this name he
+conceals Petrarch) has forgotten his dignity, the many conversations we
+had together on the state of Italy, his hatred of the archbishop
+(Visconti), 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 _Il 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 Visconti 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 have 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 in this
+opinion; for if stirred up by the most just indignation 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 bear 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 protector Visconti, yet
+received the ardent reproaches of his friend without anger, though not
+without maintaining 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 independence; but, in respect to
+servitude, he did not know whom it was most displeasing to serve, a tyrant
+like Visconti, or with Boccaccio, a people of tyrants[A].
+
+[Footnote A: These interesting letters are preserved in Count Baldelli's
+"Life of Boccaccio," p. 115.]
+
+The unity of feeling is displayed in such memorable associates as BEAUMONT
+and FLETCHER; whose labours 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 Montaigne's affection for
+Charron, that he requested him by his will to bear the arms of the
+Montaignes; and Charrot 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 simplicity 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 cryptical arts of writing, and projected many curious
+inventions which astonished his age, and which we have carried to
+perfection. This extraordinary man saw his fame somewhat diminishing by a
+rumour that his brother John Vincent 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 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 affections 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[A]. The Abbé 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 Varignon, 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 Varignon with a
+portion of his small income, accompanied 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 "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 composition, he published a defence
+of his poetical and philosophical 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.
+
+[Footnote A: This event is thus told by Southey: "The news of Churchill's
+death was somewhat abruptly announced to Lloyd as he sat at dinner; he was
+seized with a sudden sickness, and saying, 'I shall follow poor Charles,'
+took to his bed, from which he never rose again; dying, if ever man died,
+of a broken heart. The tragedy did not end here: Churchill's favourite
+sister, who is said to have possessed much of her brother's sense, and
+spirit, and genius, and to have been betrothed to Lloyd, attended him
+during his illness, and, sinking under the double loss, soon followed her
+brother and her lover to the grave."--ED.]
+
+The statesman Fouquet, deserted by all others, witnessed LA FONTAINE
+hastening every literary man to his prison-gate. Many have inscribed their
+works to their disgraced patrons, 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 lingering 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 LAETUS, so called from his natural good-humour, was
+the personal friend of HERMOLATTS BARBABUS, whose saturnine and melancholy
+disposition 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'oeuvre_ 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[A]. No men could be more
+opposite in personal character than the careless, gay, and hasty STEELE,
+and the cautious, serious, and the elegant ADDISON; yet no literary
+friendship was more fortunate than their union.
+
+[Footnote A: For a full account of their literary career see the first
+article in "Quarrels of Authors."]
+
+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 approbation of his illustrious
+friend LOCKE, the philosopher's 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 recal the past!" What tenderness in the reproach!
+What self-accusation in its modesty!
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+Are the personal dispositions of an author discoverable 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 composes 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 intrigue, 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. FORTIGUERRA, the author of
+the Ricciardetto, abounds with loose and licentious descriptions, and yet
+neither his manners nor his personal character were stained by the
+offending freedom of his inventions. SMOLLETT'S character is immaculate;
+yet he has described two scenes which offend even in the license of
+imagination. COWLEY, who boasts with such gaiety of the versatility of his
+passion among so many mistresses, wanted even the confidence to address
+one. Thus, licentious writers may be very chaste persons. The imagination
+may be a volcano while the heart is an Alp of ice.
+
+Turn to the moralist--there we find Seneca, a 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 inveigher
+against the spoilers of provinces attained to a remote government, he
+pillaged like Verres. That "DEMOSTHENES was more capable of recommending
+than of imitating the virtues of our ancestors," is the observation of
+Plutarch. LUCIAN, when young, declaimed 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 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[A]. 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 practised,
+uniting the lion's head with the fox's tail--and thus himself realising
+the political monster of Machiavel!
+
+[Footnote A: See what is said on this subject in the article on Sterne in
+the "Literary Miscellanies," of the present volume.]
+
+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
+preferment 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 perfectly 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 Molière "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 himself," exclaimed the melancholy
+man, in despair. BURTON, 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 at last was 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.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: It is reported of him that his only mode of alleviating his
+melancholy was by walking from his college at Oxford to the bridge, to
+listen to the rough jokes of the bargemen.]
+
+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?
+ROCHEFOUCAULD, in private life, was a conspicuous example 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 disinterested 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 of faction.
+
+When Valincour 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 the slave of love. RACINE never wrote a 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
+epigrammatic 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 I 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 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, describing the pleasures which
+result from the influence of good-humour; and somewhat remarkably says,
+"Without good-humour learning and bravery can be only formidable, 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
+astonished 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 leaped 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;"[A] while Sir GEORGE
+MACKENZIE, who had been continually in the bustle of business, framed a
+eulogium on solitude. We see in MACHIAVEL'S code of tyranny, of depravity,
+and of criminal violence, a horrid picture of human nature; but this
+retired philosopher was a friend to the freedom of his country; he
+participated in none of the crimes he had recorded, but drew up these
+systemized 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.
+
+[Footnote A: Since this was written the correspondence of EVELYN has
+appeared, by which we find that he apologised to Cowley for having
+published 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, requesting that
+Cowley would not suppose its principles formed his private opinions. Thus
+LEIBNITZ, we are told, laughed at the fanciful system revealed in his
+_Theodicée_, 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.]
+
+Thus authors and artists may yield no certain indication of their personal
+characters in their works. Inconstant 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 the stage. MILTON has been
+censured by CLARKE for the impiety of Satan; and an enemy of SHAKSPEARE
+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 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. CREBILLON, who exulted, on his entrance into
+the French Academy, that he had never tinged his pen with the gall of
+satire, delighted 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 singulière curiosité de connaître
+l'âme et les naïfs jugemens de mes auteurs. Il faut bien juger leur
+suffisance, mais non pas leurs moeurs, ni eux, par cette montre de leurs
+écrits qu'ils étalent au théatre 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 objections to prove that MONTAIGNE
+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 independent gentleman, and
+lives in an old family château; 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
+bag_; 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
+suffering, 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 performed in his
+chamber, and, in rising to embrace it, his hands dropped and failed him;
+thus, as Professor 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 there not
+writers who, with all the vehemence of genius, by adopting one principle
+can make all things shrink into the pigmy form 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.[A] The influence of their studies over
+men of genius is limited. Out of the ideal world, man is 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 simplicity 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 contrast 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.
+
+[Footnote A: 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 Staël made this important confession in her recent work, "Dix Années
+d'Exil," p. 154. "Je ne pouvais me dissimuler que je n'étais pas une
+persoune courageuse; j'ai de la hardiesse dans _l'imagination,_ mais de la
+timidité dans la _caractère_."]
+
+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 imagination 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, whose heart was
+not so susceptible in ordinary occurrences, while he was gradually
+creating incident after incident and touching successive 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
+contemplated, 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--"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!
+
+
+
+
+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
+general 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 literature--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 himself 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 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 sublimity. Their expansive library
+presents an indestructible history of the genius of every people, through
+all their eras--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 curiosity 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! These volumes--images of our mind
+and passions!--as he traces them from Herodotus to Gibbon, from Homer to
+Shakspeare--those portfolios which gather up, the inventions of genius,
+and that selected cabinet of medals which holds so many 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 requires, 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,[A] 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 unhappily described by the
+Hollanders as _lief-hebbers_, lovers or fanciers, and their collection as
+_lief-hebbery_, things of their love. The Dutch call everything for which
+they are impassioned _lief-hebbery_; but their feeling 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
+languages of genius; but something parallel is required to correct
+that indiscriminate notion which most persons associate with that of
+_collectors_.
+
+[Footnote A: The contiguity of the CHAMBER to the LIBRARY is not the
+solitary fancy of an individual, but marks the class. Early in life, when
+in France and Holland, I met with several of these _amateurs_, who had
+bounded 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 sleeping
+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 curiosities, 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 intercourse 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.]
+
+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 relinquished 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 opulence 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
+sincere, 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 whom the world
+ Calls idle!
+
+De Sacy, one of the Port-Royalists, was fond of repeating this lively
+remark of a man of wit--"That all 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 interrupted 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 atmosphere of taste about him
+which will be dissolved, and harmonious ideas which will be chased away,
+as it happens 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 libraries. 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
+collections. "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 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 collection,
+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
+_lief-hebber_ having silently listened to the imperial agent, seemed
+astonished that such things 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 diamonds, afforded but a mean, an
+unequal, and a barbarous 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 concentrated
+feelings which cannot be indulged with security, or even without ridicule
+in general society. Like the Lucullus of Plutarch, he would not only live
+among 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 situations;
+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![A] 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.
+
+[Footnote A: Sir Thomas Bodley, in 1602, first brought the old libraries
+at Oxford into order for the benefit of students, and added thereto his
+own noble collection. That of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford (died 1724),
+was purchased by the country, and is now in the British Museum; and also
+are the other collections named above. Sir Robert Cotton died 1631; his
+collection is remarkable for its historic documents and state-papers. Sir
+Hans Sloane's collections may be said to be the foundation of the British
+Museum, and were purchased by Government for 20,000_l_., after his death,
+in 1749. Of Cracherode and Townley some notice will be found on p. 2 of
+the present volume. Sir Joseph Banks and his sister made large bequests to
+the same national establishment.--ED.]
+
+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 described by one who has 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 the imagination, by leading it over an unbounded range of the
+noblest scenes in the overawing company of departed wisdom and genius."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: "Quarterly Review," No. xxxiii. p. 145.]
+
+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 contracted 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 temporary passions
+--those mighty beginnings, of which he knows the miserable terminations.
+
+Antiquity presents the character of a perfect man of letters in ATTICUS,
+who retreated from a political to a literary life. Had his letters
+accompanied those of Cicero, they would have illustrated the ideal
+character 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. "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 blameable, induced you to adopt
+an honourable leisure; _honestum otium_."[A] These motives appear in the
+interesting memoirs of this man of letters; a contempt 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.
+
+[Footnote A: "Ad Atticum," Lib. i. Ep. 17.]
+
+The result of this literary life was the strong affections 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 ATTICUS. 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 residing at Venice, among other peculiar honours
+received from the senate, was there distinguished by the affectionate
+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 stigmatised 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 Cæsar,
+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 principles in
+the conduct of the Roman. He engaged himself 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 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 addressing
+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 the biographer with the very thoughts, so
+closely united in the same pursuits, and so perpetual an observer of the
+remarkable man whom he has immortalised, that when employed on this
+elaborate resemblance of his friend, he was only painting himself with all
+the identifying strokes of self-love[A].
+
+[Footnote A: "I suppose," writes EVELYN, that most agreeable enthusiast of
+literature, to a travelling friend, "that you carry the life of that
+incomparable 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
+Gassendus."]
+
+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, deciphering obscure inscriptions, and explaining
+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 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
+friendships! 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.
+Considering the studious as forming but one great family wherever they
+were, for PEIRESC the national repositories of knowledge in Europe formed
+but one collection for the world. This man of letters had possessed
+himself 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
+antiquities 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 universal 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 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 importations 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.[A] 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, 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, connected both Americas, and had touched the newly-discovered
+extremities of the universe, when this intrepid mind closed in a premature
+death.
+
+[Footnote A: On this subject see "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p.
+151; and for some further account of Peiresc and his labours, vol. iii. p.
+409, of the same work.--ED.]
+
+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 endured 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 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, "content," 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
+collections. They either were not endowed with that faculty of genius
+which strikes out aggregate views, or were destitute of the talent of
+composition which embellishes 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 hesitate; 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 therefore 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. The
+delightful instruction which these men are constantly 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 Scotland," was long
+irresolute in his designs, and still unpractised 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 MAGLIABECHI, 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.
+
+"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
+communication 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 enjoyments, and usually
+its powers--a happiness which accompanies 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 designs. 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 genius is still creating. ANCORA IMPARO!--"Even
+yet I am learning!" was the concise inscription on an ingenious 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 delighted with the discovery of this circumstance in the lives
+of painters. "As I 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 possessor. 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 materially 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 deprived 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 Staël, consists in the
+mass of our ideas, to which every age will now add, by means unknown to
+preceding generations. 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. Pull 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 Littéraire," 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, constitute 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 MOTHE LE VAYER'S Treatises is striking: "I
+should but ill return the favours 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 condemned;" and the old man proceeds
+with his "Observations 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 VARBO, in opening his curious treatise _de Re Rustica_,
+which the sage lived to finish, and which, after nearly 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 Chalkhill, "the friend of Spenser."
+BODMER, beyond eighty, was occupied on Homer, and WIELAND on Cicero's
+Letters.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," on "The progress of old age
+in new studies."]
+
+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, in a
+class of reading to which he had never been accustomed, 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
+inquiries; 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
+reperusing, with the enthusiasm of a student, the tragic poets of ancient
+Greece, and Sophocles and Euripides lay open on his table."
+
+ Dans ses veines toujours un jeune sang bouillone,
+ Et Sophocle à cent ans peint encore Antigone.
+
+The calm philosophic Hume found that death only could interrupt the keen
+pleasure he was again receiving from Lucian, inspiring at the moment a
+humorous self-dialogue with Charon. "Happily," said this philosopher, "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 delight_,
+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."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: There is an interesting chapter on Favourite Authors in
+"Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii., to which the reader may be referred
+for other examples.--ED.]
+
+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 grey 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
+philosophical legacy for his children. It was a view of the history and
+progress of the human mind--of its principles, 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 developed. 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 hundred years died, TRESSAN, himself on the borders
+of the grave, would offer the last fruits of his mind in an _éloge_ 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 literature, has
+thrown something delightful over this latest season of life, in his _de
+Senectute_. To have written on old age, in old age, is to have obtained a
+triumph over Time.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: "Spurinna, or the Comforts of Old Age," by the late Sir
+Thomas Bernard, was written a year or two before he died.]
+
+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 the old bees, have been found dying in
+their honeycombs. Let them preserve but the flame alive on the altar, and
+at the last momenta they may be found in the act of sacrifice! The
+venerable BEDE, the instructor of his generation, and the historian for so
+many successive 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 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 remarkable
+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 again, and again it
+dropped: deprived of the sense of touch--his hand without motion--the earl
+perceived himself struck by palsy--and the life of the noble exile closed
+amidst the warmth of a literary work unfinished!
+
+
+
+
+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 perfection 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 occupations 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 animals, 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
+Staël has finely said, "The history of his life was the history of his
+statue."
+
+Such was the limited conception which the ancients formed of genius. They
+confined it to particular objects or departments in art. But there is a
+tendency among men of genius to ascribe a 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
+accomplish 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 promises of universal power than
+LEIBNITZ. Science, imagination, history, criticism, fertilized the richest
+of human soils; yet LEIBNITZ, with immense powers and perpetual knowledge,
+dissipated them in the multiplicity 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 distinguished as a
+monument of his genius." As a universalist, VOLTAIRE remains unparalleled
+in ancient or in modern times. This voluminous idol of our neighbours
+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 invention 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 province, but no one but himself has possessed them
+all. Voltaire discovered a new art, that of creating a supplement to the
+genius which had preceded him; and without 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 renders 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 defined 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
+philosopher. 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 vainglory of universality? Let us dare to call this a vainglory;
+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 solitary force stamps the
+authentic work of genius. To execute equally well on a variety of subjects
+may raise a suspicion of the nature of the executive power. Should it he
+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 contrary 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 remarkable 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, VOLTAIRE in comedy, and JOHNSON 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 deficient 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 inherent
+in themselves--what is individual--and not by 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 numerous odes are not
+of a higher order than those of other ode-writers. Had POPE only composed
+odes and tragedies, 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 particular artist for a particular object. Would you ornament
+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 arabesques 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 of genius
+_excel_ only in one department of their art, and that whatever they do
+with the utmost original perfection, 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+Literature an avenue to glory.--An intellectual nobility not chimerical,
+but created by public opinion.--Literary honours of various nations.--
+Local associations with the memory of the man of genius.
+
+
+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. Bruyère has
+finely said of men of genius, "These men have neither ancestors nor
+posterity; 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 VOITURE, another descendant of a _marchand de
+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 sending a knife for a
+new-year's gift, "informing his friend, 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 requested 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
+Massillon, the brilliant Fléchier, 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 Æsop, 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 has created a
+new aristocracy of its own, where they already begin to be jealous of
+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 vanquisher 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 University 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 circumstance, that by these instruments he had
+strengthened the works he had invented, when his genius poured forth the
+waters through our metropolis, thereby distinguishing 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 millions 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 mathematician, who had a calculation for his
+epitaph.
+
+We who were reproached for a coldness in our national character, have
+caught the inspiration and enthusiasm for the works and the celebrity of
+genius; the symptoms indeed were long dubious. REYNOLDS wished 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 "Sandwich"
+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; _Æschylus_ Potter, _Athenian_ Stuart, and _Anacreon_ Moore.
+BUTLER, in his own day, was more generally known by the single 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 a name instantly recognised which might
+otherwise 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 nobility, 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 condescend 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 unbending
+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 candour, 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 people 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 mortifications."_ Montesquieu
+subjoins a reflection sufficiently humiliating for the mere nobleman: "The
+great, inwardly 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." 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 develope his real feelings
+respecting himself and the literary men of his age.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: "Calamities of Authors." 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 proclaim 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, criticism, and wit of
+the most original and brilliant composition." This was published several
+years before the recent collection of his letters.]
+
+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?[A] "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 stairs-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 indisposed his holiness towards him, and
+more than once the great artist was suffered to linger in attendance in
+the antechamber. One day the indignant man of genius exclaimed, "Tell his
+holiness, if he wants me, he must look for me elsewhere." He flew back to
+his beloved Florence, to proceed with that celebrated cartoon 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 foot of the Father of the Church, turning
+aside his troubled countenance in silence. An intermeddling bishop offered
+himself as a mediator, apologising for our artist by observing, "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.
+
+[Footnote A: Johnson had originally submitted the plan of his
+"Dictionary" to Lord Chesterfield, but received no mark of interest or
+sympathy during its weary progress; when the moment of publication
+approached, his lordship, perhaps in the hope of earning a dedication,
+published in _The World_ two letters commending Johnson and his labours.
+It was this notice that produced Johnson's celebrated letter, in which he
+asks,--"Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
+struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers
+him with help? The notice you have been pleased to take of my labours, had
+it been early had been kind, but it has been delayed till I am indifferent
+and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am
+known, and do not want it."--ED.]
+
+"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 statesman; for when the
+Academy was once not received with royal honours, he complained to the
+French monarch, observing, that when "a man of letters was 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 _éloge_ on LEIBNITZ, alluding to the
+death of Queen Anne, adds of her successor, that "The Elector of Hanover
+united under his dominion an electorate, the three kingdoms of Great
+Britain, and LEIBNITZ and NEWTON."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: This greatness of intellect that glorifies a court, however
+small, is well instanced in that at Weimar, where the Duke Frederic
+surrounded himself with the first men in Germany. It was the chosen
+residence and burial-place of Herder; the birth-place of Kotzebue. Here
+also Wieland resided for many years; and in the vaults of the ducal chapel
+the ashes of Schiller repose by those of Goethe, who for more than half a
+century assisted in the councils, and adorned the court of Weimar.--Ed.]
+
+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 expressed 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 insensible 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 hastened 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 to receive, and many a crowd has followed
+his footsteps! 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 English
+parliament, was accommodated with a seat. SPINOSA, when he gained an
+humble livelihood by grinding 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 march 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:[A] everything 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 TIRABOSCHI 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 borders of the Linnet, in the
+public walk of Zurich, the monument of GESNER, erected by the votes of his
+fellow-citizens attests their sensibility; and a solemn funeral honoured
+the remains of KLOPSTOCK, led by the senate of Hamburgh, with fifty
+thousand votaries, so penetrated by one universal sentiment, that this
+multitude preserved a mournful silence, and the interference 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 ERASMUS, 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 XIV. protected 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 dramatists; in their Institute
+their illustrious authors; in their public edifices, congenial men of
+genius.[B] 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.
+
+[Footnote A: Lope de Vega.]
+
+[Footnote B: 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. [We have recent evidence of a
+more noble acknowledgment of our great men. The statue of Dr. Jenner is
+placed in Trafalgar Square; and Grantham has now a noble work to
+commemorate its great townsman, Sir Isaac Newton.]]
+
+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 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 Europe. 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 composing 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 townspeople had risen 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 coronation at Rome.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: 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, than it could give pleasure that the
+rest of Arezzo rose against his _right_ (for _right_ he had); the
+depreciation of the 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."]
+
+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 inscription 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 apartment wrote." Two hundred and eighty
+years after the death of the divine poet it was purchased by the
+_podesta_, with the money of the _commune_, that "the public veneration
+may be maintained."[A] "Foreigners," 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 VOLTAIRE inhabited, and
+at Ferney his study, are both preserved inviolate. In the study of
+MONTESQUIEU at La Brede, near Bordeaux, the proprietor 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 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
+_château_, 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.
+
+[Footnote A: A public subscription secured the house in which Shakspeare
+was born at Stratford-on-Avon. Durer's house, at Nuremberg, is still
+religiously preserved, and its features are unaltered. The house in which
+Michael Angelo resided at Florence is also carefully guarded, and the
+rooms are still in the condition in which they were left by the great
+master.--Ed.]
+
+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 Shakspeare. The
+very apartment of a man of genius, the chair he studied in, the table he
+wrote on, are contemplated with curiosity; the spot is full of local
+impressions. 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
+Cæsar 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 discovered 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 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"
+château was preserved from this elevated feeling by Prince Schwartzenberg,
+as our MARLBOROUGH had performed the same glorious office in guarding the
+hallowed asylum of FENELON.[A] 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--.
+
+[Footnote A: The printing office of Plantyn, at Antwerp, was guarded in a
+similar manner during the great revolution that separated Holland and
+Belgium, when a troop of soldiers were stationed in its courtyard. See
+"Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 77, _note_.--ED.]
+
+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.
+RABEIAIS, 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 instances
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+Influence of Authors on society, and of society on Authors.--National
+tastes a source of literary prejudices.--True Genius always the organ of
+its nation.--Master-writers preserve the distinct national character.
+--Genius the organ of the state of the age.--Causes of its suppression in
+a people.--Often invented, but neglected.--The natural gradations of
+genius.--Men of Genius produce their usefulness in privacy.--The public
+mind is now the creation of the public writer.--Politicians affect to deny
+this principle.--Authors stand between the governors and the governed.--A
+view of the solitary Author in his study.--They create an epoch in
+history.--Influence of popular Authors.--The immortality of thought.--The
+Family of Genius illustrated by their genealogy.
+
+
+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 distinguish us from a
+people of barbarians. It was long considered that our genius partook
+of the density and variableness of our climate, and that we were
+incapacitated even by situation from the enjoyments of those beautiful
+arts which have 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 philosophy, 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 enclosed 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 universe, 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 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
+originate 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 literature 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 trying them by
+conventional principles and arbitrary regulations, 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 literature 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 imagination 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 mankind indeed have the same
+common source, but they must come to us through the medium and by the
+modifications of society. Love is a 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, Shakspeare, 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 constitute their excellences. Nor does this perpetual contest
+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 understandings of the people it addresses. Hence those
+opposite characteristics, which are usually ascribed to the master-writers
+themselves, originate with the country, and not with the writer. LOPE DE
+VEGA, and CALDEBON, 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 character to the Spaniards, having adapted their genius to their
+own declamatory and vivacious countrymen. PETRARCH 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 precede the man of genius, who often becomes only the
+vehicle of public feeling. MACHIAVEL has been reproached for propagating a
+political system subversive of all human honour and happiness; but was it
+Machiavel who formed his age, or the age which created Machiavel? Living
+among the petty principalities of Italy, where stratagem and assassination
+were the practices of those wretched courts, what did that calumniated
+genius more than lift the veil from a cabinet of bandtiti? 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 indecent 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 scepticism, and for the
+unsettled notions he drew out on his motley page, which has been
+attributed to his incapacity of forming decisive opinions. "Que sçais-je?"
+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 controversy
+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 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 political 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 Cittá dolente," and "la perduta gente," were
+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.[A] To produce the "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 introduction of
+school-divinity into poetry. In a polemical age the poet, as well as the
+sovereign, reflected the reigning tastes.
+
+[Footnote A: Sismondi relates that the bed of the river Arno, at Florence,
+was transformed into a representation of the Gulf of Hell, in the year
+1304; and that all the variety of suffering that monkish imagination had
+invented was apparently inflicted on real persons, whose shrieks and
+groans gave fearful reality to the appalling scene.--ED.]
+
+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 continental 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 Winkelmann 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 teen outrageously calumniated. 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 unfortunately only obtained Holbein. A later
+sovereign, 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 notions, they might have struck at the
+true cause of the deficiency in our national genius. The jealousy of
+puritanic fanaticism had persecuted these arts from the first rise of the
+Reformation in this country. It had not only banished them from our
+churches and altar-pieces, but the fury of the people, and the "wisdom" of
+parliament, 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 confute
+the Continental calumniators, 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 realized, 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 profoundly meditated on the Jews
+rejecting Jesus. Thus 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
+government 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 displaying 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 architecture, however, is but
+a fragment of a grander composition, by which, had not the civil wars
+intervened, the fame of Britain would have balanced the glory of Greece,
+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 Française," 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 boldness 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, GUIBEBT
+died of "vexation of spirit;" and the last words on the death-bed of this
+man of genius were, "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 may we deduce the natural gradations of genius. Many men of
+genius must arise before a particular 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 CAEDAN 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 groundwork of HARTLEY'S theory
+of vibrations. The learning 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 Arabian 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 inspiration. 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
+usefulness in privacy; but it may not be of immediate 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 discoveries, 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
+aspiration 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
+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 persecutions, 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 includes 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 GROTICS'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 science and our
+legislation. When LOCKE and MONTESQUIEU 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 VITRUVIUS, 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
+conception. "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 fireside! 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 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 Staël, "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 Carême_ was another of these animated recals of man to
+the sympathies of his nature, which proves the influence 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 convoys 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 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 commercial 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 extravagances, 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 Punishments," and at length abolished torture; while the 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 fundamental principles of such works, after
+having long entered into our earliest instruction, become unquestionable
+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 incorporated 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 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 importunes--"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 falsehoods 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 contemporaries, 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--you
+see him now changed; and the restlessness of his soul is thrown into his
+very gestures--could you listen to the vaticinator! 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 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
+themselves 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 corporation 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:--"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, philosopher,
+geographer, historian, and antiquary, PETRARCH 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 discussions"
+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
+talent; and though his own fame may 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 publication 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
+advantages, without remembering or knowing its benefactors. ROLLIN is only
+a compiler of history, and to the antiquary 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 NEWTONS, 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 fugitive 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
+deliciously penetrated through all my pores: I have retained 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 application, 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
+introducing 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 toilet, or the fine moralist for active as
+well as contemplative life--in all 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 instigation and by the sole direction of
+this work_." It was an author in his studious retreat who, casting a
+prophetic 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 constructed, and they can tell you that it was with the oaks which
+the genius of EVELYN planted.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: 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.]
+
+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 silkworms. 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 Agricultural 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 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 IMMORTALITY 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 the circulation of the blood appears to
+have been obscurely conjectured by SERVETUS, who wanted experimental
+facts to support his hypothesis: VESALIUS had an imperfect perception
+of the right motion of the blood: CÆSALPINUS admits a circulation
+without comprehending 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 accidental illustration. The
+beautiful theory of vision by BERKELEY, 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 consequences, 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
+SACKVILLE the idea of his 'Mirror for Magistrates'." The "Mirror for
+Magistrates" again gave hints to SPENSER in 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
+"Idle and Industrious Apprentice," 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 chronology, for to its
+votaries everything it has done is PRESENT--the earliest attempt stands
+connected with the most recent. This continuity of ideas characterizes 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? Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton! this is a
+single line of descent!
+
+ARISTOTLE, HOBBES, and LOCKE, DESCARTES, and NEWTON, approximate more than
+we imagine. The 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 Molière and Foote were
+Aristophanic. PLUTARCH, LA MOTHE LE VAYER, 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 Vayer 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. VARRE 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 researches 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."[A] Our 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!
+
+[Footnote A: Turner's "History of England," vol. ii. p. 432.]
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY MISCELLANIES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+MISCELLANISTS.
+
+
+Miscellanists are the most popular writers among every people; for
+it is they who form a communication between the learned and the unlearned,
+and, as it were, throw a bridge between those two great divisions of the
+public. Literary Miscellanies are classed among philological studies. The
+studies of philology formerly consisted rather of the labours of arid
+grammarians and conjectural critics, than of that more elegant philosophy
+which has, within our own time, been introduced into literature,
+and which, by its graces and investigation, augment the beauties of
+original genius. This delightful province has been termed in Germany the
+_Æsthetic_, from a Greek term signifying sentiment or feeling. Æsthetic
+critics fathom the depths, or run with the current of an author's
+thoughts, and the sympathies of such a critic offer a supplement to the
+genius of the original writer. Longinus and Addison are Æsthetic critics.
+The critics of the adverse school always look for a precedent, and if none
+is found, woe to the originality of a great writer!
+
+Very elaborate criticisms have been formed by eminent writers, in which
+great learning and acute logic have only betrayed the absence of the
+Æsthetic faculty. Warburton called Addison an empty superficial writer,
+destitute himself of an atom of Addison's taste for the beautiful; and
+Johnson is a flagrant instance that great powers of reasoning are more
+fatal to the works of imagination than had ever been suspected.
+
+By one of these learned critics was Montaigne, the venerable father of
+modern Miscellanies, called "a bold ignorant fellow." To thinking readers,
+this critical summary will appear mysterious; for Montaigne had imbibed
+the spirit of all the moral writers of antiquity; and although he has made
+a capricious complaint of a defective memory, we cannot but wish the
+complaint had been more real; for we discover in his works such a
+gathering of knowledge that it seems at times to stifle his own energies.
+Montaigne was censured by Scaliger, as Addison was censured by Warburton;
+because both, like Socrates, smiled at that mere erudition which consists
+of knowing the thoughts of others and having no thoughts of our own. To
+weigh syllables, and to arrange dates, to adjust texts, and to heap
+annotations, has generally proved the absence of the higher faculties.
+When a more adventurous spirit of this herd attempts some novel discovery,
+often men of taste behold, with indignation, the perversions of their
+understanding; and a Bentley in his Milton, or a Warburton on a Virgil,
+had either a singular imbecility concealed under the arrogance of the
+scholar, or they did not believe what they told the public; the one in his
+extraordinary invention of an interpolating editor, and the other in his
+more extraordinary explanation of the Eleusinian mysteries. But what was
+still worse, the froth of the head became venom, when it reached the
+heart.
+
+Montaigne has also been censured for an apparent vanity, in making himself
+the idol of his lucubrations. If he had not done this, he had not
+performed the promise he makes at the commencement of his preface. An
+engaging tenderness prevails in these _naïve_ expressions which shall not
+be injured by a version. "Je l'ay voué à la commodité particulière de mes
+parens et amis; à ce que m'ayans perdu (ce qu'ils out à faire bientost)
+ils y puissent retrouver quelques traicts de mes humeurs, et que par ce
+moyen ils nourrissent plus entière et plus vifue la conoissance qu'ils out
+eu de moi."
+
+Those authors who appear sometimes to forget they are writers, and
+remember they are men, will be our favourites. He who writes from the
+heart, will write to the heart; every one is enabled to decide on his
+merits, and they will not be referred to learned heads, or a distant day.
+"Why," says Boileau, "are my verses read by all? it is only because they
+speak truths, and that I am convinced of the truths I write."
+
+Why have some of our fine writers interested more than others, who
+have not displayed inferior talents? Why is Addison still the first
+of our essayists? he has sometimes been excelled in criticisms more
+philosophical, in topics more interesting, and in diction more coloured.
+But there is a personal charm in the character he has assumed in his
+periodical Miscellanies, which is felt with such a gentle force, that
+we scarce advert to it. He has painted forth his little humours, his
+individual feelings, and eternised himself to his readers. Johnson and
+Hawkesworth we receive with respect, and we dismiss with awe; we come from
+their writings as from public lectures, and from Addison's as from private
+conversations. Montaigne preferred those of the ancients, who appear to
+write under a conviction of what they said; the eloquent Cicero declaims
+but coldly on liberty, while in the impetuous Brutus may be perceived a
+man who is resolved to purchase it with his life. We know little of
+Plutarch; yet a spirit of honesty and persuasion in his works expresses a
+philosophical character capable of imitating, as well as admiring, the
+virtues he records.
+
+Sterne perhaps derives a portion of his celebrity from the same influence;
+he interests us in his minutest motions, for he tells us all he feels.
+Richardson was sensible of the power with which these minute strokes of
+description enter the heart, and which are so many fastenings to which the
+imagination clings. He says, "If I give speeches and conversations, I
+ought to give them justly; for the humours and characters of persons
+cannot be known, unless I repeat _what_ they say, and their _manner_ of
+saying." I confess I am infinitely pleased when Sir William Temple
+acquaints us with the size of his orange-trees, and with the flavour of
+his peaches and grapes, confessed by Frenchmen to equal those of France;
+with his having had the honour to naturalise in this country four kinds of
+grapes, with his liberal distribution of them, because "he ever thought
+all things of this kind the commoner they are the better." In a word, with
+his passionate attachment to his garden, where he desired his heart to be
+buried, of his desire to escape from great employments, and having passed
+five years without going to town, where, by the way, "he had a large house
+always ready to receive him." Dryden has interspersed many of these little
+particulars in his prosaic compositions, and I think that his character
+and dispositions may be more correctly acquired by uniting these scattered
+notices, than by any biographical account which can now be given of this
+man of genius.
+
+From this agreeable mode of writing, a species of compositions may be
+discriminated, which seems above all others to identify the reader with
+the writer; compositions which are often discovered in a fugitive state,
+but to which their authors were prompted by the fine impulses of genius,
+derived from the peculiarity of their situation. Dictated by the heart, or
+polished with the fondness of delight, these productions are impressed by
+the seductive eloquence of genius, or attach us by the sensibility of
+taste. The object thus selected is no task imposed on the mind of the
+writer for the mere ambition of literature, but is a voluntary effusion,
+warm with all the sensations of a pathetic writer. In a word, they
+are the compositions of genius, on a subject in which it is most deeply
+interested; which it revolves on all its sides, which it paints in
+all its tints, and which it finishes with the same ardour it began. Among
+such works may be placed the exiled Bolingbroke's "Reflections upon
+Exile;" the retired Petrarch and Zimmerman's Essays on "Solitude;" the
+imprisoned Boethius's "Consolations of Philosophy;" the oppressed Pierius
+Valerianus's Catalogue of "Literary Calamities;" the deformed Hay's Essay
+on "Deformity;" the projecting De Foe's "Essays on Projects;" the liberal
+Shenstone's Poem on "Economy."
+
+We may respect the profound genius of voluminous writers; they are a kind
+of painters who occupy great room, and fill up, as a satirist expresses
+it, "an acre of canvas." But we love to dwell on those more delicate
+pieces,--a group of Cupids; a Venus emerging from the waves; a Psyche or
+an Aglaia, which embellish the cabinet of the man of taste.
+
+It should, indeed, be the characteristic of good Miscellanies, to be
+multifarious and concise. Usbek, the Persian of Montesquieu, is one of the
+profoundest philosophers, his letters are, however, but concise pages.
+Rochefoucault and La Bruyère are not superficial observers of human
+nature, although they have only written sentences. Of Tacitus it has been
+finely remarked by Montesquieu, that "he abridged everything because he
+saw everything." Montaigne approves of Plutarch and Seneca, because their
+loose papers were suited to his dispositions, and where knowledge is
+acquired without a tedious study. "It is," said he, "no great attempt to
+take one in hand, and I give over at pleasure, for they have no sequel or
+connexion." La Fontaine agreeably applauds short compositions:
+
+ Les longs ouvrages me font peur;
+ Loin d'épuiser une matière,
+ On n'en doit prendre que la fleur;
+
+and Old Francis Osborne has a coarse and ludicrous image in favour of such
+opuscula; he says, "Huge volumes, like the ox roasted whole at Bartholomew
+fair, may proclaim plenty of labour and invention, but afford less of what
+is delicate, savoury, and well concocted, than _smaller pieces_." To quote
+so light a genius as the enchanting La Fontaine, and so solid a mind as
+the sensible Osborne, is taking in all the climates of the human mind; it
+is touching at the equator, and pushing on to the pole.
+
+Montaigne's works have been called by a cardinal "The Breviary of Idlers."
+It is therefore the book of man; for all men are idlers; we have hours
+which we pass with lamentation, and which we know are always returning. At
+those moments miscellanists are conformable to all our humours. We dart
+along their airy and concise page; and their lively anecdote or their
+profound observation are so many interstitial pleasures in our listless
+hours.
+
+The ancients were great admirers of miscellanies; Aulus Gellius has
+preserved a copious list of titles of such works. These titles are so
+numerous, and include such gay and pleasing descriptions, that we may
+infer by their number that they were greatly admired by the public, and by
+their titles that they prove the great delight their authors experienced
+in their composition. Among the titles are "a basket of flowers;" "an
+embroidered mantle;" and "a variegated meadow." Such a miscellanist as was
+the admirable Erasmus deserves the happy description which Plutarch with
+an elegant enthusiasm bestows on Menander: he calls him the delight of
+philosophers fatigued with study; that they have recourse to his works as
+to a meadow enamelled with flowers, where the sense is delighted by a
+purer air; and very elegantly adds, that Menander has a salt peculiar to
+himself, drawn from the same waters that gave birth to Venus.
+
+The Troubadours, Conteurs, and Jongleurs, practised what is yet called in
+the southern parts of France, _Le guay Saber,_ or the gay science. I
+consider these as the Miscellanists of their day; they had their grave
+moralities, their tragical histories, and their sportive tales; their
+verse and their prose. The village was in motion at their approach; the
+castle was opened to the ambulatory poets, and the feudal hypochondriac
+listened to their solemn instruction and their airy fancy. I would
+call miscellaneous composition LE GUAY SABER, and I would have every
+miscellaneous writer as solemn and as gay, as various and as pleasing, as
+these lively artists of versatility.
+
+Nature herself is most delightful in her miscellaneous scenes. When I hold
+a volume of miscellanies, and run over with avidity the titles of its
+contents, my mind is enchanted, as if it were placed among the landscapes
+of Valais, which Rousseau has described with such picturesque beauty. I
+fancy myself seated in a cottage amid those mountains, those valleys,
+those rocks, encircled by the enchantments of optical illusion. I look,
+and behold at once the united seasons--"All climates in one place, all
+seasons in one instant." I gaze at once on a hundred rainbows, and trace
+the romantic figures of the shifting clouds. I seem to be in a temple
+dedicated to the service of the Goddess VARIETY.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+PREFACES.
+
+
+I declare myself infinitely delighted by a preface. Is it exquisitely
+written? no literary morsel is more delicious. Is the author inveterately
+dull? it is a kind of preparatory information, which may be very useful.
+It argues a deficiency in taste to turn over an elaborate preface unread;
+for it is the attar of the author's roses; every drop distilled at an
+immense cost. It is the reason of the reasoning, and the folly of the
+foolish.
+
+I do not wish, however, to conceal that several writers, as well as
+readers, have spoken very disrespectfully of this species of literature.
+That fine writer Montesquieu, in closing the preface to his "Persian
+Letters," says, "I do not praise my 'Persians;' because it would be a very
+tedious thing, put in a place already very tedious of itself; I mean a
+preface." Spence, in the preface to his "Polymetis," informs us, that
+"there is not any sort of writing which he sits down to with so much
+unwillingness as that of prefaces; and as he believes most people are not
+much fonder of reading them than he is of writing them, he shall get over
+this as fast as he can." Pelisson warmly protested against prefatory
+composition; but when he published the works of Sarrasin, was wise enough
+to compose a very pleasing one. He, indeed, endeavoured to justify himself
+for acting against his own opinions, by this ingenious excuse, that, like
+funeral honours, it is proper to show the utmost regard for them when
+given to others, but to be inattentive to them for ourselves.
+
+Notwithstanding all this evidence, I have some good reasons for admiring
+prefaces; and barren as the investigation may appear, some literary
+amusement can be gathered.
+
+In the first place, I observe that a prefacer is generally a most
+accomplished liar. Is an author to be introduced to the public? the
+preface is as genuine a panegyric, and nearly as long a one, as that of
+Pliny's on the Emperor Trajan. Such a preface is ringing an alarum bell
+for an author. If we look closer into the characters of these masters of
+ceremony, who thus sport with and defy the judgment of their reader, and
+who, by their extravagant panegyric, do considerable injury to the cause
+of taste, we discover that some accidental occurrence has occasioned this
+vehement affection for the author, and which, like that of another kind of
+love, makes one commit so many extravagances.
+
+Prefaces are indeed rarely sincere. It is justly observed by Shenstone, in
+his prefatory Essay to the "Elegies," that "discourses prefixed to poetry
+inculcate such tenets as may exhibit the performance to the greatest
+advantage. The fabric is first raised, and the measures by which we
+are to judge of it are afterwards adjusted." This observation might be
+exemplified by more instances than some readers might choose to read. It
+will be sufficient to observe with what art both Pope and Fontenelle have
+drawn up their Essays on the nature of Pastoral Poetry, that the rules
+they wished to establish might be adapted to their own pastorals. Has
+accident made some ingenious student apply himself to a subordinate branch
+of literature, or to some science which is not highly esteemed--look in
+the preface for its sublime panegyric. Collectors of coins, dresses, and
+butterflies, have astonished the world with eulogiums which would raise
+their particular studies into the first ranks of philosophy.
+
+It would appear that there is no lie to which a prefacer is not tempted. I
+pass over the commodious prefaces of Dryden, which were ever adapted to
+the poem and not to poetry, to the author and not to literature.
+
+The boldest preface-liar was Aldus Manutius, who, having printed an
+edition of Aristophanes, first published in the preface that Saint
+Chrysostom was accustomed to place this comic poet under his pillow, that
+he might always have his works at hand. As, in that age, a saint was
+supposed to possess every human talent, good taste not excepted,
+Aristophanes thus recommended became a general favourite. The anecdote
+lasted for nearly two centuries; and what was of greater consequence to
+Aldus, quickened the sale of his Aristophanes. This ingenious invention of
+the prefacer of Aristophanes at length was detected by Menage.
+
+The insincerity of prefaces arises whenever an author would disguise his
+solicitude for his work, by appearing negligent, and even undesirous of
+its success. A writer will rarely conclude such a preface without
+betraying himself. I think that even Dr. Johnson forgot his sound
+dialectic in the admirable Preface to his Dictionary. In one part he says,
+"having laboured this work with so much application, I cannot but have
+some degree of parental fondness." But in his conclusion he tells us, "I
+dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from
+censure or from praise." I deny the doctor's "frigidity." This polished
+period exhibits an affected stoicism, which no writer ever felt for the
+anxious labour of a great portion of life, addressed not merely to a class
+of readers, but to literary Europe.
+
+But if prefaces are rarely sincere or just, they are, notwithstanding,
+literary opuscula in which the author is materially concerned. A work
+with a poor preface, like a person who comes with an indifferent
+recommendation, must display uncommon merit to master our prejudices, and
+to please us, as it were, in spite of ourselves. Works ornamented by a
+finished preface, such as Johnson not infrequently presented to his
+friends or his booksellers, inspire us with awe; we observe a veteran
+guard placed in the porch, and we are induced to conclude from this
+appearance that some person of eminence resides in the place itself.
+
+The public are treated with contempt when an author professes to publish
+his puerilities. This Warburton did, in his pompous edition of Shakspeare.
+In the preface he informed the public, that his notes "were among his
+_younger amusements,_ when he turned over these _sort of writers._" This
+ungracious compliment to Shakspeare and the public, merited that perfect
+scourging which our haughty commentator received from the sarcastic
+"Canons of Criticism."[A] Scudery was a writer of some genius, and great
+variety. His prefaces are remarkable for their gasconades. In his epic
+poem of Alaric, he says, "I have such a facility in writing verses, and
+also in my invention, that a poem of double its length would have cost me
+little trouble. Although it contains only eleven thousand lines, I believe
+that longer epics do not exhibit more embellishments than mine." And to
+conclude with one more student of this class, Amelot de la Houssaie, in
+the preface to his translation of "The Prince" of Machiavel, instructs us,
+that "he considers his copy as superior to the original, because it is
+everywhere intelligible, and Machiavel is frequently obscure." I have seen
+in the play-bills of strollers, a very pompous description of the
+triumphant entry of Alexander into Babylon; had they said nothing about
+the triumph, it might have passed without exciting ridicule; and one might
+not so maliciously have perceived how ill the four candle-snuffers crawled
+as elephants, and the triumphal car discovered its want of a lid. But
+having pre-excited attention, we had full leisure to sharpen our eye. To
+these imprudent authors and actors we may apply a Spanish proverb, which
+has the peculiar quaintness of that people, _Aviendo pregonado vino,
+venden vinagre:_ "Having cried up their wine, they sell us vinegar."
+
+[Footnote A: See the essay on Warburton and his disputes in "Quarrels of
+Authors,"--ED.]
+
+A ridiculous humility in a preface is not less despicable. Many idle
+apologies were formerly in vogue for publication, and formed a literary
+cant, of which now the meanest writers perceive the futility. A literary
+anecdote of the Romans has been preserved, which is sufficiently curious.
+One Albinus, in the preface to his Roman History, intercedes for pardon
+for his numerous blunders of phraseology; observing that they were the
+more excusable, as he had composed his history in the Greek language, with
+which he was not so familiar as his maternal tongue. Cato severely rallies
+him on this; and justly observes, that our Albinus had merited the pardon
+he solicits, if a decree of the senate had compelled him thus to have
+composed it, and he could not have obtained a dispensation. The avowal of
+our ignorance of the language we employ is like that excuse which some
+writers make for composing on topics in which they are little conversant.
+A reader's heart is not so easily mollified; and it is a melancholy truth
+for literary men that the pleasure of abusing an author is generally
+superior to that of admiring him. One appears to display more critical
+acumen than the other, by showing that though we do not choose to take the
+trouble of writing, we have infinitely more genius than the author. These
+suppliant prefacers are described by Boileau.
+
+ Un auteur à genoux dans une humble préface
+ Au lecteur qu'il ennuie a beau demander grace;
+ Il ne gagnera rien sur ce juge irrité,
+ Qui lui fait son procès de pleine autorité.
+
+ Low in a humble preface authors kneel;
+ In vain, the wearied reader's heart is steel.
+ Callous, that irritated judge with awe,
+ Inflicts the penalties and arms the law.
+
+The most entertaining prefaces in our language are those of Dryden; and
+though it is ill-naturedly said, by Swift, that they were merely formed
+
+ To raise the volume's price a shilling,
+
+yet these were the earliest commencements of English criticism, and the
+first attempt to restrain the capriciousness of readers, and to form a
+national taste. Dryden has had the candour to acquaint us with his secret
+of prefatory composition; for in that one to his Tales he says, "the
+nature of preface-writing is rambling; never wholly out of the way, nor in
+it. This I have learnt from the practice of honest Montaigne." There is no
+great risk in establishing this observation as an axiom in literature; for
+should a prefacer loiter, it is never difficult to get rid of lame
+persons, by escaping from them; and the reader may make a preface as
+concise as he chooses.
+
+It is possible for an author to paint himself in amiable colours, in this
+useful page, without incurring the contempt of egotism. After a writer has
+rendered himself conspicuous by his industry or his genius, his admirers
+are not displeased to hear something relative to him from himself. Hayley,
+in the preface to his poems, has conveyed an amiable feature in his
+personal character, by giving the cause of his devotion to literature as
+the only mode by which he could render himself of some utility to his
+country. There is a modesty in the prefaces of Pope, even when this great
+poet collected his immortal works; and in several other writers of the
+most elevated genius, in a Hume and a Robertson, which becomes their happy
+successors to imitate, and inferior writers to contemplate with awe.
+
+There is in prefaces a due respect to be shown to the public
+and to ourselves. He that has no sense of self-dignity, will
+not inspire any reverence in others; and the ebriety of vanity
+will he sobered by the alacrity we all feel in disturbing the
+dreams of self-love. If we dare not attempt the rambling
+prefaces of a Dryden, we may still entertain the reader, and
+soothe him into good-humour, for our own interest. This,
+perhaps, will be best obtained by making the preface (like the
+symphony to an opera) to contain something analogous to the
+work itself, to attune the mind into a harmony of tone.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i., for an article on
+Prefaces.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+STYLE.
+
+
+Every period of literature has its peculiar style, derived from some
+author of reputation; and the history of a language, as an object of
+taste, might be traced through a collection of ample quotations from the
+most celebrated authors of each period.
+
+To Johnson may be attributed the establishment of our present refinement,
+and it is with truth he observes of his "Rambler," "That he had laboured
+to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from
+colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations, and
+that he has added to the elegance of its construction and to the harmony
+of its cadence." In this description of his own refinement in style and
+grammatical accuracy, Johnson probably alluded to the happy carelessness
+of Addison, whose charm of natural ease long afterwards he discovered. But
+great inelegance of diction disgraced our language even so late as in
+1736, when the "Inquiry into the Life of Homer" was published. That
+author was certainly desirous of all the graces of composition, and his
+volume by its singular sculptures evinces his inordinate affection for his
+work. This fanciful writer had a taste for polished writing, yet he
+abounds in expressions which now would be considered as impure in literary
+composition. Such vulgarisms are common--the Greeks _fell to their old
+trade_ of one tribe expelling another--the scene is always at Athens, and
+all the _pother_ is some little jilting story--the haughty Roman _snuffed_
+at the suppleness. If such diction had not been usual with good writers at
+that period, I should not have quoted Blackwall. Middleton, in his "Life
+of Cicero," though a man of classical taste, and an historian of a
+classical era, could not preserve himself from colloquial inelegances; the
+greatest characters are levelled by the poverty of his style. Warburton,
+and his imitator Hurd, and other living critics of that school, are loaded
+with familiar idioms, which at present would debase even the style of
+conversation.
+
+Such was the influence of the elaborate novelty of Johnson, that every
+writer in every class servilely copied the Latinised style, ludicrously
+mimicking the contortions and re-echoing the sonorous nothings of our
+great lexicographer; the novelist of domestic life, or the agriculturist
+in a treatise on turnips, alike aimed at the polysyllabic force, and the
+cadenced period. Such was the condition of English style for more than
+twenty years.
+
+Some argue in favour of a natural style, and reiterate the opinion of many
+great critics that proper ideas will be accompanied by proper words;
+but though supported by the first authorities, they are not perhaps
+sufficiently precise in their definition. Writers may think justly, and
+yet write without any effect; while a splendid style may cover a vacuity
+of thought. Does not this evident fact prove that style and thinking have
+not that inseparable connexion which many great writers have pronounced?
+Milton imagined that beautiful thoughts produce beautiful expression. He
+says,
+
+ Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move
+ Harmonious numbers.
+
+Writing is justly called an art; and Rousseau says, it is not an art
+easily acquired. Thinking may be the foundation of style, but it is
+not the superstructure; it is the marble of the edifice, but not its
+architecture. The art of presenting our thoughts to another, is often
+a process of considerable time and labour; and the delicate task of
+correction, in the development of ideas, is reserved only for writers of
+fine taste. There are several modes of presenting an idea; vulgar readers
+are only susceptible of the strong and palpable stroke: but there are many
+shades of sentiment, which to seize on and to paint is the pride and the
+labour of a skilful writer. A beautiful simplicity itself is a species of
+refinement, and no writer more solicitously corrected his works than Hume,
+who excels in this mode of composition. The philosopher highly approves of
+Addison's definition of fine writing, who says, that it consists of
+sentiments which are natural, without being obvious. This is a definition
+of thought rather than of composition. Shenstone has hit the truth; for
+fine writing he defines to be generally the effect of spontaneous thoughts
+and a laboured style. Addison was not insensible to these charms, and he
+felt the seductive art of Cicero when he said, that "there is as much
+difference in apprehending a thought clothed in Cicero's language and that
+of a common author, as in seeing an object by the light of a taper, or by
+the light of the sun."
+
+Mannerists in style, however great their powers, rather excite the
+admiration than the affection of a man of taste; because their habitual
+art dissipates that illusion of sincerity, which we love to believe is the
+impulse which places the pen in the hand of an author. Two eminent
+literary mannerists are Cicero and Johnson. We know these great men
+considered their eloquence as a deceptive art; of any subject, it had been
+indifferent to them which side to adopt; and in reading their elaborate
+works, our ear is more frequently gratified by the ambitious magnificence
+of their diction, than our heart penetrated by the pathetic enthusiasm of
+their sentiments. Writers who are not mannerists, but who seize the
+appropriate tone of their subject, appear to feel a conviction of what
+they attempt to persuade their reader. It is observable, that it is
+impossible to imitate with uniform felicity the noble simplicity of a
+pathetic writer; while the peculiarities of a mannerist are so far from
+being difficult, that they are displayed with nice exactness by middling
+writers, who, although their own natural manner had nothing interesting,
+have attracted notice by such imitations. We may apply to some monotonous
+mannerists these verses of Boileau:
+
+ Voulez-vous du public mériter les amours?
+ Sans cesse en écrivant variez vos discours.
+ On lit peu ces auteurs nés pour nous ennuier,
+ Qui toujours sur un ton semblent psalmodier.
+
+ Would you the public's envied favours gain?
+ Ceaseless, in writing, variegate the strain;
+ The heavy author, who the fancy calms,
+ Seems in one tone to chant his nasal psalms.
+
+Every style is excellent, if it be proper; and that style is most proper
+which can best convey the intentions of the author to his reader. And,
+after all, it is STYLE alone by which posterity will judge of a great
+work, for an author can have nothing truly his own but his style; facts,
+scientific discoveries, and every kind of information, may be seized by
+all, but an author's diction cannot be taken from him. Hence very learned
+writers have been neglected, while their learning has not been lost to the
+world, by having been given by writers with more amenity. It is therefore
+the duty of an author to learn to write as well as to learn to think; and
+this art can only be obtained by the habitual study of his sensations, and
+an intimate acquaintance with the intellectual faculties. These are the
+true prompters of those felicitous expressions which give a tone congruous
+to the subject, and which invest our thoughts with all the illusion, the
+beauty, and motion of lively perception.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+GOLDSMITH AND JOHNSON.
+
+
+We should not censure artists and writers for their attachment to
+their favourite excellence. Who but an artist can value the ceaseless
+inquietudes of arduous perfection; can trace the remote possibilities
+combined in a close union; the happy arrangement and the novel variation?
+He not only is affected by the performance like the man of taste, but is
+influenced by a peculiar sensation; for while he contemplates the apparent
+beauties, he traces in his own mind those invisible processes by which the
+final beauty was accomplished. Hence arises that species of comparative
+criticism which one great author usually makes of his own manner with that
+of another great writer, and which so often causes him to be stigmatised
+with the most unreasonable vanity.
+
+The character of GOLDSMITH, so underrated in his own day, exemplifies this
+principle in the literary character. That pleasing writer, without any
+perversion of intellect or inflation of vanity, might have contrasted his
+powers with those of JOHNSON, and might, according to his own ideas, have
+considered himself as not inferior to his more celebrated and learned
+rival.
+
+Goldsmith might have preferred the felicity of his own genius, which like
+a native stream flowed from a natural source, to the elaborate powers of
+Johnson, which in some respects may be compared to those artificial waters
+which throw their sparkling currents in the air, to fall into marble
+basins. He might have considered that he had embellished philosophy with
+poetical elegance; and have preferred the paintings of his descriptions,
+to the terse versification and the pointed sentences of Johnson. He might
+have been more pleased with the faithful representations of English
+manners in his "Vicar of Wakefield," than with the borrowed grandeur and
+the exotic fancy of the Oriental Rasselas. He might have believed, what
+many excellent critics have believed, that in this age comedy requires
+more genius than tragedy; and with his audience he might have infinitely
+more esteemed his own original humour, than Johnson's rhetorical
+declamation. He might have thought, that with inferior literature he
+displayed superior genius, and with less profundity more gaiety. He
+might have considered that the facility and vivacity of his pleasing
+compositions were preferable to that art, that habitual pomp, and that
+ostentatious eloquence, which prevail in the operose labours of Johnson.
+No one might be more sensible than himself, that he, according to the
+happy expression of Johnson (when his rival was in his grave), "tetigit et
+ornavit." Goldsmith, therefore, without any singular vanity, might have
+concluded, from his own reasonings, that he was not an inferior writer to
+Johnson: all this not having been considered, he has come down to
+posterity as the vainest and the most jealous of writers; he whose
+dispositions were the most inoffensive, whose benevolence was the most
+extensive, and whose amiableness of heart has been concealed by its
+artlessness, and passed over in the sarcasms and sneers of a more eloquent
+rival, and his submissive partisans.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+SELF-CHARACTERS.
+
+
+There are two species of minor biography which may be discriminated;
+detailing our own life and portraying our own character. The writing our
+own life has been practised with various success; it is a delicate
+operation, a stroke too much may destroy the effect of the whole. If once
+we detect an author deceiving or deceived, it is a livid spot which
+infects the entire body. To publish one's own life has sometimes been a
+poor artifice to bring obscurity into notice; it is the ebriety of vanity,
+and the delirium of egotism. When a great man leaves some memorial of his
+days, the grave consecrates the motive. There are certain things which
+relate to ourselves, which no one can know so well; a great genius obliges
+posterity when he records them. But they must be composed with calmness,
+with simplicity, and with sincerity; the biographic sketch of Hume,
+written by himself, is a model of Attic simplicity. The Life of Lord
+Herbert is a biographical curiosity. The Memoirs of Sir William Jones, of
+Priestley, and of Gibbon, offer us the daily life of the student; and
+those of Colley Cibber are a fine picture of the self-painter. We have
+some other pieces of self-biography, precious to the philosopher.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: One of the most interesting is that of Grifford, appended to
+his translation of Juvenal; it is a most remarkable record of the
+struggles of its author in early life, told with candour and simplicity.--
+ED.]
+
+The other species of minor biography, that of portraying our own
+character, could only have been invented by the most refined and the
+vainest nation. The French long cherished this darling egotism; and have a
+collection of these self-portraits in two bulky volumes. The brilliant
+Fléchier, and the refined St. Evremond, have framed and glazed their
+portraits. Every writer then considered his character as necessary as his
+preface. The fashion seems to have passed over to our country; Farquhar
+has drawn his character in a letter to a lady; and others of our writers
+have given us their own miniatures.
+
+There was, as a book in my possession will testify, a certain verse-maker
+of the name of Cantenac, who, in 1662, published in the city of Paris a
+volume, containing some thousands of verses, which were, as his countrymen
+express it, _de sa façon,_ after his own way. He fell so suddenly into the
+darkest and deepest pit of oblivion, that not a trace of his memory would
+have remained, had he not condescended to give ample information of every
+particular relative to himself. He has acquainted us with his size, and
+tells us, "that it is rare to see a man smaller than himself. I have that
+in common with all dwarfs, that if my head only were seen, I should be
+thought a large man." This atom in creation then describes his oval and
+full face; his fiery and eloquent eyes: his vermil lips; his robust
+constitution, and his effervescent passions. He appears to have been a
+most petulant, honest, and diminutive being.
+
+The description of his intellect is the object of our curiosity. "I am as
+ambitious as any person can be; but I would not sacrifice my honour to
+my ambition. I am so sensible to contempt, that I bear a mortal and
+implacable hatred against those who contemn me, and I know I could never
+reconcile myself with them; but I spare no attentions for those I love; I
+would give them my fortune and my life. I sometimes lie; but generally in
+affairs of gallantry, where I voluntarily confirm falsehoods by oaths,
+without reflection, for swearing with me is a habit. I am told that my
+mind is brilliant, and that I have a certain manner in turning a thought
+which is quite my own. I am agreeable in conversation, though I confess I
+am often troublesome; for I maintain paradoxes to display my genius, which
+savour too much of scholastic subterfuges. I speak too often and too long;
+and as I have some reading, and a copious memory, I am fond of showing
+whatever I know. My judgment is not so solid as my wit is lively. I am
+often melancholy and unhappy; and this sombrous disposition proceeds from
+my numerous disappointments in life. My verse is preferred to my prose;
+and it has been of some use to me in pleasing the fair sex; poetry is most
+adapted to persuade women; but otherwise it has been of no service to me,
+and has, I fear, rendered me unfit for many advantageous occupations, in
+which I might have drudged. The esteem of the fair has, however, charmed
+away my complaints. This good fortune has been obtained by me, at the cost
+of many cares, and an unsubdued patience; for I am one of those who, in
+affairs of love, will suffer an entire year, to taste the pleasures of one
+day."
+
+This character of Cantenac has some local features; for an English poet
+would hardly console himself with so much gaiety. The Frenchman's
+attachment to the ladies seems to be equivalent to the advantageous
+occupations he had lost. But as the miseries of a literary man, without
+conspicuous talents, are always the same at Paris as in London, there are
+some parts of this character of Cantenac which appear to describe them
+with truth. Cantenac was a man of honour; as warm in his resentment as his
+gratitude; but deluded by literary vanity, he became a writer in prose and
+verse, and while he saw the prospects of life closing on him, probably
+considered that the age was unjust. A melancholy example for certain
+volatile and fervent spirits, who, by becoming authors, either submit
+their felicity to the caprices of others, or annihilate the obscure
+comforts of life, and, like him, having "been told that their mind is
+brilliant, and that they have a certain manner in turning a thought,"
+become writers, and complain that they are "often melancholy, owing to
+their numerous disappointments." Happy, however, if the obscure, yet too
+sensible writer, can suffer an entire year, for the enjoyment of a single
+day! But for this, a man must have been born in France.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ON READING.
+
+
+Writing is justly denominated an art; I think that reading claims the same
+distinction. To adorn ideas with elegance is an act of the mind superior
+to that of receiving them; but to receive them with a happy discrimination
+is the effect of a practised taste.
+
+Yet it will be found that taste alone is not sufficient to obtain the
+proper end of reading. Two persons of equal taste rise from the perusal of
+the same book with very different notions: the one will have the ideas of
+the author at command, and find a new train of sentiment awakened; while
+the other quits his author in a pleasing distraction, but of the pleasures
+of reading nothing remains but tumultuous sensations.
+
+To account for these different effects, we must have recourse to a logical
+distinction, which appears to reveal one of the great mysteries in the
+art of reading. Logicians distinguish between perceptions and ideas.
+Perception is that faculty of the mind which notices the simple impression
+of objects: but when these objects exist in the mind, and are there
+treasured and arranged as materials for reflection, then they are called
+ideas. A perception is like a transient sunbeam, which just shows the
+object, but leaves neither light nor warmth; while an idea is like the
+fervid beam of noon, which throws a settled and powerful light.
+
+Many ingenious readers complain that their memory is defective, and their
+studies unfruitful. This defect arises from their indulging the facile
+pleasures of perceptions, in preference to the laborious habit of forming
+them into ideas. Perceptions require only the sensibility of taste, and
+their pleasures are continuous, easy, and exquisite. Ideas are an art of
+combination, and an exertion of the reasoning powers. Ideas are therefore
+labours; and for those who will not labour, it is unjust to complain, if
+they come from the harvest with scarcely a sheaf in their hands.
+
+There are secrets in the art of reading which tend to facilitate its
+purposes, by assisting the memory, and augmenting intellectual opulence.
+Some our own ingenuity must form, and perhaps every student has peculiar
+habits of study, as, in sort-hand, almost every writer has a system of his
+own.
+
+It is an observation of the elder Pliny (who, having been a voluminous
+compiler, must have had great experience in the art of reading), that
+there was no book so bad but which contained something good. To read every
+book would, however, be fatal to the interest of most readers; but it is
+not always necessary, in the pursuits of learning, to read every book
+entire. Of many books it is sufficient to seize the plan, and to examine
+some of their portions. Of the little supplement at the close of a volume,
+few readers conceive the utility; but some of the most eminent writers in
+Europe have been great adepts in the art of index reading. I, for my part,
+venerate the inventor of indexes; and I know not to whom to yield the
+preference, either to Hippocrates, who was the first great anatomiser of
+the human body, or to that unknown labourer in literature, who first laid
+open the nerves and arteries of a book. Watts advises the perusal of the
+prefaces and the index of a book, as they both give light on its contents.
+
+The ravenous appetite of Johnson for reading is expressed in a strong
+metaphor by Mrs. Knowles, who said, "he knows how to read better than any
+one; he gets at the substance of a book directly: he tears out the heart
+of it." Gibbon has a new idea in the "Art of Reading;" he says "we ought
+not to attend to the order of our books so much as of our thoughts. The
+perusal of a particular work gives birth perhaps to ideas unconnected with
+the subject it treats; I pursue these ideas, and quit my proposed plan of
+reading." Thus in the midst of Homer he read Longinus; a chapter of
+Longinus led to an epistle of Pliny; and having finished Longinus, he
+followed the train of his ideas of the sublime and beautiful in the
+"Enquiry" of Burke, and concluded by comparing the ancient with the modern
+Longinus.
+
+There are some mechanical aids in reading which may prove of great
+utility, and form a kind of rejuvenescence of our early studies. Montaigne
+placed at the end of a book which he intended not to reperuse, the time he
+had read it, with a concise decision on its merits; "that," says he, "it
+may thus represent to me the air and general idea I had conceived of the
+author, in reading the work." We have several of these annotations. Of
+Young the poet it is noticed, that whenever he came to a striking passage
+he folded the leaf; and that at his death, books have been found in his
+library which had long resisted the power of closing: a mode more easy
+than useful; for after a length of time they must be again read to know
+why they were folded. This difficulty is obviated by those who note in a
+blank leaf the pages to be referred to, with a word of criticism. Nor let
+us consider these minute directions as unworthy the most enlarged minds:
+by these petty exertions, at the most distant periods, may learning obtain
+its authorities, and fancy combine its ideas. Seneca, in sending some
+volumes to his friend Lucilius, accompanies them with notes of particular
+passages, "that," he observes, "you who only aim at the useful may be
+spared the trouble of examining them entire." I have seen books noted by
+Voltaire with a word of censure or approbation on the page itself, which
+was his usual practice; and these volumes are precious to every man of
+taste. Formey complained that the books he lent Voltaire were returned
+always disfigured by his remarks; but he was a writer of the old
+school.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: The account of Oldys and his manuscripts, in the third volume
+of the "Curiosities of Literature," will furnish abundant proof of the
+value of such _disfigurations_ when the work of certain hands.--ED.]
+
+A professional student should divide his readings into a _uniform_ reading
+which is useful, and into a _diversified_ reading which is pleasant. Guy
+Patin, an eminent physician and man of letters, had a just notion of this
+manner. He says, "I daily read Hippocrates, Galen, Fernel, and other
+illustrious masters of my profession; this I call my profitable readings.
+I frequently read Ovid, Juvenal, Horace, Seneca, Tacitus, and others, and
+these are my recreations." We must observe these distinctions; for it
+frequently happens that a lawyer or a physician, with great industry and
+love of study, by giving too much into his diversified readings, may
+utterly neglect what should be his uniform studies.
+
+A reader is too often a prisoner attached to the triumphal car of an
+author of great celebrity; and when he ventures not to judge for himself,
+conceives, while he is reading the indifferent works of great authors,
+that the languor which he experiences arises from his own defective taste.
+But the best writers, when they are voluminous, have a great deal of
+mediocrity.
+
+On the other side, readers must not imagine that all the pleasures of
+composition depend on the author, for there is something which a reader
+himself must bring to the book that the book may please. There is a
+literary appetite, which the author can no more impart than the most
+skilful cook can give an appetency to the guests. When Cardinal Richelieu
+said to Godeau, that he did not understand his verses, the honest poet
+replied that it was not his fault. The temporary tone of the mind may be
+unfavourable to taste a work properly, and we have had many erroneous
+criticisms from great men, which may often be attributed to this
+circumstance. The mind communicates its infirm dispositions to the book,
+and an author has not only his own defects to account for, but also those
+of his reader. There is something in composition like the game of
+shuttlecock, where if the reader do not quickly rebound the feathered cock
+to the author, the game is destroyed, and the whole spirit of the work
+falls extinct.
+
+A frequent impediment in reading is a disinclination in the mind to settle
+on the subject; agitated by incongruous and dissimilar ideas, it is with
+pain that we admit those of the author. But on applying ourselves with a
+gentle violence to the perusal of an interesting work, the mind soon
+assimilates to the subject; the ancient rabbins advised their young
+students to apply themselves to their readings, whether they felt an
+inclination or not, because, as they proceeded, they would find their
+disposition restored and their curiosity awakened.
+
+Readers may be classed into an infinite number of divisions; but an author
+is a solitary being, who, for the same reason he pleases one, must
+consequently displease another. To have too exalted a genius is more
+prejudicial to his celebrity than to have a moderate one; for we shall
+find that the most popular works are not the most profound, but such as
+instruct those who require instruction, and charm those who are not too
+learned to taste their novelty. Lucilius, the satirist, said, that he did
+not write for Persius, for Scipio, and for Rutilius, persons eminent for
+their science, but for the Tarentines, the Consentines, and the Sicilians.
+Montaigne has complained that he found his readers too learned, or too
+ignorant, and that he could only please a middle class, who have just
+learning enough to comprehend him. Congreve says, "there is in true beauty
+something which vulgar souls cannot admire." Balzac complains bitterly of
+readers,--"A period," he cries, "shall have cost us the labour of a day;
+we shall have distilled into an essay the essence of our mind; it may be a
+finished piece of art; and they think they are indulgent when they
+pronounce it to contain some pretty things, and that the style is not
+bad!" There is something in exquisite composition which ordinary readers
+can never understand.
+
+Authors are vain, but readers are capricious. Some will only read old
+books, as if there were no valuable truths to be discovered in modern
+publications; while others will only read new books, as if some valuable
+truths are not among the old. Some will not read a book, because they are
+acquainted with the author; by which the reader may be more injured than
+the author: others not only read the book, but would also read the man; by
+which the most ingenious author may be injured by the most impertinent
+reader.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ON HABITUATING OURSELVES TO AN INDIVIDUAL PURSUIT.
+
+
+Two things in human life are at continual variance, and without escaping
+from the one we must be separated from the other; and these are _ennui_
+and _pleasure_. Ennui is an afflicting sensation, if we may thus express
+it, from a want of sensation; and pleasure is greater pleasure according
+to the quantity of sensation. That sensation is received in proportion to
+the capacity of our organs; and that practice, or, as it has been
+sometimes called, "educated feeling," enlarges this capacity, is evident
+in such familiar instances as those of the blind, who have a finer tact,
+and the jeweller, who has a finer sight, than other men who are not so
+deeply interested in refining their vision and their touch. Intense
+attention is, therefore, a certain means of deriving more numerous
+pleasures from its object.
+
+Hence it is that the poet, long employed on a poem, has received a
+quantity of pleasure which no reader can ever feel. In the progress of any
+particular pursuit, there are a hundred fugitive sensations which are too
+intellectual to be embodied into language. Every artist knows that between
+the thought that first gave rise to his design, and each one which appears
+in it, there are innumerable intermediate evanescences of sensation which
+no man felt but himself. These pleasures are in number according to the
+intenseness of his faculties and the quantity of his labour.
+
+It is so in any particular pursuit, from the manufacturing of pins to the
+construction of philosophical systems. Every individual can exert that
+quantity of mind necessary to his wants and adapted to his situation; the
+quality of pleasure is nothing in the present question: for I think that
+we are mistaken concerning the gradations of human felicity. It does at
+first appear, that an astronomer rapt in abstraction, while he gazes on a
+star, must feel a more exquisite delight than a farmer who is conducting
+his team; or a poet experience a higher gratification in modulating verses
+than a trader in arranging sums. But the happiness of the ploughman and
+the trader may be as satisfactory as that of the astronomer and the poet.
+Our mind can only he conversant with those sensations which surround us,
+and possessing the skill of managing them, we can form an artificial
+felicity; it is certain that what the soul does not feel, no more affects
+it than what the eye does not see. It is thus that the trader, habituated
+to humble pursuits, can never be unhappy because he is not the general of
+an army; for this idea of felicity he has never received. The philosopher
+who gives his entire years to the elevated pursuits of mind, is never
+unhappy because he is not in possession of an Indian opulence, for the
+idea of accumulating this exotic splendour has never entered the range of
+his combinations. Nature, an impartial mother, renders felicity as perfect
+in the school-boy who scourges his top, as in the astronomer who regulates
+his star. The thing contained can only be equal to the container; a full
+glass is as full as a full bottle; and a human soul may be as much
+satisfied in the lowest of human beings as in the highest.
+
+In the progress of an individual pursuit, what philosophers call the
+associating or suggesting idea is ever busied, and in its beautiful
+effects genius is most deeply concerned; for besides those trains of
+thought the great artist falls into during his actual composition, a
+distinct habit accompanies real genius through life in the activity of his
+associating idea, when not at his work; it is at all times pressing and
+conducting his spontaneous thoughts, and every object which suggests them,
+however apparently trivial or unconnected towards itself, making what it
+wills its own, while instinctively it seems inattentive to whatever has no
+tendency to its own purposes.
+
+Many peculiar advantages attend the cultivation of one master passion or
+occupation. In superior minds it is a sovereign that exiles others,
+and in inferior minds it enfeebles pernicious propensities. It may render
+us useful to our fellow-citizens, and it imparts the most perfect
+independence to ourselves. It is observed by a great mathematician, that a
+geometrician would not be unhappy in a desert.
+
+This unity of design, with a centripetal force, draws all the rays of our
+existence; and often, when accident has turned the mind firmly to one
+object, it has been discovered that its occupation is another name for
+happiness; for it is a mean of escaping from incongruous sensations. It
+secures us from the dark vacuity of soul, as well as from the whirlwind of
+ideas; reason itself is a passion, but a passion full of serenity.
+
+It is, however, observable of those who have devoted themselves to an
+individual object, that its importance is incredibly enlarged to their
+sensations. Intense attention magnifies like a microscope; but it is
+possible to apologise for their apparent extravagance from the
+consideration, that they really observe combinations not perceived by
+others of inferior application. That this passion has been carried to a
+curious violence of affection, literary history affords numerous
+instances. In reading Dr. Burney's "Musical Travels," it would seem that
+music was the prime object of human life; Richardson, the painter, in his
+treatise on his beloved art, closes all by affirming, that "_Raphael_ is
+not only _equal_, but _superior_ to a _Virgil_, or a _Livy_, or a
+_Thucydides_, or a _Homer_!" and that painting can reform our manners,
+increase our opulence, honour, and power. Denina, in his "Revolutions of
+Literature," tells us that to excel in historical composition requires
+more ability than is exercised by the excelling masters of any other art;
+because it requires not only the same erudition, genius, imagination, and
+taste, necessary for a poet, a painter, or a philosopher, but the
+historian must also have some peculiar qualifications; this served as a
+prelude to his own history.[A] Helvetius, an enthusiast in the fine arts
+and polite literature, has composed a poem on Happiness; and imagines that
+it consists in an exclusive love of the cultivation of letters and the
+arts. All this shows that the more intensely we attach ourselves to an
+individual object, the more numerous and the more perfect are our
+sensations; if we yield to the distracting variety of opposite pursuits
+with an equal passion, our soul is placed amid a continual shock of ideas,
+and happiness is lost by mistakes.
+
+[Footnote A: One of the most amusing modern instances occurs in the
+Preface to the late Peter Buchan's annotated edition of "Ancient Ballads
+and Songs of the North of Scotland" (2 vols. 8vo, Edin. 1828), in which he
+declares--"no one has yet conceived, nor has it entered the mind of man,
+what patience, perseverance, and general knowledge are necessary for an
+editor of a Collection of Ancient Ballads."--ED.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ON NOVELTY IN LITERATURE.
+
+
+"All is said," exclaims the lively La Bruyère; but at the same moment, by
+his own admirable Reflections, confutes the dreary system he would
+establish. An opinion of the exhausted state of literature has been a
+popular prejudice of remote existence; and an unhappy idea of a wise
+ancient, who, even in his day, lamented that "of books there is no end,"
+has been transcribed in many books. He who has critically examined any
+branch of literature has discovered how little of original invention is to
+be found even in the most excellent works. To add a little to his
+predecessors satisfies the ambition of the first geniuses. The popular
+notion of literary novelty is an idea more fanciful than exact. Many are
+yet to learn that our admired originals are not such as they mistake them
+to be; that the plans of the most original performances have been
+borrowed; and that the thoughts of the most admired compositions are not
+wonderful discoveries, but only truths, which the ingenuity of the author,
+by arranging the intermediate and accessary ideas, has unfolded from that
+confused sentiment, which those experience who are not accustomed to think
+with depth, or to discriminate with accuracy. This Novelty in Literature
+is, as Pope defines it,
+
+ What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd.
+
+Novelty, in its rigid acceptation, will not be found in any judicious
+production.
+
+Voltaire looked on everything as imitation. He observes that the most
+original writers borrowed one from another, and says that the instruction
+we gather from books is like fire--we fetch it from our neighbours, kindle
+it at home, and communicate it to others, till it becomes the property of
+all. He traces some of the finest compositions to the fountainhead; and
+the reader smiles when he perceives that they have travelled in regular
+succession through China, India, Arabia, and Greece, to France and to
+England.
+
+To the obscurity of time are the ancients indebted for that originality in
+which they are imagined to excel, but we know how frequently they accuse
+each other; and to have borrowed copiously from preceding writers was not
+considered criminal by such illustrious authors as Plato and Cicero. The
+Æneid of Virgil displays little invention in the incidents, for it unites
+the plan of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_.
+
+Our own early writers have not more originality than modern genius may
+aspire to reach. To imitate and to rival the Italians and the French
+formed their devotion. Chaucer, Gower, and Gawin Douglas, were all
+spirited imitators, and frequently only masterly translators. Spenser, the
+father of so many poets, is himself the child of the Ausonian Muse. Milton
+is incessantly borrowing from the poetry of his day. In the beautiful
+Masque of Comus he preserved all the circumstances of the work he
+imitated. Tasso opened for him the Tartarean Gulf; the sublime description
+of the bridge may be found in Sadi, who borrowed it from the Turkish
+theology; the paradise of fools is a wild flower, transplanted from the
+wilderness of Ariosto. The rich poetry of Gray is a wonderful tissue,
+woven on the frames, and composed with the gold threads, of others. To
+Cervantes we owe Butler; and the united abilities of three great wits, in
+their _Martinus Scriblerus_, could find no other mode of conveying
+their powers but by imitating at once Don Quixote and Monsieur Oufle.
+Pope, like Boileau, had all the ancients and moderns in his pay; the
+contributions he levied were not the pillages of a bandit, but the taxes
+of a monarch. Swift is much indebted for the plans of his two very
+original performances: he owes the "Travels of Gulliver" to the "Voyages
+of Cyrano de Bergerac to the Sun and Moon;" a writer, who, without the
+acuteness of Swift, has wilder flashes of fancy; Joseph Warton has
+observed many of Swift's strokes in Bishop Godwin's "Man in the Moon,"
+who, in his turn, must have borrowed his work from Cyrano. "The Tale of a
+Tub" is an imitation of such various originals, that they are too numerous
+here to mention. Wotton observed, justly, that in many places the author's
+wit is not his own. Dr. Ferriar's "Essay on the Imitations of Sterne"
+might be considerably augmented. Such are the writers, however, who
+imitate, but remain inimitable!
+
+Montaigne, with honest naïveté, compares his writings to a thread that
+binds the flowers of others; and that, by incessantly pouring the waters
+of a few good old authors into his sieve, some drops fall upon his paper.
+The good old man elsewhere acquaints us with a certain stratagem of his
+own invention, consisting of his inserting whole sentences from the
+ancients, without acknowledgment, that the critics might blunder, by
+giving _nazardes_ to Seneca and Plutarch, while they imagined they tweaked
+his nose. Petrarch, who is not the inventor of that tender poetry of which
+he is the model, and Boccaccio, called the father of Italian novelists,
+have alike profited by a studious perusal of writers, who are now only
+read by those who have more curiosity than taste. Boiardo has imitated
+Pulci, and Ariosto, Boiardo. The madness of Orlando Furioso, though it
+wears, by its extravagance, a very original air, is only imitated from Sir
+Launcelot in the old romance of "Morte Arthur," with which, Warton
+observes, it agrees in every leading circumstance; and what is the
+Cardenio of Cervantes but the Orlando of Ariosto? Tasso has imitated the
+_Iliad_, and enriched his poem with episodes from the _Æneid_. It is
+curious to observe that even Dante, wild and original as he appears, when
+he meets Virgil in the Inferno, warmly expresses his gratitude for the
+many fine passages for which he was indebted to his works, and on which he
+says he had "long meditated." Molière and La Fontaine are considered to
+possess as much originality as any of the French writers; yet the learned
+Ménage calls Molière "un grand et habile picoreur;" and Boileau tells us
+that La Fontaine borrowed his style and matter from Marot and Rabelais,
+and took his subjects from Boccaccio, Poggius, and Ariosto. Nor was the
+eccentric Rabelais the inventor of most of his burlesque narratives; and
+he is a very close imitator of Folengo, the inventor of the macaronic
+poetry, and not a little indebted to the old _Facezie_ of the Italians.
+Indeed Marot, Villon, as well as those we have noticed, profited by the
+authors anterior to the age of Francis I. La Bruyère incorporates whole
+passages of Publius Syrus in his work, as the translator of the latter
+abundantly shows. To the "Turkish Spy" was Montesquieu beholden for his
+"Persian Letters," and a numerous crowd are indebted to Montesquieu.
+Corneille made a liberal use of Spanish literature; and the pure waters of
+Racine flowed from the fountains of Sophocles and Euripides.
+
+This vein of imitation runs through the productions of our greatest
+authors. Vigneul de Marville compares some of the first writers to bankers
+who are rich with the assembled fortunes of individuals, and would be
+often ruined were they too hardly drawn on.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+VERS DE SOCIÉTÉ
+
+
+Pliny, in an epistle to Tuscus, advises him to intermix among his severer
+studies the softening charms of poetry; and notices a species of poetical
+composition which merits critical animadversion. I shall quote Pliny in
+the language of his elegant translator. He says, "These pieces commonly go
+under the title of poetical amusements; but these amusements have
+sometimes gained as much reputation to their authors as works of a more
+serious nature. It is surprising how much the mind is entertained and
+enlivened by these little poetical compositions, as they turn upon
+subjects of gallantry, satire, tenderness, politeness, and everything, in
+short, that concerns life, and the affairs of the world."
+
+This species of poetry has been carried to its utmost perfection by the
+French. It has been discriminated by them, from the mass of poetry,
+under the apt title of "_Poésies légères,"_ and sometimes it has been
+significantly called "_Vers de Société_." The French writers have formed a
+body of this fugitive poetry which no European nation can rival; and to
+which both the language and genius appear to be greatly favourable.
+
+The "_Poésies légères_" are not merely compositions of a light and gay
+turn, but are equally employed as a vehicle for tender and pathetic
+sentiment. They are never long, for they are consecrated to the amusement
+of society. The author appears to have composed them for his pleasure, not
+for his glory; and he charms his readers, because he seems careless of
+their approbation.
+
+Every delicacy of sentiment must find its delicacy of expression, and
+every tenderness of thought must be softened by the tenderest tones.
+Nothing trite or trivial must enfeeble and chill the imagination; nor must
+the ear be denied its gratification by a rough or careless verse. In these
+works nothing is pardoned; a word may disturb, a line may destroy the
+charm.
+
+The passions of the poet may form the subjects of his verse. It is in
+these writings he delineates himself; he reflects his tastes, his
+desires, his humours, his amours, and even his defects. In other poems the
+poet disappears under the feigned character he assumes; here alone he
+speaks, here he acts. He makes a confidant of the reader, interests him in
+his hopes and his sorrows; we admire the poet, and conclude with esteeming
+the man. The poem is the complaint of a lover, or a compliment to a
+patron, a vow of friendship, or a hymn of gratitude.
+
+These poems have often, with great success, displayed pictures of manners;
+for here the poet colours the objects with all the hues of social life.
+Reflection must not be amplified, for these are pieces devoted to
+the fancy; a scene may be painted throughout the poem; a sentiment
+must be conveyed in a verse. In the "Grongar Hill" of Dyer we discover
+some strokes which may serve to exemplify this criticism. The poet,
+contemplating the distant landscape, observes--
+
+ A step methinks may pass the stream,
+ So little distant dangers seem;
+ So we mistake the future's face,
+ Eyed through Hope's deluding glass.
+
+It must not be supposed that, because these poems are concise, they
+are of easy production; a poet's genius may not be diminutive because
+his pieces are so; nor must we call them, as a fine sonnet has been
+called, a difficult trifle. A circle may be very small, yet it may be as
+mathematically beautiful and perfect as a larger one. To such compositions
+we may apply the observation of an ancient critic, that though a little
+thing gives perfection, yet perfection is not a little thing.
+
+The poet must be alike polished by an intercourse with the world as with
+the studies of taste; one to whom labour is negligence, refinement a
+science, and art a nature.
+
+Genius will not always be sufficient to impart that grace of amenity. Many
+of the French nobility, who cultivated poetry, have therefore oftener
+excelled in these poetical amusements than more professed poets. France
+once delighted in the amiable and ennobled names of Nivernois, Boufflers,
+and St. Aignan; they have not been considered as unworthy rivals of
+Chaulieu and Bernard, of Voltaire and Gresset.
+
+All the minor odes of Horace, and the entire Anacreon, are compositions of
+this kind; effusions of the heart, and pictures of the imagination, which
+were produced in the convivial, the amatory, and the pensive hour. Our
+nation has not always been successful in these performances; they have not
+been kindred to its genius. With Charles II. something of a gayer and more
+airy taste was communicated to our poetry, but it was desultory and
+incorrect. Waller, both by his habits and his genius, was well adapted to
+excel in this lighter poetry; and he has often attained the perfection
+which the state of the language then permitted. Prior has a variety of
+sallies; but his humour is sometimes gross, and his versification is
+sometimes embarrassed. He knew the value of these charming pieces, and
+he had drunk of this Burgundy in the vineyard itself. He has some
+translations, and some plagiarisms; but some of his verses to Chloe are
+eminently airy and pleasing. A diligent selection from our fugitive poetry
+might perhaps present us with many of these minor poems; but the "_Vers de
+Société_" form a species of poetical composition which may still be
+employed with great success.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE GENIUS OF MOLIÈRE.
+
+
+The genius of comedy not only changes with the age, but appears different
+among different people. Manners and customs not only vary among European
+nations, but are alike mutable from one age to another, even in the same
+people. These vicissitudes are often fatal to comic writers; our old
+school of comedy has been swept off the stage: and our present uniformity
+of manners has deprived our modern writers of those rich sources of
+invention when persons living more isolated, society was less monotonous;
+and Jonson and Shadwell gave us what they called "_the humours_,"--that
+is, the individual or particular characteristics of men.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Aubrey has noted this habit of our two greatest dramatists,
+when speaking of Shakspeare he says--"The humour of the constable in _A
+Midsummer Night's Dream_, he happened to take at Grendon in Bucks; which
+is the roade from London to Stratford; and there was living that constable
+in 1642, when I first came to Oxon. Ben Jonson and he did gather humours
+of men dayly, wherever they came." Shadwell, whose best plays were
+produced in the reign of Charles II., was a professed imitator of the
+style of Jonson; and so closely described the manners of his day that he
+was frequently accused of direct personalities, and obliged to alter one
+of his plays, _The Humorists_, to avoid an outcry raised against him. Sir
+Walter Scott has recorded, in the Preface to his "Fortunes of Nigel," the
+obligation he was under to Shadwell's comedy, _The Squire of Alsatia_, for
+the vivid description it enabled him to give of the lawless denizens of
+the old Sanctuary of Whitefriars.--ED.]
+
+But however tastes and modes of thinking may be inconstant, and customs
+and manners alter, at bottom the groundwork is Nature's, in every
+production of comic genius. A creative genius, guided by an unerring
+instinct, though he draws after the contemporary models of society, will
+retain his pre-eminence beyond his own age and his own nation; what was
+temporary and local disappears, but what appertains to universal nature
+endures. The scholar dwells on the grotesque pleasantries of the sarcastic
+Aristophanes, though the Athenian manners, and his exotic personages, have
+long vanished.
+
+MOLIÈRE was a creator in the _art of comedy_; and although his personages
+were the contemporaries of Louis the Fourteenth, and his manners, in the
+critical acceptation of the term, local and temporary, yet his admirable
+genius opened that secret path of Nature, which is so rarely found among
+the great names of the most literary nations. CERVANTES remains single in
+Spain; in England SHAKSPEARE is a consecrated name; and centuries may pass
+away before the French people shall witness another MOLIÈRE.
+
+The history of this comic poet is the tale of powerful genius creating
+itself amidst the most adverse elements. We have the progress of that
+self-education which struck out an untried path of its own, from the time
+Molière had not yet acquired his art to the glorious days when he gave his
+country a Plautus in his farce, a Terence in his composition, and a
+Menander in his moral truths. But the difficulties overcome, and the
+disappointments incurred, his modesty and his confidence, and, what was
+not less extraordinary, his own domestic life in perpetual conflict with
+his character, open a more strange career, in some respects, than has
+happened to most others of the high order of his genius.
+
+It was long the fate of Molière to experience that restless importunity of
+genius which feeds on itself, till it discovers the pabulum it seeks.
+Molière not only suffered that tormenting impulse, but it was accompanied
+by the unhappiness of a mistaken direction. And this has been the lot of
+some who for many years have thus been lost to themselves and to the
+public.
+
+A man born among the obscure class of the people, thrown among the
+itinerant companies of actors--for France had not yet a theatre--occupied
+to his last hours by too devoted a management of his own dramatic corps;
+himself, too, an original actor in the characters by himself created; with
+no better models of composition than the Italian farces _all' improvista_,
+and whose fantastic gaiety he, to the last, loved too well; becomes the
+personal favourite of the most magnificent monarch, and the intimate of
+the most refined circles. Thoughtful observer of these new scenes and new
+personages, he sports with the affected _précieuses_ and the flattering
+_marquises_ as with the _naïve_ ridiculousness of the _bourgeois,_ and the
+wild pride and egotism of the _parvenus_; and with more profound designs
+and a hardier hand unmasks the impostures of false _pretenders_ in all
+professions. His scenes, such was their verity, seem but the reflections
+of his reminiscences. His fertile facility when touching on transient
+follies; his wide comprehension, and his moralising vein, in his more
+elevated comedy, display, in this painter of man, the poet and the
+philosopher, and, above all, the great moral satirist. Molière has shown
+that the most successful reformer of the manners of a people is a great
+comic poet.
+
+The youth _Pocquelin_--this was his family name--was designed by the
+_tapissier_, his father, to be the heir of the hereditary honours of an
+ancient standing, which had maintained the Pocquelins through four
+or five generations by the articles of a furnishing upholsterer. His
+grandfather was a haunter of the small theatres of that day, and
+the boy often accompanied this venerable critic of the family to his
+favourite recreations. The actors were usually more excellent than their
+pieces; some had carried the mimetic art to the perfection of eloquent
+gesticulation. In these loose scenes of inartificial and burlesque pieces
+was the genius of Molière cradled and nursed. The changeful scenes of the
+_Théâtre de Bourgogne_ deeply busied the boy's imagination, to the great
+detriment of the _tapisserie_ of all the Pocquelins.
+
+The father groaned, the grandfather clapped, the boy remonstrated till, at
+fourteen years of age, he was consigned, as "un mauvais sujet" (so his
+father qualified him), to a college of the Jesuits at Paris, where the
+author of the "Tartuffe" passed five years, studying--for the bar!
+
+Philosophy and logic were waters which he deeply drank; and sprinklings of
+his college studies often pointed the satire of his more finished
+comedies. To ridicule false learning and false taste one must be intimate
+with the true.
+
+On his return to the metropolis the old humour broke out at the
+representation of the inimitable Scaramouch of the Italian theatre. The
+irresistible passion drove him from his law studies, and cast young
+Pocquelin among a company of amateur actors, whose fame soon enabled them
+not to play gratuitously. Pocquelin was the manager and the modeller, for
+under his studious eye this company were induced to imitate Nature with
+the simplicity the poet himself wrote.
+
+The prejudices of the day, both civil and religious, had made these
+private theatres--no great national theatre yet existing--the resource
+only of the idler, the dissipated, and even of the unfortunate in society.
+The youthful adventurer affectionately offered a free admission to the
+dear Pocquelins. They rejected their _entrées_ with horror, and sent their
+genealogical tree, drawn afresh, to shame the truant who had wantoned into
+the luxuriance of genius. To save the honour of the parental upholsterers
+Pocquelin concealed himself under the immortal name of Molière.
+
+The future creator of French comedy had now passed his thirtieth year, and
+as yet his reputation was confined to his own dramatic corps--a pilgrim in
+the caravan of ambulatory comedy. He had provided several temporary
+novelties. Boileau regretted the loss of one, _Le Docteur Amoureux;_ and
+in others we detect the abortive conceptions of some of his future pieces.
+The severe judgment of Molière suffered his skeletons to perish; but, when
+he had discovered the art of comic writing, with equal discernment he
+resuscitated them.
+
+Not only had Molière not yet discovered the true bent of his genius, but,
+still more unfortunate, he had as greatly mistaken it as when he proposed
+turning _avocat_, for he imagined that his most suitable character was
+tragic. He wrote a tragedy, and he acted in a tragedy; the tragedy he
+composed was condemned at Bordeaux; the mortified poet flew to Grenoble;
+still the unlucky tragedy haunted his fancy; he looked on it with paternal
+eyes, in which there were tears. Long after, when Racine, a youth, offered
+him a very unactable tragedy,[A] Molière presented him with his own:
+--"Take this, for I am convinced that the subject is highly tragic,
+notwithstanding my failure." The great dramatic poet of France opened his
+career by recomposing the condemned tragedy of the comic wit in _La
+Thébaïde._ In the illusion that he was a great tragic actor, deceived by
+his own susceptibility, though his voice denied the tones of passion, he
+acted in one of Corneille's tragedies, and quite allayed the alarm of a
+rival company on the announcement. It was not, however, so when the
+author-actor vivified one of his own native personages; then, inimitably
+comic, every new representation seemed to be a new creation.
+
+[Footnote A: The tragedy written by Racine was called _Théagenè et
+Chariclée_, and founded on the tale by Heliodorus. It was the first
+attempt of its author, and submitted by him to Molière, while director of
+the Theatre of the Palais Royal; the latter had no favourable impression
+of its success if produced, but suggested _La Thébaïde_ as a subject for
+his genius, and advanced the young poet 100 louis while engaged on his
+work, which was successfully produced in 1664.--ED.]
+
+It is a remarkable feature, though not perhaps a singular one, in the
+character of this great comic writer, that he was one of the most serious
+of men, and even of a melancholic temperament. One of his lampooners wrote
+a satirical comedy on the comic poet, where he figures as "Molière
+hypochondre." Boileau, who knew him intimately, happily characterised
+Molière as _le Contemplateur_. This deep pensiveness is revealed in his
+physiognomy.
+
+The genius of Molière, long undiscovered by himself, in its first attempts
+in a higher walk did not move alone; it was crutched by imitation, and it
+often deigned to plough with another's heifer. He copied whole scenes from
+Italian comedies and plots from Italian novelists: his sole merit was
+their improvement. The great comic satirist, who hereafter was to people
+the stage with a dramatic crowd who were to live on to posterity, had not
+yet struck at that secret vein of originality--the fairy treasure which
+one day was to cast out such a prodigality of invention. His two first
+comedies, _L'Etourdi_ and _Le Dépit Amoureux_, which he had only ventured
+to bring out in a provincial theatre, were grafted on Italian and Spanish
+comedy. Nothing more original offered to his imagination than the Roman,
+the Italian, and the Spanish drama; the cunning adroit slave of Terence;
+the tricking, bustling _Gracioso_ of modern Spain; old fathers, the dupes
+of some scapegrace, or of their own senile follies, with lovers sighing at
+cross-purposes. The germ of his future powers may, indeed, be discovered
+in these two comedies, for insensibly to himself he had fallen into some
+scenes of natural simplicity. In _L'Etourdi,_ Mascarille, "le roi des
+serviteurs," which Molière himself admirably personated, is one of those
+defunct characters of the Italian comedy no longer existing in society;
+yet, like our Touchstone, but infinitely richer, this new ideal personage
+still delights by the fertility of his expedients and his perpetual and
+vigorous gaiety. In _Le Dépit Amoureux_ is the exquisite scene of the
+quarrel and reconciliation of the lovers. In this fine scene, though
+perhaps but an amplification of the well-known ode of Horace, _Donec
+gratus eram tibi_, Molière consulted his own feelings, and betrayed his
+future genius.
+
+It was after an interval of three or four years that the provincial
+celebrity of these comedies obtained a representation at Paris; their
+success was decisive. This was an evidence of public favour which did
+not accompany Molière's more finished productions, which were so far
+unfortunate that they were more intelligible to the few; in fact, the
+first comedies of Molière were not written above the popular taste; the
+spirit of true comedy, in a profound knowledge of the heart of man, and in
+the delicate discriminations of individual character, was yet unknown.
+Molière was satisfied to excel his predecessors, but he had not yet
+learned his art.
+
+The rising poet was now earnestly sought after; a more extended circle of
+society now engaged his contemplative habits. He looked around on living
+scenes no longer through the dim spectacles of the old comedy, and he
+projected a new species, which was no longer to depend on its conventional
+grotesque personages and its forced incidents; he aspired to please a more
+critical audience by making his dialogue the conversation of society, and
+his characters its portraits.
+
+Introduced to the literary coterie of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, a new view
+opened on the favoured poet. To occupy a seat in this envied circle was a
+distinction in society. The professed object of this reunion of nobility
+and literary persons, at the hôtel of the Marchioness of Rambouillet, was
+to give a higher tone to all France, by the cultivation of the language,
+the intellectual refinement of their compositions, and last, but not
+least, to inculcate the extremest delicacy of manners. The recent civil
+dissensions had often violated the urbanity of the court, and a grossness
+prevailed in conversation which offended the scrupulous. This critical
+circle was composed of both sexes. They were to be the arbiters of taste,
+the legislators of criticism, and, what was less tolerable, the models of
+genius. No work was to be stamped into currency which bore not the
+mint-mark of the hôtel.
+
+In the annals of fashion and literature no coterie has presented a more
+instructive and amusing exhibition of the abuses of learning, and the
+aberrations of ill-regulated imaginations, than the Hôtel de Rambouillet,
+by its ingenious absurdities. Their excellent design to refine the
+language, the manners, and even morality itself, branched out into every
+species of false refinement; their science ran into trivial pedantries,
+their style into a fantastic jargon, and their spiritualising delicacy
+into the very puritanism of prudery. Their frivolous distinction between
+the mind and the heart, which could not always be made to go together,
+often perplexed them as much as their own jargon, which was not always
+intelligible, even to the initiated. The French Academy is said to have
+originated in the first meetings of the Hôtel de Rambouillet; and it is
+probable that some sense and taste, in its earliest days, may have visited
+this society, for we do not begin such refined follies without some show
+of reason.
+
+The local genius of the hôtel was feminine, though the most glorious men
+of the literature of France were among its votaries. The great magnet was
+the famed Mademoiselle Scudery, whose voluminous romances were their code;
+and it is supposed these tomes preserve some of their lengthened
+_conversaziones_. In the novel system of gallantry of this great inventor
+of amorous and metaphysical "twaddle," the ladies were to be approached as
+beings nothing short of celestial paragons; they were addressed in a
+language not to be found in any dictionary but their own, and their habits
+were more fantastic than their language: a sort of domestic chivalry
+formed their etiquette. Their baptismal names were to them profane, and
+their assumed ones were drawn from the folio romances--those Bibles of
+love. At length all ended in a sort of Freemasonry of gallantry, which had
+its graduated orders, and whoever was not admitted into the mysteries was
+not permitted to prolong his existence--that is, his residence among
+them. The apprenticeship of the craft was to be served under certain
+_Introducers to Ruelles_.
+
+Their card of invitation was either a rondeau or an enigma, which served
+as a subject to open conversation. The lady received her visitors reposing
+on that throne of beauty, a bed placed in an alcove; the toilet was
+magnificently arranged. The space between the bed and the wall was called
+the _Ruelle_[A], the diminutive of _la Rue_; and in this narrow street, or
+"Fop's alley," walked the favoured. But the chevalier who was graced by
+the honorary title of _l'Alcoviste,_ was at once master of the household
+and master of the ceremonies. His character is pointedly defined by St.
+Evremond, as "a lover whom the _Précieuse_ is to love without enjoyment,
+and to enjoy in good earnest her husband with aversion." The scene offered
+no indecency to such delicate minds, and much less the impassioned style
+which passed between _les chères_, as they called themselves. Whatever
+offered an idea, of what their jargon denominated _charnelle_, was treason
+and exile. Years passed ere the hand of the elected maiden was kissed by
+its martyr. The celebrated Julia d'Angennes was beloved by the Duke de
+Montausier, but fourteen years elapsed ere she would yield a "yes." When
+the faithful Julia was no longer blooming, the Alcoviste duke gratefully
+took up the remains of her beauty.
+
+[Footnote A: In a portion of the ancient Louvre, still preserved amid the
+changes to which it has been subjected, is the old wainscoted bedroom of
+the great Henry IV., with the carved recess, and the _ruelle_, as
+described above: it is a most interesting fragment of regal domestic
+life.--ED.]
+
+Their more curious project was the reform of the style of conversation, to
+purify its grossness, and invent novel terms for familiar objects. Ménage
+drew up a "Petition of the Dictionaries," which, by their severity of
+taste, had nearly become superannuated. They succeeded better with the
+_marchandes des modes_ and the jewellers, furnishing a vocabulary
+excessively _précieuse_, by which people bought their old wares with new
+names. At length they were so successful in their neology, that with great
+difficulty they understood one another. It is, however, worth observation,
+that the orthography invented by the _précieuses_--who, for their
+convenience, rejected all the redundant letters in words--was adopted, and
+is now used; and their pride of exclusiveness in society introduced the
+singular term _s'encanailler,_ to describe a person who haunted low
+company, while their morbid purity had ever on their lips the word
+_obscénité_, terms which Molière ridicules, but whose expressiveness has
+preserved them in the language.
+
+Ridiculous as some of these extravagances now appear to us, they had been
+so closely interwoven with the elegance of the higher ranks, and so
+intimately associated with genius and literature, that the veil of fashion
+consecrated almost the mystical society, since we find among its admirers
+the most illustrious names of France.
+
+Into this elevated and artificial circle of society our youthful and
+unsophisticated poet was now thrown, with a mind not vitiated by any
+prepossessions of false taste, studious of nature and alive to the
+ridiculous. But how was the comic genius to strike at the follies of his
+illustrious friends--to strike, but not to wound? A provincial poet and
+actor to enter hostilely into the sacred precincts of these Exclusives?
+Tormented by his genius Molière produced _Les Précieuses Ridicules_, but
+admirably parried, in his preface, any application to them, by averring
+that it was aimed at their imitators--their spurious mimics in the
+country. The _Précieuses Ridicules_ was acted in the presence of the
+assembled Hôtel de Rambouillet with immense applause. A central voice from
+the pit, anticipating the host of enemies and the fame of the reformer of
+comedy, exclaimed, "Take courage, Molière, this is true comedy." The
+learned Ménage was the only member of the society who had the good sense
+to detect the drift; he perceived the snake in the grass. "We must now,"
+said this sensible pedant (in a remote allusion to the fate of idolatry
+and the introduction of Christianity) to the poetical pedant, Chapelain,
+"follow the counsel which St. Rémi gave to Clovis--we must burn all that
+we adored, and adore what we have burned." The success of the comedy was
+universal; the company doubled their prices; the country gentry flocked to
+witness the marvellous novelty, which far exposed that false taste, that
+romance-impertinence, and that sickly affectation which had long disturbed
+the quiet of families. Cervantes had not struck more adroitly at Spanish
+rodomontade.
+
+At this universal reception of the _Précieuses Ridicules_, Molière, it is
+said, exclaimed--"I need no longer study Plautus and Terence, nor poach in
+the fragments of Menander; I have only to study the world." It may be
+doubtful whether the great comic satirist at that moment caught the sudden
+revelation of his genius, as he did subsequently in his _Tartuffe_, his
+_Misanthrope_, his _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, and others. The _Précieuses
+Ridicules_ was the germ of his more elaborate _Femmes Savantes_, which was
+not produced till after an interval of twelve years.
+
+Molière returned to his old favourite _canevas_, or plots of Italian
+farces and novels, and Spanish comedies, which, being always at hand,
+furnished comedies of intrigue. _L'Ecole des Maris_ is an inimitable model
+of this class.
+
+But comedies which derive their chief interest from the ingenious
+mechanism of their plots, however poignant the delight of the artifice
+of the _denouement_, are somewhat like an epigram, once known, the
+brilliant point is blunted by repetition. This is not the fate of those
+representations of men's actions, passions, and manners, in the more
+enlarged sphere of human nature, where an eternal interest is excited, and
+will charm on the tenth repetition.
+
+No! Molière had not yet discovered his true genius; he was not yet
+emancipated from his old seductions. A rival company was reputed to have
+the better actors for tragedy, and Molière resolved to compose an heroic
+drama on the passion of jealousy--a favourite one on which he was
+incessantly ruminating. _Don Garcie de Navarre, ou Le Prince Jaloux_, the
+hero personated by himself, terminated by the hisses of the audience.
+
+The fall of the _Prince Jaloux_ was nearly fatal to the tender reputation
+of the poet and the actor. The world became critical: the marquises,
+and the précieuses, and recently the bourgeois, who were sore from
+_Sganarelle, ou Le Cocu Imaginaire_, were up in arms; and the rival
+theatre maliciously raised the halloo, flattering themselves that the
+comic genius of their dreaded rival would be extinguished by the ludicrous
+convulsed hiccough to which Molière was liable in his tragic tones, but
+which he adroitly managed in his comic parts.
+
+But the genius of Molière was not to be daunted by cabals, nor even
+injured by his own imprudence. _Le Prince Jaloux_ was condemned in
+February, 1661, and the same year produced _L'Ecole des Maris_ and _Les
+Fâcheux_. The happy genius of the poet opened on his Zoiluses a series of
+dramatic triumphs.
+
+Foreign critics--Tiraboschi and Schlegel--have depreciated the Frenchman's
+invention, by insinuating that were all that Molière borrowed taken from
+him, little would remain of his own. But they were not aware of his
+dramatic creation, even when he appropriated the slight inventions of
+others; they have not distinguished the eras of the genius of Molière, and
+the distinct classes of his comedies. Molière had the art of amalgamating
+many distinct inventions of others into a single inimitable whole.
+Whatever might be the herbs and the reptiles thrown into the mystical
+caldron, the incantation of genius proved to be truly magical.
+
+Facility and fecundity may produce inequality, but, when a man of genius
+works, they are imbued with a raciness which the anxious diligence of
+inferior minds can never yield. Shakspeare, probably, poured forth many
+scenes in this spirit. The multiplicity of the pieces of Molière, their
+different merits, and their distinct classes--all written within the space
+of twenty years--display, if any poet ever did, this wonder-working
+faculty. The truth is, that few of his comedies are finished works; he
+never satisfied himself, even in his most applauded productions. Necessity
+bound him to furnish novelties for his theatre; he rarely printed any
+work. _Les Fâcheux_, an admirable series of scenes, in three acts, and in
+verse, was "planned, written, rehearsed, and represented in a single
+fortnight." Many of his dramatic effusions were precipitated on the stage;
+the humorous scenes of _Monsieur de Pourceaugnac_ were thrown out to
+enliven a royal fête.
+
+This versatility and felicity of composition made everything with Molière
+a subject for comedy. He invented two novelties, such as the stage had
+never before witnessed. Instead of a grave defence from the malice of his
+critics, and the flying gossip of the court circle, Molière found out the
+art of congregating the public to _The Quarrels of Authors_. He dramatised
+his critics. In a comedy without a plot, and in scenes which seemed rather
+spoken than written, and with characters more real than personated, he
+displayed his genius by collecting whatever had been alleged to depreciate
+it; and _La Critique de L'Ecole des Femmes_ is still a delightful
+production. This singular drama resembles the sketch-book of an artist,
+the _croquis_ of portraits--the loose hints of thoughts, many of which we
+discover were more fully delineated in his subsequent pieces. With the
+same rapid conception he laid hold of his embarrassments to furnish
+dramatic novelties as expeditiously as the king required. Louis XIV. was
+himself no indifferent critic, and more than once suggested an incident or
+a character to his favourite poet. In _L'Impromptu de Versailles_, Molière
+appears in his own person, and in the midst of his whole company, with all
+the irritable impatience of a manager who had no piece ready. Amidst this
+green-room bustle Molière is advising, reprimanding, and imploring, his
+"ladies and gentlemen." The characters in this piece are, in fact, the
+actors themselves, who appear under their own names; and Molière himself
+reveals many fine touches of his own poetical character, as well as his
+managerial. The personal pleasantries on his own performers, and the hints
+for plots, and the sketches of character which the poet incidentally
+throws out, form a perfect dramatic novelty. Some of these he himself
+subsequently adopted, and others have been followed up by some dramatists
+without rivalling Molière. The _Figaro_ of Beaumarchais is a descendant of
+the _Mascarille_ of Molière; but the glory of rivalling Molière was
+reserved for our own stage. Sheridan's _Critic, or a Tragedy Rehearsed,_
+is a congenial dramatic satire with these two pieces of Molière.
+
+The genius of Molière had now stepped out of the restricted limits of the
+old comedy; he now looked on the moving world with other eyes, and he
+pursued the ridiculous in society. These fresher studies were going on at
+all hours, and every object was contemplated with a view to comedy. His
+most vital characters have been traced to living originals, and some of
+his most ludicrous scenes had occurred in reality before they delighted
+the audience. Monsieur Jourdain had expressed his astonishment, "qu'il
+faisait de la prose," in the Count de Soissons, one of the uneducated
+noblemen devoted to the chase. The memorable scene between Trissotin and
+Vadius, their mutual compliments terminating in their mutual contempt, had
+been rehearsed by their respective authors--the Abbé Cottin and Ménage.
+The stultified booby of Limoges, _Monsieur de Pourceaugnac_, and the
+mystified millionaire, _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, were copied after life,
+as was _Sganarelle_, in _Le Médecin malgré lui_. The portraits in that
+gallery of dramatic paintings, _Le Misanthrope_, have names inscribed
+under them; and the immortal _Tartuffe_ was a certain bishop of Autun. No
+dramatist has conceived with greater variety the female character; the
+women of Molière have a distinctness of feature, and are touched with a
+freshness of feeling. Molière studied nature, and his comic humour is
+never checked by that unnatural wit where the poet, the more he discovers
+himself, the farther he removes himself from the personage of his
+creation. The quickening spell which hangs over the dramas of Molière is
+this close attention to nature, wherein he greatly resembles our
+Shakspeare, for all springs from its source. His unobtrusive genius never
+occurs to us in following up his characters, and a whole scene leaves on
+our mind a complete but imperceptible effect.
+
+The style of Molière has often been censured by the fastidiousness of his
+native critics, as _bas_ and _du style familier_. This does not offend the
+foreigner, who is often struck by its simplicity and vigour. Molière
+preferred the most popular and naïve expressions, as well as the most
+natural incidents, to a degree which startled the morbid delicacy of
+fashion and fashionable critics. He had frequent occasions to resist their
+petty remonstrances; and whenever Molière introduced an incident, or made
+an allusion of which he knew the truth, and which with him had a settled
+meaning, this master of human life trusted to his instinct and his art.
+
+This pure and simple taste, ever rare at Paris, was the happy portion of
+the genius of this Frenchman. Hence he delighted to try his farcical
+pieces, for we cannot imagine that they were his more elevated comedies,
+on his old maid-servant. This maid, probably, had a keen relish for comic
+humour, for once when Molière read to her the comedy of another writer as
+his own, she soon detected the trick, declaring that it could not be her
+master's. Hence, too, our poet invited even children to be present on such
+rehearsals, and at certain points would watch their emotions. Hence, too,
+in his character of manager, he taught his actors to study nature. An
+actress, apt to speak freely, told him, "You torment us all; but you
+never speak to my husband." This man, originally a candle-snuffer, was a
+perfect child of nature, and acted the Thomas Diaforius, in _Le Malade
+Imaginaire_. Molière replied, "I should be sorry to say a word to him; I
+should spoil his acting. Nature has provided him with better lessons to
+perform his parts than any which I could give him." We may imagine
+Shakspeare thus addressing his company, had the poet been also the
+manager.
+
+A remarkable incident in the history of the genius of Molière is the
+frequent recurrence of the poet to the passion of jealousy. The "jaundice
+in the lover's eye," he has painted with every tint of his imagination.
+"The green-eyed monster" takes all shapes, and is placed in every position.
+Solemn, or gay, or satirical, he sometimes appears in agony, but often
+scorns to make its "trifles light as air," only ridiculous as a source of
+consolation. Was _Le Contemplateur_ comic in his melancholy, or melancholy
+in his comic humour?
+
+The truth is, that the poet himself had to pass through those painful
+stages which he has dramatised. The domestic life of Molière was itself
+very dramatic; it afforded Goldoni a comedy of five acts, to reveal the
+secrets of the family circle of Molière; and l'Abbate Chiari, an Italian
+novelist and playwright, has taken for a comic subject, _Molière, the
+Jealous Husband_.
+
+The French, in their "petite morale" on conjugal fidelity, appear so
+tolerant as to leave little sympathy for the real sufferer. Why should
+they else have treated domestic jealousy as a foible for ridicule, rather
+than a subject for deep passion? Their tragic drama exhibits no Othello,
+nor their comedy a Kitely, or a _Suspicious Husband_. Molière, while his
+own heart was the victim, conformed to the national taste, by often
+placing the object on its comic side. Domestic jealousy is a passion which
+admits of a great diversity of subjects, from the tragic or the pathetic,
+to the absurd and the ludicrous. We have them all in Molière. Molière
+often was himself "Le Cocu Imaginaire;" he had been in the position of the
+guardian in _L'Ecole des Maris_. Like Arnolphe in _L'Ecole des Femmes_, he
+had taken on himself to rear a young wife who played the same part, though
+with less innocence; and like the _Misanthrope_, where the scene between
+Alceste and Celimène is "une des plus fortes qui existant au théâtre," he
+was deeply entangled in the wily cruelties of scornful coquetry, and we
+know that at times he suffered in "the hell of lovers" the torments of his
+own _Jealous Prince_.
+
+When this poet cast his fate with a troop of comedians, as the manager,
+and whom he never would abandon, when at the height of his fortune, could
+he avoid accustoming himself to the relaxed habits of that gay and
+sorrowful race, who, "of imagination all compact," too often partake of
+the passions they inspire in the scene? The first actress, Madame Béjard,
+boasted that, with the exception of the poet, she had never dispensed her
+personal favours but to the aristocracy. The constancy of Molière was
+interrupted by another actress, Du Parc; beautiful but insensible, she
+only tormented the poet, and furnished him with some severe lessons for
+the coquetry of his Celimène, in _Le Misanthrope_. The facility of the
+transition of the tender passion had more closely united the susceptible
+poet to Mademoiselle de Brie. But Madame Béjard, not content to be the
+chief actress, and to hold her partnership in "the properties," to retain
+her ancient authority over the poet, introduced, suddenly, a blushing
+daughter, some say a younger sister, who had hitherto resided at Avignon,
+and who she declared was the offspring of the count of Modena, by a secret
+marriage. Armande Béjard soon attracted the paternal attentions of the
+poet. She became the secret idol of his retired moments, while he fondly
+thought that he could mould a young mind, in its innocence, to his own
+sympathies. The mother and the daughter never agreed. Armande sought his
+protection; and one day rushing into his study, declared that she would
+marry her friend. The elder Béjard freely consented to avenge herself on
+De Brie. De Brie was indulgent, though "the little creature," she
+observed, was to be yoked to one old enough to be her father. Under the
+same roof were now heard the voices of the three females, and Molière
+meditating scenes of feminine jealousies.
+
+Molière was fascinated by his youthful wife; her lighter follies charmed:
+two years riveted the connubial chains. Molière was a husband who was
+always a lover. The actor on the stage was the very man he personated.
+Mademoiselle Molière, as she was called by the public, was the Lucile in
+_Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_. With what fervour the poet feels her neglect!
+with what eagerness he defends her from the animadversions of the friend
+who would have dissolved the spell!
+
+The poet was doomed to endure more poignant sorrows than slights.
+Mademoiselle had the art of persuading Molière that he was only his own
+"cocu imaginaire;" but these domestic embarrassments multiplied.
+Mademoiselle, reckless of the distinguished name she bore, while she
+gratified her personal vanity by a lavish expenditure, practised that
+artful coquetry which attracted a crowd of loungers. Molière found no
+repose in his own house, and retreated to a country-house, where, however,
+his restless jealousy often drove him back to scenes which he trembled to
+witness. At length came the last argument of outraged matrimony--he
+threatened confinement. To prevent a public rupture, Molière consented to
+live under the same roof, and only to meet at the theatre. Weak only in
+love, however divided from his wife, Molière remained her perpetual lover.
+He said, in confidence, "I am born with every disposition to tenderness.
+When I married, she was too young to betray any evil inclinations. My
+studies were devoted to her, but I soon discovered her indifference. I
+ascribed it to her temper; her foolish passion for Count Guiche made too
+much noise to leave me even this apparent tranquillity. I resolved to live
+with her as an honourable man, whose reputation does not depend on the bad
+conduct of his wife. My kindness has not changed her, but my compassion
+has increased. Those who have not experienced these delicate emotions have
+never truly loved. In her absence her image is before me; in her presence,
+I am deprived of all reflection; I have no longer eyes for her defects; I
+only view her amiable. Is not this the last extreme of folly? And are you
+not surprised that I, reasoning as I do, am only sensible of the weakness
+which I cannot throw off?"
+
+Few men of genius have left in their writings deeper impressions of their
+personal feelings than Molière. With strong passions in a feeble frame, he
+had duped his imagination that, like another Pygmalion, he would create a
+woman by his own art. In silence and agony he tasted the bitter fruits of
+the disordered habits of the life of a comedian, a manager, and a poet.
+His income was splendid; but he himself was a stranger to dissipation. He
+was a domestic man, of a pensive and even melancholy temperament. Silent
+and reserved, unless in conversation with that more intimate circle whose
+literature aided his genius, or whose friendship consoled for his domestic
+disturbances, his habits were minutely methodical; the strictest order was
+observed throughout his establishment; the hours of dinner, of writing, of
+amusement, were allotted, and the slightest derangement in his own
+apartment excited a morbid irritability which would interrupt his studies
+for whole days.
+
+Who, without this tale of Molière, could conjecture, that one skilled in
+the workings of our nature would have ventured on the perilous experiment
+of equalizing sixteen years against forty--weighing roses against grey
+locks--to convert a wayward coquette, through her capricious womanhood,
+into an attached wife? Yet, although Mademoiselle could cherish no
+personal love for the intellectual being, and hastened to change the
+immortal name she bore for a more terrestrial man, she seems to have been
+impressed by a perfect conviction of his creative genius. When the
+Archbishop of Paris, in the pride of prelacy, refused the rites of
+sepulture to the corpse of Molière THE ACTOR, it was her voice which
+reminded the world of Molière THE POET, exclaiming--"Have they denied a
+grave to the man to whom Greece would have raised an altar!"
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE SENSIBILITY OF RACINE.
+
+
+The "Memoirs of the poet Racine," composed by his son, who was himself no
+contemptible poet, may be classed among those precious pieces of biography
+so delightful to the philosopher who studies human nature, and the
+literary man whose curiosity is interested in the history of his republic.
+Such, works are rare, and rank in merit next to autobiographies. Such
+biographical sketches, like Boswell's of Johnson, contain what we often
+regret is wanting in the more regular life of a professed biographer.
+These desultory memoirs interest by their warmth, their more personal
+acquaintance with the hero, and abound with those minuter strokes which
+give so much life to the individual character.
+
+The prominent feature in the character of Racine was an excessive
+tenderness of feeling; his profound sensibility even to its infirmity, the
+tears which would cover his face, and the agony in his heart, were perhaps
+national. But if this sensibility produced at times the softest emotions,
+if it made him the poet of lovers, and even the poet of imagination, it
+also rendered him too feelingly alive to criticism, it embittered his
+days with too keen a perception of the domestic miseries which all men
+must alike undergo.
+
+During a dramatic performance at St. Cyr, the youthful representative of
+Esther suddenly forgot her part; the agitated poet exclaimed, "Oh,
+mademoiselle, you are ruining my piece!" Terrified at this reprimand, the
+young actress wept; the poet flew to her, wiped away her tears, and with
+contagious sympathy shed tears himself. "I do not hesitate," says Louis
+Racine, "to relate such minute circumstances, because this facility of
+shedding tears shows the goodness of the heart, according to the
+observation of the ancients--
+
+ [Greek:] "agathohi d aridakryes andres."
+
+This morbid state of feeling made his whole literary life uneasy; unjust
+criticism affected him as much as the most poignant, and there was nothing
+he dreaded more than that his son should become a writer of tragedies. "I
+will not dissimulate," he says, addressing his son, "that in the heat of
+composition we are not sometimes pleased with ourselves; but you may
+believe me, when the day after we look over our work, we are astonished
+not to find that excellence we admired in the evening; and when we reflect
+that even what we find good ought to be still better, and how distant we
+are still from perfection, we are discouraged and dissatisfied. Besides
+all this, although the approbation I have received has been very
+flattering, the least adverse criticism, even miserable as it might be,
+has always occasioned me more vexation than all the praise I received
+could give me pleasure." And, again, he endeavours to impress on him that
+the favour he received from the world he owed not to his verses. "Do not
+imagine that they are my verses that attract all these kindnesses.
+Corneille composes verses a hundred times finer than mine, but no one
+regards him. His verses are only applauded from the mouths of the actors.
+I do not tire men of the world by reciting my works; I never allude to
+them; I endeavour to amuse them with matters which please them. My talent
+in their company is, not to make them feel that I have any genius, but to
+show them that they possess some themselves. When you observe the duke
+pass several hours with me, you would be surprised, were you present, that
+he frequently quits me without my having uttered three words; but
+gradually I put him in a humour of chatting, and he leaves me more
+satisfied with himself than with me." When Rochefoucault said that Boileau
+and Racine had only one kind of genius, and could only talk about their
+own poetry, it is evident that the observation should not have extended to
+Racine, however it might to Boileau. It was Racine's excessive sensibility
+which made him the finest dramatic reciter. The celebrated actress,
+Mademoiselle Champmeslé,[A] the heroine of his tragedies, had no genius
+whatever for the stage, but she had beauty, voice, and memory. Racine
+taught her first to comprehend the verses she was going to recite, showed
+her the appropriate gesture, and gave her the variable tones, which he
+even sometimes noted down. His pupil, faithful to her lessons, though a
+mere actress of art, on the stage seemed inspired by passion; and as she,
+thus formed and fashioned, naturally only played thus effectively in the
+dramas of her preceptor, it was supposed that love for the poet inspired
+the actress.
+
+[Footnote A: Racine first met this actress at the Marquis de Sevigné's
+_petit soupers_; so much lamented by his more famous mother in one of her
+admirable letters, who speaks of "the Racines and the Despreaux's" who
+assisted his prodigality. In one of Madame de Sevigné's letters, dated in
+1672, she somewhat rashly declares, "Racine now writes his dramas, not for
+posterity, but for Mademoiselle Champmeslé:" she had then forsaken the
+marquis for the poet, who wrote _Roxane_ in _Bajazet_ expressly for her.
+--ED.]
+
+When Racine read aloud he diffused his own enthusiasm once with Boileau
+and Nicole, amid a literary circle, they talked of Sophocles, whom Racine
+greatly admired, but from whom he had never dared to borrow a tragic
+subject. Taking up a Greek Sophocles, and translating the OEdipus, the
+French poet became so deeply imbued with the Greek tragedian, that his
+auditors caught all the emotions of terror and pity. "I have seen," says
+one of those auditors, "our best pieces represented by our best actors,
+but never anything approached the agitation which then came over us; and
+to this distant day I have never lost the recollection of Racine, with the
+volume in his hand, full of emotion, and we all breathlessly pressing
+around him."
+
+It was the poet's sensibility that urged him to make the most
+extraordinary sacrifice that ever poet made; he wished to get rid entirely
+of that poetical fame to which he owed everything, and which was at once
+his pleasure, his pride, and his property. His education had been a
+religious one, in the Port-Royal;[A] but when Nicole, one of that
+illustrious fraternity, with undistinguishing fanaticism, had once
+asserted that all dramatic writers were public poisoners of souls, Racine,
+in the pride and strength of his genius, had eloquently repelled the
+denouncement. But now, having yet only half run his unrivalled course, he
+turned aside, relinquished its glory, repented of his success, and
+resolved to write no more tragedies.[B] He determined to enter into the
+austere order of the Chartreux; but his confessor, more rational than his
+penitent, assured him that a character so feeling as his own, and so long
+accustomed to the world, could not endure that terrible solitude. He
+advised him to marry a woman of a serious turn, and that little domestic
+occupations would withdraw him from the passion he seemed most to dread,
+that of writing verses.
+
+[Footnote A: For an account of this very celebrated religious foundation,
+its fortunes and misfortunes, see the "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i.
+p. 94.--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: Racine ultimately conceived an aversion for his dramatic
+offspring, and could never be induced to edit a proper edition of his
+works, or even give a few lessons in declamation to a juvenile princess,
+who selected his _Andromaque_ for the subject, perhaps out of compliment
+to the poet, whose first visit became in consequence his last.--ED.]
+
+The marriage of Racine was an act of penance--neither love nor interest
+had any share in the union. His wife was a good sort of woman, but perhaps
+the most insensible of her sex; and the properest person in the world to
+mortify the passion of literary glory, and the momentary exultation of
+literary vanity.[A] It is scarcely credible, but most certainly true,
+since her own son relates the fact, that the wife of Racine had neither
+seen acted, nor ever read, nor desired to read, the tragedies which had
+rendered her husband so celebrated throughout Europe; she had only learned
+some of their titles in conversation. She was as insensible to fortune as
+to fame. One day, when Racine returned from Versailles, with the princely
+gift from Louis XIV. of a purse of 1000 louis, he hastened to embrace his
+wife, and to show her the treasure. But she was full of trouble, for one
+of the children for two days had not studied. "We will talk of this
+another time," exclaimed the poet; "at present let us be happy." But she
+insisted he ought instantly to reprimand this child, and continued her
+complaints; while Boileau in astonishment paced to and fro, perhaps
+thinking of his Satire on Women, and exclaiming, "What insensibility! Is
+it possible that a purse of 1000 louis is not worth a thought!" This
+stoical apathy did not arise in Madame Racine from the grandeur, but the
+littleness, of her mind. Her prayer-books and her children were the sole
+objects that interested this good woman. Racine's sensibility was not
+mitigated by his marriage; domestic sorrows weighed heavily on his
+spirits: when the illness of his children agitated him, he sometimes
+exclaimed, "Why did I expose myself to all this? Why was I persuaded not
+to be a Chartreux?"--His letters to his children are those of a father and
+a friend; kind exhortations, or pathetic reprimands; he enters into the
+most domestic detail, while he does not conceal from them the mediocrity
+of their fortune. "Had you known him in his family," said Louis Racine,
+"you would be more alive to his poetical character, you would then know
+why his verses are always so full of sentiment. He was never more pleased
+than when, permitted to be absent from the court, he could come among us
+to pass a few days. Even in the presence of strangers he dared to be
+a father, and used to join us in our sports. I well remember our
+processions, in which my sisters were the clergy, I the rector, and the
+author of 'Athaliah,' chanting with us, carried the cross."
+
+[Footnote A: The lady he chose was one Catherine de Romanet, whose family
+was of great respectability but of small fortune. She is not described as
+possessing any marked personal attractions.--ED.]
+
+At length this infirm sensibility abridged his days. He was naturally of a
+melancholic temperament, apt to dwell on objects which occasion pain,
+rather than on those which exhilarate. Louis Racine observes that his
+character resembled Cicero's description of himself, more inclined to
+dread unfortunate events, than to hope for happy ones; _semper magis ad_
+_versos rerum exitus metuens quam sperans secundos_. In the last incident
+of his life his extreme sensibility led him to imagine as present a
+misfortune which might never have occurred.
+
+Madame de Maintenon, one day in conversation with the poet, alluded to the
+misery of the people. Racine observed it was the usual consequence of long
+wars: the subject was animating, and he entered into it with all that
+enthusiasm peculiar to himself. Madame de Maintenon was charmed with his
+eloquent effusion, and requested him to give her his observations in
+writing, assuring him they should not go out of her hand. She was reading
+his memoir when the king entered her apartment; he took it up, and, after
+having looked over a few pages, he inquired with great quickness who was
+the author. She replied it was a secret; but the king was peremptory, and
+the author was named. The king asked with great dissatisfaction, "Is it
+because he writes the most perfect verses, that he thinks that he is able
+to become a statesman?"
+
+Madame de Maintenon told the poet all that had passed, and declined to
+receive his visits for the present. Racine was shortly after attacked with
+violent fever. In the languor of recovery he addressed Madame de Maintenon
+to petition to have his pension freed from some new tax; and he added an
+apology for his presumption in suggesting the cause of the miseries of the
+people, with an humiliation that betrays the alarms that existed in his
+mind. The letter is too long to transcribe, but it is a singular instance
+how genius can degrade itself when it has placed all its felicity on the
+varying smiles of those we call the great. Well might his friend Boileau,
+who had nothing of his sensibility nor imagination, exclaim, with his good
+sense, of the court:--
+
+ Quel séjour étranger, et pour vous et pour moi!
+
+Racine afterwards saw Madame de Maintenon walking in the gardens of
+Versailles; she drew aside into a retired allée to meet him; she exhorted
+him to exert his patience and fortitude, and told him that all would end
+well. "No, madam," he replied, "never!" "Do you then doubt," she said,
+"either my heart, or my influence?" He replied, "I acknowledge your
+influence, and know your goodness to me; but I have an aunt who loves me
+in quite a different manner. That pious woman every day implores God to
+bestow on me disgrace, humiliation, and occasions for penitence, and she
+has more influence than you." As he said these words, the sound of a
+carriage was heard; "The king is coming!" said Madame de Maintenon; "hide
+yourself!"
+
+To this last point of misery and degradation was this great genius
+reduced. Shortly after he died, and was buried at the feet of his master
+in the chapel of the studious and religious society of Port-Royal.
+
+The sacred dramas of _Esther_ and _Athaliah_ were among the latter
+productions of Racine. The fate of _Athaliah_, his masterpiece, was
+remarkable. The public imagined that it was a piece written only for
+children, as it was performed by the young scholars of St. Cyr, and
+received it so coldly that Racine was astonished and disgusted.[A]
+He earnestly requested Boileau's opinion, who maintained it was his
+capital work. "I understand these things," said he, "and the public _y
+reviendra_." The prediction was a true one, but it was accomplished too
+late, long after the death of the author; it was never appreciated till it
+was publicly performed.
+
+[Footnote A: They were written at the request of Madame de Maintenon, for
+the pupils of her favourite establishment at St. Cyr; she was anxious that
+they should be perfect in declamation, and she tried them with the poet's
+_Andromaque_, but they recited it with so much passion and feeling that
+they alarmed their patroness, who told Racine "it was so well done that
+she would be careful they should never act that drama again," and urged
+him to write plays on sacred subjects expressly for their use. He had not
+written a play for upwards of ten years; he now composed his _Esther_,
+making that character a flattering reflection of Maintenon's career.--ED.]
+
+Boileau and Racine derived little or no profit from the booksellers.
+Boileau particularly, though fond of money, was so delicate on this point
+that he gave all his works away. It was this that made him so bold in
+railing at those authors _qui mettent leur Apollon aux gages d'un
+libraire_, and he declared that he had only inserted these verses,
+
+ Je sai qu'un noble esprit peut sans honte et sans crime
+ Tirer de son travail un tribut légitime,
+
+to console Racine, who had received some profits from the printing of his
+tragedies. Those profits were, however, inconsiderable; the truth is, the
+king remunerated the poets.
+
+Racine's first royal mark of favour was an order signed by Colbert for six
+hundred livres, _to give him the means of continuing his studies of the
+belles-lettres_. He received, by an account found among his papers, above
+forty thousand livres from the cassette of the king, by the hand of the
+first valet-de-chambre. Besides these gifts, Racine had a pension of four
+thousand livres as historiographer, and another pension as a man of
+letters.
+
+Which is the more honourable? to crouch for a salary brought by the hand
+of the first valet-de-chambre, or to exult in the tribute offered by the
+public to an author?
+
+ * * * * *
+
+OF STERNE.
+
+
+Cervantes is immortal--Rabelais and STERNE have passed away to the
+curious.
+
+These fraternal geniuses alike chose their subjects from their own times.
+Cervantes, with the innocent design of correcting a temporary folly of his
+countrymen, so that the very success of the design might have proved fatal
+to the work itself; for when he had cut off the heads of the Hydra, an
+extinct monster might cease to interest the readers of other times, and
+other manners. But Cervantes, with judgment equal to his invention, and
+with a cast of genius made for all times, delighted his contemporaries and
+charms his posterity. He looked to the world and collected other follies
+than the Spanish ones, and to another age than the administration of the
+duke of Lerma; with more genuine pleasantry than any writer from the days
+of Lucian, not a solitary spot has soiled the purity of his page; while
+there is scarcely a subject in human, nature for which we might not find
+some apposite illustration. His style, pure as his thoughts, is, however,
+a magic which ceases to work in all translations, and Cervantes is not
+Cervantes in English or in French; yet still he retains his popularity
+among all the nations of Europe; which is more than we can say even of our
+Shakspeare!
+
+Rabelais and Sterne were not perhaps inferior in genius, and they were
+read with as much avidity and delight as the Spaniard. "Le docte Rabelais"
+had the learning which the Englishman wanted; while unhappily Sterne
+undertook to satirise false erudition, which requires the knowledge of the
+true. Though the _Papemanes_, on whom Rabelais has exhausted his grotesque
+humour and his caustic satire, have not yet walked off the stage, we pay a
+heavy price in the grossness of his ribaldry and his tiresome balderdash
+for odd stories and flashes of witty humour. Rabelais hardly finds readers
+even in France, with the exception of a few literary antiquaries. The day
+has passed when a gay dissolute abbe could obtain a rich abbey by getting
+Rabelais by heart, for the perpetual improvement of his patron--and
+Rabelais is now little more than a Rabelais by tradition.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: The clergy were not so unfavourable to Rabelais as might
+have been expected. He was through life protected by the Cardinal
+Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, who employed him in various important
+negotiations; and it is recorded of him that he refused a scholar
+admittance to his table because he had not read his works. This
+familiarity with his grotesque romance was also shared by Cardinal Duprat,
+who is said to have always carried a copy of it with him, as if it was his
+breviary. The anecdote of the priest who obtained promotion from a
+knowledge of his works is given in the "Curiosities of Literature," vol.
+ii. p. 10.--ED.]
+
+In my youth the world doted on Sterne! Martin Sherlock ranks him among
+"the luminaries of the century." Forty years ago, young men in their most
+facetious humours never failed to find the archetypes of society in the
+Shandy family--every good-natured soul was uncle Toby, every humorist was
+old Shandy, every child of Nature was Corporal Trim! It may now be doubted
+whether Sterne's natural dispositions were the humorous or the pathetic:
+the pathetic has survived!
+
+There is nothing of a more ambiguous nature than strong humour, and Sterne
+found it to be so; and latterly, in despair, he asserted that "the taste
+for humour is the gift of heaven!" I have frequently observed how humour,
+like the taste for olives, is even repugnant to some palates, and have
+witnessed the epicure of humour lose it all by discovering how some have
+utterly rejected his favourite relish! Even men of wit may not taste
+humour! The celebrated Dr. Cheyne, who was not himself deficient in
+originality of thinking with great learning and knowledge, once entrusted
+to a friend a remarkable literary confession. Dr. Cheyne assured him that
+"he could not read 'Don Quixote' with any pleasure, nor had any taste for
+'Hudibras' or 'Gulliver;' and that what we call _wit_ and _humour_ in
+these authors he considered as false ornaments, and never to be found in
+those compositions of the ancients which we most admire and esteem."[A]
+Cheyne seems to have held Aristophanes and Lucian monstrously cheap! The
+ancients, indeed, appear not to have possessed that comic quality that
+we understand as _humour_, nor can I discover a word which exactly
+corresponds with our term _humour_ in any language, ancient or modern.
+Cervantes excels in that sly satire which hides itself under the cloak of
+gravity, but this is not the sort of humour which so beautifully plays
+about the delicacy of Addison's page; and both are distinct from the
+broader and stronger humour of Sterne.
+
+[Footnote A: This friend, it now appears, was Dr. King, of Oxford, whose
+anecdotes have recently been published. This curious fact is given in a
+strange hodge-podge, entitled "The Dreamer;" a remarkable instance where a
+writer of learning often conceives that to be humour, which to others is
+not even intelligible!]
+
+The result of Dr. Cheyne's honest confession was experienced by Sterne,
+for while more than half of the three kingdoms were convulsed with
+laughter at his humour, the other part were obdurately dull to it. Take,
+for instance, two very opposite effects produced by "Tristram Shandy" on a
+man of strong original humour himself, and a wit who had more delicacy and
+sarcasm than force and originality. The Rev. Philip Skelton declared that
+"after reading 'Tristram Shandy,' he could not for two or three days
+attend seriously to his devotion, it filled him with so many ludicrous
+ideas." But Horace Walpole, who found his "Sentimental Journey" very
+pleasing, declares that of "his tiresome 'Tristram Shandy,' he could never
+get through three volumes."
+
+The literary life of Sterne was a short one: it was a blaze of existence,
+and it turned his head. With his personal life we are only acquainted by
+tradition. Was the great sentimentalist himself unfeeling, dissolute,
+and utterly depraved? Some anecdotes which one of his companions[A]
+communicated to me, confirm Garrick's account preserved in Dr. Bumey's
+collections, that "He was more dissolute in his conduct than his writings,
+and generally drove every female away by his ribaldry. He degenerated in
+London like an ill-transplanted shrub; the incense of the great spoiled
+his head, and their ragouts his stomach. He grew sickly and proud
+--an invalid in body and mind." Warburtou declared that "he was an
+irrecoverable scoundrel." Authenticated facts are, however, wanting for a
+judicious summary of the real character of the founder of sentimental
+writing. An impenetrable mystery hangs over his family conduct; he has
+thrown many sweet domestic touches in his own memoirs and letters
+addressed to his daughter: but it would seem that he was often parted from
+his family. After he had earnestly solicited the return of his wife from
+France, though she did return, he was suffered to die in utter neglect.
+
+[Footnote A: Caleb Whitefoord, the wit once famed for his invention of
+cross-readings, which, appeared under the name of "Papirius Cursor."]
+
+His sermons have been observed to be characterised by an air of levity; he
+attempted this unusual manner. It was probably a caprice which induced him
+to introduce one of his sermons in "Tristram Shandy;" it was fixing a
+diamond in black velvet, and the contrast set off the brilliancy. But he
+seems then to have had no design of publishing his "Sermons." One day, in
+low spirits, complaining to Caleb Whitefoord of the state of his finances,
+Caleb asked him, "if he had no sermons like the one in 'Tristram Shandy?'"
+But Sterne had no notion that "sermons" were saleable, for two preceding
+ones had passed unnoticed. "If you could hit on a striking title, take my
+word for it that they would go down." The next day Sterne made his
+appearance in raptures. "I have it!" he cried: "Dramatic Sermons by
+Torick." With great difficulty he was persuaded to drop this allusion to
+the church and the playhouse![A]
+
+[Footnote A: He published these two volumes of discourses under the title
+of "Yorick's Sermons," because, as he stated in his preface, it would
+"best serve the booksellers' purpose, as Yorick's name is possibly of the
+two the more known;" but, fearing the censure of the world, he added a
+second title-page with his own name, "to ease the minds of those who see a
+jest, and the danger which lurks under it, where no jest is meant." All
+this did not free Sterne from much severe criticism.--ED.]
+
+We are told in the short addition to his own memoirs, that "he submitted
+to fate on the 18th day of March, 1768, at his lodgings in Bond-street."
+But it does not appear to have been noticed that Sterne died with
+neither friend nor relation by his side! a hired nurse was the sole
+companion of the man whose wit found admirers in every street, but
+whose heart, it would seem, could not draw one to his death-bed. We
+cannot say whether Sterne, who had long been dying, had resolved to
+practise his own principle,--when he made the philosopher Shandy, who had
+a fine saying for everything, deliver his opinion on death--that "there is
+no terror, brother Toby, in its looks, but what it borrows from groan? and
+convulsions--and the blowing of noses, and the wiping away of tears with
+the bottoms of curtains in a dying man's room. Strip it of these, what is
+it?" I find the moment of his death described in a singular book, the
+"Life of a Foot-man." I give it with all its particulars. "In the month of
+January, 1768, we set off for London. We stopped for some time at Almack's
+house in Pall-Mall. My master afterwards took Sir James Gray's house in
+Clifford-street, who was going ambassador to Spain. He now began
+house-keeping, hired a French cook, a house-maid, and kitchen-maid, and
+kept a great deal of the best company. About this time, Mr Sterne, the
+celebrated author, was taken ill at the silk-bag shop in Old Bond-street.
+He was sometimes called 'Tristram Shandy,' and sometimes 'Yorick;' a very
+great favourite of the gentlemen's. One day my master had company to
+dinner who were speaking about him: the Duke of Roxburgh, the Earl of
+March, the Earl of Ossory, the Duke of Grafton, Mr. Garrick, Mr. Hume,
+and Mr. James. 'John,' said my master, 'go and inquire how Mr. Sterne is
+to-day.' I went, returned, and said,--I went to Mr. Sterne's lodging; the
+mistress opened the door; I inquired how he did. She told me to go up to
+the nurse; I went into the room, and he was just a-dying. I waited ten
+minutes; but in five he said, 'Now it is come!' He put up his hand as if
+to stop a blow, and died in a minute. The gentlemen were all very sorry,
+and lamented him very much[A]."
+
+[Footnote A: "Travels in various parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, during
+a series of thirty years and upwards, by John Macdonald, a cadet of the
+family of Kippoch, in Invernesshire, who after the ruin of his family, in
+1765, was thrown, when a child, on the wide world, &c. Printed for the
+author, 1790."--He served a number of noblemen and gentlemen in the humble
+station of a footman. There is such an air of truth and sincerity
+throughout the work that I entertain no doubt of its genuineness.]
+
+Such is the simple narrative of the death of this wit[A]! Some letters and
+papers of Sterne are now before me which reveal a piece of secret history
+of our sentimentalist. The letters are addressed to a young lady of the
+name of De Fourmantel, whose ancestors were the Berangers de Fourmantel,
+who during the persecution of the French Protestants by Louis XIV.
+emigrated to this country: they were entitled to extensive possessions in
+St. Domingo, but were excluded by their Protestantism. The elder sister
+became a Catholic, and obtained the estates; the younger adopted the name
+of Beranger, and was a governess to the Countess of Bristol. The paper
+states that Catherine de Fourmantel formed an attachment to Sterne, and
+that it was the expectation of their friends that they would be united;
+but that on a visit Sterne became acquainted with a lady, whom he married,
+in the space of one month, after having paid his addresses to Miss de
+Fourmantel for five years. The consequence was, the total derangement of
+intellect of this young lady. She was confined in a private madhouse.
+Sterne twice saw her there; and from observation on her state drew the
+"Maria" whom he has so pathetically described. The elder sister, at the
+instigation of the father of the communicator of these letters, came to
+England, and took charge of the unhappy Maria, who died at Paris. "For
+many years," says the writer of this statement, "my mother had the
+_handkerchief_ Sterne alludes to." The anxious wish of Sterne was to have
+his letters returned to him. In this he failed; and such as they are,
+without date, either of time or place, they are now before me.
+
+[Footnote A: Sterne was buried in the ground belonging to the parish of
+St. George's, Hanover Square, situated in the Bayswater Road. His funeral
+was "attended only by two gentlemen in a mourning coach, no bell tolling;"
+and his grave has been described as "distinguished by a plain headstone,
+set up with an unsuitable inscription, by a tippling fraternity of
+Freemasons." In 1761, long before his death, was published a satire on the
+tendencies of his writings, mixed with a good deal of personal censure, in
+a pamphlet entitled "A Funeral Discourse, occasioned by the much lamented
+death of Mr. Yorick, preached before a very mixed society of Jemmies,
+Jessamies, Methodists, and Christians, at a nocturnal meeting in Petticoat
+Lane; by Christopher Flagellan, A.M." As one of the minor "Curiosities of
+Literature" this tract is worth noting; its author, in a preface, says
+that "it has been _maliciously_, or rather _stupidly_, reported that the
+late Mr. Sterne, alias Yorick, is not dead; but that, on the contrary, he
+is writing a fifth and sixth, and has carried his plan as far as a
+fiftieth and sixtieth volume of the book called 'The Life and Opinions of
+Tristram Shandy;' but they are rather to be attributed to his ghastly
+ghost, which is said to walk the purlieus of Covent Garden and Drury
+Lane."--ED.]
+
+The billets-doux are unquestionably authentic, but the statement is
+inaccurate. I doubt whether the narrative be correct in stating that
+Sterne married after an acquaintance of one month; for he tells us in his
+Memoirs that he courted his wife for two years; he, however, married in
+1741. The "Sermon of Elijah," which he presents to Miss de Fourmantel in
+one of these letters, was not published till 1747. Her disordered mind
+could not therefore have been occasioned by the _sudden_ marriage of
+Sterne. A sentimental intercourse evidently existed between them. He
+perhaps sought in her sympathy, consolation for his domestic infelicity;
+he communicates to her the minutest events of his early fame; and these
+letters, which certainly seem very like love-letters, present a picture of
+his life in town in the full flower of his fame eager with hope and
+flushed with success.
+
+
+LETTER I.
+
+"My dear Kitty,--I beg you will accept of the inclosed sermon, which I do
+not make you a present of merely because it was wrote by myself, but
+because there is a beautiful character in it of a tender and compassionate
+mind in the picture given of Elijah. Read it, my dear Kitty, and believe
+me when I assure you that I see something of the same kind and gentle
+disposition in your heart which I have painted in the prophet's, which has
+attached me so much to you and your interests, that I shall live and die
+
+"Your affectionate and faithful servant,
+
+"Laurence Sterne.
+
+"P.S.--If possible, I will see you this afternoon before I go to Mr.
+Fothergil's. Adieu, dear friend,--I had the pleasure to drink your health
+last night."
+
+
+LETTER II.
+
+"My dear Kitty,--If this billet catches you in bed, you are a lazy, sleepy
+little slut, and I am a giddy, foolish, unthinking fellow, for keeping you
+so late up--but this Sabbath is a day of rest, at the same time that it is
+a day of sorrow; for I shall not see my dear creature to-day, unless you
+meet me at Taylor's half an hour after twelve; but in this do as you like.
+I have ordered Matthew to turn thief, and steal you a quart of honey; what
+is honey to the sweetness of thee, who art sweeter than all the flowers it
+comes from! I love you to distraction, Kitty, and will love you on so to
+eternity--so adieu, and believe, what time will only prove me, that I am,
+
+"Yours."
+
+
+LETTER III.
+
+"My dear Kitty,--I have sent you a pot of sweetmeats and a pot of honey
+--neither of them half so sweet as yourself--but don't be vain upon this,
+or presume to grow sour upon this character of sweetness I give you; for
+if you do I shall send you a pot of pickles (by way of contraries) to
+sweeten you up, and bring you to yourself again--whatever changes happen
+to you, believe me that I am unalterably yours, and according to your
+motto, such a one, my dear Kitty,
+
+ "Qui ne changera pas qu'en mourant.
+
+"L.S."
+
+
+He came up to town in 1760, to publish the two first volumes of 'Shandy,'
+of which the first edition had appeared at York the preceding year.
+
+
+LETTER IV.
+
+"_London, May 8._
+
+"My dear Kitty,--I have arrived here safe and sound--except for the hole
+in my heart which you have made, like a dear enchanting slut as you are.
+--I shall take lodgings this morning in Piccadilly or the Haymarket, and
+before I send this letter will let you know where to direct a letter to
+me, which letter I shall wait for by the return of the post with great
+impatience.
+
+"I have the greatest honours paid me, and most civilities shown me that
+were ever known from the great; and am engaged already to ten noblemen and
+men of fashion to dine. Mr. Garrick pays me all and more honour than I
+could look for: I dined with him to-day, and he has prompted numbers of
+great people to carry me to dine with them--he has given me an order for
+the liberty of his boxes, and of every part of his house, for the whole
+season; and indeed leaves nothing undone that can do me either service or
+credit. He has undertaken the whole management of the booksellers, and
+will procure me a great price--but more of this in my next.
+
+"And now, my dear girl, let me assure you of the truest friendship for you
+that ever man bore towards a woman--wherever I am, my heart is warm
+towards you, and ever shall be, till it is cold for ever. I thank you for
+the kind proof you gave me of your desire to make my heart easy in
+ordering yourself to be denied to you know who--while I am so miserable to
+be separated from my dear, dear Kitty, it would have stabbed my soul to
+have thought such a fellow could have the liberty of coming near you.--I
+therefore take this proof of your love and good principles most kindly--
+and have as much faith and dependence upon you in it, as if I was at your
+elbow--would to God I was at this moment--for I am sitting solitary and
+alone in my bedchamber (ten o'clock at night after the play), and would
+give a guinea for a squeeze of your hand. I send my soul perpetually out
+to see what you are a-doing--wish I could convey my body with it--adieu,
+dear and kind girl. Ever your kind friend and affectionate admirer.
+
+"I go to the oratorio this night. My service to your mamma."
+
+
+LETTER V.
+
+"My dear Kitty,--Though I have but a moment's time to spare, I would not
+omit writing you an account of my good fortune; my Lord Fauconberg has
+this day given me a hundred and sixty pounds a year, which I hold with all
+my preferment; so that all or the most part of my sorrows and tears are
+going to be wiped away.--I have but one obstacle to my happiness now left
+--and what that is you know as well as I.[A]
+
+"I long most impatiently to see my dear Kitty. I had a purse of guineas
+given me yesterday by a bishop--all will do well in time.
+
+"From morning to night my lodgings, which by the bye are the genteelest in
+town,[B] are full of the greatest company.--I dined these two days with
+two ladies of the bedchamber--then with Lord Buckingham, Lord Edgcumb,
+Lord Winchelsea, Lord Littleton, a bishop, &c. &c.
+
+"I assure you, my dear Kitty, that Tristram is the fashion.--Pray to God I
+may see my dearest girl soon and well.--Adieu.
+
+"Your affectionate friend,
+
+"L. STERNE."
+
+[Footnote A: Can this allude to the death of his wife?--that very year he
+tells his daughter he had taken a house at York, "for your mother and
+yourself."]
+
+[Footnote B: They were the second house from St. Alban's Street, Pall
+Mall.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+HUME, ROBERTSON, AND BIRCH.
+
+
+The rarest of literary characters is such an historian as Gibbon; but
+we know the price which he paid for his acquisitions--unbroken and
+undeviating studies. Wilkes, a mere wit, could only discover the drudgery
+of compilation in the profound philosopher and painter of men and of
+nations. A speculative turn of mind, delighting in generalising principles
+and aggregate views, is usually deficient in that closer knowledge,
+without which every step we take is on the fairy-ground of conjecture and
+theory, very apt to shift its unsubstantial scenes. The researchers are
+like the inhabitants of a city who live among its ancient edifices, and
+are in the market-places and the streets: but the theorists, occupied by
+perspective views, with a more artist-like pencil may impose on us a
+general resemblance of things; but often shall we find in those shadowy
+outlines how the real objects are nearly, if not wholly lost--for much is
+given which is fanciful, and much omitted which is true.
+
+Of our two popular historians, Hume and Robertson, alike in character but
+different in genius, it is much to be lamented that neither came to their
+tasks with the previous studies of half a life; and their speculative or
+theoretical histories are of so much the less value whenever they are
+deficient in that closer research which can be obtained only in one way;
+not the most agreeable to those literary adventurers, for such they are,
+however high they rank in the class of genius, who grasp at early
+celebrity, and depend more on themselves than on their researches.
+
+In some curious letters to the literary antiquary Dr. Birch, Eobertson
+acknowledges "my chief object is to _adorn_, as far as I am capable of
+adorning, the history of a period which deserves to be better known," He
+probably took his lesson from Voltaire, the reigning author of that day,
+and a great favourite with Robertson. Voltaire indeed tells us, that no
+writers, but those who have composed tragedies, can throw any interest
+into a history; that we must know to paint and excite the passions; and
+that a history, like a dramatic piece, must have situation, intrigue, and
+catastrophe; an observation which, however true, at least shows that there
+can be but a moderate quantity of truth in such agreeable narratives.
+Robertson's notion of _adorning_ history was the pleasing labour of
+genius--it was to amplify into vastness, to colour into beauty, and
+to arrange the objects of his meditation with a secret artifice of
+disposition. Such an historian is a sculptor, who, though he display a
+correct semblance of nature, is not less solicitous to display the
+miracles of his art, and enlarges his figures to a colossal dimension.
+Such is theoretical history.
+
+The theoretical historian communicates his own character to his history;
+and if, like Robertson, he be profound and politic, he detects the secret
+motives of his actors, unravels the webs of cabinet councils, explains
+projects that were unknown, and details stratagems which never took place.
+When we admire the fertile conceptions of the Queen Regent, of Elizabeth,
+and of Bothwell, we are often defrauding Robertson of whatever admiration
+may be due to such deep policy.
+
+When Hume received from Dr. Birch Forbes's Manuscripts and Murdin's
+State-papers, in great haste he writes to his brother historian:--"What I
+wrote you with regard to Mary, &c., was from the printed histories and
+papers. But I am now sorry to tell you that by Murdin's State-papers, the
+matter is put beyond all question. I got these papers during the holidays
+by Dr. Birch's means; and as soon as I read them _I ran to Millar_, and
+desired him very earnestly to stop the publication of your history till I
+should write to you, and give you an opportunity of correcting a mistake
+so important; but he absolutely refused compliance. He said that your book
+was now finished; that the whole narrative of Mary's trial must be wrote
+over again; that it was uncertain whether the new narrative could be
+brought within the same compass with the old: that this change would
+require the cancelling a great many sheets; that there were scattered
+_passages through the volumes founded on your theory._" What an interview
+was this of Andrew Millar and David Hume! truly the bibliopole shone to
+greater advantage than the _two theoretical historians_! And so the world
+had, and eagerly received, what this critical bookseller declared
+"required the new printing (that is, the new writing) of a great part of
+the edition!"
+
+When this successful history of Scotland invited Robertson to pursue this
+newly-discovered province of philosophical or theoretical history, he was
+long irresolute in his designs, and so unpractised in those researches he
+was desirous of attempting, that his admirers would have lost his popular
+productions, had not a fortunate introduction to Dr. Birch, whose life had
+been spent in historical pursuits, enabled the Scottish historian to open
+many a clasped book, and to drink of many a sealed fountain. Robertson was
+long undecided whether to write the history of Greece, of Leo X., that of
+William III. and Queen Anne, or that of Charles V., and perhaps many other
+subjects.
+
+We have a curious letter of Lord Orford's, detailing the purport of a
+visit Robertson paid to him to inquire after materials for the reigns of
+William and Anne; he seemed to have little other knowledge than what he
+had taken upon trust. "I painted to him," says Lord Orford, "the
+difficulties and the want of materials--but the booksellers will out-argue
+me." Both the historian and "the booksellers" had resolved on another
+history: and Robertson looked upon it as a task which he wished to have
+set to him, and not a glorious toil long matured in his mind. But how did
+he come prepared to the very dissimilar subjects he proposed? When he
+resolved to write the history of Charles V., he confesses to Dr. Birch: "I
+never had _access to any copious libraries_, and do not pretend to _any
+extensive knowledge of authors_; but I have made a list of such as I
+thought most essential to the subject, and have put them down _as I found
+them mentioned in any book I happened to read_. Your erudition and
+knowledge of hooks is infinitely superior to mine, and I doubt not but you
+will be able to make such additions to my catalogue as may be of great use
+to me. I know very well, and to my sorrow, _how servilely historians copy
+from one another_, and how little is to be learned from reading many
+books; but at the same time, when one writes upon any particular period,
+it is both necessary and decent for him to consult every book relating to
+it upon which he can lay his hands." This avowal proves that Robertson
+knew little of the history of Charles V. till he began the task; and he
+further confesses that "he had no knowledge of the Spanish or German,"
+which, for the history of a Spanish monarch and a German emperor, was
+somewhat ominous of the nature of the projected history.
+
+Yet Robertson, though he once thus acknowledged, as we see, that he "never
+had access to any copious libraries, and did not _pretend to any extensive
+knowledge of authors_," seems to have acquired from his friend, Dr. Birch,
+who was a genuine researcher in manuscripts as well as printed books, a
+taste even for bibliographical ostentation, as appears by that pompous and
+voluminous list of authors prefixed to his "History of America;" the most
+objectionable of his histories, being a perpetual apology for the Spanish
+Government, adapted to the meridian of the court of Madrid, rather than to
+the cause of humanity, of truth, and of philosophy. I understand, from
+good authority, that it would not be difficult to prove that our historian
+had barely examined them, and probably had never turned over half of that
+deceptive catalogue. Birch thought so, and was probably a little disturbed
+at the overwhelming success of our eloquent and penetrating historian,
+while his own historical labours, the most authentic materials of history,
+but not history itself, hardly repaid the printer. Birch's publications
+are either originals, that is, letters or state-papers; or they are
+narratives drawn from originals, for he never wrote but from manuscripts.
+They are the true _materia historica_.
+
+Birch, however, must have enjoyed many a secret triumph over our popular
+historians, who had introduced their beautiful philosophical history into
+our literature; the dilemma in which they sometimes found themselves must
+have amused him. He has thrown out an oblique stroke at Bobertson's "pomp
+of style, and fine eloquence," "which too often tend to disguise the real
+state of the facts."[A] When he received from Robertson the present of his
+"Charles V.," after the just tribute of his praise, he adds some regret
+that the historian had not been so fortunate as to have seen Burghley's
+State-papers, "published since Christmas," and a manuscript trial of Mary,
+Queen of Scots, in Lord Boyston's possession. Alas! such is the fate of
+_speculative history_; a Christmas may come, and overturn the elaborate
+castle in the air. Can we forbear a smile when we hear Robertson, who had
+projected a history of British America, of which we possess two chapters,
+when the rebellion and revolution broke out, congratulate himself that he
+had not made any further progress? "It is lucky that my American History
+was not finished before this event; how many plausible theories that I
+should have been entitled to form are contradicted by what has now
+happened!" A fair confession!
+
+[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 387.]
+
+Let it not be for one moment imagined that this article is designed to
+depreciate the genius of Hume and Robertson, who are the noblest of our
+modern authors, and exhibit a perfect idea of the literary character.
+
+Forty-four years ago, I transcribed from their originals the
+correspondence of the historian with the literary antiquary. For the
+satisfaction of the reader, I here preserve these literary relics.
+
+
+_Letters between Dr. Birch and Dr. W. Robertson, relative to
+the Histories of Scotland and of Charles V._
+
+
+"TO DR. BIRCH.
+
+"_Gladsmuir, 19 Sept. 1757._
+
+"Reverent Sir,--Though I have not the good fortune to be known to you
+personally, I am so happy as to be no stranger to your writings, to which
+I have been indebted for much useful instruction. And as I have heard from
+my friends, Sir David Dalrymple and Mr. Davidson, that your disposition to
+oblige was equal to your knowledge, I now presume to write to you and to
+ask your assistance without any apology.
+
+"I have been engaged for some time in writing the history of Scotland from
+the death of James V. to the accession of James VI. to the throne of
+England. My chief object is to adorn (as far as I am capable of adorning)
+the history of a period which, on account of the greatness of the events,
+and their close connection with the transactions in England, deserves to
+be better known. But as elegance of composition, even where a writer can
+attain that, is but a trivial merit without historical truth and accuracy,
+and as the prejudices and rage of factions, both religious and political,
+have rendered almost every fact, in the period which I have chosen, a
+matter of doubt or of controversy, I have therefore taken all the pains in
+my power to examine the evidence on both sides with exactness. You know
+how copious the _materia, historian_ in this period is. Besides all the
+common historians and printed collections of papers, I have consulted
+several manuscripts which are to be found in this country. I am persuaded
+that there are still many manuscripts worth my seeing to be met with in
+England, and for that reason I propose to pass some time in London this
+winter. I am impatient, however, to know what discoveries of this kind I
+may expect, and what are the treasures before me, and with regard to this
+I beg leave to consult you.
+
+"I was afraid for some time that Dr. Forbes's Collections had been
+lost upon his death, but I am glad to find by your 'Memoirs' that
+they are in the possession of Mr. Yorke. I see likewise that the 'Dépêches
+de Beaumont' are in the hands of the same gentleman. But I have no
+opportunity of consulting your 'Memoirs' at present, and I cannot remember
+whether the 'Dépêches de Fenelon' be still preserved or not. I see that
+Carte has made a great use of them in a very busy period from 1563 to
+1576. I know the strength of Carte's prejudices so well, that I dare say
+many things may be found there that he could not see, or would not
+publish. May I beg the favour of you to let me know whether Fenelon's
+papers be yet extant and accessible, and to give me some general idea of
+what Dr. Forbes's Collections contain with regard to Scotland, and whether
+the papers they consist of are different from those published by Haynes,
+Anderson, &c. I am far from desiring that you should enter into any detail
+that would be troublesome to you, but some short hint of the nature of
+these Collections would be extremely satisfying to my curiosity, and I
+shall esteem it a great obligation laid upon me.
+
+"I have brought my work almost to a conclusion. If you would be so good as
+to suggest anything that you thought useful for me to know or to examine
+into, I shall receive your directions with great respect and gratitude.
+
+"I am, with sincere esteem,
+
+"Rev'd Sir, Y'r m. ob. & m. h. S'r,
+
+"Wm. ROBERTSON."
+
+
+TO DR. BIRCH.
+
+"_Edinburgh, 1 Jan. 1759._
+
+"Dear Sir,--If I had not considered a letter of mere compliment as an
+impertinent interruption to one who is so busy as you commonly are, I
+would long before this have made my acknowledgments to you for the
+civilities which you was so good as to show me while I was in London. I
+had not only a proof of your obliging disposition, but I reaped the good
+effects of it.
+
+"The papers to which I got access by your means, especially those from
+Lord Royston, have rendered my work more perfect than it could have
+otherwise been. My history is now ready for publication, and I have
+desired Mr. Millar to send you a large paper copy of it in my name, which
+I beg you may accept as a testimony of my regard and of my gratitude. He
+will likewise transmit to you another copy, which I must entreat you to
+present to my Lord Royston, with such acknowledgments of his favours
+toward me as are proper for me to make. I have printed a short appendix of
+original papers. You will observe that there are several inaccuracies in
+the press work. Mr. Millar grew impatient to have the book published, so
+that it was impossible to send down the proofs to me. I hope, however, the
+papers will be abundantly intelligible. I published them only to confirm
+my own system, about particular facts, not to obtain the character of an
+antiquarian. If, upon perusing the book, you discover any inaccuracies,
+either with regard to style or facts, whether of great or of small
+importance, I will esteem it a very great favour if you'll be so good as
+to communicate them to me. I shall likewise be indebted to you, if you'll
+let me know what reception the book meets with among the literati of your
+acquaintance. I hope you will be particularly pleased with the critical
+dissertation at the end, which is the production of a co-partnership
+between me and your friend Mr. Davidson. Both Sir D. Dalrymple and he
+offer compliments to you. If Dean Tucker be in town this winter, I beg you
+will offer my compliments to him.
+
+"I am, w. great regard, Dr. Sir,
+
+"Y'r m. obed't. & rust. o. ser't.,
+
+"WILLIAM ROBERTSON.
+
+"My address is, one of the ministers of Ed."
+
+
+TO DR. BIRCH.
+
+"_Edinburgh, 13 Dec. 1759._
+
+"Dear Sir,--I beg leave once more to have recourse to your good nature and
+to your love of literature, and to presume upon putting you to a piece of
+trouble. After considering several subjects for another history, I have at
+last fixed upon the reign of Charles V., which contains the first
+establishment of the present political system of Europe. I have begun to
+labour seriously upon my task. One of the first things requisite was to
+form a catalogue of books which must be consulted. As I never had access
+to very copious libraries, I do not pretend to any extensive knowledge of
+authors, but I have made a list of such as I thought most essential to the
+subject, and have put them down just in the order which they occurred to
+me, or as I found them mentioned in any book I happened to read. I beg you
+would be so good as to look it over, and as your erudition and knowledge
+of books is infinitely superior to mine, I doubt not but you'll be able to
+make such additions to my catalogue as may be of great use to me. I know
+very well, and to my sorrow, how servilely historians copy from one
+another, and how little is to be learned from reading many books, but at
+the same time when one writes upon any particular period, it is both
+necessary and decent for him to consult every book relating to it, upon
+which he can lay his hands. I am sufficiently master of French and
+Italian; but have no knowledge of the Spanish or German tongues. I flatter
+myself that I shall not suffer much by this, as the two former languages,
+together with the Latin, will supply me with books in abundance. Mr.
+Walpole informed me some time ago, that in the catalogue of Harleian MSS.
+in the British Museum, there is a volume of papers relating to Charles V.,
+it is No. 295. I do not expect much from it, but it would be extremely
+obliging if you would take the trouble of looking into it and of informing
+me in general what it contains. In the catalogue I have inclosed, this
+mark × is prefixed to all the books which I can get in this country; if
+you yourself, or any friend with whom you can use freedom, have any of the
+other books in my list, and will be so good as to send them to Mr. Millar,
+he will forward them to me, and I shall receive them with great gratitude
+and return them with much punctuality. I beg leave to offer compliments to
+all our common friends, and particularly to Dean Tucker, if he be in town
+this season. I wish it were in my power to confer any return for all the
+trouble you have taken in my behalf--"
+
+
+FROM DR. BIRCH TO THE REV. DR. ROBERTSON, AT EDINBURGH.
+
+"_London, 3 Jany. 1760._
+
+"Dear Sir,--Your letter of the 13 Dec'r. was particularly agreeable to me,
+as it acquainted me with your resolution to resume your historic pen, and
+to undertake a subject which, from its importance and extent, and your
+manner of treating it, will be highly acceptable to the public.
+
+"I have perused your list of books to be consulted on this occasion; and
+after transcribing it have delivered it to Mr. Millar; and shall now make
+some additions to it.
+
+"The new 'Histoire d'Allemagne' by Father Barre, chancellor of the
+University of Paris, published a few years ago in several volumes in 4^to.,
+is a work of very good credit, and to be perused by you; as is likewise
+the second edition of 'Abrégé chronologique de l'Histoire & du Droit
+public d'Allemagne,' just printed at Paris, and formed upon the plan of
+President Henault's 'Nouvel Abrégé chronologique de l'Histoire de France,'
+in which the reigns of Francis I. and Henry II. will be proper to be seen
+by you.
+
+"The 'Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Cardinal Granvelle,' by Father
+Rosper Levesque, a Benedictin monk, which were printed at Paris in two
+vol's. 12^o. in 1753, contain some particulars relating to Charles V. But
+this performance is much less curious than it might have been, considering
+that the author had the advantage of a vast collection, above an hundred
+volumes of the Cardinal's original papers, at Besançon. Among these are
+the papers of his eminence's father, who was chancellor and minister to
+the Emperor Charles V.
+
+"Bishop Burnet, in the 'Summary of Affairs before the Restoration,'
+prefixed to his 'History of his Own Time,' mentions a life of Frederick
+Elector Palatine, who first reformed the Palatinate, as curiously written
+by Hubert Thomas Leodius. This book, though a very rare one, is in my
+study and shall be sent to you. You will find in it many facts relating to
+your Emperor. The manuscript was luckily saved when the library of
+Heydelberg was plundered and conveyed to the Vatican after the taking of
+that city in 1622, and it was printed in 1624, at Francfort, in 4^to.
+The writer had been secretary and councillor to the elector.
+
+"Another book which I shall transmit to you is a valuable collection of
+state papers, made by Mons'r. Rivier, and printed at Blois, in 1665, in
+two vols. f^o. They relate to the reigns of Francis I., Henry II., and
+Francis II. of France. The indexes will direct you to such passages as
+concern the Emperor.
+
+"As Mons'r. Amelot de la Houssaic, who was extremely conversant in modern
+history, has, in the 1st. tome of his 'Mémoires Historiques Politiques et
+Littéraires,' from p. 156 to 193, treated of Charles V., I shall add that
+book to my parcel.
+
+"Varillas's 'Life of Henry II. of France' should be looked into, though
+that historian has not at present much reputation for exactness and
+veracity.
+
+"Dr. Fiddes, in his 'Life of Cardinal Wolsey,' has frequent occasion to
+introduce the Emperor, his contemporary, of which Bayle in his Dictionary
+gives us an express article and not a short one, for it consists of eight
+of his pages.
+
+"Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth's preceptor, when he was secretary to S'r.
+Richard Morysin amb. from K. Edward VI. to the imperial court, wrote to a
+friend of his 'a report and discourse of the affairs and state of Germany
+and the Emperor Charles's court.' This was printed in the reign of Queen
+Elizabeth; but the copies of that edition are now very rare. However this
+will be soon made public, being reprinted in an edition of all the
+author's English works now in the press.
+
+"The 'Epîtres des Princes,' translated from the Italian by Belleforest,
+will probably supply you with some few things to your purpose.
+
+"Vol. 295 among the Harleian MSS. contains little remarkable except some
+letters from Henry VIII's amb'r. in Spain, in 1518, of which, you may see
+an abstract in the printed catalogue.
+
+"In Dr. Hayne's 'Collection of State Papers in the Hatfield History,' p.
+56, is a long letter of the lord of the council of Henry VIII., in 1546,
+to his amb'r. with the Emperor."
+
+
+TO DR. BIRCH.
+
+_Extract from a letter of Dr. Robertson, dated College of Edinburgh, Oct.
+8, 1765._
+
+" . . . I have met with many interruptions in carrying on my 'Charles V.,'
+partly from bad health, and partly from the avocations arising from
+performing the duties of my office. But I am now within sight of land. The
+historical part of the work is finished, and I am busy with a preliminary
+book, in which I propose to give a view of the progress in the state of
+society, laws, manners, and arts, from the irruption of the barbarous
+nations to the beginning of the sixteenth century. This is a laborious
+undertaking; but I flatter myself that I shall be able to finish it in a
+few months. I have kept the books you was so good as to send me, and shall
+return them carefully as soon as my work is done."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+OF VOLUMINOUS WORKS INCOMPLETE BY THE DEATHS OF THE AUTHORS.
+
+
+In those "Dances of Death" where every profession is shown as taken by
+surprise in the midst of their unfinished tasks, where the cook is viewed
+in flight, oversetting his caldron of soup, and the physician, while
+inspecting his patient's urinal, is himself touched by the grim visitor,
+one more instance of poor mortality may be added in the writers of works
+designed to be pursued through a long series of volumes. The French have
+an appropriate designation for such works, which they call "_ouvrages de
+longue haleine_," and it has often happened that the _haleine_ has closed
+before the work.
+
+Works of literary history have been particularly subject to this
+mortifying check on intellectual enterprise, and human life has not
+yielded a sufficient portion for the communication of extensive
+acquirement! After years of reading and writing, the literary historian,
+who in his innumerable researches is critical as well as erudite, has
+still to arbitrate between conflicting opinions; to resolve on the
+doubtful, to clear up the obscure, and to grasp at remote researches:--but
+he dies, and leaves his favourite volumes little more than a project!
+
+Feelingly the antiquary Hearne laments this general forgetfulness of the
+nature of all human concerns in the mind of the antiquary, who is so
+busied with other times and so interested for other persons than those
+about him. "It is the business of a good antiquary, as of a good man, to
+have mortality always before him."
+
+A few illustrious scholars have indeed escaped the fate reserved for most
+of their brothers. A long life, and the art of multiplying that life not
+only by an early attachment to study, but by that order and arrangement
+which shortens our researches, have sufficed for a MURATORI. With such a
+student time was a great capital, which he knew to put out at compound
+interest; and this Varro of the Italians, who performed an infinite number
+of things in the circumscribed period of ordinary life, appears not to
+have felt any dread of leaving his voluminous labours unfinished, but
+rather of wanting one to begin. This literary Alexander thought he might
+want a world to conquer! Muratori was never perfectly happy unless
+employed in two large works at the same time, and so much dreaded the
+state of literary inaction, that he was incessantly importuning his
+friends to suggest to him objects worthy of his future composition. The
+flame kindled in his youth burned clear in his old age; and it was in his
+senility that he produced the twelve quartos of his _Annali d'Italia_
+as an addition to his twenty-nine folios of his _Rerum Italicarum
+Scriptores_, and the six folios of the _Antiquitates Medii Ævi_! Yet
+these vast edifices of history are not all which this illustrious Italian
+has raised for his fatherland. Gibbon in his Miscellaneous Works has drawn
+an admirable character of Muratori.
+
+But such a fortunate result has rarely accompanied the labours of the
+literary worthies of this order. TIRABOSCHI indeed lived to complete his
+great national history of Italian literature; but, unhappily for us,
+WARTON, after feeling his way through the darker ages of our poetry, and
+just conducting us to a brighter region, in planning the map of the
+country of which he had only a Pisgah view, expires amid his volumes! Our
+poetical antiquary led us to the opening gates of the paradise of our
+poetry, when, alas! they closed on him and on us! The most precious
+portion of Warton's history is but the fragment of a fragment.
+
+Life passes away in collecting materials--the marble lies in blocks--and
+sometimes a colonnade is erected, or even one whole side of a palace
+indicates the design of the architect. Count MAZZUCHELLI, early in
+life, formed a noble but too mighty a project, in which, however, he
+considerably advanced. This was an historical and critical account of the
+memoirs and the writings of Italian authors; he even commenced the
+publication in alphabetical order, but the six invaluable folios we
+possess only contain the authors the initial letters of whose names are A
+and B! This great literary historian had finished for the press other
+volumes, which the torpor of his descendants has suffered to lie in a
+dormant state. Rich in acquisition, and judicious in his decisions, the
+days of the patriotic Mazzuchelli were freely given to the most curious
+and elegant researches in his national literature; his correspondence is
+said to consist of forty volumes; with eight of literary memoirs, besides
+the lives of his literary contemporaries;--but Europe has been defrauded
+of the hidden treasures.
+
+The history of BAILLET'S "Jugemens des Sçavans sur les Principaux Ouvrages
+des Auteurs," or Decisions of the Learned on the Learned, is a remarkable
+instance how little the calculations of writers of research serve to
+ascertain the period of their projected labour. Baillet passed his life in
+the midst of the great library of the literary family of the Lamoignons,
+and as an act of gratitude arranged a classified catalogue in thirty-two
+folio volumes; it indicated not only what any author had professedly
+composed on any subject, but also marked those passages relative to the
+subject which other writers had touched on. By means of this catalogue,
+the philosophical patron of Baillet at a single glance discovered the
+great results of human knowledge on any object of his inquiries. This
+catalogue, of equal novelty and curiosity, the learned came to study, and
+often transcribed its precious notices. Amid this world of books, the
+skill and labour of Baillet prompted him to collect the critical opinions
+of the learned, and from the experience he had acquired in the progress of
+his colossal catalogue, as a preliminary, sketched one of the most
+magnificent plans of literary history. This instructive project has been
+preserved by Monnoye in his edition. It consists of six large divisions,
+with innumerable subdivisions. It is a map of the human mind, and presents
+a view of the magnitude and variety of literature, which few can conceive.
+The project was too vast for an individual; it now occupies seven quartos,
+yet it advanced no farther than the critics, translators, and poets,
+forming little more than the first, and a commencement of the second great
+division; to more important classes the laborious projector never reached!
+
+Another literary history is the "Bibliothèque Françoise" of GOUJET, left
+unfinished by his death. He had designed a classified history of French
+literature; but of its numerous classes he has only concluded that of the
+translators, and not finished the second he had commenced, of the poets.
+He lost himself in the obscure times of French Literature, and consumed
+sixteen years on his eighteen volumes!
+
+A great enterprise of the BENEDICTINES, the "Histoire Littéraire de la
+France," now consists of twelve large quartos, which even its successive
+writers have only been able to carry down to the close of the twelfth
+century![A]
+
+[Footnote A: This work has been since resumed.]
+
+DAVID CLEMENT, a bookseller and a book-lover, designed the most extensive
+bibliography which had ever appeared; this history of books is not a
+barren nomenclature, the particulars and dissertations are sometimes
+curious: but the diligent life of the author only allowed him to proceed
+as far as the letter H! The alphabetical order which some writers have
+adopted has often proved a sad memento of human life! The last edition of
+our own "Biographia Britannica," feeble, imperfect, and inadequate as the
+writers were to the task the booksellers had chosen them to execute,
+remains still a monument which every literary Englishman may blush to see
+so hopelessly interrupted.
+
+When LE GRAND D'AUSSY, whose "Fabliaux" are so well known, adopted,
+in the warmth of antiquarian imagination, the plan suggested by the
+Marquis de Paulmy, first sketched in the _Mélanges tirés d'une grande
+Bibliothèque_, of a picture of the domestic life of the French people from
+their earliest periods, the subject broke upon him like a vision; it had
+novelty, amusement, and curiosity: "_le sujet m'en parut neuf, riche et
+piquant_." He revelled amid the scenes of their architecture, the interior
+decorations of their houses, their changeable dress, their games, and
+recreations; in a word, on all the parts which were most adapted to amuse
+the fancy. But when he came to compose the more detailed work, the fairy
+scene faded in the length, the repetition, and the never-ending labour and
+weariness; and the three volumes which we now possess, instead of sports,
+dresses, and architecture, exhibit only a very curious, but not always a
+very amusing, account of the food of the French nation.
+
+No one has more fully poured out his vexation of spirit--he may excite a
+smile in those who have never experienced this toil of books and
+manuscripts--but he claims the sympathy of those who would discharge their
+public duties so faithfully to the public. I shall preserve a striking
+picture of these thousand task-works, coloured by the literary pangs of
+the voluminous author, who is doomed never to finish his curious work:--
+
+"Endowed with a courage at all proofs, with health which, till then, was
+unaltered, and which excess of labour has greatly changed, I devoted
+myself to write the lives of the learned of the sixteenth century.
+Renouncing all kinds of pleasure, working ten to twelve hours a-day,
+extracting, ceaselessly copying; after this sad life I now wished to draw
+breath, turn over what I had amassed, and arrange it. I found myself
+possessed of many thousands of _bulletins_, of which the longest did not
+exceed many lines. At the sight of this frightful chaos, from which I was
+to form a regular history, I must confess that I shuddered; I felt myself
+for some time in a _stupor and depression of spirits_; and now actually
+that I have finished this work, _I cannot endure the recollection of that
+moment of alarm without a feeling of involuntary terror._ What a business
+is this, good God, of a compiler! In truth, it is too much condemned; it
+merits some regard. At length I regained courage; I returned to my
+researches: I have completed my plan, though every day I was forced to
+_add_, to _correct_, to _change my facts as well as my ideas_; SIX times
+has my hand _re-copied my work_; and, however fatiguing this may be, it
+certainly is not that portion of my task which has cost me most."
+
+The history of the "Bibliotheca Britannica" of the late Dr. Watt may serve
+as a mortifying example of the length of labour and the brevity of life.
+To this gigantic work the patient zeal of the writer had devoted twenty
+years; he had just arrived at the point of publication, when death folded
+down his last page; the son who, during the last four years, had toiled
+under the direction of his father, was chosen to occupy his place. The
+work was in the progress of publication, when the son also died; and
+strangers now reap the fruits of their combined labours.
+
+One cannot forbear applying to this subject of voluminous designs, which
+must be left unfinished, the forcible reflection of Johnson on the
+planting of trees: "There is a frightful interval between the seed and
+timber. He that calculates the growth of trees has the unwelcome
+remembrance of the shortness of life driven hard upon him. He knows that
+he is doing what will never benefit himself; and, when he rejoices to see
+the stem arise, is disposed to repine that another shall cut it down."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+OF DOMESTIC NOVELTIES AT FIRST CONDEMNED.
+
+
+It is amusing enough to discover that things, now considered among the
+most useful and even agreeable acquisitions of domestic life, on their
+first introduction ran great risks of being rejected, by the ridicule or
+the invective which they encountered. The repulsive effect produced on
+mankind by the mere strangeness of a thing, which at length we find
+established among our indispensable conveniences, or by a practice which
+has now become one of our habits, must be ascribed sometimes to a proud
+perversity in our nature; sometimes to the crossing of our interests, and
+to that repugnance to alter what is known for that which has not been
+sanctioned by our experience. This feeling has, however, within the latter
+half century considerably abated; but it proves, as in higher matters,
+that some philosophical reflection is required to determine on the
+usefulness, or the practical ability, of every object which comes in the
+shape of novelty or innovation. Could we conceive that man had never
+discovered the practice of washing his hands, but cleansed them as animals
+do their paws, he would for certain have ridiculed and protested against
+the inventor of soap, and as tardily, as in other matters, have adopted
+the invention. A reader, unaccustomed to minute researches, might be
+surprised, had he laid before him the history of some of the most familiar
+domestic articles which, in their origin, incurred the ridicule of the
+wits, and had to pass through no short ordeal of time in the strenuous
+opposition of the zealots against domestic novelties. The subject requires
+no grave investigation; we will, therefore, only notice a few of universal
+use. They will sufficiently demonstrate that, however obstinately man
+moves in "the march of intellect," he must be overtaken by that greatest
+of innovators--Time itself; and that, by his eager adoption of what he had
+once rejected, and by the universal use of what he once deemed unuseful,
+he will forget, or smile at the difficulties of a former generation, who
+were baffled in their attempts to do what we all are now doing.
+
+Forks are an Italian invention; and in England were so perfect a novelty
+in the days of Queen Bess, that Fynes Moryson, in his curious "Itinerary,"
+relating a bargain with the patrone of a vessel which was to convey him
+from Venice to Constantinople, stipulated to be fed at his table, and to
+have "his glass or cup to drink in peculiar to himself, with his knife,
+spoon, _fork."_ This thing was so strange that he found it necessary to
+describe it.[A] It is an instrument "to hold the meat while he cuts it;
+for they hold it ill-manners that one should touch the meat with his
+hands."[B] At the close of the sixteenth century were our ancestors eating
+as the Turkish _noblesse_ at present do, with only the free use of their
+fingers, steadying their meat and conveying it to their mouths by their
+mere manual dexterity. They were, indeed, most indelicate in their habits,
+scattering on the table-cloth all their bones and parings. To purify their
+tables, the servant bore a long wooden "voiding-knife," by which he
+scraped the fragments from the table into a basket, called "a voider."
+Beaumont and Fletcher describe the thing,
+
+ They sweep the table with a wooden dagger.
+
+[Footnote A: Modern research has shown that forks were not so entirely
+unknown as was imagined when the above was written. In vol. xxvii. of the
+"Archaeologia," published by the Society of Antiquaries, is an engraving
+of a fork and spoon of the Anglo-Saxon era; they were found with fragments
+of ornaments in silver and brass, all of which had been deposited in a
+box, of which there were some decayed remains; together with about seventy
+pennies of sovereigns from Coenwolf, King of Mercia (A.D. 796), to
+Ethelstan (A.D. 878, 890). The inventories of royal and noble persons in
+the middle ages often name forks. They were made of precious materials,
+and sometimes adorned with jewels like those named in the inventory of the
+Duke of Normandy, in 1363, "une cuiller d'or et une fourchette, et aux
+deux fonts deux saphirs;" and in the inventory of Charles V. of France, in
+1380, "une cuillier et une fourchette d'or, où il y a ij balays et X
+perles." Their use seems to have been a luxurious appendage to the
+dessert, to lift fruit, or take sops from wine. Thus Piers Gaveston, the
+celebrated favourite of Edward III., is described to have had three silver
+forks to eat pears with; and the Duchess of Orleans, in 1390, had one fork
+of gold to take sops from wine (à prendre la soupe où vin). They appear to
+have been entirely restricted to this use, and never adopted as now, to
+lift meat at ordinary meals. They were carried about the person in
+decorated cases, and only used on certain occasions, and then only by the
+highest classes; hence their comparative rarity.--Ed.]
+
+[Footnote B: Moryson's "Itinerary," part i, p. 208.]
+
+Fabling Paganism had probably raised into a deity the little man who first
+taught us, as Ben Jonson describes its excellence--
+
+ --the laudable use of forks,
+ To the sparing of napkins.
+
+This personage is well-known to have been that odd compound, Coryat the
+traveller, the perpetual butt of the wits. He positively claims this
+immortality. "I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by this
+FORKED _cutting of meat,_ not only while I was in Italy, but also in
+Germany, and oftentimes in England since I came home." Here the use of
+forks was, however, long ridiculed; it was reprobated in Germany, where
+some uncleanly saints actually preached against the unnatural custom "as
+an insult on Providence, not to touch our meat with our fingers." It is a
+curious fact, that forks were long interdicted in the Congregation de St.
+Maur, and were only used after a protracted struggle between the old
+members, zealous for their traditions, and the young reformers, for their
+fingers.[A] The allusions to the use of the fork, which we find in all the
+dramatic writers through the reigns of James the First and Charles the
+First, show that it was still considered as a strange affectation and
+novelty. The fork does not appear to have been in general use before the
+Restoration! On the introduction of forks there appears to have been some
+difficulty in the manner they were to be held and used. In _The Fox_, Sir
+Politic Would-be, counselling Peregrine at Venice, observes--
+
+ --Then you must learn the use
+ And handling of your silver fork at meals.
+
+[Footnote A: I find this circumstance concerning forks mentioned in the
+"Dictionnaire de Trevoux."]
+
+Whatever this art may be, either we have yet to learn it, or there is more
+than one way in which it may be practised. D'Archenholtz, in his "Tableau
+de l'Angleterre" asserts that "an Englishman may be discovered anywhere,
+if he be observed at table, because he places his fork upon the left side
+of his plate; a Frenchman, by using the fork alone without the knife; and
+a German, by planting it perpendicularly into his plate; and a Russian, by
+using it as a toothpick."
+
+Toothpicks seem to have come in with forks, as younger brothers of the
+table, and seem to have been borrowed from the nice manners of the stately
+Venetians. This implement of cleanliness was, however, doomed to the same
+anathema as the fantastical ornament of "the complete Signor," the
+Italianated Englishman. How would the writers, who caught "the manners as
+they rise," have been astonished that now no decorous person would be
+unaccompanied by what Massinger in contempt calls
+
+ Thy case of toothpicks and thy silver fork!
+
+Umbrellas, in my youth, were not ordinary things; few but the macaroni's
+of the day, as the dandies were then called, would venture to display
+them. For a long while it was not usual for men to carry them without
+incurring the brand of effeminacy; and they were vulgarly considered as
+the characteristics of a person whom the mob then hugely disliked--namely,
+a mincing Frenchman. At first a single umbrella seems to have been kept at
+a coffee-house for some extraordinary occasion--lent as a coach or chair
+in a heavy shower--but not commonly carried by the walkers. The _Female
+Tatler_ advertises "the young gentleman belonging to the custom-house,
+who, in fear of rain, borrowed _the umbrella from Wilks' Coffee-house,_
+shall the next time be welcome to the maid's _pattens_." An umbrella
+carried by a man was obviously then considered an extreme effeminacy. As
+late as in 1778, one John Macdonald, a footman, who has written his own
+life, informs us, that when he carried "a fine silk umbrella, which he had
+brought from Spain, he could not with any comfort to himself use it; the
+people calling out 'Frenchman! why don't you get a coach?'" The fact was,
+that the hackney-coachmen and the chairmen, joining with the true _esprit
+de corps_, were clamorous against this portentous rival. This footman, in
+1778, gives us further Information:--"At this time there were no umbrellas
+worn in London, except in noblemen's and gentlemen's houses, where there
+was a large one hung in the hall to hold over a lady or a gentleman, if it
+rained, between the door and their carriage." His sister was compelled to
+quit his arm one day, from the abuse he drew down on himself by his
+umbrella. But he adds that "he persisted for three months, till they took
+no further notice of this novelty. Foreigners began to use theirs, and
+then the English. Now it is become a great trade in London."[A] The state
+of our population might now, in some degree, be ascertained by the number
+of umbrellas.
+
+[Footnote A: Umbrellas are, However, an invention of great antiquity, and
+may be seen in the sculptures of ancient Egypt and Assyria. They are also
+depicted on early Greek vases. But the most curious fact connected with
+their use in this country seems to be the knowledge our Saxon ancestors
+had of them; though the use, in accordance with the earliest custom,
+appears to have been as a shelter or mark of distinction for royalty. In
+Cædmon's "Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of Scripture," now in the British
+Museum (Harleian MS. No. 603), an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth
+century, is the drawing of a king, who has an umbrella held over his head
+by an attendant, in the same way as it is borne over modern eastern kings.
+The form is precisely similar to those now in use, though, as noted above,
+they were an entire novelty when re-introduced in the last century.--Ed.]
+
+Coaches, on their first invention, offered a fruitful source of
+declamation, as an inordinate luxury, particularly among the ascetics of
+monkish Spain. The Spanish biographer of Don John of Austria, describing
+that golden age, the good old times, when they only used "carts drawn by
+oxen, riding in this manner to court," notices that it was found
+necessary to prohibit coaches by a royal proclamation, "to such a height
+was this _infernal vice_ got, which has done so much injury to Castile."
+In this style nearly every domestic novelty has been attacked. The
+injury inflicted on Castile by the introduction of coaches could only
+have been felt by the purveyors of carts and oxen for a morning's ride.
+The same circumstances occurred in this country. When coaches began to be
+kept by the gentry, or were hired out, a powerful party found their
+"occupation gone!" Ladies would no longer ride on pillions behind their
+footmen, nor would take the air, where the air was purest, on the river.
+Judges and counsellors from their inns would no longer be conveyed by
+water to Westminster Hall, or jog on with all their gravity on a poor
+palfrey. Considerable bodies of men were thrown out of their habitual
+employments--the watermen, the hackneymen, and the saddlers. Families
+were now jolted, in a heavy wooden machine, into splendour and ruin. The
+disturbance and opposition these coaches created we should hardly now have
+known, had not Taylor, the Water-poet[A] and man, sent down to us an
+invective against coaches, in 1623, dedicated to all who are grieved with
+"the world running on wheels."
+
+[Footnote A: Taylor was originally a Thames waterman, hence the term
+"Water-poet" given him. His attack upon coaches was published with this
+quaint title, "The world runnes on wheeles, or, odds, betwixt carts and
+coaches." It is an unsparing satire.--Ed.]
+
+Taylor, a humorist and satirist, as well as waterman, conveys some
+information in this rare tract of the period when coaches began to be more
+generally used--"Within our memories our nobility and gentry could ride
+well-mounted, and sometimes walk on foot gallantly attended with fourscore
+brave fellows in blue coats, which was a glory to our nation far greater
+than forty of these leathern timbrels. Then the name of a _coach_ was
+heathen Greek. Who ever saw, but upon extraordinary occasions, Sir Philip
+Sidney and Sir Francis Drake ride in a coach? They made small use of
+coaches; there were but few in those times, and they were deadly foes to
+sloth and effeminacy. It is in the memory of many when in the whole
+kingdom there was not one! It is a doubtful question whether the devil
+brought _tobacco_ into England in _a coach_, for both appeared at the same
+time." It appears that families, for the sake of their exterior show,
+miserably contracted their domestic establishment; for Taylor, the
+Water-poet, complains that when they used formerly to keep from ten to a
+hundred proper serving-men, they now made the best shift, and for the sake
+of their coach and horses had only "a butterfly page, a trotting footman,
+and a stiff-drinking coachman, a cook, a clerk, a steward, and a butler,
+which hath forced an army of tall fellows to the gatehouses," or prisons.
+Of one of the evil effects of this new fashion of coach-riding this
+satirist of the town wittily observes, that, as soon as a man was
+knighted, his lady was lamed for ever, and could not on any account be
+seen but in a coach. As hitherto our females had been accustomed to robust
+exercise, on foot or on horseback, they were now forced to substitute a
+domestic artificial exercise in sawing billets, swinging, or rolling the
+great roller in the alleys of their garden. In the change of this new
+fashion they found out the inconvenience of a sedentary life passed in
+their coaches.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Stow, in his "Chronicles," has preserved the date of the
+first introduction of coaches into England, as well as the name of the
+first driver, and first English coachmaker. "In the year 1564 Guilliam
+Boonen, a Dutchman, became the queen's coachman, and was the first that
+brought the use of coaches into England. After a while divers great
+ladies, with as great jealousie of the queen's displeasure, made them
+coaches, and rid in them up and down the country, to the great admiration
+of all the beholders; but then, by little and little, they grew usual
+among the nobility and others of sorte, and within twenty years became a
+great trade of coachmaking;" and he also notes that in the year of their
+introduction to England "Walter Rippon made a _coche_ for the Earl of
+Rutland, which was the first _coche_ that was ever made in England."--ED.]
+
+Even at this early period of the introduction of coaches, they were not
+only costly in the ornaments--in velvets, damasks, taffetas, silver and
+gold lace, fringes of all sorts--but their greatest pains were in matching
+their coach-horses. "They must be all of a colour, longitude, latitude,
+cressitude, height, length, thickness, breadth (I muse they do not weigh
+them in a pair of balances); and when once matched with a great deal of
+care, if one of them chance to die, then is the coach maimed till a meet
+mate be found, whose corresponding may be as equivalent to the surviving
+palfrey, in all respects, as like as a broom to a besom, barm to yeast, or
+codlings to boiled apples." This is good natural humour. He proceeds
+--"They use more diligence in matching their coach-horses than in the
+marriage of their sons and daughters." A great fashion, in its novelty, is
+often extravagant; true elegance and utility are never at first combined;
+good sense and experience correct its caprices. They appear to have
+exhausted more cost and curiosity in their equipages, on their first
+introduction, than since they have become objects of ordinary use.
+Notwithstanding this humorous invective on the calamity of coaches, and
+that "housekeeping never decayed till coaches came into England; and that
+a ten-pound rent now was scarce twenty shillings then, till the witchcraft
+of the coach quickly mounted the price of all things." The Water-poet,
+were he now living, might have acknowledged that if, in the changes of
+time, some trades disappear, other trades rise up, and in an exchange of
+modes of industry the nation loses nothing. The hands which, like
+Taylor's, rowed boats, came to drive coaches. These complainers on all
+novelties, unawares always answer themselves. Our satirist affords us a
+most prosperous view of the condition of "this new trade of coachmakers,
+as the gainfullest about the town. They are apparelled in sattins and
+velvets, are masters of the parish, vestrymen, and fare like the Emperor
+Heliogabalus and Sardanapalus--seldom without their mackeroones,
+Parmisants (macaroni, with Parmesan cheese, I suppose), jellies and
+kickshaws, with baked swans, pastries hot or cold, red-deer pies, which
+they have from their debtors, worships in the country!" Such was the
+sudden luxurious state of our first great coachmakers! to the deadly
+mortification of all watermen, hackneymen, and other conveyancers of our
+loungers, thrown out of employ!
+
+Tobacco.--It was thought, at the time of its introduction, that the
+nation would be ruined by the use of tobacco. Like all novel tastes the
+newly-imported leaf maddened all ranks among us, "The money spent in smoke
+is unknown," said a writer of that day, lamenting over this "new trade of
+tobacco, in which he feared that there were more than seven thousand
+tobacco-houses." James the First, in his memorable "Counterblast to
+Tobacco," only echoed from the throne the popular cry; but the blast was
+too weak against the smoke, and vainly his paternal majesty attempted to
+terrify his liege children that "they were making a sooty kitchen in their
+inward parts, soiling and infecting them with an unctuous kind of soot, as
+hath been found in some great tobacco-eaters, that after their death were
+opened." The information was perhaps a pious fraud. This tract, which has
+incurred so much ridicule, was, in truth, a meritorious effort to allay
+the extravagance of the moment. But such popular excesses end themselves;
+and the royal author might have left the subject to the town-satirists of
+the day, who found the theme inexhaustible for ridicule or invective.
+
+Coal.--The established use of our ordinary fuel, coal, may be ascribed to
+the scarcity of wood in the environs of the metropolis. Its recommendation
+was its cheapness, however it destroys everything about us. It has formed
+an artificial atmosphere which envelopes the great capital, and it is
+acknowledged that a purer air has often proved fatal to him who, from
+early life, has only breathed in sulphur and smoke. Charles Fox once said
+to a friend, "I cannot live in the country; my constitution is not strong
+enough." Evelyn poured out a famous invective against "London Smoke."
+"Imagine," he cries, "a solid tentorium or canopy over London, what a mass
+of smoke would then stick to it! This fuliginous crust now comes down
+every night on the streets, on our houses, the waters, and is taken into
+our bodies. On the water it leaves a thin web or pellicle of dust dancing
+upon the surface of it, as those who bath in the Thames discern, and bring
+home on their bodies." Evelyn has detailed the gradual destruction it
+effects on every article of ornament and price; and "he heard in France,
+that those parts lying south-west of England, complain of being infected
+with smoke from our coasts, which injured their vines in flower." I have
+myself observed at Paris, that the books exposed to sale on stalls,
+however old they might be, retained their freshness, and were in no
+instance like our own, corroded and blackened, which our coal-smoke never
+fails to produce. There was a proclamation, so far back as Edward the
+First, forbidding the use of sea-coal in the suburbs, on a complaint of
+the nobility and gentry, that they could not go to London on account of
+the noisome smell and thick air. About 1550, Hollingshed foresaw the
+general use of sea-coal from the neglect of cultivating timber. Coal fires
+have now been in general use for three centuries. In the country they
+persevered in using wood and peat. Those who were accustomed to this
+sweeter smell declared that they always knew a Londoner, by the smell of
+his clothes, to have come from coal-fires. It must be acknowledged that
+our custom of using coal for our fuel has prevailed over good reasons why
+we ought not to have preferred it. But man accommodates himself even to an
+offensive thing whenever his interest predominates.
+
+Were we to carry on a speculation of this nature into graver topics,
+we should have a copious chapter to write of the opposition to new
+discoveries. Medical history supplies no unimportant number. On the
+improvements in anatomy by Malpighi and his followers, the senior
+professors of the university of Bononia were inflamed to such a pitch that
+they attempted to insert an additional clause in the solemn oath taken by
+the graduates, to the effect that they would not permit the principles and
+conclusions of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, which had been approved
+of so many ages, to be overturned by any person. In phlebotomy we have a
+curious instance. In Spain, to the sixteenth century, they maintained that
+when the pain was on the one side they ought to bleed on the other. A
+great physician insisted on a contrary practice; a civil war of opinion
+divided Spain; at length, they had recourse to courts of law; the
+novelists were condemned; they appealed to the emperor, Charles the Fifth;
+he was on the point of confirming the decree of the court, when the Duke
+of Savoy died of a pleurisy, having been legitimately bled. This puzzled
+the emperor, who did not venture on a decision.
+
+The introduction of antimony and the jesuits' bark also provoked
+legislative interference; decrees and ordinances were issued, and a civil
+war raged among the medical faculty, of which Guy Patin is the copious
+historian. Vesalius was incessantly persecuted by the public prejudices
+against dissection; Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood led
+to so protracted a controversy, that the great discovery was hardly
+admitted even in the latter days of the old man; Lady Wortley Montague's
+introduction of the practice of inoculation met the same obstinate
+resistance as, more recently, that of vaccination startled the people.
+Thus objects of the highest importance to mankind, on their first
+appearance, are slighted and contemned. Posterity smiles at the ineptitude
+of the preceding age, while it becomes familiar with those objects which
+that age has so eagerly rejected. Time is a tardy patron of true
+knowledge.
+
+A nobler theme is connected with the principle we have here but touched
+on--the gradual changes in public opinion--the utter annihilation of false
+notions, like those of witchcraft, astrology, spectres, and many other
+superstitions of no remote date, the hideous progeny of imposture got on
+ignorance, and audacity on fear. But one impostor reigns paramount, the
+plausible opposition to novel doctrines which may be subversive of some
+ancient ones; doctrines which probably shall one day be as generally
+established as at present they are utterly decried, and which the
+interests of corporate bodies oppose with all their cumbrous machinery;
+but artificial machinery becomes perplexed in its movements when worn out
+by the friction of ages.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+DOMESTICITY; OR, A DISSERTATION ON SERVANTS.
+
+
+The characteristics of servants have been usually known by the broad
+caricatures of the satirists of every age, and chiefly by the most
+popular--the writers of comedy. According to these exhibitions, we must
+infer that the vices of the menial are necessarily inherent to his
+condition, and consequently that this vast multitude in society remain
+ever in an irrecoverably ungovernable state. We discover only the cunning
+depredator of the household; the tip-toe spy, at all corners--all ear, all
+eye: the parasitical knave--the flatterer of the follies, and even the
+eager participator of the crimes, of his superior. The morality of
+servants has not been improved by the wonderful revelations of Swift's
+"Directions," where the irony is too refined, while it plainly inculcates
+the practice. This celebrated tract, designed for the instruction of the
+masters, is more frequently thumbed in the kitchen, as a manual for the
+profligate domestic. Servants have acknowledged that some of their base
+doings have been suggested to them by their renowned satirist.
+
+Bentham imagined, that were all the methods employed by thieves and rogues
+described and collected together, such a compilation of their artifices
+and villanies would serve to put us on our guard. The theorist of
+legislation seems often to forget the metaphysical state of man. With the
+vitiated mind, that latent sympathy of evil which might never have been
+called forth but by the occasion, has often evinced how too close an
+inspection of crime may grow into criminality itself. Hence it is, that
+when some monstrous and unusual crime has been revealed to the public, it
+rarely passes without a sad repetition. A link in the chain of the
+intellect is struck, and a crime is perpetrated which else had not
+occurred.
+
+Listen to the counsels which one of the livery gives a brother, more
+stupid but more innocent than himself. I take the passage from that
+extraordinary Spanish comedy, in twenty-five acts, the _Spanish Bawd_. It
+was no doubt designed to expose the arts and selfishness of the domestic,
+yet we should regret that the _Spanish Bawd_ was as generally read by
+servants as Swift's "Directions":--
+
+"Serve not your master with this foolish loyalty and ignorant honesty,
+thinking to find firmness on a false foundation, as most of these masters
+now-a-days are. Gain friends, which is a during and lasting commodity;
+live not on hopes, relying on the vain promises of masters. The masters
+love more themselves than their servants, nor do they amiss; and the like
+love ought servants to bear to themselves. Liberality was lost long ago--
+rewards are grown out of date. Every one is now for himself, and makes the
+best he can of his servant's service, serving his turn, and therefore they
+ought to do the same, for they are less in substance. Thy master is one
+who befools his servants, and wears them out to the very stumps, looking
+for much service at their hands. Thy master cannot be thy friend, such
+difference is there of estate and condition between you two."
+
+This passage, written two centuries ago, would find an echo of its
+sentiments in many a modern domestic. These notions are sacred traditions
+among the livery. We may trace them from Terence and Plautus, as well as
+Swift and Mandeville. Our latter great cynic has left a frightful picture
+of the state of the domestics, when it seems "they had experienced
+professors among them, who could instruct the graduates in iniquity seven
+hundred illiberal arts how to cheat, impose upon, and find out the blind
+side of their masters." The footmen, in Mandeville's day, had entered into
+a society together, and made laws to regulate their wages, and not to
+carry burdens above two or three pounds weight, and a common fund was
+provided to maintain any suit at law against any rebellious master. This
+seems to be a confederacy which is by no means dissolved.
+
+Lord Chesterfield advises his son not to allow his upper man to doff his
+livery, though this valet was to attend his person, when the toilet was a
+serious avocation requiring a more delicate hand and a nicer person than
+he who was to walk before his chair, or climb behind his coach. This
+searching genius of philosophy and _les petites moeurs_ solemnly warned
+that if ever this man were to cast off the badge of his order, he never
+would resume it. About this period the masters were menaced by a sort of
+servile war. The famous farce of _High Life below Stairs_ exposed with
+great happiness the impudence and the delinquencies of the parti-coloured
+clans. It roused them into the most barefaced opposition; and, as ever
+happens to the few who press unjust claims on the many, in the result
+worked the reform they so greatly dreaded.[A] One of the grievances in
+society was then an anomalous custom, for it was only practised in our
+country, of a guest being highly taxed in dining with a family whose
+establishment admitted of a numerous train. Watchful of the departure of
+the guest, this victim had to pass along a line of domestics, arranged in
+the hall, each man presenting the visitor with some separate article, of
+hat, gloves, coat and cane, claiming their "vails." It would not have been
+safe to refuse even those who, with nothing to present, still held out the
+hand, for their attentions to the diner-out.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: The farce was produced in 1759, when it was the custom to
+admit any servant in livery free to the upper gallery, as they were
+supposed to be in attendance on their masters. Their foibles and
+dishonesty being so completely hit off in the play incensed them greatly;
+and they created such an uproar that it was resolved to exclude them in
+future. In Edinburgh the opposition to the play produced still greater
+scenes of violence, and the lives of some of the performers were
+threatened. It at last became necessary for their masters to stop this
+outbreak on the part of their servants; and alter the whole system of the
+household economy which led to such results.--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: These _vails_, supposed to be the free gratuity of the
+invited to the servants of the inviter, were ultimately so managed that
+persons paid servants by that mode only--levying a kind of black-mail on
+their friends, which ran through all society. "The wages are nothing,"
+says a noble lady's servant in one of Smollet's novels, "but the _vails_
+are enormous." The consequence was, that masters and mistresses had little
+control over them; they are said in some instances to have paid for their
+places, as some servants do at inns, where the situation was worth having,
+owing to the large parties given, and gaming, then so prevalent, being
+well-attended. It was ended by a mutual understanding all over the three
+kingdoms, after the riots which resulted from the production of the play
+noted above.--ED.]
+
+When a slave was deemed not a person, but a thing marketable and
+transferable, the single principle judged sufficient to regulate the
+mutual conduct of the master and the domestic was, to command and to obey.
+It seems still the sole stipulation exacted by the haughty from the
+menial. But this feudal principle, unalleviated by the just sympathies of
+domesticity, deprives authority of its grace, and service of its zeal. To
+be served well, we should be loved a little; the command of an excellent
+master is even grateful, for the good servant delights to be useful. The
+slave repines, and such is the domestic destitute of any personal
+attachment for his master. Whoever was mindful of the interests of him
+whose beneficence is only a sacrifice to his pomp? The master dresses and
+wages highly his pampered train; but this is the calculated cost of
+state-liveries, of men measured by a standard, for a Hercules in the hall,
+or an Adonis for the drawing-room; but at those times, when the domestic
+ceases to be an object in the public eye, he sinks into an object of
+sordid economy, or of merciless caprice. His personal feelings are
+recklessly neglected. He sleeps where there is neither light nor air; he
+is driven when he is already exhausted; he begins the work of midnight,
+and is confined for hours with men like himself, who fret, repine, and
+curse. They have their tales to compare together; their unhallowed secrets
+to disclose. The masters and the mistresses pass by them in review, and
+little deem they how oft the malignant glance or the malicious whisper
+follow their airy steps. To shorten such tedious hours, the servants
+familiarise themselves with every vicious indulgence, for even the
+occupation of such domestics is little more than a dissolute idleness. A
+cell in Newgate does not always contain more corruptors than a herd of
+servants congregated in our winter halls. It is to be lamented that the
+modes of fashionable life demand the most terrible sacrifices of the
+health, the happiness, and the morals of servants. Whoever perceives that
+he is held in no esteem stands degraded in his own thoughts. The heart of
+the simple throbs with this emotion; but it hardens the villain who would
+rejoice to avenge himself: it makes the artful only the more cunning; it
+extorts from the sullen a cold unwilling obedience, and it stings even the
+good-tempered into insolence.
+
+South, as great a wit as a preacher, has separated, by an awful interval,
+the superior and the domestic. "A servant dwells remote from all knowledge
+of his lord's purposes; he lives as a kind of foreigner under the same
+roof; a domestic, yet a foreigner too." This exhibits a picture of feudal
+manners. But the progress of society in modern Europe has since passed
+through a mighty evolution. In the visible change of habits, of feelings,
+of social life, the humble domestic has approximated to, and communicated
+more frequently even with "his lord." The domestic is now not always a
+stranger to "his lord's purposes," but often their faithful actor--their
+confidential counsellor--the mirror in which his lordship contemplates on
+his wishes personified.
+
+This reflection, indeed, would have violated the dignity of the noble
+friend of Swift, Lord Orrery. His lordship censures the laughter in
+"Rabelais' easy chair" for having directed such intense attention to
+affairs solely relating to servants. "Let him jest with dignity, and let
+him be ironical upon _useful_ subjects, leaving _poor slaves_ to eat their
+porridge, or drink their small beer, in such vessels as they shall think
+proper." This lordly criticism has drawn down the lightning of Sir Walter
+Scott:--"The noble lord's feelings of dignity deemed nothing worthy of
+attention that was unconnected with the highest orders of society." Such,
+in truth, was too long the vicious principle of those monopolists of
+personal distinction, the mere men of elevated rank.
+
+Metropolitan servants, trained in depravity, are incapacitated to
+comprehend how far the personal interests of servants are folded up with
+the interests of the house they inhabit. They are unconscious that they
+have any share in the welfare of the superior, save in the degree that the
+prosperity of the master contributes to the base and momentary purposes of
+the servant. But in small communities we perceive how the affections of
+the master and the domestic may take root. Look in an ancient retired
+family, whose servants often have been born under the roof they inhabit,
+and where the son is serving where the father still serves; and sometimes
+call the sacred spot of their cradle and their grave by the proud and
+endearing term of "our house." We discover this in whole countries where
+luxury has not removed the classes of society at too wide distances from
+each other, to deaden their sympathies. We behold this in agrestic
+Switzerland, among its villages and its pastures; in France, among its
+distant provinces; in Italy, in some of its decayed cities; and in
+Germany, where simple manners and strong affections mark the inhabitants
+of certain localities. Holland long preserved its primitive customs; and
+there the love of order promotes subordination, though its free
+institutions have softened the distinctions in the ranks of life, and
+there we find a remarkable evidence of domesticity. It is not unusual in
+Holland for servants to call their masters uncle, their mistresses
+aunt, and the children of the family their cousins. These domestics
+participating in the comforts of the family, become naturalized and
+domiciliated; and their extraordinary relatives are often adopted by the
+heart. An heroic effort of these domestics has been recorded; it occurred
+at the burning of the theatre at Amsterdam, where many rushed into the
+flames, and nobly perished in the attempt to save their endeared families.
+
+It is in limited communities that the domestic virtues are most intense;
+all concentrating themselves in their private circles, in such localities
+there is no public--no public which extorts so many sacrifices from the
+individual. Insular situations are usually remarkable for the warm
+attachment and devoted fidelity of the domestic, and the personal regard
+of families for their servants. This genuine domesticity is strikingly
+displayed in the island of Ragusa, on the coast of Dalmatia: for there
+they provide for the happiness of the humble friends of the house. Boys,
+at an early age, are received into families, educated in writing, reading,
+and arithmetic. Some only quit their abode, in which they were almost
+born, when tempted by the stirring spirit of maritime enterprise. They
+form a race of men who are much sought after for servants; and the term
+applied to them of "Men of the Gulf," is a sure recommendation of
+character for unlimited trust and unwearying zeal.
+
+The mode of providing for the future comforts of their maidens is a little
+incident in the history of benevolence, which we must regret is only
+practised in such limited communities. Malte-Brun, in his "Annales des
+Voyages," has painted a scene of this nature, which may read like some
+romance of real life. The girls, after a service of ten years, on one
+great holiday, an epoch in their lives, receive the ample reward of their
+good conduct. On that happy day the mistress and all the friends of the
+family prepare for the maiden a sort of dowry or marriage-portion. Every
+friend of the house sends some article; and the mistress notes down the
+gifts, that she may return the same on a similar occasion. The donations
+consist of silver, of gowns, of handkerchiefs, and other useful articles
+for a young woman. These tributes of friendship are placed beside a silver
+basin, which contains the annual wages of the servant; her relatives from
+the country come, accompanied by music, carrying baskets covered with
+ribbons and loaded with fruits, and other rural delicacies. They are
+received by the master himself, who invites them to the feast, where the
+company assemble, and particularly the ladies. All the presents are
+reviewed. The servant introduced kneels to receive the benediction of her
+mistress, whose grateful task is then to deliver a solemn enumeration of
+her good qualities, concluding by announcing to the maiden that, having
+been brought up in the house, if it be her choice to remain, from
+henceforward she shall be considered as one of the family. Tears of
+affection often fall during this beautiful scene of true domesticity,
+which terminates with a ball for the servants, and another for the
+superiors. The relatives of the maiden return homewards with their joyous
+musicians; and, if the maiden prefers her old domestic abode, she receives
+an increase of wages, and at a succeeding period of six years another
+jubilee provides her second good fortune. Let me tell one more story of
+the influence of this passion of domesticity in the servant;--its merit
+equals its novelty. In that inglorious attack on Buenos Ayres, where our
+brave soldiers were disgraced by a recreant general, the negroes, slaves
+as they were, joined the inhabitants to expel the invaders. On this signal
+occasion the city decreed a public expression of their gratitude to the
+negroes, in a sort of triumph, and at the same time awarded the freedom of
+eighty of their leaders. One of them, having shown his claims to the boon,
+declared, that to obtain his freedom had all his days formed the proud
+object of his wishes: his claim was indisputable; yet now, however, to the
+amazement of the judges, he refused his proffered freedom! The reason he
+alleged was a singular refinement of heartfelt sensibility:--"My kind
+mistress," said the negro, "once wealthy, has fallen into misfortunes in
+her infirm old age. I work to maintain her, and at intervals of leisure
+she leans on my arm to take the evening air. I will not be tempted to
+abandon her, and I renounce the hope of freedom that she may know she
+possesses a slave who never will quit her side."
+
+Although I have been travelling out of Europe to furnish some striking
+illustrations of the powerful emotion of domesticity, it is not that we
+are without instances in the private history of families among ourselves.
+I have known more than one where the servant has chosen to live without
+wages, rather than quit the master or the mistress in their decayed
+fortunes; and another where the servant cheerfully worked to support her
+old lady to her last day.
+
+Would we look on a very opposite mode of servitude, turn to the United
+States. No system of servitude was ever so preposterous. A crude notion of
+popular freedom in the equality of ranks abolished the very designation of
+"servant," substituting the fantastic term of "helps." If there be any
+meaning left in this barbarous neologism, their aid amounts to little;
+their engagements are made by the week, and they often quit their domicile
+without the slightest intimation.
+
+Let none, in the plenitude of pride and egotism, imagine that they exist
+independent of the virtues of their domestics. The good conduct of the
+servant stamps a character on the master. In the sphere of domestic life
+they must frequently come in contact with them. On this subordinate class,
+how much the happiness and even the welfare of the master may rest! The
+gentle offices of servitude began in his cradle, and await him at all
+seasons and in all spots, in pleasure or in peril. Feelingly observes Sir
+Walter Scott--"In a free country an individual's happiness is more
+immediately connected with the personal character of his valet, than with
+that of the monarch himself." Let the reflection not be deemed extravagant
+if I venture to add, that the habitual obedience of a devoted servant is a
+more immediate source of personal comfort than even the delightfulness of
+friendship and the tenderness of relatives--for these are but periodical;
+but the unbidden zeal of the domestic, intimate with our habits, and
+patient of our waywardness, labours for us at all hours. It is those feet
+which hasten to us in our solitude; it is those hands which silently
+administer to our wants. At what period of life are even the great exempt
+from the gentle offices of servitude?
+
+Faithful servants have never been commemorated by more heartfelt affection
+than by those whose pursuits require a perfect freedom from domestic
+cares. Persons of sedentary occupations, and undisturbed habits,
+abstracted from the daily business of life, must yield unlimited trust to
+the honesty, while they want the hourly attentions and all the cheerful
+zeal, of the thoughtful domestic. The mutual affections of the master and
+the servant have often been exalted into a companionship of feelings.
+
+When Madame de Genlis heard that POPE had raised a monument not only to
+his father and to his mother, but also to the faithful servant who had
+nursed his earliest years, she was so suddenly struck by the fact, that
+she declared that "This monument of gratitude is the more remarkable for
+its singularity, as I know of no other instance." Our churchyards would
+have afforded her a vast number of tomb-stones erected by grateful masters
+to faithful servants;[A] and a closer intimacy with the domestic privacy
+of many public characters might have displayed the same splendid examples.
+The one which appears to have so strongly affected her may be found on the
+east end of the outside of the parish church of Twickenham. The stone
+bears this inscription:--
+
+ To the memory of
+ MARY BEACH,
+ who died November 5, 1725, aged 78.
+ ALEXANDER POPE,
+ whom she nursed in his infancy,
+ and constantly attended for thirty-eight years,
+ Erected this stone
+ In gratitude to a faithful Servant.
+
+[Footnote A: Even our modern cemeteries perpetuate this feeling, and
+exhibit many grateful EPITAPHS ON SERVANTS.]
+
+The original portrait of SHENSTONE was the votive gift of a master to his
+servant, for, on its back, written by the poet's own hand, is the
+following dedication:--"This picture belongs to Mary Cutler, given her by
+her master, William Shenstone, January 1st, 1754, in acknowledgment of her
+native genius, her magnanimity, her tenderness, and her fidelity.--W.S."
+We might refer to many similar evidences of the domestic gratitude of such
+masters to old and attached servants. Some of these tributes may be
+familiar to most readers. The solemn author of the "Night Thoughts"
+inscribed an epitaph over the grave of his man-servant; the caustic
+GIFFORD poured forth an effusion to the memory of a female servant,
+fraught with a melancholy tenderness which his muse rarely indulged.
+
+The most pathetic, we had nearly said, and had said justly, the most
+sublime, development of this devotion of a master to his servant, is a
+letter addressed by that powerful genius MICHAEL ANGELO to his friend
+Vasari, on the death of Urbino, an old and beloved servant.[A] Published
+only in the voluminous collection of the letters of Painters, by Bottari,
+it seems to have escaped general notice. We venture to translate it in
+despair: for we feel that we must weaken its masculine yet tender
+eloquence.
+
+[Footnote A: It is delightful to note the warm affection displayed by the
+great sculptor toward his old servant on his death-bed. The man who would
+beard princes and the pope himself, when he felt it necessary to assert
+his independent character as an artist, and through life evinced a
+somewhat hard exterior, was soft as a child in affectionate attention to
+his dying domestic, anticipating all his wants by a personal attendance at
+his bedside. This was no light service on the part of Michael Angelo, who
+was himself at the time eighty-two years of age.--ED.]
+
+
+MICHAEL ANGELO TO VASARI.
+
+"My Dear George,--I can but write ill, yet shall not your letter remain
+without my saying something. You know how Urbino has died. Great was the
+grace of God when he bestowed on me this man, though now heavy be the
+grievance and infinite the grief. The grace was that when he lived he kept
+me living; and in dying he has taught me to die, not in sorrow and with
+regret, but with a fervent desire of death. Twenty and six years had he
+served me, and I found him a most rare and faithful man; and now that I
+had made him rich, and expected to lean on him as the staff and the repose
+of my old age, he is taken from me, and no other hope remains than that of
+seeing him again in Paradise. A sign of God was this happy death to him;
+yet, even more than this death, were his regrets increased to leave me in
+this world the wretch of many anxieties, since the better half of myself
+has departed with him, and nothing is left for me than this loneliness of
+life."
+
+Even the throne has not been too far removed from this sphere of humble
+humanity, for we discover in St. George's Chapel a mural monument erected
+by order of one of our late sovereigns as the memorial of a female servant
+of a favourite daughter. The inscription is a tribute of domestic
+affection in a royal bosom, where an attached servant became a cherished
+inmate.
+
+ King George III.
+ Caused to be interred near this place the body of
+ MARY GASCOIGNE,
+ Servant to the Princess Amelia;
+ and this stone
+ to be inscribed in testimony of his grateful sense
+ of the faithful services and attachment
+ of an amiable young woman to
+ his beloved Daughter.
+
+This deep emotion for the tender offices of servitude is not peculiar to
+the refinement of our manners, or to modern Europe; it is not the charity
+of Christianity alone which has hallowed this sensibility, and confessed
+this equality of affection, which the domestic may participate: monumental
+inscriptions, raised by grateful masters to the merits of their slaves,
+have been preserved in the great collections of Graevius and Gruter.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: There are several instances of Roman heads of houses who
+consecrate "to themselves and their servants" the sepulchres they erect in
+their own lifetime, as if in death they had no desire to be divided from
+those who had served them faithfully. An instance of affectionate regard
+to the memory of a deceased servant occurs in the collection at Nismes; it
+is an inscription by one Sextus Arius Varcis, to Hermes, "his best
+servant" (servo optimo). Fabretti has preserved an inscription which
+records the death of a child, T. Alfacius Scantianius, by one Alfacius
+Severus, his master, by which it appears he was the child of an old
+servant, who was honoured by bearing the prenomen of the master, and
+who is also styled in the epitaph "his sweetest freedman" (liberto
+dulcissimo).--ED.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+PRINTED LETTERS IN THE VERNACULAR IDIOM.
+
+
+Printed Letters, without any attention to the selection, is so great a
+literary evil, that it has excited my curiosity to detect the first modern
+who obtruded such formless things on public attention. I conjectured that,
+whoever he might be, he would be distinguished for his egotism and his
+knavery. My hypothetical criticism turned out to be correct. Nothing less
+than the audacity of the unblushing Pietro Aretino could have adventured
+on this project; he claims the honour, and the critics do not deny it, of
+being the first who published Italian letters. Aretino had the hardihood
+to dedicate one volume of his letters to the King of England, another to
+the Duke of Florence; a third to Hercules of Este, a relative of Pope
+Julius Third--evidently insinuating that his letters were worthy to be
+read by the royal and the noble.
+
+Among these letters there is one addressed to Mary, Queen of England, on
+her resuscitation of the ancient faith, which offers a very extraordinary
+catalogue of the ritual and ceremonies of the Romish church. It is
+indeed impossible to translate into Protestant English the multiplied
+nomenclature of offices which involve human life in never-ceasing service.
+As I know not where we can find so clear a perspective of this amazing
+contrivance to fetter with religious ceremonies the freedom of the human
+mind, I present the reader with an accurate translation of it:--
+
+ "_Pietro Aretino to the Queen of England._
+
+"The voices of Psalms, the sound of Canticles, the breath of Epistles, and
+the Spirit of Gospels, had need unloose the language of my words in
+congratulating your superhuman Majesty on having not only restored
+conscience to the minds and hearts of Englishmen and taken deceitful
+heresy away from them, but on bringing it to pass, when it was least hoped
+for, that charity and faith were again born and raised up in them; on
+which sudden conversion triumphs our sovereign Pontiff Julius, the
+College, and the whole of the clergy, so that it seems in Rome as if the
+shades of the old Cæsars with visible effect showed it in their very
+statues; meanwhile the pure mind of his most blessed Holiness canonizes
+you, and marks you in the catalogue among the Catharines and Margarets,
+and dedicates you," &c.
+
+"The stupor of so stupendous a miracle is not the stupefaction of stupid
+wonder; and all proceeds from your being in the grace of God in every
+deed, whose incomprehensible goodness is pleased with seeing you, in
+holiness of life and innocence of heart, cause to be restored in those
+proud countries, solemnity to Easters, abstinence to Lents, sobriety to
+Fridays, parsimony to Saturdays, fulfilment to vows, fasts to vigils,
+observances to seasons, chrism to creatures, unction to the dying,
+festivals to saints, images to churches, masses to altars, lights to
+lamps, organs to quires, benedictions to olives, robings to sacristies,
+and decencies to baptisms; and that nothing may be wanting (thanks
+to your pious and most entire nature), possession has been regained to
+offices, of hours; to ceremonies, of incense; to reliques, of shrines; to
+the confessed, of absolutions; to priests, of habits; to preachers,
+of pulpits; to ecclesiastics, of pre-eminences; to scriptures, of
+interpreters; to hosts, of communions; to the poor, of alms; to the
+wretched, of hospitals; to virgins, of monasteries; to fathers, of
+convents; to the clergy, of orders; to the defunct, of obsequies; to
+tierces, noons, vespers, complins, ave-maries, and matins, the privileges
+of daily and nightly bells."
+
+The fortunate temerity of Aretino gave birth to subsequent publications by
+more skilful writers. Nicolo Franco closely followed, who had at first
+been the amanuensis of Aretino, then his rival, and concluded his literary
+adventures by being hanged at Rome; a circumstance which at the time must
+have occasioned regret that Franco had not, in this respect also, been an
+imitator of his original, a man equally feared, flattered, and despised.
+
+The greatest personages and the most esteemed writers of that age were
+perhaps pleased to have discovered a new and easy path to fame; and
+since it was ascertained that a man might become celebrated by writings
+never intended for the press, and which it was never imagined could
+confer fame on the writers, volumes succeeded volumes, and some authors
+are scarcely known to posterity but as letter-writers. We have the
+too-elaborate epistles of BEMBO, secretary to Leo X., and the more elegant
+correspondence of ANNIBAL CARO; a work which, though posthumous, and
+published by an affectionate nephew, and therefore too undiscerning a
+publisher, is a model of familiar letters.
+
+These collections, being found agreeable to the taste of their readers,
+novelty was courted by composing letters more expressly adapted to public
+curiosity. The subjects were now diversified by critical and political
+topics, till at length they descended to one more level with the
+faculties, and more grateful to the passions of the populace of readers
+--Love! Many grave personages had already, without being sensible
+of the ridiculous, languished through tedious odes and starch sonnets.
+DONI, a bold literary projector, who invented a literary review both of
+printed and manuscript works, with not inferior ingenuity, published his
+_love-letters;_ and with the felicity of an Italian diminutive, he fondly
+entitled them "Pistolette Amorose del Doni," 1552, 8vo. These Pistole were
+designed to be little epistles, or billets-doux, but Doni was one of those
+fertile authors who have too little time of their own to compose short
+works. Doni was too facetious to be sentimental, and his quill was not
+plucked from the wing of Love. He was followed by a graver pedant, who
+threw a heavy offering on the altar of the Graces; PARABOSCO, who in six
+books of "Lettere Amorose," 1565, 8vo. was too phlegmatic to sigh over his
+inkstand.
+
+Denina mentions LEWIS PASQUALIGO of Venice as an improver of these amatory
+epistles, by introducing a deeper interest and a more complicate
+narrative. Partial to the Italian literature, Denina considers this author
+as having given birth to those _novels_ in the form of _letters_, with
+which modern Europe has been inundated; and he refers the curious in
+literary researches, for the precursors of these _epistolary novels_, to
+the works of those Italian wits who flourished in the sixteenth century.
+
+"The Worlds" of DONI, and the numerous whimsical works of ORTENSIO LANDI,
+and the "Circe" of GELLI, of which we have more than one English
+translation, which, under their fantastic inventions, cover the most
+profound philosophical views, have been considered the precursors of the
+finer genius of "The Persian Letters," that fertile mother of a numerous
+progeny, of D'Argens and others.
+
+The Italians are justly proud of some valuable collections of letters,
+which seem peculiar to themselves, and which may be considered as the
+works of _artists_. They have a collection of "Lettere di Tredici Uomini
+Illustri," which appeared in 1571; another more curious, relating to
+princes--"Lettere de' Principi le quali o si scrivono da Principi a
+Principi, o ragionano di Principi;" Tenezia, 1581, in 3 vols. quarto.
+
+But a treasure of this kind, peculiarly interesting to the artist, has
+appeared in mere recent times, in seven quarto volumes, consisting of the
+original letters of the great painters, from the golden age of Leo X.,
+gradually collected by BOTTARI, who published them in separate volumes.
+They abound in the most interesting facts relative to the arts, and
+display the characteristic traits of their lively writers. Every artist
+will turn over with delight and curiosity these genuine effusions;
+chronicles of the days and the nights of their vivacious brothers.
+
+It is a little remarkable that he who claims to be the first satirist in
+the English language, claims also, more justly perhaps, the honour of
+being the first author who published familiar letters. In the dedication
+of his Epistles to Prince Henry, the son of James the First, Bishop HALL
+claims the honour of introducing "this new fashion of discourse by
+epistles, new to our language, usual to others; and as novelty is never
+without plea of use, more free, more familiar." Of these epistles, in six
+decades, many were written during his travels. We have a collection of
+Donne's letters abounding with his peculiar points, at least witty, if not
+natural.
+
+As we became a literary nation, familiar letters served as a vehicle for
+the fresh feelings of our first authors. Howell, whose Epistolæ bears his
+name, takes a wider circumference in "Familiar Letters, domestic and
+foreign, historical, political, and philosophical, upon emergent
+occasions." The "emergent occasions" the lively writer found in his long
+confinement in the Fleet--that English Parnassus! Howell is a wit, who, in
+writing his own history, has written that of his times; he is one of the
+few whose genius, striking in the heat of the moment only current coin,
+produces finished medals for the cabinet. His letters are still published.
+The taste which had now arisen for collecting letters, induced Sir Tobie
+Mathews, in 1660, to form a volume, of which many, if not all, are genuine
+productions of their different writers.
+
+The dissipated elegance of Charles II. inspired freedom in letter-writing.
+The royal emigrant had caught the tone of Voiture. We have some few
+letters of the wits of this court, but that school of writers, having
+sinned in gross materialism, the reaction produced another of a more
+spiritual nature, in a romantic strain of the most refined sentiment.
+Volumes succeeded volumes from pastoral and heroic minds. Katherine
+Philips, in the masquerade-dress of "The Matchless Orinda," addressed Sir
+Charles Cottrel, her grave "Poliarchus;" while Mrs. Behn, in her loose
+dress, assuming the nymph-like form of "Astræa," pursued a gentleman,
+concealed in a domino, under the name of "Lycidas."
+
+Before our letters reached to nature and truth, they were strained by one
+more effort after novelty; a new species appeared, "From the Dead to the
+Living," by Mrs. Rowe: they obtained celebrity. She was the first who, to
+gratify the public taste, adventured beyond the Styx; the caprice of
+public favour has returned them to the place whence they came.
+
+The letters of Pope were unquestionably written for the public eye. Partly
+accident, and partly persevering ingenuity, extracted from the family
+chests the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who long remained the
+model of letter-writing. The letters of Hughes and Shenstone, of Gray,
+Cowper, Walpole, and others, self-painters, whose indelible colours have
+given an imperishable charm to these fragments of the human mind, may
+close our subject; printed familiar letters now enter into the history of
+our literature.
+
+
+
+
+ AN INQUIRY
+
+ INTO THE
+
+ LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF
+ JAMES THE FIRST;
+
+ INCLUDING A SKETCH OF HIS AGE.
+
+
+"The whole reign of James I. has been represented by a late celebrated pen
+(Burnet) to have been a continued course of mean practices; and others,
+who have professedly given an account of it, have filled their works with
+_libel_ and _invective_, instead of _history_. Both King James and his
+ministers have met with a treatment from posterity highly unworthy of
+them, and those who have so liberally bestowed their censures were
+entirely ignorant of the true springs and causes of the actions they have
+undertaken to represent."--SAWYER'S Preface to "Winwood's Memorials."
+
+"Il y auroit un excellent livre à faire sur les INJUSTICES, les OUBLIS, et
+les CALOMNIES HISTORIQUES."--MADAME DE GENLIS.
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The present inquiry originates in an affair of literary conscience. Many
+years ago I set off in the world with the popular notions of the character
+of James the First; but in the course of study, and with a more enlarged
+comprehension of the age, I was frequently struck by the contrast of his
+real with his apparent character; and I thought I had developed those
+hidden and involved causes which have so long influenced modern writers in
+ridiculing and vilifying this monarch.
+
+This historical trifle is, therefore, neither a hasty decision, nor a
+designed inquiry; the results gradually arose through successive periods
+of time, and, were it worth the while, the history of my thoughts, in my
+own publications, might be arranged in a sort of chronological
+conviction.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: I have described the progress of my opinions in "Curiosities
+of Literature," vol. i. p. 467, last edition.]
+
+It would be a cowardly silence to shrink from encountering all that
+popular prejudice and party feeling may oppose; this were incompatible
+with that constant search after truth which we may at least expect from
+the retired student.
+
+I had originally limited this inquiry to the _literary_ character of the
+monarch; but there was a secret connexion between that and his political
+conduct; and that again led me to examine the manners and temper of the
+times, with the effects which a peace of more than twenty years operated
+on the nation. I hope that the freshness of the materials, often drawn
+from contemporary writings which have never been published, may in some
+respect gratify curiosity. Of the _political_ character of James the First
+opposite tempers will form opposite opinions; the friends of peace and
+humanity will consider that the greatest happiness of the people is that
+of possessing a philosopher on the throne; let profounder inquirers
+hereafter discover why those princes are suspected of being but weak men,
+who are the true fathers of their people; let them too inform us, whether
+we are to ascribe to James the First, as well as to Marcus Antoninus, the
+disorders of their reign, or place them to the ingratitude and wantonness
+of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+ AN INQUIRY
+
+ INTO THE
+
+ LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF
+ JAMES THE FIRST;
+
+ INCLUDING A SKETCH OF HIS AGE.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+If sometimes the learned entertain false opinions and traditionary
+prejudices, as well as the people, they however preserve among themselves
+a paramount love of truth, and the means to remove errors, which have
+escaped their scrutiny. The occasion of such errors may be complicate,
+but, usually, it is the arts and passions of the few which find an
+indolent acquiescence among the many, and firm adherents among those who
+so eagerly consent to what they do not dislike to hear.
+
+A remarkable instance of this appears in the character of James the First,
+which lies buried under a heap of ridicule and obloquy; yet James the
+First was a literary monarch at one of the great eras of English
+literature, and his contemporaries were far from suspecting that his
+talents were inconsiderable, even among those who had their reasons not to
+like him. The degradation which his literary character has suffered has
+been inflicted by more recent hands; and it may startle the last echoer of
+Pope's "Pedant-reign" to hear that more wit and wisdom have been
+recorded of James the First than of any one of our sovereigns. An
+"Author-Sovereign," as Lord Shaftesbury, in his anomalous but emphatic
+style, terms this class of writers, is placed between a double eminence of
+honours, and must incur the double perils; he will receive no favour from
+his brothers, the _Fainéants_, as a whole race of ciphers in succession on
+the throne of France were denominated, and who find it much more easy to
+despise than to acquire; while his other brothers, the republicans of
+literature, want a heart to admire the man who has resisted the perpetual
+seductions of a court-life for the silent labours of his closet. Yet if
+Alphonsus of Arragon be still a name endeared to us for his love of
+literature, and for that elegant testimony of his devotion to study
+expressed by the device on his banner of _an open book_, how much more
+ought we to be indulgent to the memory of a sovereign who has written one
+still worthy of being opened?
+
+We must separate the literary from the political character of this
+monarch, and the qualities of his mind and temper from the ungracious and
+neglected manners of his personal one. And if we do not take a more
+familiar view of the events, the parties, and the genius of the times, the
+views and conduct of James the First will still remain imperfectly
+comprehended. In the reign of a prince who was no military character, we
+must busy ourselves at home; the events he regulated may be numerous and
+even interesting, although not those which make so much noise and show in
+the popular page of history, and escape us in its general views. The want
+of this sort of knowledge has proved to be one great source of the false
+judgments passed on this monarch. Surely it is not philosophical to decide
+of another age by the changes and the feelings through which our own has
+passed. There is a chronology of human opinions which, not observing, an
+indiscreet philosopher may commit an anachronism in reasoning.
+
+When the Stuarts became the objects of popular indignation, a peculiar
+race of libels was eagerly dragged into light, assuming the imposing form
+of history; many of these state-libels did not even pass through the
+press, and may occasionally be discovered in their MS. state. Yet these
+publications cast no shade on the _talents_ of James the First. His
+literary attainments were yet undisputed; they were echoing in the ear of
+the writers, and many proofs of his sagacity were still lively in their
+recollections.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE FIRST MODERN ASSAILANTS OF THE CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST.
+
+
+Burnet, the ardent champion of a party so deeply concerned to oppose as
+well the persons as the principles of the Stuarts, levelled the father of
+the race; we read with delight pages which warm and hurry us on, mingling
+truths with rumours, and known with suggested events, with all the spirit
+of secret history. But the character of James I. was to pass through the
+lengthened inquisitorial tortures of the sullen sectarianism of Harris.[A]
+It was branded by the fierce, remorseless republican Catharine Macaulay,
+and flouted by the light, sparkling Whig, Horace Walpole.[B] A senseless
+cry of pedantry had been raised against him by the eloquent invective of
+Bolingbroke, from whom doubtless Pope echoed it in verse which has
+outlived his lordship's prose:--
+
+ Oh, cried the goddess, for some pedant reign!
+ Some gentle James to bless the land again;
+ To stick the doctor's chair into the throne,
+ Give law to words, or war with words alone,
+ Senates and courts with Greek and Latin rule,
+ And turn the council to a grammar-school!
+
+ _Dunciad_, book iv. ver. 175.
+
+[Footnote A: The historical works of Dr. William Harris have been recently
+republished in a collected form, and they may now be considered as
+entering into our historical stores.
+
+HARRIS is a curious researcher; but what appears more striking in his
+historical character, is the impartiality with which he quotes authorities
+which make against his own opinions and statements. Yet is Harris a writer
+likely to impose on many readers. He announces in his title-pages that his
+works are "after the manner of Mr. Bayle." This is but a literary
+imposition, for Harris is perhaps the meanest writer in our language both
+for style and philosophical thinking. The extraordinary impartiality he
+displays in his faithful quotations from writers on opposite sides is only
+the more likely to deceive us; for by that unalterable party feeling,
+which never forsakes him, the facts against him he studiously weakens by
+doubts, surmises, and suggestions; a character sinks to the level of his
+notions by a single stroke; and from the arguments adverse to his purpose,
+he wrests the most violent inferences. All party writers must submit to
+practise such mean and disingenuous arts if they affect to disguise
+themselves under a cover of impartiality. Bayle, intent on collecting
+facts, was indifferent to their results; but Harris is more intent on the
+deductions than the facts. The truth is, Harris wrote to please his
+patron, the republican Hollis, who supplied him with books, and every
+friendly aid. "It is possible for an ingenious man to be of a _party_
+without being _partial_" says Rushworth; an airy clench on the lips of a
+sober matter-of-fact man looks suspicions, and betrays the weak pang of a
+half-conscience.]
+
+[Footnote B: Horace Walpole's character of James I., in his "Royal
+Authors," is as remarkable as his character of Sir Philip Sidney; he might
+have written both without any acquaintance with the works he has so
+maliciously criticised. In his account of Sidney he had silently passed
+over the "Defence of Poetry;" and in his second edition he makes this
+insolent avowal, that "he had forgotten it; a proof that I at least did
+not think it sufficient foundation for so high a character as he
+acquired." Every reader of taste knows the falseness of the criticism, and
+how heartless the polished cynicism that could dare it. I repeat, what I
+have elsewhere said, that Horace Walpole had something in his composition
+more predominant than his wit, a cold, unfeeling disposition, which
+contemned all literary men, at the moment his heart secretly panted to
+partake of their fame.
+
+Nothing can be more imposing than his volatile and caustic criticisms on
+the works of James I.; yet it appears to me that he had never opened that
+folio volume he so poignantly ridicules. For he doubts whether these two
+pieces, "The Prince's Cabala" and "The Duty of a King in his Royal
+Office," were genuine productions of James I. The truth is, they are both
+nothing more than extracts printed with those separate titles, drawn from
+the King's "Basilicon Doron." He had probably neither read the extracts
+nor the original. Thus singularity of opinion, vivacity of ridicule, and
+polished epigrams in prose, were the means by which this noble writer
+startled the world by his paradoxes, and at length lived to be mortified
+at a reputation which he sported with and lost. I refer the reader to
+those extracts from his MS. letters which are in "Calamities of Authors,"
+where he has made his literary confessions, and performs his act of
+penance.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE PEDANTRY OF JAMES THE FIRST.
+
+
+Few of my readers, I suspect, but have long been persuaded that James I.
+was a mere college pedant, and that all his works, whatever they maybe,
+are monstrous pedantic labours. Yet this monarch of all things detested
+pedantry, either as it shows itself in the mere form of Greek and Latin,
+or in ostentatious book-learning, or in the affectation of words of remote
+signification: these are the only points of view in which I have been
+taught to consider the meaning of the term pedantry, which is very
+indefinite, and always a relative one.
+
+The age of James I. was a controversial age, of unsettled opinions and
+contested principles; an age, in which authority was considered as
+stronger than opinion; but the vigour of that age of genius was infused
+into their writings, and those citers, who thus perpetually crowded their
+margins, were profound and original thinkers. When the learning of a
+preceding age becomes less recondite, and those principles general which
+were at first peculiar, are the ungrateful heirs of all this knowledge to
+reproach the fathers of their literature with pedantry? Lord Bolingbroke
+has pointedly said of James I. that "his pedantry was too much even for
+the age in which he lived." His lordship knew little of that glorious age
+when the founders of our literature flourished. It had been over-clouded
+by the French court of Charles II., a race of unprincipled wits, and the
+revolution-court of William, heated by a new faction, too impatient to
+discuss those principles of government which they had established. It was
+easy to ridicule what they did not always understand, and very rarely met
+with. But men of far higher genius than this monarch, Selden, Usher, and
+Milton, must first be condemned before this odium of pedantry can attach
+itself to the plain and unostentatious writings of James I., who, it is
+remarkable, has not scattered in them those oratorical periods, and
+elaborate fancies, which he indulged in his speeches and proclamations.
+These loud accusers of the pedantry of James were little aware that the
+king has expressed himself with energy and distinctness on this very
+topic. His majesty cautions Prince Henry against the use of any "corrupt
+leide, as _book-language_, and _pen-and-inkhorn termes_, and, least of
+all, nignard and effeminate ones." One passage may be given entire as
+completely refuting a charge so general, yet so unfounded. "I would also
+advise you to write in _your own language_, for there is _nothing left to
+be said in Greek and Latine already_; and, ynewe (enough) of poore
+schollers would match you in these languages; and besides that it best
+becometh a _King_, to purifie and make famous _his owne tongue_;
+therein he may goe before all his subjects, as it setteth him well to doe
+in all honest and lawful things." No scholar of a pedantic taste could
+have dared so complete an emancipation from ancient, yet not obsolete
+prejudices, at a time when many of our own great authors yet imagined
+there was no fame for an Englishman unless he neglected his maternal
+language for the artificial labour of the idiom of ancient Rome. Bacon had
+even his own domestic Essays translated into Latin; and the king found a
+courtier-bishop to perform the same task for his majesty's writings. There
+was something prescient in this view of the national language, by the
+king, who contemplated in it those latent powers which had not yet burst
+into existence. It is evident that the line of Pope is false which
+describes the king as intending to rule "senates and courts" by "turning
+the council to a grammar-school."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+HIS POLEMICAL STUDIES.
+
+
+ This censure of the pedantry of James is also connected with those
+studies of polemical divinity, for which the king has incurred much
+ridicule from one party, who were not his contemporaries; and such
+vehement invective from another, who were; who, to their utter dismay,
+discovered their monarch descending into their theological gymnasium to
+encounter them with their own weapons.
+
+The affairs of religion and politics in the reign of James I., as in the
+preceding one of Elizabeth,[A] were identified together; nor yet have the
+same causes in Europe ceased to act, however changed or modified. The
+government of James was imperfectly established while his subjects were
+wrestling with two great factions to obtain the predominance. The
+Catholics were disputing his title to the crown, which they aimed to carry
+into the family of Spain, and had even fixed on Arabella Stuart, to marry
+her to a Prince of Parma; and the Puritans would have abolished even
+sovereignty itself; these parties indeed were not able to take the field,
+but all felt equally powerful with the pen. Hence an age of doctrines.
+When a religious body has grown into power, it changes itself into a
+political one; the chiefs are flattered by their strength and stimulated
+by their ambition; but a powerful body in the State cannot remain
+stationary, and a divided empire it disdains. Religious controversies have
+therefore been usually coverings to mask the political designs of the
+heads of parties.
+
+We smile at James the First threatening the States-general by the
+English Ambassador about Vorstius, a Dutch professor, who had espoused
+the doctrines of Arminius, and had also vented some metaphysical notions
+of his own respecting the occult nature of the Divinity. He was the head
+of the Remonstrants, who were at open war with the party called the
+Contra-Remonstrants. The ostensible subjects were religious doctrines, but
+the concealed one was a struggle between Pensionary Barnevelt, aided by
+the French interest, and the Prince of Orange, supported by the English;
+even to our own days the same opposite interests existed, and betrayed the
+Republic, although religious doctrines had ceased to be the pretext.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: I have more largely entered into the history of the party who
+attempted to subvert the government in the reign of Elizabeth, and who
+published their works under the assumed name of Martin Mar-prelate, than
+had hitherto been done. In our domestic annals that event and those
+personages are of some importance and curiosity; but were imperfectly
+known to the popular writers of our history.--See "Quarrels of Authors,"
+p. 296, _et seq_.]
+
+[Footnote B: Pensionary Barnevelt, in his seventy-second year, was at
+length brought to the block. Diodati, a divine of Geneva, made a miserable
+pun the occasion; he said that "the _Canons_ of the Synod of Dort had
+taken off the head of the advocate of Holland." This pun, says Brandt in
+his curious "History of the Reformation," is very injurious to the Synod,
+since it intimates that the Church loves blood. It never entered into the
+mind of these divines that Barnevelt fell, not by the Synod, but by the
+Orange and English party prevailing against the French. Lord Hardwicke, a
+statesman and a man of letters, deeply conversant with secret and public
+history, is a more able judge than the ecclesiastical historian or the
+Swiss divine, who could see nothing in the Synod of Dort but what appeared
+in it. It is in Lord Hardwicke's preface to Sir Dudley Carleton's
+"Letters" that his lordship has made this important discovery.]
+
+What was passing between the Dutch Prince and the Dutch Pensionary, was
+much like what was taking place between the King of England and his own
+subjects. James I. had to touch with a balancing hand the Catholics and
+the Nonconformists,[A]--to play them one against another; but there was a
+distinct end in their views. "James I.," says Barnet, "continued always
+writing and talking against Popery, but acting for it." The King and the
+bishops were probably more tolerant to monarchists and prelatists, than to
+republicans and presbyters. When James got nothing but gunpowder and
+Jesuits from Rome, he was willing enough to banish, or suppress, but the
+Catholic families were ancient and numerous; and the most determined
+spirits which ever subverted a government were Catholic.[B] Yet what could
+the King expect from the party of the Puritans, and their "conceited
+parity," as he called it, should he once throw himself into their hands,
+but the fate his son received from them?
+
+[Footnote A: James did all he could to weaken the Catholic party
+by dividing them in opinion. When Dr. Reynolds, the head of the
+Nonconformists, complained to the king of the printing and dispersing of
+Popish pamphlets, the king answered, that this was done by a warrant from
+the Court, to nourish the schism between the Seculars and Jesuits, which
+was of great service, "Doctor," added the king, "you are a better
+clergyman than statesman."--Neale's "History of the Puritans," vol. i. p.
+416, 4to.]
+
+[Footnote B: The character and demeanour of the celebrated Guy or Guido
+Fawkes, who appeared first before the council under the assumed name of
+Johnson, I find in a MS. letter of the times, which contains some
+characteristic touches not hitherto published. This letter is from Sir
+Edward Hoby to Sir Thomas Edmondes, our ambassador at the court of
+Brussels--dated 19th November, 1605. "One Johnson was found in the vault
+where the Gunpowder Plot was discovered. He was asked if he was sorry! He
+answered that he was only sorry it had not taken place. He was threatened
+that he should die a worse death than he that killed the Prince of Orange;
+he answered, that he could bear it as well. When Johnson was brought to
+the king's presence, the king asked him how he could conspire so hideous a
+treason against his children and so many innocent souls who had never
+offended him? He answered, that dangerous diseases required a desperate
+remedy; and he told some of the Scots that his intent was to have blown
+them back again into Scotland!"--Mordacious Guy Fawkes!]
+
+In the early stage of the Reformation, the Catholic still entered into the
+same church with the Reformed; this common union was broken by the
+impolitical impatience of the court of Rome, who, jealous of the
+tranquillity of Elizabeth, hoped to weaken her government by disunion;[A]
+but the Reformed were already separating among themselves by a new race,
+who, fancying that their religion was still too Catholic, were for
+reforming the Reformation. These had most extravagant fancies, and were
+for modelling the government according to each particular man's notion.
+Were we to bend to the foreign despotism of the Roman Tiara, or that of
+the republican rabble of the Presbytery of Geneva?
+
+[Footnote A: Sir Edward Coke, attorney-general, in the trial of Garnet the
+Jesuit, says, "There were no Recusants in England--all came to church
+howsoever Popishly inclined, till the Bull of Pius V. excommunicated and
+deposed Elizabeth. On this the Papists refused to join in the public
+service."--"State Trials," vol. i. p. 242.
+
+The Pope imagined, by false impressions he had received, that the Catholic
+party was strong enough to prevail against Elizabeth. Afterwards, when he
+found his error, a dispensation was granted by himself and his successor,
+that all Catholics might show outward obedience to Elizabeth till a
+happier opportunity. Such are Catholic politics and Catholic faith!]
+
+
+ * * * * *
+
+POLEMICAL STUDIES WERE POLITICAL.
+
+
+It was in these times that James I., a learned prince, applied to
+polemical studies; properly understood, these were in fact political
+ones. Lord Bolingbroke says, "He affected more learning than became
+a king, which he broached on every occasion in such a manner as would
+have misbecome a schoolmaster." Would the politician then require a
+half-learned king, or a king without any learning at all? Our eloquent
+sophist appears not to have recollected that polemical studies had long
+with us been considered as royal ones; and that from a slender volume of
+the sort our sovereigns still derive the regal distinction of "Defenders
+of the Faith." The pacific government of James I. required that the King
+himself should be a master of these controversies to be enabled to balance
+the conflicting parties; and none but a learned king could have exerted
+the industry or attained to the skill. In the famous conference at
+Hampton Court, which the King held with the heads of the Nonconformists,
+we see his majesty conversing sometimes with great learning and sense,
+but oftener more with the earnestness of a man, than some have imagined
+comported with the dignity of a crowned head. The truth is, James,
+like a true student, indulged, even to his dress, an utter carelessness
+of parade, and there was in his character a constitutional warmth
+of heart and a jocundity of temper which did not always adapt it to
+state-occasions; he threw out his feelings, and sometimes his jests.
+James, who had passed his youth in a royal bondage, felt that these
+Nonconformists, while they were debating small points, were reserving for
+hereafter their great ones; were cloaking their republicanism by their
+theology, and, like all other politicians, that their ostensible were not
+their real motives.[A] Harris and Neale, the organs of the Nonconformists,
+inveigh against James; even Hume, with the philosophy of the eighteenth
+century, has pronounced that the king was censurable "for entering
+zealously into these frivolous disputes of theology." Lord Bolingbroke
+declares that the king held this conference "in haste to show his parts."
+Thus a man of genius substitutes suggestion and assertion for accuracy of
+knowledge. In the present instance, it was an attempt of the Puritans to
+try the king on his arrival in England; they presented a petition for a
+conference, called "The Millenary Petition,"[B] from a thousand persons
+supposed to have signed it; the king would not refuse it; but so far from
+being "in haste to show his parts," that when he discovered their
+pretended grievances were so futile, "he complained that he had been
+troubled with such importunities, when some more private course might have
+been taken for their satisfaction."
+
+[Footnote A: In political history we usually find that the heads of a
+party are much wiser than the party themselves, so that, whatever they
+intend to acquire, their first demands are small; but the honest souls who
+are only stirred by their own innocent zeal, are sure to complain that
+their business is done negligently. Should the party at first succeed,
+then the bolder spirit, which they have disguised or suppressed through
+policy, is left to itself; it starts unbridled and at full gallop. All
+this occurred in the case of the Puritans. We find that some of the rigid
+Nonconformists did confess in a pamphlet, "The Christian's modest offer of
+the Silenced Ministers," 1606, that those who were appointed to speak for
+them at Hampton Court were _not of their nomination or judgment_; they
+insisted that these delegates should declare at once against the whole
+church establishment, &c., and model the government to each particular
+man's notions! But these delegates prudently refused to acquaint the king
+with the conflicting opinions of their constituents.--_Lansdowne MSS_.
+1056, 51.
+
+This confession of the Nonconformists is also acknowledged by their
+historian Neale, vol. ii. p. 419, 4to edit.]
+
+[Footnote B: The petition is given at length in Collier's "Eccles. Hist.,"
+vol. ii. p. 672. At this time also the Lay Catholics of England printed
+at Donay, "A Petition Apologetical," to James I. Their language is
+remarkable; they complained they were excluded "that supreme court of
+parliament first founded by and for Catholike men, was furnished with
+Catholike prelates, peeres, and personages; and so continued till the
+times of _Edward VI._ a _childe_, and Queen Elizabeth a _woman_."--Dodd's
+"Church History."]
+
+The narrative of this once celebrated conference, notwithstanding the
+absurdity of the topics, becomes in the hands of the entertaining Fuller a
+picturesque and dramatic composition, where the dialogue and the manners
+of the speakers are after the life.
+
+In the course of this conference we obtain a familiar intercourse with the
+king; we may admire the capacity of the monarch whose genius was versatile
+with the subjects; sliding from theme to theme with the ease which only
+mature studies could obtain; entering into the graver parts of these
+discussions; discovering a ready knowledge of biblical learning, which
+would sometimes throw itself out with his natural humour, in apt and
+familiar illustrations, throughout indulging his own personal feelings
+with an unparalleled _naïveté_.
+
+The king opened the conference with dignity; he said "he was happier than
+his predecessors, who had to alter what they found established, but he
+only to confirm what was well settled." One of the party made a notable
+discovery, that the surplice was a kind of garment used by the priests of
+Isis. The king observed that he had no notion of this antiquity, since he
+had always heard from them that it was "a rag of popery." "Dr. Reynolds,"
+said the king, with an air of pleasantry, "they used to wear hose and
+shoes in times of popery; have you therefore a mind to go bare-foot?"
+Reynolds objected to the words used in matrimony, "with my body I thee
+worship." The king said the phrase was an usual English term, as a
+_gentleman of worship_, &c., and turning to the doctor, smiling, said,
+"Many a man speaks of Robin Hood, who never shot in his bow; if you had a
+good wife yourself, you would think all the honour and worship you could
+do to her were well bestowed." Reynolds was not satisfied on the 37th
+article, declaring that "the Bishop of Rome hath no authority in this
+land," and desired it should be added, "nor ought to have any." In
+Barlow's narrative we find that on this his majesty heartily laughed--a
+laugh easily caught up by the lords; but the king nevertheless
+condescended to reply sensibly to the weak objection.
+
+"What speak you of the pope's authority here? _Habemus jure quod habemus_;
+and therefore inasmuch as it is said he hath not, it is plain enough that
+he ought not to have." It was on this occasion that some "pleasant
+discourse passed," in which "a Puritan" was defined to be "a Protestant
+frightened out of his wits." The king is more particularly vivacious when
+he alludes to the occurrences of his own reign, or suspects the Puritans
+of republican notions. On one occasion, to cut the gordian-knot, the king
+royally decided--"I will not argue that point with you, but answer as
+kings in parliament, _Le Roy s'avisera"_
+
+When they hinted at a Scottish Presbytery the king was somewhat stirred,
+yet what is admirable in him (says Barlow) without a show of passion. The
+king had lived among the republican saints, and had been, as he said, "A
+king without state, without honour, without order, where beardless boys
+would brave us to our face; and, like the Saviour of the world, though he
+lived among them, he was not of them." On this occasion, although the king
+may not have "shown his passion," he broke out, however, with a _naïve_
+effusion, remarkable for painting after the home-life a republican
+government. It must have struck Hume forcibly, for he has preserved part
+of it in the body of his history. Hume only consulted Fuller. I give the
+copious explosion from Barlow:--
+
+"If you aim at a Scottish Presbytery, it agreeth as well with monarchy as
+God and the devil. Then Jack, and Tom, and Will, and Dick, shall meet, and
+at their pleasure censure me and my council, and all our proceedings; then
+Will shall stand up and say, It must be thus; then Dick shall reply, Nay,
+marry, but we will have it thus. And therefore here I must once more
+reiterate my former speech, _Le Roy s'avisera._ Stay, I pray you, for one
+seven years before you demand that of me, and if then you find me pursy
+and fat, I may hearken to you; for let that government once be up, I am
+sure I shall be kept in breath; then shall we all of us have work enough:
+but, Dr. Reynolds, till you find that I grow lazy, let that alone."
+
+The king added,
+
+"I will tell you a tale:--Knox flattered the queen-regent of Scotland that
+she was supreme head of all the church, if she suppressed the popish
+prelates. But how long, trow ye, did this continue? Even so long, till, by
+her authority, the popish bishops were repressed, and he himself, and his
+adherents, were brought in and well settled. Then, lo! they began to make
+small account of her authority, and took the cause into their own hands."
+
+This was a pointed political tale, appropriately told in the person of a
+monarch.
+
+The king was never deficient in the force and quickness of his arguments.
+Even Neale, the great historian of the Puritans, complaining that
+Dean Barlow has cut off some of the king's speeches, is reluctantly
+compelled to tax himself with a high commendation of the monarch, who, he
+acknowledges, on one of the days of this conference, spoke against the
+corruptions of the church, and the practices of the prelates, insomuch
+that Dr. Andrews, then dean of the chapel, said that his majesty did that
+day wonderfully play the Puritan.[A] The king, indeed, was seriously
+inclined to an union of parties. More than once he silenced the angry
+tongue of Bancroft, and tempered the zeal of others; and even commended
+when he could Dr. Reynolds, the chief of the Puritans; the king consented
+to the only two important articles that side suggested; a new catechism
+adapted to the people--"Let the weak be informed and the wilful be
+punished," said the king; and that new translation of the Bible which
+forms our present version. "But," added the king, "it must be without
+marginal notes, for the Geneva Bible is the worst for them, full of
+seditious conceits; Asa is censured for _only deposing_ his mother for
+idolatry, and not _killing_ her." Thus early the dark spirit of Machiavel
+had lighted on that of the ruthless Calvin. The grievances of our first
+dissenters were futile--their innovations interminable; and we discover
+the king's notions, at the close of a proclamation issued after this
+conference: "Such is the desultory levity of some people, that they are
+always languishing after change and novelty, insomuch that were they
+humoured in their inconstancy, they would expose the public management,
+and make the administration ridiculous." Such is the vigorous style of
+James the First in his proclamations; and such is the political truth,
+which will not die away with the conference at Hampton Court.
+
+[Footnote A: The bishops of James I. were, as Fuller calls one of them,
+"potent courtiers," and too worldly-minded men. Bancroft was a man of
+vehement zeal, but of the most grasping avarice, as appears by an
+epigrammatic epitaph on his death in Arthur Wilson--
+
+ "Here lies his grace, in cold earth clad,
+ Who died with want of what he had."
+
+We find a characteristic trait of this Bishop of London in this
+conference. When Ellesmere, Lord Chancellor, observed that "livings rather
+want learned men, than learned men livings, many in the universities
+pining for want of places. I wish therefore some may have _single coats_
+(one living) before others have _doublets_ (pluralities), and this method
+I have observed in bestowing the king's benefices." Bancroft replied, "I
+commend your memorable _care_ that way; but a _doublet_ is necessary in
+cold weather." Thus an avaricious bishop could turn off, with a miserable
+jest, the open avowal of his love of pluralities. Another, Neile, Bishop
+of Lincoln, when any one preached who was remarkable for his piety,
+desirous of withdrawing the king's attention from truths he did not wish
+to have his majesty reminded of, would in the sermon-time entertain the
+king with a merry tale, which the king would laugh at, and tell those near
+him, that he could not hear the preacher for the old--bishop;
+prefixing an epithet explicit of the character of these merry tales.
+Kennet has preserved for us the "rank relation," as he calls it; not, he
+adds, but "we have had divers hammerings and conflicts within us to leave
+it out."--Kennet's "History of England," ii. 729.]
+
+These studies of polemical divinity, like those of the ancient
+scholastics, were not to be obtained without a robust intellectual
+exercise. James instructed his son Charles,[A] who excelled in them; and
+to those studies Whitelocke attributes that aptitude of Charles I. which
+made him so skilful a summer-up of arguments, and endowed him with so
+clear a perception in giving his decisions.
+
+
+[Footnote A: That the clergy were somewhat jealous of their sovereign's
+interference in these matters may be traced. When James charged the
+chaplains, who were to wait on the prince in Spain, to decline, as far as
+possible, religious disputes, he added, that "should any happen, my son is
+able to moderate in them." The king, observing one of the divines smile,
+grew warm, vehemently affirming, "I tell ye, Charles shall manage a point
+in controversy with the best studied divine of ye all." What the king
+said was afterwards confirmed on an extraordinary occasion, in the
+conference Charles I. held with Alexander Henderson, the old champion of
+the kirk. Deprived of books, which might furnish the sword and pistol of
+controversy, and without a chaplain to stand by him as a second, Charles
+I. fought the theological duel; and the old man, cast down, retired with
+such a sense of the learning and honour of the king, in maintaining the
+order of episcopacy in England, that his death, which soon followed, is
+attributed to the deep vexation of this discomfiture. The veteran, who had
+succeeded in subverting the hierarchy in Scotland, would not be apt to die
+of a fit of conversion; but vexation might be apoplectic in an old and
+sturdy disputant. The king's controversy was published; and nearly all the
+writers agree he carried the day. Yet some divines appear more jealous
+than grateful: Bishop Kennet, touched by the _esprit du corps_, honestly
+tells us, that "some thought the king had been better able to _protect_
+the Church, if he had not _disputed_ for it." This discovers all the
+ardour possible for the _establishment_, and we are to infer that an
+English sovereign is only to _fight_ for his churchmen. But there is a
+nobler office for a sovereign to perform in ecclesiastical history--to
+promote the learned and the excellent, and repress the dissolute and the
+intolerant.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE WORKS OF JAMES THE FIRST.
+
+
+We now turn to the writings of James the First. He composed a treatise on
+demoniacs and witches; those dramatic personages in courts of law. James
+and his council never suspected that those ancient foes to mankind
+could be dismissed by a simple _Nolle prosequi_. "A Commentary on the
+Revelations," which was a favourite speculation then, and on which greater
+geniuses have written since his day. "A Counterblast to Tobacco!" the
+title more ludicrous than the design.[A] His majesty terrified "the
+tobacconists," as the patriarchs of smoking-clubs were called, and who
+were selling their very lands and houses in an epidemical madness for "a
+stinking weed," by discovering that "they were making a sooty kitchen in
+their inward parts."[B] And the king gained a point with the great
+majority of his subjects, when he demonstrated to their satisfaction that
+the pope was antichrist. Ridiculous as these topics are to us, the works
+themselves were formed on what modern philosophers affect to term the
+principle of utility; a principle which, with them indeed, includes
+everything they approve of, and nothing they dislike.
+
+[Footnote A: Not long before James composed his treatise on "Dæmonologie,"
+the learned Wierus had published an elaborate work on the subject.
+"_De præstigiis Dæmonum et incantationibus et Veneficiis_," &c., 1568.
+He advanced one step in philosophy by discovering that many of the
+supposed cases of incantation originated in the imagination of these
+sorcerers--but he advanced no farther, for he acknowledges the real
+diabolical presence. The physician, who pretended to cure the disease, was
+himself irrecoverably infected. Yet even this single step of Wierus was
+strenuously resisted by the learned Bodin, who, in his amusing volume of
+"Demonomanie des Sorciers," 1593, refutes Wierus. These are the leading
+authors of the times; who were followed by a crowd. Thus James I. neither
+wanted authorities to quote nor great minds to sanction his "Dæmonologie,"
+first published in 1597. To the honour of England, a single individual,
+Reginald Scot, with a genius far advanced beyond his age, denied the very
+existence of those witches and demons in the curious volume of his
+"Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584. His books were burned! and the author was
+himself not quite out of danger; and Voetius, says Bayle, complains that
+when the work was translated into Dutch, it raised up a number of
+libertines who laughed at all the operations and the apparitions of
+devils. Casaubon and Glanvil, who wrote so much later, treat Scot with
+profound contempt, assuring us his reasonings are childish, and his
+philosophy absurd! Such was the reward of a man of genius combating with
+popular prejudices! Even so late as 1687, these popular superstitions were
+confirmed by the narrations and the philosophy of Glanvil, Dr. More, &c.
+The subject enters into the "Commentaries on the Laws of England." An
+edict of Louis XIV, and a statute by George II, made an end of the whole
+_Diablerie_. Had James I. adopted the system of Reginald Scot, the king
+had probably been branded as an atheist king!]
+
+[Footnote B: Harris, with systematic ingenuity against James I., after
+abusing this tract as a wretched performance, though himself probably had
+written a meaner one--quotes the curious information the king gives of the
+enormous abuse to which the practice of smoking was carried, expressing
+his astonishment at it. Yet, that James may not escape bitter censure, he
+abuses the king for levying a heavy tax on it to prevent this ruinous
+consumption, and his silly policy in discouraging such a branch of our
+revenues, and an article so valuable to our plantations, &c. As if James
+I. could possibly incur censure for the discoveries of two centuries
+after, of the nature of this plant! James saw great families ruined by the
+epidemic madness, and sacrificed the revenues which his crown might derive
+from it, to assist its suppression. This was patriotism in the monarch.]
+
+It was a prompt honesty of intention to benefit his people, which seems to
+have been the urgent motive that induced this monarch to become an author,
+more than any literary ambition; for he writes on no prepared or permanent
+topic, and even published anonymously, and as he once wrote "post-haste,"
+what he composed or designed for practical and immediate use; and even in
+that admirable treatise on the duties of a sovereign, which he addressed
+to Prince Henry, a great portion is directed to the exigencies of the
+times, the parties, and the circumstances of his own court. Of the works
+now more particularly noticed, their interest has ceased with the
+melancholy follies which at length have passed away; although the
+philosophical inquirer will not choose to drop this chapter in the history
+of mankind. But one fact in favour of our royal author is testified by the
+honest Fuller and the cynical Osborne. On the king's arrival in England,
+having discovered the numerous impostures and illusions which he had often
+referred to as authorities, he grew suspicious of the whole system
+of "Dæmonologie," and at length recanted it entirely. With the same
+conscientious zeal James had written the book, the king condemned it; and
+the sovereign separated himself from the author, in the cause of truth;
+but the clergy and the parliament persisted in making the imaginary crime
+felony by the statute, and it is only a recent act of parliament which has
+forbidden the appearance of the possessed and the spae-wife.
+
+But this apology for having written these treatises need not rest on this
+fact, however honourably it appeals to our candour. Let us place it on
+higher ground, and tell those who asperse this monarch for his credulity
+and intellectual weakness, that they themselves, had they lived in the
+reign of James I., had probably written on the same topics, and felt as
+uneasy at the rumour of a witch being a resident in their neighbourhood!
+
+ * * * * *
+
+POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS OF THE AGE.
+
+
+This and the succeeding age were the times of omens and meteors,
+prognostics and providences--of "day-fatality," or the superstition of
+fortunate and unfortunate days, and the combined powers of astrology and
+magic. It was only at the close of the century of James I. that Bayle
+wrote a treatise on comets, to prove that they had no influence in the
+cabinets of princes; this was, however, done with all the precaution
+imaginable. The greatest minds were then sinking under such popular
+superstitions: and whoever has read much of the private history of
+this age will have smiled at their ludicrous terrors and bewildered
+reasonings. The most ordinary events were attributed to an interposition
+of Providence. In the unpublished memoirs of that learned antiquary, Sir
+Symouds D'Ewes, such frequently occur. When a comet appeared, and D'Ewes,
+for exercise at college, had been ringing the great bell, and entangled
+himself in the rope, which had nearly strangled him, he resolves not to
+ring while the comet is in the heavens. When a fire happened at the Six
+Clerks' Office, of whom his father was one, he inquires into the most
+prominent sins of the six clerks: these were the love of the world, and
+doing business on Sundays: and it seems they thought so themselves; for
+after the fire the office-door was fast closed on the Sabbath. When the
+Thames had an unusual ebb and flow, it was observed, that it had never
+happened in their recollection, but just before the rising of the Earl of
+Essex in Elizabeth's reign,--and Sir Symonds became uneasy at the
+political aspect of affairs.
+
+All the historians of these times are very particular in marking the
+bearded beams of blazing stars; and the first public event that occurs is
+always connected with the radiant course. Arthur Wilson describes one
+which preceded the death of the simple queen of James I. It was generally
+imagined that "this great light in the heaven was sent as a flambeaux to
+her funeral;" but the historian discovers, while "this blaze was burning,
+the fire of war broke out in Bohemia." It was found difficult to decide
+between the two opinions; and Rushworth, who wrote long afterwards,
+carefully chronicles both.
+
+The truth is, the greatest geniuses of the age of James I. were as deeply
+concerned in these investigations as his Majesty. Had the great Verulam
+emancipated himself from all the dreams of his age? He speaks indeed
+cautiously of witchcraft, but does not deny its occult agency; and of
+astrology he is rather for the improvement than the rejection. The bold
+spirit of Rawleigh contended with the superstitions of the times; but how
+feeble is the contest where we fear to strike! Even Rawleigh is prodigal
+of his praise to James for the king's chapter on magic. The great mind of
+Rawleigh perceived how much men are formed and changed by _education;_
+but, were this principle admitted to its extent, the _stars_ would
+lose their influence! In pleading for the free agency of man, he would
+escape from the pernicious tendency of predestination, or the astral
+influence, which yet he allows. To extricate himself from the dilemma,
+he invents an analogical reasoning of a royal power of dispensing
+with the laws in extreme cases; so that, though he does not deny "the
+binding of the stars," he declares they are controllable by the will of
+the Creator. In this manner, fettered by prevalent opinions, he satisfies
+the superstitions of an astrological age, and the penetration of his own
+genius. At a much later period Dr Henry More, a writer of genius,
+confirmed the ghost and demon creed, by a number of facts, as marvellously
+pleasant as any his own poetical fancy could have invented. Other great
+authors have not less distinguished themselves. When has there appeared a
+single genius who at once could free himself of the traditional prejudices
+of his contemporaries--nay, of his own party? Genius, in its advancement
+beyond the intelligence of its own age, is but progressive; it is
+fancifully said to soar, but it only climbs. Yet the minds of some authors
+of this age are often discovered to be superior to their work; because the
+mind is impelled by its own inherent powers, but the work usually
+originates in the age. James I, once acutely observed, how "the author may
+be wise, but the work foolish."
+
+Thus minds of a higher rank than our royal author had not yet cleared
+themselves out of these clouds of popular prejudices. We now proceed to
+more decisive results of the superior capacity of this much ill-used
+monarch.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE HABITS OF JAMES THE FIRST THOSE OF A MAN OF LETTERS.
+
+
+The habits of life of this monarch were those of a man of letters. His
+first studies were soothed by none of their enticements. If James loved
+literature, it was for itself; for Buchanan did not tinge the rim of the
+vase with honey; and the bitterness was tasted not only in the draught,
+but also in the rod. In some princes, the harsh discipline James passed
+through has raised a strong aversion against literature. The Dauphin, for
+whose use was formed the well-known edition of the classics, looked on the
+volumes with no eye of love. To free himself of his tutor, Huet, he
+eagerly consented to an early marriage. "Now we shall see if Mr. Huet
+shall any more keep me to ancient geography!" exclaimed the Dauphin,
+rejoicing in the first act of despotism. This ingenuous sally, it is said,
+too deeply affected that learned man for many years afterwards. Huet's
+zealous gentleness (for how could Huet be too rigid?) wanted the art which
+Buchanan disdained to practise. But, in the case of the prince of
+Scotland, a constitutional timidity combining with an ardour for study,
+and therefore a veneration for his tutor, produced a more remarkable
+effect. Such was the terror which the remembrance of this illustrious but
+inexorable republican left on the imagination of his royal pupil, that
+even so late as when James was seated on the English throne, once the
+appearance of his frowning tutor in a dream greatly agitated the king,
+who in vain attempted to pacify him in this portentous vision. This
+extraordinary fact may be found in a manuscript letter of that day.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: The learned Mede wrote the present letter soon after another,
+which had not been acknowledged, to his friend Sir M. Stuteville; and the
+writer is uneasy lest the political secrets of the day might bring the
+parties into trouble. It seems he was desirous that letter should be read
+and then burnt.
+
+"_March 31, 1622._
+
+"I hope my letter miscarried not; if it did I am in a sweet pickle. I
+desired to hear from you of the receipt and extinction of it. Though there
+is no danger in my letters whilst report is so rife, yet when it is
+forgotten they will not be so safe; but your danger is as great as mine--
+
+"Mr. Downham was with we, now come from London. He told me that it was
+three years ago since those verses were delivered to the king in a dream,
+by his Master Buchanan, who seemed to _check him severely, as he used to
+do_; and his Majesty, in his dream, seemed desirous to pacify him, but he,
+_turning away with a frowning countenance_, would utter those verses,
+which his Majesty, perfectly remembering, repeated the next day, and many
+took notice of them. Now, by occasion of the late soreness in his arm, and
+the doubtfulness what it would prove; especially having, by mischance,
+fallen into the fire with that arm, the remembrance of the verses began to
+trouble him."
+
+It appears that these verses were of a threatening nature, since, in a
+melancholy fit, they were recalled to recollection after an interval of
+three years; the verses are lost to us, with the letter which contained
+them.]
+
+James, even by the confession of his bitter satirist, Francis Osborne,
+"dedicated rainy weather to his standish, and fair to his hounds." His
+life had the uniformity of a student's; but the regulated life of a
+learned monarch must have weighed down the gay and dissipated with the
+deadliest monotony. Hence one of these courtiers declared that, if he were
+to awake after a sleep of seven years' continuance, he would undertake to
+enumerate the whole of his Majesty's occupations, and every dish that had
+been placed on the table during the interval. But this courtier was not
+aware that the monotony which the king occasioned him was not so much in
+the king himself as in his own volatile spirit.
+
+The table of James I. was a trial of wits, says a more learned courtier,
+who often partook of these prolonged conversations: those genial and
+convivial conferences were the recreations of the king, and the means
+often of advancing those whose talents had then an opportunity of
+discovering themselves. A life so constant in its pursuits was to have
+been expected from the temper of him who, at the view of the Bodleian
+library, exclaimed, "Were I not a king, I would be an university man; and
+if it were so that I must be a prisoner, I would have no other prison than
+this library, and be _chained together_ with all these goodly authors."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: In this well-known exclamation of James I., a witty allusion
+has been probably overlooked. The king had in his mind the then prevalent
+custom of securing books by fastening them to the shelves by _chains_ long
+enough to reach to the reading-desks under them.]
+
+Study, indeed, became one of the businesses of life with our contemplative
+monarch; and so zealous was James to form his future successor, that he
+even seriously engaged in the education of both his sons. James I. offers
+the singular spectacle of a father who was at once a preceptor and a
+monarch: it was in this spirit the king composed his "Basilicon Doron; or,
+His Majesty's Instructions to his dearest Son Henry the Prince," a work of
+which something more than the intention is great; and he directed the
+studies of the unfortunate Charles. That both these princes were no common
+pupils may be fairly attributed to the king himself. Never did the
+character of a young prince shoot out with nobler promises than Henry; an
+enthusiast for literature and arms, that prince early showed a great and
+commanding spirit. Charles was a man of fine taste: he had talents and
+virtues, errors and misfortunes; but he was not without a spirit equal to
+the days of his trial.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+FACILITY AND COPIOUSNESS OF HIS COMPOSITION.
+
+
+The mind of James I. had at all times the fulness of a student's,
+delighting in the facility and copiousness of composition. The king wrote
+in one week one hundred folio pages of a monitory address to the European
+sovereigns; and, in as short a time, his apology, sent to the pope and
+cardinals. These he delivered to the bishops, merely as notes for their
+use; but they were declared to form of themselves a complete answer. "_Qua
+felicitate_ they were done, let others judge; but _Qua celeritate_, I can
+tell," says the courtly bishop who collected the king's works, and who is
+here quoted, not for the compliment he would infer, but for the fact he
+states. The week's labour of his majesty provoked from Cardinal Perron
+about one thousand pages in folio, and replies and rejoinders from the
+learned in Europe.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Mr. Lodge, in his "Illustrations of British History," praises
+and abuses James I. for the very same treatises. Mr. Lodge, dropping the
+sober character of the antiquary for the smarter one of the critic, tells
+us, "James had the good fortune to gain the two points he principally
+aimed at in the publication of these _dull treatises_--the reputation of
+an acute disputant, and the honour of having Cardinal Bellarmin for an
+antagonist." Did Mr. Lodge ever read these "dull treatises?" I declare I
+never have; but I believe these treatises are not dull, from the inference
+he draws from them: for how any writer can gain the reputation of "an
+acute disputant" by writing "dull treatises," Mr. Lodge only can explain.
+It is in this manner, and by unphilosophical critics, that the literary
+reputation of James has been flourished down by modern pens. It was sure
+game to attack James I.!]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+HIS ELOQUENCE.
+
+
+The eloquence of James is another feature in the literary character of
+this monarch. Amid the sycophancy of the court of a learned sovereign some
+truths will manifest themselves. Bishop Williams, in his funeral eulogy of
+James I., has praised with warmth the eloquence of the departed monarch,
+whom he intimately knew; and this was an acquisition of James's, so
+manifest to all, that the bishop made eloquence essential to the dignity
+of a monarch; observing, that "it was the want of it that made Moses, in a
+manner, refuse all government, though offered by God."[A] He would
+not have hazarded so peculiar an eulogium, had not the monarch been
+distinguished by that talent.
+
+[Footnote A: This funeral sermon, by laying such a stress on the
+_eloquence_ of James I., it is said, occasioned the disgrace of the
+zealous bishop; perhaps, also, by the arts of the new courtiers practising
+on the feelings of the young monarch. It appears that Charles betrayed
+frequent symptoms of impatience.
+
+This allusion to the _stammering_ of Moses was most unlucky; for Charles
+had this defect in his delivery, which he laboured all his life to
+correct. In the first speech from the throne, he alludes to it: "Now,
+because _I am unfit for much speaking_, I mean to bring up the fashion of
+my predecessors, to have my lord-keeper speak for me in most things." And
+he closed a speech to the Scottish parliament by saying, that "he does not
+offer to endear himself by words, _which, indeed is not my way_." This,
+however, proved to be one of those little circumstances which produce a
+more important result than is suspected. By this substitution of a
+lord-keeper instead of the sovereign, he failed in exciting the personal
+affections of his parliament. Even the most gracious speech from the lips
+of a lord-keeper is but formally delivered, and coldly received; and
+Charles had not yet learned that there are no deputies for our feelings.]
+
+Hume first observed of James I., that "the speaker of the House of Commons
+is usually an eminent man; yet the harangue of his Majesty will always be
+found much superior to that of the speaker in every parliament during this
+reign." His numerous proclamations are evidently wrought by his own hand,
+and display the pristine vigour of the state of our age of genius. That
+the state-papers were usually composed by himself, a passage in the Life
+of the Lord-keeper Williams testifies; and when Sir Edward Conway, who had
+been bred a soldier, and was even illiterate, became a viscount, and a
+royal secretary, by the appointment of Buckingham, the king, who in fact
+wanted no secretary, would often be merry over his imperfect scrawls in
+writing, and his hacking of sentences in reading, often breaking out in
+laughter, exclaiming, "Stenny has provided me with a secretary who can
+neither write nor read, and a groom of my bedchamber who cannot truss my
+points,"--this latter person having but one hand! It is evident, since
+Lord Conway, the most inefficient secretary ever king had--and I have
+myself seen his scrawls--remained many years in office, that James I.
+required no secretary, and transacted his affairs with his own mind and
+hand. These habits of business and of study prove that James indulged much
+less those of indolence, for which he is so gratuitously accused.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+HIS WIT.
+
+
+Amid all the ridicule and contempt in which the intellectual capacity of
+James I. is involved, this college-pedant, who is imagined to have given
+in to every species of false wit, and never to have reached beyond
+quibbles, puns, conceits, and quolibets,--was in truth a great wit; quick
+in retort, and happy in illustration; and often delivering opinions with a
+sententious force. More wit and wisdom from his lips have descended to us
+than from any other of our sovereigns. One of the malicious writers of his
+secret history, Sir Anthony Weldon, not only informs us that he was witty,
+but describes the manner: "He was very witty, and had as many witty jests
+as any man living: at which he would not smile himself, but deliver them
+in a grave and serious manner." Thus the king was not only witty, but a
+dextrous wit: nor is he one of those who are recorded as having only said
+one good thing in their lives; for his vein was not apt to dry.
+
+His conversations, like those of most literary men, he loved to prolong at
+table. We find them described by one who had partaken of them:
+
+"The reading of some books before him was very frequent, while he was at
+his repast; and otherwise he collected knowledge by variety of questions,
+which he carved out to the capacity of different persons. Methought his
+hunting humour was not off, while the learned stood about him at his
+board; he was ever in chase after some disputable doubts, which he would
+wind and turn about with the most stabbing objections that ever I heard;
+and was as pleasant and fellow-like, in all these discourses, as with his
+huntsman in the field. Those who were ripe and weighty in their answers
+were ever designed for some place of credit or profit."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Hacket's curious "Life of the Lord-keeper Williams," p. 38,
+Part 11.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+SPECIMENS OF HIS HUMOUR, AND OBSERVATIONS ON HUMAN LIFE.
+
+
+The relics of witticisms and observations on human life, on state affairs,
+in literature and history, are scattered among contemporary writers, and
+some are even traditional; I regret that I have not preserved many which
+occurred in the course of reading. It has happened, however, that a man of
+genius has preserved for posterity some memorials of the wit, the
+learning, and the sense of the monarch.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: In the Harl. MSS. 7582, Art. 3, one entitled "Crumms fallen
+from King James's Table; or his Table-Talk, taken by Sir Thomas Overbury.
+The original being in his own handwriting." This MS. has been, perhaps,
+imperfectly printed in "The Prince's Cabala, or Mysteries of State," 1715.
+This Collection of Sir Thomas Overbury was shortened by his unhappy fate,
+since he perished early in the reign.--Another Harl. MS. contains things
+"as they were at sundrie times spoken by James I." I have drawn others
+from the Harl. MSS. 6395. We have also printed, "Wittie Observations,
+gathered in King James's Ordinary Discourse," 1643; "King James his
+Apothegmes or Table-Talk as they were by him delivered occasionally, and
+by the publisher, his quondam servant, carefully received, by B.A. gent.
+4^to. in eight leaves, 1643." The collector was Ben'n. Agar, who had
+gathered them in his youth; "Witty Apothegmes, delivered at several times
+by King James, King Charles, the Marquis of Worcester," &c., 1658.
+
+The collection of Apothegms formed by Lord Bacon offers many instances of
+the king's wit and sense. See Lord Bacon's Apothegms new and old; they are
+numbered to 275 in the edition 1819. Basil Montague, in his edition, has
+separated what he distinguishes as the spurious ones.]
+
+In giving some loose specimens of the wit and capacity of a man, if they
+are too few, it may be imagined that they are so from their rarity;
+and if too many, the page swells into a mere collection. But truth is not
+over-nice to obtain her purpose, and even the common labours she inspires
+are associated with her pleasures.
+
+Early in life James I. had displayed the talent of apt allusion, and his
+classical wit on the Spaniards, that "He expected no other favour from
+them than the courtesy of Polyphemus to Ulysses--to be the last devoured,"
+delighted Elizabeth, and has even entered into our history. Arthur
+Wilson, at the close of his "Life of James I.," has preserved one of his
+apothegms, while he censures him for not making timely use of it! "Let
+that prince, who would beware of conspiracies, be rather jealous of such
+whom his extraordinary favours have advanced, than of those whom his
+displeasure have discontented. _These_ want means to execute their
+pleasures, but _those_ have means at pleasure to execute their desires."
+--Wilson himself ably develops this important state-observation, by
+adding, that "Ambition to rule is more vehement than malice to revenge." A
+pointed reflection, which rivals a maxim of Rochefoucault.
+
+The king observed that, "Very wise men and very fools do little harm; it
+is the mediocrity of wisdom that troubleth all the world."--He described,
+by a lively image, the differences which rise in argument: "Men, in
+arguing, are often carried by the force of words farther asunder than
+their question was at first; like two ships going out of the same haven,
+their landing is many times whole countries distant."
+
+One of the great national grievances, as it appeared both to the
+government and the people, in James's reign, was the perpetual growth of
+the metropolis; and the nation, like an hypochondriac, was ludicrously
+terrified that their head was too monstrous for their body, and drew
+all the moisture of life from the remoter parts. It is amusing to
+observe the endless and vain precautions employed to stop all new
+buildings, and to force persons out of town to reside at their country
+mansions. Proclamations warned and exhorted, but the very interference of
+prohibition rendered the crowded town more delightful. One of its
+attendant calamities was the prevalent one of that day, the plague; and
+one of those state libels, which were early suppressed, or never printed,
+entitled, "Balaam's Ass," has this passage: "In this deluge of new
+buildings, we shall be all poisoned with breathing in one another's faces;
+and your Majesty has most truly said, England will shortly be London, and
+London, England." It was the popular wish, that country gentlemen should
+reside more on their estates, and it was on this occasion the king made
+that admirable allusion, which has been in our days repeated in the House
+of Commons: "Gentlemen resident on their estates were like ships in port
+--their value and magnitude were felt and acknowledged; but, when at
+a distance, as their size seemed insignificant, so their worth and
+importance were not duly estimated." The king abounded with similar
+observations; for he drew from life more than even from books.
+
+James is reproached for being deficient in political sagacity;
+notwithstanding that he somewhat prided himself on what he denominated
+"king's-craft." This is the fate of a pacific and domestic prince!
+
+"A king," said James, "ought to be a preserver of his people, as well of
+their fortunes as lives, and not a destroyer of his subjects. Were I to
+make such a war as the King of France doth, with such tyranny on his own
+subjects--with Protestants on one side, and his soldiers drawn to
+slaughter on the other,--I would put myself in a monastery all my days
+after, and repent me that I had brought my subjects to such misery."
+
+That James was an adept in his "king's-craft," by which term he meant
+the science of politics, but which has been so often misinterpreted in an
+ill sense, even the confession of such a writer as Sir Anthony Weldon
+testifies; who acknowledges that "no prince living knew how to make use of
+men better than King James." He certainly foresaw the spirit of the
+Commons, and predicted to the prince and Buckingham, events which occurred
+after his death. When Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, whom James considered
+a useful servant, Buckingham sacrificed, as it would appear, to the
+clamours of a party, James said, "You are making a rod for your own back;"
+and when Prince Charles was encouraging the frequent petitions of
+the Commons, James told him, "You will live to have your bellyful of
+petitions." The following anecdote may serve to prove his political
+sagacity:--When the Emperor of Germany, instigated by the Pope and his own
+state-interests, projected a crusade against the Turks, he solicited from
+James the aid of three thousand Englishmen; the wise and pacific monarch,
+in return, advised the emperor's ambassador to apply to France and Spain,
+as being more nearly concerned in this project: but the ambassador very
+ingeniously argued, that, James being a more remote prince, would more
+effectually alarm the Turks, from a notion of a general armament of
+the Christian princes against them. James got rid of the importunate
+ambassador by observing, that "three thousand Englishmen would do no more
+hurt to the Turks than fleas to their skins: great attempts may do good by
+a destruction, but little ones only stir up anger to hurt themselves."
+
+His vein of familiar humour flowed at all times, and his facetiousness
+was sometimes indulged at the cost of his royalty. In those unhappy
+differences between him and his parliament, one day mounting his horse,
+which, though usually sober and quiet, began to bound and
+prance,--"Sirrah!" exclaimed the king, who seemed to fancy that his
+favourite prerogative was somewhat resisted on this occasion, "if you be
+not quiet, I'll send you to the five hundred kings in the lower house:
+they'll quickly tame you." When one of the Lumleys was pushing on his
+lineal ascent beyond the patience of the hearers, the king, to cut short
+the tedious descendant of the Lumleys, cried out, "Stop mon! thou needst
+no more: now I learn that Adam's surname was Lumley!" When Colonel Gray,
+a military adventurer of that day, just returned from Germany, seemed
+vain of his accoutrements, on which he had spent his all,--the king,
+staring at this buckled, belted, sworded, and pistolled, but ruined,
+martinet, observed, that "this town was so well fortified, that, were it
+victualled, it might be impregnable."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+EVIDENCES OF HIS SAGACITY IN THE DISCOVERY OF TRUTH.
+
+
+Possessing the talent of eloquence, the quickness of wit, and the
+diversified knowledge which produced his "Table-talk," we find also many
+evidences of his sagacity in the discovery of truth, with that patient
+zeal so honourable to a monarch. When the shipwrights, jealous of Pett,
+our great naval architect, formed a party against him, the king would
+judge with his own eyes. Having examined the materials depreciated by
+Pett's accusers, he declared that "the cross-grain was in the men, not in
+the timber." The king, on historical evidence, and by what he said
+in his own works, claims the honour of discovering the gunpowder plot, by
+the sagacity and reflection with which he solved the enigmatical and
+ungrammatical letter sent on that occasion. The train of his thoughts has
+even been preserved to us; and, although a loose passage, in a private
+letter of the Earl of Salisbury, contradicted by another passage in the
+same letter, would indicate that the earl was the man; yet even Mrs.
+Macaulay acknowledges the propriety of attributing the discovery to the
+king's sagacity. Several proofs of his zeal and reflection in the
+detection of imposture might be adduced; and the reader may, perhaps, be
+amused at these.
+
+There existed a conspiracy against the Countess of Exeter by Lady Lake,
+and her daughter, Lady Ross. They had contrived to forge a letter in the
+Countess's name, in which she confessed all the heavy crimes they accused
+her of, which were incest, witchcraft, &c.;[A] and, to confirm its
+authenticity, as the king was curious respecting the place, the time, and
+the occasion, when the letter was written, their maid swore it was at the
+countess's house at Wimbledon, and that she had written it at the window,
+near the upper end of the great chamber; and that she (the maid) was hid
+beneath the tapestry, where she heard the countess read over the letter
+after writing. The king appeared satisfied with this new testimony; but,
+unexpectedly, he visited the great chamber at Wimbledon, observed the
+distance of the window, placed himself behind the hangings, and made the
+lords in their turn: not one could distinctly hear the voice of a person
+placed at the window. The king further observed, that the tapestry was two
+feet short of the ground, and that any one standing behind it must
+inevitably be discovered. "Oaths cannot confound my sight," exclaimed the
+king. Having also effectuated other discoveries with a confession of one
+of the parties, and Sir Thomas Lake being a faithful servant of James, as
+he had been of Elizabeth, the king, who valued him, desired he would not
+stand the trial with his wife and daughter; but the old man pleaded that
+he was a husband and a father, and must fall with them. "It is a fall!"
+said the king: "your wife is the serpent; your daughter is Eve; and you,
+poor man, are Adam!"[B]
+
+[Footnote A: Camden's "Annals of James I., Kennet II., 652."]
+
+[Footnote B: The suit cost Sir Thomas Lake 30,000_l_.; the fines in the
+star-chamber were always heavy in all reigns. Harris refers to this cause
+as an evidence of the tyrannic conduct of James I., as if the king was
+always influenced by personal dislike; but he does not give the story.]
+
+The sullen Osborne reluctantly says, "I must confess he was the promptest
+man living in detecting an imposture." There was a singular impostor in
+his reign, of whom no one denies the king the merit of detecting the
+deception--so far was James I. from being credulous, as he is generally
+supposed to have been. Ridiculous as the affair may appear to us, it had
+perfectly succeeded with the learned fellows of New College, Oxford, and
+afterwards with heads as deep; and it required some exertion of the king's
+philosophical reasoning to pronounce on the deception.
+
+One Haddock, who was desirous of becoming a preacher, but had a stuttering
+and slowness of utterance, which he could not get rid of, took to
+the study of physic; but recollecting that, when at Winchester, his
+schoolfellows had told him that he spoke fluently in his sleep, he tried,
+affecting to be asleep, to form a discourse on physic. Finding that he
+succeeded, he continued the practice: he then tried divinity, and spoke a
+good sermon. Having prepared one for the purpose, he sat up in his bed and
+delivered it so loudly that it attracted attention in the next chamber. It
+was soon reported that Haddock preached in his sleep; and nothing was
+heard but inquiries after the _sleeping preacher_, who soon found it his
+interest to keep up the delusion. He was now considered as a man truly
+inspired; and he did not in his own mind rate his talents at less worth
+than the first vacant bishopric. He was brought to court, where the
+greatest personages anxiously sat up through the night by his bedside.
+They tried all the maliciousness of Puck to pinch and to stir him: he was
+without hearing or feeling; but they never departed without an orderly
+text and sermon; at the close of which, groaning and stretching himself,
+he pretended to awake, declaring he was unconscious of what had passed.
+"The king," says Wilson, no flatterer of James, "privately handled him so
+like a chirurgeon, that he found out the sore." The king was present at
+one of these sermons, and forbade them; and his reasonings, on this
+occasion, brought the sleeping preacher on his knees. The king observed,
+that things studied in the day-time may be dreamed of in the night, but
+always irregularly, without order; not, as these sermons were, good and
+learned: as particularly the one preached before his Majesty in his sleep
+--which he first treated physically, then theologically; "and I observed,"
+said the king, "that he always preaches best when he has the most crowded
+audience." "Were he allowed to proceed, all slander and treason might pass
+under colour of being asleep," added the king, who, notwithstanding his
+pretended inspiration, awoke the sleeping preacher for ever afterwards.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+BASILICON DORON.
+
+
+That treatise of James I., entitled "Basilicon Doron; or, His Majesty's
+Instructions to his dearest Son Henry the Prince," was composed by the
+king in Scotland, in the freshness of his studious days; a work, addressed
+to a prince by a monarch which, in some respects, could only have come
+from the hands of such a workman. The morality and the politics often
+retain their curiosity and their value. Our royal author has drawn his
+principles of government from the classical volumes of antiquity; for then
+politicians quoted Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. His waters had, indeed,
+flowed over those beds of ore;[A] but the growth and vigour of the work
+comes from the mind of the king himself: he writes for the Prince of
+Scotland, and about the Scottish people. On its first appearance Camden
+has recorded the strong sensation it excited: it was not only admired, but
+it entered into and won the hearts of men. Harris, forced to acknowledge,
+in his mean style and with his frigid temper, that "this book contains
+some tolerable things," omits not to hint that "it might not be his own:"
+but the claims of James I. are evident from the peculiarity of the style;
+the period at which it was composed; and by those particular passages
+stamped with all the individuality of the king himself. The style is
+remarkable for its profuse sprinkling of Scottish and French words, where
+the Doric plainness of the one, and the intelligent expression of the
+other, offer curious instances of the influence of manners over language;
+the diction of the royal author is a striking evidence of the intermixture
+of the two nations, and of a court which had marked its divided interests
+by its own chequered language.
+
+[Footnote A: James, early in life, was a fine scholar, and a lover of
+the ancient historians, as appears from an accidental expression of
+Buchanan's, in his dedication to James of his "Baptistes;" referring to
+Sallust, he adds, _apud_ TUUM _Salustium_.]
+
+This royal manual still interests a philosophical mind; like one of those
+antique and curious pictures we sometimes discover in a cabinet,--studied
+for the costume; yet where the touches of nature are true, although the
+colouring is brown and faded; but there is a force, and sometimes even a
+charm, in the ancient simplicity, to which even the delicacy of taste may
+return, not without pleasure. The king tells his son:--
+
+"Sith all people are naturally inclined to follow their prince's example,
+in your own person make your wordes and deedes to fight together; and let
+your own life be a law-book and a mirror to your people, that therein they
+may read the practice of their own lawes, and see by your image what life
+they should lead.
+
+"But vnto one faulte is all the common people of this kingdome subject, as
+well burgh as land; which is, to judge and speak rashly of their prince,
+setting the commonweale vpon foure props, as wee call it; euer wearying of
+the present estate, and desirous of nouelties." The remedy the king
+suggests, "besides the execution of laws that are to be vsed against
+vnreuerent speakers," is so to rule, as that "the subjects may not only
+live in suretie and wealth, but be stirred up to open their mouthes in
+your iust praise."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+JAMES THE FIRST'S IDEA OF A TYRANT AND A KING.
+
+
+The royal author distinguishes a king from a tyrant on their first
+entrance into the government:--
+
+"A tyrant will enter like a saint, till he find himself fast under foot,
+and then will suffer his unruly affections to burst forth." He advises the
+prince to act contrary to Nero, who, at first, "with his tender-hearted
+wish, _vellem nescire literas_," appeared to lament that he was to execute
+the laws. He, on the contrary, would have the prince early show "the
+severitie of justice, which will settle the country, and make them know
+that ye can strike: this would be but for a time. If otherwise ye kyth
+(show) your clemencie at the first the offences would soon come to such
+heapes, and the contempt of you grow so great, that when ye would fall to
+punish the number to be punished would exceed the innocent; and ye would,
+against your nature, be compelled then to wracke manie, whom the
+chastisement of few in the beginning might have preserved. In this my own
+dear-bought experience may serve you for a different lesson. For I
+confess, where I thought (by being gracious at the beginning) to gain all
+men's heart to a loving and willing obedience, I by the contrarie found
+the disorder of the countrie, and the loss of my thanks, to be all my
+reward."
+
+James, in the course of the work, often instructs the prince by his own
+errors and misfortunes; and certainly one of these was an excess of the
+kinder impulses in granting favours; there was nothing selfish in his
+happiness; James seemed to wish that every one around him should
+participate in the fulness of his own enjoyment. His hand was always open
+to scatter about him honours and wealth, and not always on unworthy
+favourites, but often on learned men whose talents he knew well to
+appreciate. There was a warmth in the king's temper which once he himself
+well described; he did not like those who pride themselves on their tepid
+dispositions. "I love not one that will never be angry, for as he that is
+without sorrow is without gladness, so he that is without anger is without
+love. Give me the heart of a man, and out of that all his actions shall be
+acceptable." The king thus addresses the prince:--
+
+_On the Choice of Servants and Associates_.
+
+"Be not moved with importunities; for the which cause, as also for
+augmenting your Maiestie, be not so facile of access-giving at all times,
+as I have been."--In his minority, the choice of his servants had been
+made by others, "recommending servants unto me, more for serving, in
+effect, their friends that put them in, than their maister that admitted
+them, and used them well, at the first rebellion raised against me. Chuse
+you your own servantes for your own vse, and not for the vse of others;
+and, since ye must be _communis parens_ to all your people, chuse
+indifferentlie out of all quarters; not respecting other men's appetites,
+but their own qualities. For as you must command all, so reason would ye
+should be served of all.--Be a daily watchman over your own servants, that
+they obey your laws precisely: for how can your laws be kept in the
+country, if they be broken at your eare!--Bee homelie or strange with
+them, as ye think their behaviour deserveth and their nature may bear
+ill.--Employ every man as ye think him qualified, but use not one in all
+things, lest he wax proud, and be envied by his fellows.--As for the other
+sort of your companie and servants, they ought to be of perfect age, see
+they be of a good fame; otherwise what can the people think but that ye
+have chosen a companion unto you according to your own humour, and so have
+preferred those men for the love of their vices and crimes, that ye knew
+them to be guiltie of. For the people, that see you not within, cannot
+judge of you but according to the outward appearance of your actions and
+company, which only is subject to their sight."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE REVOLUTIONISTS OF THAT AGE.
+
+
+James I. has painted, with vivid touches, the Anti-Monarchists,
+or revolutionists, of his time.
+
+He describes "their imagined democracie, where they fed themselves with
+the hope to become _tribunî plebi_; and so, in a popular government, by
+leading the people by the nose, to bear the sway of all the rule.--Every
+faction," he adds, "always joined them. I was ofttimes calumniated in
+their popular sermons, not for any evill or vice in me,[A] but because I
+was a king, which they thought the highest evill; and, because they were
+ashamed to professe this quarrel, they were busie to look narrowly in all
+my actions, pretending to distinguish the lawfulness of the office from
+the vice of the person; yet some of them would snapper out well grossly
+with the trewth of their intentions, informing the people that all kings
+and princes were naturally enemies to the liberties of the Church; whereby
+the ignorant were emboldened (as bayards),[B] to cry the learned and
+modest out of it: but their parity is the mother of confusion, and enemie
+to vnitie, which is the mother of order." And it is not without eloquence
+his Majesty describes these factious Anti-Monarchists, as "Men, whom no
+deserts can oblige, neither oaths nor promises bind; breathing nothing but
+sedition and calumnies, aspiring without measure, railing without reason,
+and making their own imaginations the square of their conscience. I
+protest, before the great God, and, since I am here as vpon my testament,
+it is no place for me to lie in, that ye shall never find with any
+Hie-land, or Border theeves, greater ingratitude, and more lies and vile
+perjuries: ye may keep them for trying your patience, as Socrates did an
+evill wife."
+
+[Footnote A: The conduct of James I. in Scotland has even extorted praise
+from one of his bitterest calumniators; for Mrs. Macaulay has said--"His
+conduct, when King of Scotland, was in many points unexceptionable."]
+
+[Footnote B: An old French word, expressing, "A man that gapes or gazes
+earnestly at a thing; a fly-catcher; a greedy and unmannerly beholder."--
+COTGRAVE.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+OF THE NOBILITY OF SCOTLAND.
+
+
+The king makes three great divisions of the Scottish people: the church,
+the nobility, and the burghers.
+
+Of the nobility, the king counsels the prince to check
+
+"A fectless arrogant conceit of their greatness and power, drinking in
+with their very nourish-milk. Teach your nobilitie to keep your lawes, as
+precisely as the meanest; fear not their orping, or being discontented, as
+long as ye rule well: for their pretended reformation of princes taketh
+never effect, but where evil government proceedeth. Acquaint yourself so
+with all the honest men of your barone and gentlemen, giving access so
+open and affable, to make their own suites to you themselves, and not to
+employ the great lordes, their intercessours; so shall ye bring to a
+measure their monstrous backes. And for their barbarous feîdes (feuds),
+put the laws to due execution made by mee there-anent; beginning ever
+rathest at him that yee love best, and is oblished vnto you, to make him
+an example to the rest. Make all your reformations to begin at your elbow,
+and so by degrees to the extremities of the land."
+
+He would not, however, that the prince should highly contemn the nobility:
+"Remember, howe that error brake the king, my grandfather's heart.
+Consider that vertue followeth oftest noble blood: the more frequently
+that your court can be garnished with them, as peers and fathers of your
+land, thinke it the more your honour."
+
+He impresses on the mind of the prince ever to embrace the quarrel of the
+poor and the sufferer, and to remember the honourable title given to his
+grandfather, in being called "The poor man's king."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+OF COLONISING.
+
+
+James I. had a project of improving the state of those that dwelt in
+the isles, "who are so utterly barbarous," by intermixing some of the
+semi-civilised Highlanders, and planting colonies among them of inland
+subjects.
+
+"I have already made laws against the over-lords, and the chief of their
+clannes, and it would be no difficultie to danton them; so rooting out, or
+transporting the barbarous and stubborn sort, and planting civilised in
+their rooms."
+
+This was as wise a scheme as any modern philosopher could have suggested,
+and, with the conduct he subsequently pursued in Ireland, may be referred
+to as splendid proofs of the kingly duties so zealously performed by this
+monarch.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+OF MERCHANTS.
+
+
+Of merchants, as this king understood the commercial character, he had no
+honourable notion.
+
+He says, "They think the whole commonwealth ordained for raising them up,
+and accounting it their lawful gain to enrich themselves upon the losses
+of the rest of the people."
+
+We are not to censure James I. for his principles of political economy,
+which then had not assumed the dignity of a science; his rude and simple
+ideas convey popular truths.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+REGULATIONS FOR THE PRINCE'S MANNERS AND HABITS.
+
+
+The last portion of the "Basilicon Doron" is devoted to domestic
+regulations for the prince, respecting his manners and habits; which the
+king calls "the indifferent actions of a man."
+
+"A king is set as one on a stage, whose smallest actions and gestures all
+the people gazinglie do behold; and, however just in the discharge of his
+office, yet, if his behaviour be light or dissolute, in indifferent
+actions, the people, who see but the outward part, conceive pre-occupied
+conceits of the king's inward intention, which, although with time, the
+trier of truth, will evanish by the evidence of the contrarie effect, yet
+_interim patitur justus_, and pre-judged conceits will, in the meantime,
+breed contempt, the mother of rebellion and disorder. Besides," the king
+adds, "the indifferent actions and behaviour of a man have a certain
+holding and dependence upon vertue or vice, according as they are used or
+ruled."
+
+The prince is not to keep regular hours,
+
+"That any time in the four and twentie hours may be alike to you; thereby
+your diet may be accommodated to your affairs, and not your affairs to
+your diet."
+
+The prince is to eat in public, "to shew that he loves not to haunt
+companie, which is one of the marks of a tyrant, and that he delights not
+to eat privatelie, ashamed of his gluttonie." As a curious instance of the
+manners of the times, the king advises the prince "to use mostly to eat of
+reasonablie-grosse and common-meats; not only for making your bodie strong
+for travel, as that ye may be the hartlier received by your meane subiects
+in their houses, when their cheere may suffice you, which otherwaies would
+be imputed to you for pride, and breed coldness and disdain in them."
+
+I have noticed his counsel against the pedantry or other affectations of
+style in speaking.
+
+He adds, "Let it be plaine, natural, comelie, cleane, short, and
+sententious."
+
+In his gestures "he is neither to look sillily, like a stupid pedant; nor
+unsettledly, with an uncouth morgue, like a new-come-over cavalier; not
+over sparing in your courtesies, for that will be imputed to incivilitie
+and arrogance; nor yet over prodigal in jowking or nodding at every step,
+for that forme of being popular becometh better aspiring Absaloms than
+lawful kings; forming ever your gesture according to your present action;
+looking gravely, and with a majestie, when ye sit upon judgment, or give
+audience to embassadors; homely, when ye are in private with your own
+servants; merrily, when ye are at any pastime, or merry discourse; and let
+your countenance smell of courage and magnanimity when at the warres. And
+remember (I say again) to be plaine and sensible in your language; for
+besides, it is the tongue's office to be the messenger of the mind; it may
+be thought a point of imbecilitie of spirit in a king to speak obscurely,
+much more untrewely, as if he stood in awe of any in uttering his
+thoughts."
+
+Should the prince incline to be an author, the king adds--
+
+"If your engine (genius) spur you to write any workes, either in prose or
+verse, I cannot but allow you to practise it; but take no longsome works
+in hande, for distracting you from your calling."
+
+He reminds the prince with dignity and truth,
+
+"Your writes (writings) will remain as the true picture of your minde, to
+all posterities; if yee would write worthelie, chuse subjects worthie of
+you." His critical conception of the nature of poetry is its best
+definition. "If ye write in verse, remember that it is not the principal
+part of a poem to rime right, and flow well with many prettie wordes; but
+the chief commendation of a poem is, that when the verse shall bee taken
+sundry in prose, it shall be found so ritch in quick inventions and
+poetick floures, and in fair and pertinent comparisons, as it shall retain
+the lustre of a poem although in prose."
+
+The king proceeds touching many curious points concerning the prince's
+bodily exercises and "house-pastimes." A genuine picture of the customs
+and manners of the age: our royal author had the eye of an observer, and
+the thoughtfulness of a sage.
+
+The king closes with the hope that the prince's "natural inclination will
+have a happie simpathie with these precepts; making the wise man's
+schoolmaister, which is the example of others, to be your teacher; and not
+that overlate repentance by your own experience, which is the
+schoolmaister of fools."
+
+Thus have I opened the book, and I believe, the heart of James I. The
+volume remains a perpetual witness to posterity of the intellectual
+capacity and the noble disposition of the royal author.
+
+But this monarch has been unfairly reproached both by the political and
+religious; as far as these aspersions connect themselves with his
+character, they enter into our inquiry.
+
+His speeches and his writings are perpetually quoted by democratic
+writers, with the furious zeal of those who are doing the work of a party;
+they never separate the character of James from his speculative principles
+of government; and, such is the odium they have raised against him, that
+this sovereign has received the execration, or the ridicule, even of those
+who do not belong to their party. James maintained certain abstract
+doctrines of the times, and had written on "The Prerogative Royal," and
+"The Trew Laws of Free Monarchies," as he had on witches and devils. All
+this verbal despotism is artfully converted into so many acts of despotism
+itself; and thus they contrive their dramatic exhibition of a blustering
+tyrant, in the person of a father of his people, who exercised his power
+without an atom of brutal despotism adhering to it.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE KING'S IDEA OF THE ROYAL PREROGATIVE.
+
+
+When James asserted that a king is above the laws, he did not understand
+this in the popular sense; nor was he the inventor or the reviver of
+similar doctrines. In all his mysterious flights on the nature of "The
+Prerogative Royal," James only maintained what Elizabeth and all the
+Tudors had, as jealously, but more energetically exercised.[A] Elizabeth
+left to her successor the royal prerogative strained to its highest pitch,
+with no means to support a throne which in the succeeding reign was found
+to be baseless. The king employed the style of absolute power, and, as
+Harris says, "entertained notions of his prerogative amazingly great, and
+bordering on impiety." It never occurred to his calumniators, who are
+always writing, without throwing themselves back into the age of their
+inquiries, that all the political reveries, the abstract notions, and the
+metaphysical fancies of James I. arose from his studious desire of being
+an English sovereign, according to the English constitution--for from
+thence he derived those very ideas.
+
+[Footnote A: In Sir Symund D'Ewes's "Journals of the Parliament," and in
+Townshend's "Historical Collections," we trace in some degree Elizabeth's
+arbitrary power concealed in her prerogative, which she always considered
+as the dissolving charm in the magical circle of our constitution. But I
+possess two letters of the French ambassador to Charles IX., written from
+our court in her reign; who, by means of his secret intercourse with those
+about her person, details a curious narrative of a royal interview granted
+to some deputies of the parliament, at that moment refractory, strongly
+depicting the exalted notions this great sovereign entertained of the
+prerogative, and which she asserted in stamping her foot.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE LAWYERS' IDEA OF THE ROYAL PREROGATIVE.
+
+
+The truth is, that lawyers, in their anxiety to define, or to defend the
+shadowy limits of the royal prerogative, had contrived some strange and
+clumsy fictions to describe its powers; their flatteries of the imaginary
+being, whom they called the sovereign, are more monstrous than all the
+harmless abstractions of James I.
+
+They describe an English sovereign as a mysterious being, invested with
+absolute perfection, and a fabulous immortality, whose person was
+inviolable by its sacredness. A king of England is not subject to death,
+since the sovereign is a corporation, expressed by the awful plural the
+OUR and the WE. His majesty is always of full age, though in infancy; and
+so unlike mortality, the king can do no wrong. Such his ubiquity, that he
+acts at the same moment in different places; and such the force of his
+testimony, that whatever the sovereign declares to have passed in his
+presence, becomes instantly a perpetual record; he serves for his own
+witness, by the simple subscription of _Teste me ipso_; and he is so
+absolute in power, beyond the laws, that he quashes them by his negative
+voice.[A] Such was the origin of the theoretical prerogative of an ideal
+sovereign which James I. had formed: it was a mere curious abstraction of
+the schools in the spirit of the age, which was perpetually referring to
+the mysteries of state and the secrets of empires, and not a principle he
+was practising to the detriment of the subject.
+
+[Footnote A: Such are the descriptions of the British sovereign, to be
+found in Cowell's curious book, entitled "The Interpreter." The reader may
+further trace the modern genius of Blackstone, with an awful reverence,
+dignifying the venerable nonsense--and the commentator on Blackstone
+sometimes labouring to explain the explanations of his master; so obscure,
+so abstract, and so delicate is the phantom which our ancient lawyers
+conjured up, and which the moderns cannot lay.]
+
+James I. while he held for his first principle that a sovereign is only
+accountable to God for the sins of his government, an harmless and even a
+noble principle in a religious prince, at various times acknowledged that
+"a king is ordained for procuring the prosperity of his people." In his
+speech, 1603, he says,
+
+"If you be rich I cannot be poor; if you be happy I cannot but be
+fortunate. My worldly felicity consists in your prosperity. And that I am
+a servant is most true, as I am a head and governour of all the people in
+my dominions. If we take the people as one body, then as the head is
+ordained for the body and not the body for the head, so must a righteous
+king know himself to be ordained for his people, and not his people for
+him."
+
+The truth is always concealed by those writers who are cloaking their
+antipathy against monarchy, in their declamations against the writings of
+James I. Authors, who are so often influenced by the opinions of their
+age, have the melancholy privilege of perpetuating them, and of being
+cited as authorities for those very opinions, however erroneous.
+
+At this time the true principles of popular liberty, hidden in the
+constitution, were yet obscure and contested; involved in contradiction,
+in assertion and recantation;[A] and they have been established as much by
+the blood as by the ink of our patriots. Some noble spirits in the Commons
+were then struggling to fix the vacillating principles of our government;
+but often their private passions were infused into their public feelings;
+James, who was apt to imagine that these individuals were instigated by a
+personal enmity in aiming at his mysterious prerogative, and at the same
+time found their rivals with equal weight opposing the novel opinions,
+retreated still farther into the depths and arcana of the constitution.
+Modern writers have viewed the political fancies of this monarch through
+optical instruments not invented in his days.
+
+[Footnote A: Cowell, equally learned and honest, involved himself in
+contradictory positions, and was alike prosecuted by the King and the
+Commons, on opposite principles. The overbearing Coke seems to have aimed
+at his life, which the lenity of James saved. His work is a testimony of
+the unsettled principles of liberty at that time; Cowell was compelled to
+appeal to one part of his book to save himself from the other.]
+
+When Sir Edward Coke declared that the king's royal prerogative being
+unlimited and undefined, "was a great overgrown monster;" and, on one
+occasion, when Coke said before the king, that "his Majesty was defended
+by the laws,"--James, in anger, told him he spoke foolishly, and he said
+he was not defended by the laws, but by God (alluding to his "divine
+right"); and sharply reprimanded him for having spoken irreverently of Sir
+Thomas Crompton, a civilian; asserting, that Crompton was as good a man as
+Coke. The fact is, there then existed a rivalry between the civil and the
+common lawyers. Coke declared that the common law of England was in
+imminent danger of being perverted; that law which he has enthusiastically
+described as the perfection of all sense and experience. Coke was
+strenuously opposed by Lord Bacon and by the civilians, and was at length
+committed to the Tower (according to a MS. letter of the day, for the
+cause is obscure in our history), "charged with speaking so in parliament
+as tended to stir up the subjects' hearts against their sovereign."[A] Yet
+in all this we must not regard James as the despot he is represented: he
+acted as Elizabeth would have acted, for the sacredness of his own person,
+and the integrity of the constitution. In the same manuscript letter I
+find that, when at Theobalds, the king, with his usual openness, was
+discoursing how he designed to govern; and as he would sometimes, like the
+wits of all nations and times, compress an argument into a play on
+words,--the king said, "I will govern according to the good of the
+_common-weal_, but not according to the _common-will!_"
+
+[Footnote A: The following anecdotes of Lord Chief Justice Coke have not
+been published. They are extracts from manuscript letters of the times: on
+that occasion, at first, the patriot did not conduct himself with the
+firmness of a great spirit.
+
+_Nov. 19, 1616._
+
+"The thunderbolt hath fallen on the Lord Coke, which hath overthrown him
+from the very roots. The supersedeas was carried to him by Sir George
+Coppin, who, at the presenting of it, received it with dejection and
+tears. _Tremor et successio non cadunt in fortem et constantem_. I send
+you a distich on the Lord Coke--
+
+ "Jus condere Cocus potuit, sed condere jure
+ Non potuit; potuit condere jura cocis."
+
+It happened that the name of Coke, or rather Cook, admitted of being
+punned on, both in Latin and in English: for he was lodged in the Tower,
+in a room that had once been a kitchen, and as soon as he arrived, one had
+written on the door, which he read at his entrance--
+
+ "This room has long wanted a Cook."
+
+"The Prince interceding lately for _Edward Coke_, his Majesty answered,
+'He knew no such man.' When the Prince interceded by the name of Mr. Coke,
+his Majesty still answered, 'He knew none of that name neither; but he
+knew there was one Captain Coke, the leader of the faction in
+parliament.'"
+
+In another letter, Coke appears with greater dignity. When Lord Arundel
+was sent by the king to Coke, a prisoner in the Tower, to inform him that
+his Majesty would allow him to consult with eight of the best learned in
+the law to advise him for his cause, Coke thanked the king, but he knew
+himself to be accounted to have as much skill in the law as any man in
+England, and therefore needed no such help, nor feared to be judged by the
+law. He knew his Majesty might easily find, in such a one as he, whereby
+to take away his head; but for this he feared not what could be said.
+
+"I have heard you affirm," said Lord Arundel, "that by law, he that should
+go about to withdraw the subjects' hearts from their king was a traitor."
+Sir Edward answered, "That he held him an arch-traitor."
+
+James I. said of Coke, "That he had so many shifts that, throw him where
+you would, he still fell upon his legs."
+
+This affair ended with putting Sir Edward Coke on his knees before the
+council-table, with an order to retire to a private life, to correct his
+book of Reports, and occasionally to consult the king himself. This
+part of Coke's history is fully opened in Mr. Alexander Chalmers's
+"Biographical Dictionary."]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE KING'S ELEVATED CONCEPTION OF THE KINGLY CHARACTER.
+
+
+But what were the real thoughts and feelings of this presumed despot
+concerning the duties of a sovereign? His Platonic conceptions inspired
+the most exalted feelings; but his gentle nature never led to one act of
+unfeeling despotism. His sceptre was wreathed with the roses of his fancy:
+the iron of arbitrary power only struck into the heart in the succeeding
+reign. James only menaced with an abstract notion; or, in anger, with his
+own hand would tear out a protestation from the journals of the Commons:
+and, when he considered a man as past forgiveness, he condemned him to a
+slight imprisonment; or removed him to a distant employment; or, if an
+author, like Coke and Cowell, sent him into retirement to correct his
+works.
+
+In a great court of judicature, when the interference of the royal
+authority was ardently solicited, the magnanimous monarch replied:--
+
+"Kings ruled by their laws, as God did by the laws of nature; and ought as
+rarely to put in use their supreme authority as God does his power of
+working miracles."
+
+Notwithstanding his abstract principles, his knowledge and reflection
+showed him that there is a crisis in monarchies and a period in empires;
+and in discriminating between a king and a tyrant, he tells the prince--
+
+"A tyranne's miserable and infamous life armeth in end his own subjects to
+become his burreaux; and although this rebellion be ever unlawful on their
+part, yet is the world so wearied of him, that his fall is little meaned
+(minded) by the rest of his subjects, and smiled at by his neighbours."
+
+And he desires that the prince, his son, should so perform his royal
+duties, that, "In case ye fall in the highway, yet it should be with the
+honourable report and just regret of all honest men." In the dedicatory
+sonnet to Prince Henry of the "Basilicon Doron," in verses not without
+elevation, James admonishes the prince to
+
+ Represse the proud, maintaining aye the right;
+ Walk always so, as ever in his sight,
+ Who guards the godly, plaguing the prophane.
+
+The poems of James I. are the versifications of a man of learning and
+meditation. Such an one could not fail of producing lines which reflect
+the mind of their author. I find in a MS. these couplets, which condense
+an impressive thought on a favourite subject:--
+
+ Crownes have their compasse, length of daies their date,
+ Triumphs their tombes, Felicitie her fate;
+ Of more than earth, can earth make none partaker;
+ But knowledge makes the king most like his Maker.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: "Harl. MSS.," 6824.]
+
+These are among the elevated conceptions the king had formed of the
+character of a sovereign, and the feeling was ever present in his mind.
+James has preserved an anecdote of Henry VIII., in commenting on it, which
+serves our purpose:--
+
+"It was strange," said James I., "to look into the life of Henry VIII.,
+how like an epicure he lived! Henry once asked, whether he might be saved?
+He was answered, 'That he had no cause to fear, having lived so mighty a
+king.' 'But, oh!' said he, 'I have lived too like a king.' He should
+rather have said, not like a king--for the office of a king is to do
+justice and equity; but he only served his sensuality, like a beast."
+
+Henry VII. was the favourite character of James I.; and it was to gratify
+the king that Lord Bacon wrote the life of this wise and prudent monarch.
+It is remarkable of James I., that he never mentioned the name of
+Elizabeth without some expressive epithet of reverence; such as, "The late
+queen of famous memory;" a circumstance not common among kings, who do not
+like to remind the world of the reputation of a great predecessor. But it
+suited the generous temper of that man to extol the greatness he admired,
+whose philosophic toleration was often known to have pardoned the libel on
+himself for the redeeming virtue of its epigram. In his forgiving temper,
+James I. would call such effusions "the superfluities of idle brains."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+"THE BOOK OF SPORTS."
+
+
+But while the mild government of this monarch has been covered with the
+political odium of arbitrary power, he has also incurred a religious one,
+from his design of rendering the Sabbath a day for the poor alike of
+devotion and enjoyment, hitherto practised in England, as it is still
+throughout Europe. Plays were performed on Sundays at court, in
+Elizabeth's reign; and yet "the Protestants of Elizabeth" was the
+usual expressive phrase to mark those who did most honour to the reformed.
+The king, returning from Scotland, found the people in Lancashire
+discontented, from the unusual deprivation of their popular recreations on
+Sundays and holidays, after the church service. "With our own ears we
+heard the general complaint of our people." The Catholic priests were
+busily insinuating among the lower orders that the reformed religion was a
+sullen deprivation of all mirth and social amusements, and thus "turning
+the people's hearts." But while they were denied what the king terms
+"lawful recreations,"[A] they had substituted more vicious ones: alehouses
+were more frequented--drunkenness more general--tale-mongery and sedition,
+the vices of sedentary idleness, prevailed--while a fanatical gloom was
+spreading over the country.
+
+[Footnote A: These are enumerated to consist of dancing, archery, leaping,
+vaulting, May-games, Whitsun-ales, Morris-dances, and the setting up of
+May-poles, and other manly sports.]
+
+The king, whose gaiety of temper instantly sympathised with the multitude,
+and perhaps alarmed at this new shape which puritanism was assuming,
+published what is called "The Book of Sports," and which soon obtained the
+contemptuous term of "The Dancing Book."
+
+On this subject our recent principles have governed our decisions:
+with our habits formed, and our notions finally adjusted, this singular
+state-paper has been reprobated by piety; whose zeal, however, is not
+sufficiently historical. It was one of the state maxims of this
+philosophic monarch, in his advice to his son,
+
+"To allure the common people to a common amitie among themselves; and that
+certain daies in the yeere should be appointed for delighting the people
+with public spectacles of all honest games and exercise of arms; making
+playes and lawful games in Maie, and good cheare at Christmas; as also for
+convening of neighbours, for entertaining friendship and heartliness, by
+honest feasting and merriness; so that the sabbothes be kept holie, and no
+unlawful pastime be used. This form of contenting the people's minds hath
+been used in all well-governed republics."
+
+James, therefore, was shocked at the sudden melancholy among the people.
+In Europe, even among the reformed themselves, the Sabbath, after
+church-service, was a festival-day; and the wise monarch, could discover
+no reason why, in his kingdom, it should prove a day of penance and
+self-denial: but when once this unlucky "Book of Sports" was thrown among
+the nation, they discovered, to their own astonishment, that everything
+concerning the nature of the Sabbath was uncertain.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE SABBATARIAN CONTROVERSY.
+
+
+And, because they knew nothing, they wrote much. The controversy was
+carried to an extremity in the succeeding reign. The proper hour of the
+Sabbath was not agreed on: Was it to commence on the Saturday-eve? Others
+thought that time, having a circular motion, the point we begin at was not
+important, provided the due portion be completed. Another declared, in his
+"Sunday no Sabbath," that it was merely an ecclesiastical day which may be
+changed at pleasure; as they were about doing it, in the Church of Geneva,
+to Thursday,--probably from their antipathy to the Catholic Sunday, as the
+early Christians had anciently changed it from the Jewish Saturday. This
+had taken place, had the Thursday voters not formed the minority. Another
+asserted, that Sunday was a working day, and that Saturday was the
+perpetual Sabbath.[A] Some deemed the very name of Sunday profaned the
+Christian mouth, as allusive to the Saxon idolatry of that day being
+dedicated to the Sun; and hence they sanctified it with the "Lord's-day."
+Others were strenuous advocates for closely copying the austerity of the
+Jewish Sabbath, in all the rigour of the Levitical law; forbidding meat to
+be dressed, houses swept, fires kindled, &c.,--the day of rest was to be a
+day of mortification. But this spread an alarm, that "the old rotten
+ceremonial law of the Jews, which had been buried in the grave of Jesus,"
+was about to be revived. And so prone is man to the reaction of opinion,
+that, from observing the Sabbath with a Judaic austerity, some were for
+rejecting "Lord's-days" altogether; asserting, they needed not any;
+because, in their elevated holiness, all days to them were Lord's-days.[B]
+A popular preacher at the Temple, who was disposed to keep alive a
+cheerful spirit among the people, yet desirous that the sacred day should
+not pass like any other, moderated between the parties. He declared it was
+to be observed with strictness only by "persons of quality."[C]
+
+[Footnote A: Collier's "Ecclesiastical History," vol. ii. p. 758.]
+
+[Footnote B: Fuller's "Church History," book xi. p. 149. One of the most
+curious books of this class is Heylin's "History of the Sabbath," a work
+abounding with uncommon researches; it was written in favour of Charles's
+declaration for reviving lawful sports on Sundays. Warton, in the _first_
+edition of Milton's "Juvenile Poems," observed in a note on the lady's
+speech, in Comus, verse 177, that "it is owing to the Puritans ever since
+Cromwell's time that _Sunday_ has been made in England a day of gravity
+and severity: and many a staunch observer of the rites of the Church of
+England little suspects that he is conforming to the _Calvinism_ of an
+_English Sunday_." It is probable this gave unjust offence to grave heads
+unfurnished with their own national history, for in the _second edition_
+Warton cancelled the note. Truth is thus violated. The Puritans, disgusted
+with the levities and excesses of the age of James and Charles, as is
+usual on these points, vehemently threw themselves into an opposite
+direction; but they perhaps advanced too far in converting the Sabbath-day
+into a sullen and gloomy reserve of pharisaical austerity. Adam Smith, and
+Paley, in his "Moral and Political Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 73, have taken
+more enlightened views on this subject.]
+
+[Footnote C: "Let servants," he says, "whose hands are ever working,
+whilst their eyes are waking; let such who all the foregoing week had
+their cheeks moistened with sweat, and their hands hardened with labour,
+let such have some recreations on the Lord's-day indulged to them; whilst
+_persons of quality_, who may be said to keep Sabbath all the week long--I
+mean, who rest from hard labour--are concerned in conscience to observe
+the Lord's-day with the greater abstinence from recreations."]
+
+One of the chief causes of the civil war is traced to the revival of
+this "Book of Sports." Thus it happened that from the circumstance of our
+good-tempered monarch discovering the populace in Lancashire discontented,
+being debarred from their rustic sports--and, exhorting them, out of his
+_bonhomie_ and "fatherly love, which he owed to them all" (as he said), to
+recover their cheerful habits--he was innocently involving the country in
+divinity, and in civil war. James I. would have started with horror at the
+"Book of Sports," could he have presciently contemplated the archbishop,
+and the sovereign who persisted to revive it, dragged to the block. What
+invisible threads suspend together the most remote events!
+
+The parliament's armies usually chose Sundays for their battles, that the
+profanation of the day might be expiated by a field-sacrifice, and that
+the Sabbath-breakers should receive a signal punishment. The opinions of
+the nature of the Sabbath were, even in the succeeding reign, so opposite
+and novel, that plays were performed before Charles on Sundays. James I.,
+who knew nothing of such opinions, has been unjustly aspersed by those who
+live in more settled times, when such matters have been more wisely
+established than ever they were discussed.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: It is remarkable of James I. that he never pressed for the
+performance of any of his proclamations; and his facile disposition made
+him more tolerant than appears in our history. At this very time, the
+conduct of a lord mayor of London has been preserved by Wilson, as a proof
+of the city magistrate's piety, and, it may be added, of his wisdom. It is
+here adduced as an evidence of the king's usual conduct:--
+
+The king's carriages, removing to Theobalds on the Sabbath, occasioned a
+great clatter and noise in the time of divine service. The lord-mayor
+commanded them to be stopped, and the officers of the carriages, returning
+to the king, made violent complaints. The king, in a rage, swore he
+thought there had been no more kings in England than himself; and sent a
+warrant to the lord-mayor to let them pass, which he obeyed, observing--
+"While it was in my power, I did my duty; but that being taken away by a
+higher power, it is my duty to obey." The good sense of the lord-mayor so
+highly gratified James, that the king complimented him, and thanked him
+for it. Of such gentleness was the arbitrary power of James composed!]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+MOTIVES OF THE KING'S AVERSION TO WAR.
+
+
+The king's aversion to war has been attributed to his pusillanimity--as if
+personal was the same thing as political courage, and as if a king placed
+himself in a field of battle by a proclamation for war. The idle tale that
+James trembled at the mere view of a naked sword, which is produced as an
+instance of the effects of sympathy over the infant in the womb from his
+mother's terror at the assassination of Rizzio, is probably not true, yet
+it serves the purpose of inconsiderate writers to indicate his excessive
+pusillanimity; but there is another idle tale of an opposite nature which
+is certainly true:--In passing from Berwick into his new kingdom, the
+king, with his own hand, "shot out of a cannon so fayre and with so great
+judgment" as convinced the cannoniers of the king's skill "in great
+artillery," as Stowe records. It is probable, after all, that James I.
+was not deficient in personal courage, although this is not of consequence
+in his literary and political character. Several instances are recorded
+of his intrepidity. But the absurd charge of his pusillanimity and
+his pedantry has been carried so far, as to suppose that it affected
+his character as a sovereign. The warm and hasty Burnet says at once of
+James I.:--"He was despised by all abroad as a pedant without true
+judgment, courage, or steadiness." This "pedant," however, had "the true
+judgment and steadiness" to obtain his favourite purpose, which was the
+preservation of a continued peace. If James I. was sometimes despised by
+foreign powers, it was because an insular king, who will not consume the
+blood and treasure of his people (and James had neither to spare), may be
+little regarded on the Continent; the Machiavels of foreign cabinets will
+look with contempt on the domestic blessings a British sovereign would
+scatter among his subjects; his presence with the foreigners is only felt
+in his armies; and they seek to allure him to fight their battles, and to
+involve him in their interests.
+
+James looked with a cold eye on the military adventurer: he said, "No man
+gains by war but he that hath not wherewith to live in peace." But there
+was also a secret motive, which made the king a lover of peace, and which
+he once thus confidentially opened:--
+
+"A king of England had no reason but to seek always to decline a war; for
+though the sword was indeed in his hand, the purse was in the people's.
+One could not go without the other. Suppose a supply were levied to begin
+the fray, what certainty could he have that he should not want sufficient
+to make an honourable end? If he called for subsidies, and did not obtain,
+he must retreat ingloriously. He must beg an alms, with such conditions as
+would break the heart of majesty, through capitulations that _some members
+would make, who desire to improve the reputation of their wisdom, by
+retrenching the dignity of the crown in popular declamations_, and thus he
+must buy the soldier's pay, or fear the danger of a mutiny."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Hacket's "Life of Lord-Keeper Williams," p. 80. The whole is
+distinguished by italics, as the king's own words.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+JAMES ACKNOWLEDGES HIS DEPENDENCE ON THE COMMONS. THEIR CONDUCT.
+
+
+Thus James I., perpetually accused of exercising arbitrary power,
+confesses a humiliating dependence on the Commons; and, on the whole, at a
+time when prerogative and privilege were alike indefinite and obscure, the
+king received from them hard and rigorous usage. A king of peace claimed
+the indulgence, if not the gratitude, of the people; and the sovereign who
+was zealous to correct the abuses of his government, was not distinguished
+by the Commons from him who insolently would perpetuate them.
+
+When the Commons were not in good humour with Elizabeth, or James, they
+contrived three methods of inactivity, running the time to waste--_nihil
+agendo_, or _aliud agendo_, or _malè agendo_; doing nothing, doing
+something else, or doing evilly.[A] In one of these irksome moments,
+waiting for subsidies, Elizabeth anxiously inquired of the Speaker, "What
+had passed in the Lower House?" He replied, "If it please your Majesty--
+seven weeks." On one of those occasions, when the queen broke into a
+passion when they urged her to a settlement of the succession, one
+of the deputies of the Commons informed her Majesty, that "the Commons
+would never _speak_ about a subsidy, or any other matter whatever; and
+that hitherto nothing but the most trivial discussions had passed in
+parliament: which was, therefore, a great assembly rendered entirely
+useless,--and all were desirous of returning home."[B]
+
+[Footnote A: I find this description in a MS. letter of the times.]
+
+[Footnote B: From a MS. letter of the French ambassador, La Mothe Fenelon,
+to Charles IX., then at the court of London, in my possession.]
+
+But the more easy and open nature of James I. endured greater hardships:
+with the habit of studious men, the king had an utter carelessness of
+money and a generosity of temper, which Hacket, in his Life of the
+Lord-Keeper Williams, has described. "The king was wont to give like a
+king, and for the most part to keep one act of liberality warm with
+the covering of another." He seemed to have had no distinct notions of
+total amounts; he was once so shocked at the sight of the money he had
+granted away, lying in heaps on a table, that he instantly reduced it to
+half the sum. It appears that Parliament never granted even the ordinary
+supplies they had given to his predecessors; his chief revenue was drawn
+from the customs; yet his debts, of which I find an account in the
+Parliamentary History, after a reign of twenty-one years, did not amount
+to 200,000_l._[A] This monarch could not have been so wasteful of his
+revenues as it is presumed. James I. was always generous, and left
+scarcely any debts. He must have lived amidst many self-deprivations; nor
+was this difficult to practise for this king, for he was a philosopher,
+indifferent to the common and imaginary wants of the vulgar of royalty.
+Whenever he threw himself into the arms of his Parliament, they left him
+without a feeling of his distress. In one of his speeches he says--
+
+"In the last Parliament I laid open the true thoughts of my heart; but I
+may say, with our Saviour, 'I have piped to you, and you have not danced;
+I have mourned, and you have not lamented.' I have reigned eighteen years,
+in which time you have had peace, and I have received far less supply than
+hath been given to any king since the Conquest."
+
+[Footnote A: "Parliamentary History," vol. v. p. 147.]
+
+Thus James, denied the relief he claimed, was forced on wretched
+expedients, selling patents for monopolies, craving benevolences, or free
+gifts, and such expedients; the monopolies had been usual in Elizabeth's
+reign; yet all our historians agree, that his subjects were never
+grievously oppressed by such occasional levies; this was even the
+confession of the contemporaries of this monarch. They were every day
+becoming wealthier by those acts of peace they despised the monarch for
+maintaining. "The kingdom, since his reign began, was luxuriant in gold
+and silver, far above the scant of our fathers who lived before us," are
+the words of a contemporary.[A] All flourished about the king, except the
+king himself. James I. discovered how light and hollow was his boasted
+"prerogative-royal," which, by its power of dissolving the Parliament,
+could only keep silent those who had already refused their aid.
+
+[Footnote A: Hacket's "Life of Lord-Keeper Williams."]
+
+A wit of the day described the Parliaments of James by this ludicrous
+distich:
+
+ Many faults complained of, few things amended,
+ A subsidy granted, the Parliament ended.
+
+But this was rarely the fact. Sometimes they addressed James I. by what
+the king called a "stinging petition;" or, when the minister, passing over
+in silence the motion of the Commons, pressed for supplies, the heads of a
+party replied, that to grant them were to put an end to Parliament. But
+they practised expedients and contrivances, which comported as little with
+the dignity of an English senate, as with the majesty of the sovereign.
+
+At a late hour, when not a third part of the house remained, and those who
+required a fuller house, amid darkness and confusion, were neither seen
+nor heard, they made a protest,--of which the king approved as little of
+the ambiguous matter, as the surreptitious means; and it was then, that,
+with his own hand, he tore the leaf out of the journal.[A] In the sessions
+of 1614 the king was still more indignant at their proceedings. He and the
+Scotch had been vilified by their invectives; and they were menaced by two
+lawyers, with a "Sicilian vespers, or a Parisian matins." They aimed to
+reduce the king to beggary, by calling in question a third part of his
+revenue, contesting his prerogative in levying his customs. On this
+occasion I find that, publicly in the Banqueting-house at Whitehall, the
+king tore all their bills before their faces; and, as not a single act was
+passed, in the phrase of the day this was called an _addle_ Parliament.[B]
+Such unhappy proceedings indicated the fatal divisions of the succeeding
+reign. A meeting of a different complexion, once occurred in 1621, late in
+James's reign. The monopolies were then abolished. The king and the prince
+shed reciprocal tears in the house; and the prince wept when he brought an
+affectionate message of thanks from the Commons. The letter-writer says,
+"It is a day worthy to be kept holiday; some say it shall, but I believe
+them not." It never was; for even this parliament broke up with the cries
+of "some tribunitial orators," as James designated the pure and the impure
+democratic spirits. Smollett remarks in his margin, that the king
+endeavoured to _cajole_ the Commons. Had he known of the royal tears, he
+had still heightened the phrase. Hard fate of kings! Should ever their
+tears attest the warmth of honest feelings, they must be thrown out of the
+pale of humanity: for Francis Osborne, that cynical republican, declares,
+that "there are as few abominable princes as tolerable kings; because
+princes must court the public favour before they attain supreme power, and
+then change their nature!" Such is the egotism of republicanism!
+
+[Footnote A: "Rushworth," vol. i. p. 54.]
+
+[Footnote B: From a MS. of the times.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+SCANDALOUS CHRONICLES.
+
+
+The character of James I. has always been taken from certain scandalous
+chronicles, whose origin requires detection. It is this mud which has
+darkened and disturbed the clear stream of history. The reigns of
+Elizabeth and James teemed with libels in church and state from opposite
+parties: the idleness of the pacific court of James I. hatched a viperous
+brood of a less hardy, but perhaps of a more malignant nature, than the
+Martin Mar-prelates of the preceding reign. Those boldly at once wrote
+treason, and, in some respects, honestly dared the rope which could only
+silence Penry and his party; but these only reached to _scandalum
+magnatum_, and the puny wretches could only have crept into a pillory. In
+the times of the Commonwealth, when all things were agreeable which
+vilified our kings, these secret histories were dragged from their lurking
+holes. The writers are meagre Suetoniuses and Procopiuses; a set of
+self-elected spies in the court; gossipers, lounging in the same circle;
+eaves-droppers; pryers into corners; buzzers of reports; and punctual
+scribes of what the French (so skilful in the profession) technically term
+_les on dit_; that is, things that might never have happened, although
+they are recorded: registered for posterity in many a scandalous
+chronicle, they have been mistaken for histories; and include so many
+truths and falsehoods, that it becomes unsafe for the historian either to
+credit or to disbelieve them.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Most of these works were meanly printed, and were usually
+found in a state of filth and rags, and would have perished in their own
+merited neglect, had they not been recently splendidly reprinted by Sir
+Walter Scott. Thus the garbage has been cleanly laid on a fashionable
+epergne, and found quite to the taste of certain lovers of authentic
+history! Sir Anthony Weldon, clerk of the king's kitchen, in his "Court of
+King James" has been reproached for gaining much of his scandalous
+chronicle from the purlieus of the court. For this work and some similar
+ones, especially "The None-Such Charles," in which it would appear that he
+had procured materials from the State Paper Office, and for other zealous
+services to the Parliament, they voted him a grant of 500_l_. "The Five
+Years of King James," which passes under the name of Sir Fulk Greville,
+the dignified friend of the romantic Sir Philip Sidney, and is frequently
+referred to by grave writers, is certainly a Presbyterian's third day's
+hash--for there are parts copied from Arthur Wilson's "History of James
+I.," who was himself the pensioner of a disappointed courtier; yet this
+writer never attacks the personal character of the king, though charged
+with having scraped up many tales maliciously false. Osborne is a
+misanthropical politician, who cuts with the most corroding pen that ever
+rottened a man's name. James was very negligent in dress; graceful
+appearances did not come into his studies. Weldon tells us how the king
+was trussed on horseback, and fixed there like a pedlar's pack or a lump
+of inanimate matter; the truth is, the king had always an infirmity in his
+legs. Further, we are told that this ridiculous monarch allowed his hat to
+remain just as it chanced to be placed on his head. Osborne once saw this
+unlucky king "in a green hunting-dress, with a feather in his cap, and a
+horn, instead of a sword, by his side; how suitable to his age, calling,
+or person, I leave others to judge from his pictures:" and this he
+bitterly calls "leaving him dressed for posterity!" This is the style
+which passes for history with some readers. Hume observes that "hunting,"
+which was James's sole recreation, necessary for his health, as a
+sedentary scholar, "is the cheapest a king can indulge;" and, indeed, the
+empty coffers of this monarch afforded no other.
+
+These pseudo-histories are alluded to by Arthur Wilson as "monstrous
+satires against the king's own person, that haunted both court and
+country," when, in the wantonness of the times, "every little miscarriage,
+exuberantly branched, so that evil report did often perch on them." Fuller
+has designated these suspicious scribes as "a generation of the people
+who, like _moths_, have lurked under the carpets of the council-table, and
+even like _fleas_, have leaped into pillows of the prince's bed-chamber;
+and, to enhance the reputation of their knowledge, thence derived that of
+all things which were, or were not, ever done or thought of."--_Church
+History,_ book x. p. 87.]
+
+Such was the race generated in this court of peace and indolence! And
+Hacket, in his "Life of the Lord-Keeper Williams," without disguising the
+fact, tells us that the Lord-Keeper "spared not for cost to purchase the
+most certain intelligence, by his fee'd pensioners, of _every hour's
+occurrences at court_; and was wont to say that no man could be a
+statesman without a great deal of money."
+
+We catch many glimpses of these times in another branch of the same
+family. When news-books, as the first newspapers were called, did not yet
+exist to appease the hungering curiosity of the country, a voluminous
+correspondence was carried on between residents in the metropolis and
+their country friends: these letters chiefly remain in their MS. state.[A]
+Great men then employed a scribe who had a talent this way, and sometimes
+a confidential friend, to convey to them the secret history of the times;
+and, on the whole, they are composed by a better sort of writers; for, as
+they had no other design than to inform their friends of the true state
+of passing events, they were eager to correct, by subsequent accounts the
+lies of the day they sometimes sent down. They have preserved some
+fugitive events useful in historical researches, but their pens are
+garrulous; and it requires some experience to discover the character of
+the writers, to be enabled to adopt their opinions and their statements.
+Little things were, however, great matters to these diurnalists; much time
+was spent in learning of those at court, who had quarrelled, or were on
+the point; who were seen to have bit their lips, and looked downcast; who
+was budding, and whose full-blown flower was drooping: then we have the
+sudden reconcilement and the anticipated fallings out, with a deal of the
+_pourquoi_ of the _pourquoi_.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: Mr. Lodge's "Illustrations of British History" is an eminent
+and elegant work of the _minutiæ historicæ_; as are the more recent
+volumes of Sir Henry Ellis's valuable collections.]
+
+[Footnote B: Some specimens of this sort of correspondence of the idleness
+of the times may amuse. The learned Mede, to his friend Sir Martin
+Stuteville, chronicles a fracas:--"I am told of a great falling out
+between my Lord Treasurer and my Lord Digby, insomuch that they came to
+_pedlar's blood_, and _traitor's blood_. It was about some money which my
+Lord Digby should have had, which my Lord Treasurer thought too much for
+the charge of his employment, and said himself could go in as good a
+fashion for half the sum. But my Lord Digby replies that he could not
+_peddle_ so well as his lordship."
+
+A lively genius sports with a fanciful pen in conveying the same kind of
+intelligence, and so nice in the shades of curiosity, that he can describe
+a quarrel before it takes place.
+
+"You know the _primum mobile_ of our court (Buckingham), by whose motion
+all the other spheres must move, or else stand still: the bright sun of
+our firmament, at whose splendour or glooming all our marygolds of the
+court open or shut. There are in higher spheres as great as he, but none
+so glorious. But the king is in progress, and we are far from court. Now
+to hear certainties. It is told me that my Lord of Pembroke and my Lord of
+Rochester are so far out, as it is almost come to a quarrel; I know not
+how true this is, but Sir Thomas Overbury and my Lord of Pembroke have
+been long jarring, and therefore the other is likely."
+
+Among the numerous MS. letters of this kind, I have often observed the
+writer uneasy at the scandal he has seasoned his letter with, and
+concluding earnestly that his letter, after perusal, should be thrown to
+the flames. A wish which appears to have been rarely complied with; and
+this may serve as a hint to some to restrain their tattling pens, if they
+regard their own peace; for, on most occasions of this nature, the letters
+are rather preserved with peculiar care.]
+
+Such was this race of gossipers in the environs of a court, where, steeped
+in a supine lethargy of peace, corrupting or corrupted, every man stood
+for himself through a reckless scene of expedients and of compromises.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+A PICTURE OF THE AGE FROM A MS. OF THE TIME.
+
+
+A long reign of peace, which had produced wealth in that age, engendered
+the extremes of luxury and want. Money traders practised the art of
+decoying the gallant youths of the day into their nets, and transforming,
+in a certain time, the estates of the country gentlemen into skins of
+parchment,
+
+ The wax continuing hard, the acres melting.
+
+ MASSINGER.
+
+Projectors and monopolists who had obtained patents for licensing all the
+inns and alehouses--for being the sole vendors of manufactured articles,
+such as gold lace, tobacco-pipes, starch, soap, &c., were grinding and
+cheating the people to an extent which was not at first understood,
+although the practice had existed in the former reign. The gentry, whose
+family pride would vie with these _nouveaux riches_, exhausted themselves
+in rival profusion; all crowded to "upstart London," deserting their
+country mansions, which were now left to the care of "a poor alms-woman,
+or a bed-rid beadsman."
+
+In that day, this abandonment of the ancient country hospitality for the
+metropolis, and this breaking-up of old family establishments, crowded
+London with new and distinct races of idlers, or, as they would now be
+called, unproductive members of society. From a contemporary manuscript,
+one of those spirited remonstrances addressed to the king, which it was
+probably thought not prudent to publish, I shall draw some extracts, as a
+forcible picture of the manners of the age.[A] Masters of ancient
+families, to maintain a mere exterior of magnificence in dress and
+equipage in the metropolis, were really at the same time hiding themselves
+in penury: they thrust themselves into lodgings, and "five or six knights,
+or justices of peace," with all their retinue, became the inmates of a
+shopkeeper; yet these gentlemen had once "kept the rusty chimneys of two
+or three houses smoking, and had been the feeders of twenty or forty
+serving-men: a single page, with a guarded coat, served their turn now."
+
+[Footnote A: The MS. is entitled "Balaam's Ass, or a True Discoverie
+touching the Murmurs and Feared Discontents of the Times, directed to King
+James."--Lansdowne Collection, 209. The writer, throughout, speaks of the
+king with the highest respect.]
+
+"Every one strives to be a Diogenes in his house and an emperor in the
+streets; not caring if they sleep in a tub, so they may be hurried in a
+coach; giving that allowance to horses and mares that formerly maintained
+houses full of men; pinching many a belly to paint a few backs, and
+burying all the treasures of the kingdom into a few citizens' coffers.
+
+"There are now," the writer adds, "twenty thousand masterless men turned
+off, who know not this night where to lodge, where to eat to-morrow, and
+ready to undertake any desperate course."
+
+Yet there was still a more turbulent and dangerous race of idlers, in
+
+"A number of younger brothers, of ancient houses, who, nursed up in
+fulness, pampered in their minority, and left in charge to their elder
+brothers, who were to be fathers to them, followed them in despair to
+London, where these untimely-born youths are left so bare, that their
+whole life's allowance was consumed in one year."
+
+The same manuscript exhibits a full and spirited picture of manners in
+this long period of peace.
+
+"The gentry are like owls, all feathers and no flesh; all show, and no
+substance; all fashion, and no feeding; and fit for no service but masks
+and May-games. The citizens have dealt with them as it is said the
+Indians are dealt with; they have given them counterfeit brooches and
+bugle-bracelets for gold and silver;[A] pins and peacock feathers for
+lands and tenements; gilded coaches and outlandish hobby-horses for goodly
+castles and ancient mansions; their woods are turned into wardrobes, their
+leases into laces; and their goods and chattels into guarded coats and
+gaudy toys. Should your Majesty fly to them for relief, you would fare
+like those birds that peek at painted fruits; all outside." The writer
+then describes the affected penurious habits of the grave citizens, who
+were then preying on the country gentlemen:--"When those big swoln
+leeches, that have thus sucked them, wear rags, eat roots, speak like
+jugglers that have reeds in their mouths; look like spittle-men,
+especially when your Majesty hath occasion to use them; their fat lies in
+their hearts, their substance is buried in their bowels, and he that will
+have it must first take their lives. Their study is to get, and their
+chiefest care to conceal; and most from yourself, gracious sir; not a
+commodity comes from their hand, but you pay a noble in the pound for
+_booking_, which they call _forbearing_[B] They think it lost time if they
+double not their principal in two years. They have attractive powders to
+draw these flies into their claws; they will entice men with honey into
+their hives, and with wax entangle them;[C] they pack the cards, and their
+confederates, the lords, deal, by which means no other men have ever good
+game. They have in a few years laid up riches for many, and yet can never
+be content to say--_Soul, take thy rest, or hand receive no more; do no
+more wrong:_ but still they labour to join house to house, and land to
+land. What want they of being kings, but the name? Look into the shires
+and counties, where, with their purchased lordships and manors, one of
+their private letters has equal power with your Majesty's privy seal.[D]
+It is better to be one of their hinds, than your Majesty's gentleman
+usher; one of their grooms, than your guards. What care they, if it be
+called tribute or no, so long as it comes in termly: or whether their
+chamber be called Exchequer, or the dens of cheaters, so that the money be
+left there."
+
+[Footnote A: Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir James Mitchell had the monopolies
+of gold lace, which they sold in a counterfeit state; and not only cheated
+the people, but, by a mixture of copper, the ornaments made of it are said
+to have rotted the flesh. As soon as the grievance was shown to James, he
+expressed his abhorrence of the practice, and even declared that no person
+connected with the villanous fraud should escape punishment. The brother
+of his favourite, Buckingham, was known to be one, and with Sir Giles
+Overreach (as Massinger conceals the name of Mompesson), was compelled to
+fly the country. The style of James, in his speech, is indeed different
+from kings' speeches in parliament: he speaks as indignantly as any
+individual who was personally aggrieved: "Three patents at this time have
+been complained of, and thought great grievances; my purpose is to strike
+them all dead, and, that time may not be lost, I will have it done
+presently. Had these things been complained of to me, before the
+parliament, I could have done the office of a just king, and have punished
+them; peradventure more than now ye intend to do. No private person
+whatsoever, were he ever so dear unto me, shall be respected by me by many
+degrees as the public good; and I hope, my lords, that ye will do me that
+right to publish to my people this my heart purposes. Proceed judicially;
+spare none, where ye find just cause to punish: but remember that laws
+have not their eyes in their necks, but in their foreheads."--Rushworth,
+vol. i. p. 26.]
+
+[Footnote B: The credit which these knavish traders gave their customers,
+who could not conveniently pay their money down, was carried to an
+exorbitant charge; since, even in Elizabeth's reign, it was one of the
+popular grievances brought into Parliament--it is there called, "A bill
+against _Double Payments_ of Book Debts." One of the country members, who
+made a speech consisting entirely of proverbs, said, "Pay the reckoning
+overnight, and you shall not be troubled in the morning."]
+
+[Footnote C: In the life of a famous usurer of that day, who died worth
+400,000_l_., an amazing sum at that period, we find numberless expedients
+and contrivances of the money trader, practised on improvident landholders
+and careless heirs, to entangle them in his nets. He generally contrived
+to make the wood pay for the land, which he called "making the feathers
+pay for the goose." He never pressed hard for his loans, but fondly
+compared his bonds "to infants, which battle best by sleeping;" to battle,
+is to be nourished--a term still retained in the battle-book of the
+university. I have elsewhere preserved the character and habits of the
+money-dealer in the age of James I.--See "Curiosities of Literature," 11th
+Edit. p. 228.]
+
+[Footnote D: It is observed, in the same life, that his mortgages, and
+statutes, and his judgments were so numerous, that his papers would have
+made a good map of England. A view of the chamber of this usurer is
+preserved by Massinger, who can only be understood by the modern reader in
+Mr. Gifford's edition:--
+
+ Here lay
+ A manor, bound fast in a skin of parchment;
+ Here a sure deed of gift for a market-town,
+ If not redeem'd this day, which is not in
+ The unthrift's purse; there being scarce one shire
+ In Wales or England, where my monies are not
+ Lent out at usury, the certain hook
+ To draw in more.
+
+ MASSINGER'S _City Madam_.]
+
+This crushing usury seemed to them a real calamity; for although in the
+present extraordinary age of calculations and artificial wealth, we can
+suffer "a dunghill-breed of men," like Mompesson and his contemptible
+partner of this reign, to accumulate in a rapid period more than a ducal
+fortune, without any apparent injury to the public welfare, the result was
+different then; the legitimate and enlarged principles of commerce were
+not practised by our citizens in the first era of their prosperity; their
+absorbing avarice rapidly took in all the exhausting prodigality of the
+gentry, who were pushed back on the people to prey in their turn on them;
+those who found their own acres disappearing, became enclosers of commons;
+this is one of the grievances which Massinger notices, while the writer of
+the "Five Years of King James" tells us that these discontents between the
+gentry and the commonalty grew out into a petty rebellion; and it appears
+by Peyton that "divers of the people were hanged up."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ANECDOTES OF THE MANNERS OF THE AGE.
+
+
+The minute picture of the domestic manners of this age exhibits the
+results of those extremes of prodigality and avarice which struck
+observers in that contracted circle which then constituted society. The
+king's prodigal dispensations of honours and titles seem at first to have
+been political; for James was a foreigner, and designed to create a
+nobility, as likewise an inferior order, who might feel a personal
+attachment for the new monarch; but the facility by which titles were
+acquired, was one cause which occasioned so many to crowd to the
+metropolis to enjoy their airy honour by a substantial ruin; knighthood
+had become so common, that some of the most infamous and criminal
+characters of this age we find in that rank.[A] The young females, driven
+to necessity by the fashionable ostentation of their parents, were brought
+to the metropolis as to a market; "where," says a contemporary, "they
+obtained pensions, or sometimes marriages, by their beauty." When
+Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, passed to his house, the ladies were at
+their balconies on the watch, to make themselves known to him; and it
+appears that every one of those ladies had sold their favours at a dear
+rate. Among these are some, "who pretending to be _wits_, as they called
+them," says Arthur Wilson,[B] "or had handsome nieces or daughters, drew a
+great resort to their houses." And it appears that Gondomar, to prevent
+these conversaziones from too freely touching on Spanish politics,
+sweetened their silence by his presents.[C] The same grossness of manners
+was among the higher females of the age; when we see that grave statesman,
+Sir Dudley Carleton, narrating the adventures of a bridal night, and all
+"the petty sorceries," the romping of the "great ladies, who were made
+shorter by the skirts," we discover their coarse tastes; but when we find
+the king going to the bed of the bride in his nightgown, to give a
+reveille-matin, and remaining a good time in or upon the bed, "Choose
+which you will believe;" this bride was not more decent than the ladies
+who publicly, on their balconies, were soliciting the personal notice of
+Gondomar.
+
+[Footnote A: A statesman may read with advantage Sir Edward Walker on "The
+inconveniences that have attended the frequent promotions to Titles, since
+King James came to the crown." Sir Edward appears not to disapprove of
+these promotions during the first ten years of his reign, but "when
+alliance to a favourite, riches though gotten in a shop, persons of
+private estates, and of families whose fathers would have thought
+themselves highly honoured to have been but knights in Queen Elizabeth's
+time, were advanced, then the fruits began to appear. The greater
+nobility were undervalued; the ancient baronage saw inferior families
+take precedency over them; nobility lost its respect, and a parity in
+conversation was introduced which in English dispositions begot contempt;
+the king could not employ them all; some grew envious, some factious, some
+ingrateful, however obliged, by being once denied."--P. 302.]
+
+[Footnote B: One may conjecture, by this expression, that the term of
+"wits" was then introduced, in the sense we now use it.]
+
+[Footnote C: Wilson has preserved a characteristic trait of one of the
+lady wits. When Gondomar one day, in Drury-lane, was passing Lady Jacob's
+house, she, exposing herself for a salutation from him, he bowed, but in
+return she only opened her mouth, gaping on him. This was again repeated
+the following day, when he sent a gentleman to complain of her incivility.
+She replied, that he had purchased some favours of the ladies at a dear
+rate, and she had a mouth to be stopped as well as others.]
+
+This coarseness of manners, which still prevailed in the nation, as it had
+in the court of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, could not but influence the
+familiar style of their humour and conversation. James I., in the Edict on
+Duels, employs the expression of _our dearest bedfellow_ to designate the
+queen; and there was no indelicacy attached to this singular expression.
+Much of that silly and obscene correspondence of James with Buckingham,
+while it adds one more mortifying instance of "the follies of the wise,"
+must be attributed to this cause.[A] Are not most of the dramatic works of
+that day frequently unreadable from this circumstance? As an historian, it
+would be my duty to show how incredibly gross were the domestic language
+and the domestic familiarities of kings, queens, lords, and ladies, which
+were much like the lowest of our populace. We may felicitate ourselves on
+having escaped the grossness, without, however, extending too far these
+self-congratulations.
+
+[Footnote A: Our wonder and surmises have been often raised at the strange
+subscriptions of Buckingham to the king,--"Your dog," and James as
+ingenuously calling him "dog Steenie." But this was not peculiar to
+Buckingham; James also called the grave Cecil his "little beagle." The
+Earl of Worcester, writing to Cecil, who had succeeded in his search after
+one Bywater, the earl says, "If the _king's beagle_ can hunt by land as
+well as he hath done _by water_, we will leave capping of _Jowler_, and
+cap the _beagle_." The queen, writing to Buckingham to intercede with the
+king for Rawleigh's life, addresses Buckingham by "My kind Dog." James
+appears to have been always playing on some whimsical appellative by which
+he characterised his ministers and favourites, analogous to the notions of
+a huntsman. Many of our writers, among them Sir Walter Scott, have
+strangely misconceived these playful appellatives, unconscious of the
+origin of this familiar humour. The age was used to the coarseness. We did
+not then excel all Europe, as Addison set the model, in the delicacy of
+humour; indeed, even so late as Congreve's time, they were discussing its
+essential distinction from wit.]
+
+The men were dissolved in all the indolence of life and its wantonness;
+they prided themselves in traducing their own innocence rather than
+suffer a lady's name to pass unblemished.[B] The marriage-tie lost
+its sacredness amid these disorders of social life. The luxurious
+idlers of that day were polluted with infamous vices; and Drayton, in the
+"Moon-calf," has elaborately drawn full-length pictures of the lady and
+the gentleman of that day, which seem scarcely to have required the
+darkening tints of satire to be hideous--in one line the Muse describes
+"the most prodigious birth"--
+
+ He's too much woman and She's too much man.
+
+[Footnote B. The expression of one of these gallants, as preserved by
+Wilson, cannot be decently given, but is more expressive, p. 147.]
+
+The trades of foppery, in Spanish fashions, suddenly sprung up in this
+reign, and exhibited new names and new things. Now silk and gold-lace
+shops first adorned Cheapside, which the continuator of Stowe calls "the
+beauty of London;" the extraordinary rise in price of these fashionable
+articles forms a curious contrast with those of the preceding reign.
+Scarfs, in Elizabeth's time, of thirty shillings value, were now wrought
+up to as many pounds; and embroidered waistcoats, which in the queen's
+reign no workman knew how to make worth five pounds, were now so rich and
+curious as to be cheapened at forty. Stowe has recorded a revolution in
+shoe-buckles, portentously closing in shoe-roses, which were puffed knots
+of silk, or of precious embroidery, worn even by men of mean rank,
+at the cost of more than five pounds, who formerly had worn gilt copper
+shoe-buckles.
+
+In the new and ruinous excess of the use of tobacco, many consumed three
+or four hundred pounds a year. James, who perceived the inconveniences of
+this sudden luxury in the nation, tried to discountenance it, although the
+purpose went to diminish his own scanty revenue. Nor was this attack on
+the abuse of tobacco peculiar to his majesty, although he has been so
+ridiculed for it; a contemporary publication has well described the mania
+and its consequences: "The smoak of fashion hath quite blown away the
+smoak of hospitalitie, and turned the chimneys of their forefathers into
+the noses of their children."[A] The king also reprobated the finical
+embarrassments of the new fashions, and seldom wore new clothes. When they
+brought him a Spanish hat, he flung it away with scorn, swearing he never
+loved them nor their fashions; and when they put roses on his shoes, he
+swore too, "that they should not make him a ruffe-footed dove; a yard of
+penny ribbon would serve that turn."
+
+[Footnote A: The "Peace-Maker," 1618.]
+
+The sudden wealth which seems to have rushed into the nation in this
+reign of peace, appeared in massy plate and jewels, and in "prodigal
+marriage-portions, which were grown in fashion among the nobility and
+gentry, as if the skies had rained plenty." Such are the words of Hacket,
+in his "Memorial of the Lord-Keeper Williams." Enormous wealth was often
+accumulated. An usurer died worth 400,000_l_.; Sir Thomas Compton, a
+citizen, left, it is said, 800,000_l_., and his heir was so overcome with
+this sudden irruption of wealth, that he lost his senses; and Cranfield, a
+citizen, became the Earl of Middlesex.
+
+The continued peace, which produced this rage for dress, equipage, and
+magnificence, appeared in all forms of riot and excess; corruption bred
+corruption. The industry of the nation was not the commerce of the many,
+but the arts of money-traders, confined to the suckers of the state; and
+the unemployed and dissipated, who were every day increasing the
+population in the capital, were a daring petulant race, described by a
+contemporary as "persons of great expense, who, having run themselves into
+debt, were constrained to run into faction; and defend themselves from the
+danger of the law."[A] These appear to have enlisted under some show of
+privilege among the nobility; and the metropolis was often shaken by
+parties, calling themselves Roaring-boys, Bravadoes, Roysters, and
+Bonaventures.[B] Such were some of the turbulent children of peace, whose
+fiery spirits, could they have found their proper vent, had been soldiers
+of fortune, as they were younger brothers, distressed often by their own
+relatives; and wards ruined by their own guardians;[C] all these were
+clamorous for bold piracies on the Spaniards: a visionary island, and a
+secret mine, would often disturb the dreams of these unemployed youths,
+with whom it was no uncommon practice to take a purse on the road. Such
+felt that--
+
+ --in this plenty
+ And fat of peace, our young men ne'er were train'd
+ To martial discipline, and our ships unrigg'd
+ Rot in the harbour.
+
+ MASSINGER.
+
+[Footnote A: "Five Years of King James." Harl. Misc.]
+
+[Footnote B: A. Wilson's "Hist. of James I." p. 28.]
+
+[Footnote C: That ancient oppressive institution of the Court of Wards
+then existed; and Massinger, the great painter of our domestic manners in
+this reign, has made it the subject of one of his interesting dramas.]
+
+The idleness which rusts quiet minds effervesces in fiery spirits pent up
+together; and the loiterers in the environs of a court, surfeiting with
+peace, were quick at quarrel. It is remarkable, that in the pacific reign
+of James I. never was so much blood shed in brawls, nor duels so
+tremendously barbarous. Hume observed this circumstance, and attributes it
+to "the turn that the romantic chivalry, for which the nation was formerly
+so renowned, had lately taken." An inference probably drawn from the
+extraordinary duel between Sir Edward Sackville, afterwards Lord Dorset,
+and the Lord Bruce.[A] These two gallant youths had lived as brothers, yet
+could resolve not to part without destroying each other; the narrative so
+wonderfully composed by Sackville, still makes us shudder at each blow
+received and given. Books were published to instruct them by a system of
+quarrelling, "to teach young gentlemen when they are beforehand and when
+behindhand;" thus they incensed and incited those youths of hope and
+promise, whom Lord Bacon, in his charge on duelling, calls, in the
+language of the poet, _Auroræ filii,_ the sons of the morning,--who often
+were drowned in their own blood! But, on a nearer inspection, when we
+discover the personal malignity of these hasty quarrels, the coarseness of
+their manners, and the choice of weapons and places in their mode of
+butchering each other, we must confess that they rarely partake of the
+spirit of chivalry. One gentleman biting the ear of a Templar, or
+switching a poltroon lord; another sending a challenge to fight in a
+saw-pit; or to strip to their shirts, to mangle each other, were
+sanguinary duels, which could only have fermented in the disorders of the
+times, amid that wanton pampered indolence which made them so petulant and
+pugnacious. Against this evil his Majesty published a voluminous edict,
+which exhibits many proofs that it was the labour of his own hand, for the
+same dignity, the same eloquence, the same felicity of illustration,
+embellish the state-papers;[B] and to remedy it, James, who rarely
+consented to shed blood, condemned an irascible lord to suffer the
+ignominy of the gallows.
+
+[Footnote A: It may be found in the popular pages of the "Guardian;" there
+first printed from a MS. in the library of the Harleys.]
+
+[Footnote B: "A publication of his Majestie's edict and seuere censure
+against private combats and combatants, &c." 1613. It is a volume of about
+150 pages. As a specimen of the royal style, I transcribe two passages:--
+
+"The pride of humours, the libertie of times, the conniuencie of
+magistrates, together with a kind of prescription of impunity, hath bred
+ouer all this kingdome, not only an opinion among the weakest, but a
+constant beleefe among many that desire to be reputed among the wisest, of
+a certain freedome left to all men vpon earth by nature, as their
+_birth-right_ to defend their reputations with their swords, and to take
+reuenge of any wrong either offered or apprehended, in that measure which
+their owne inward passion or affection doth suggest, without any further
+proofe; so as the challenge be sent in a civil manner, though without
+leave demanded of the _sovereign_," &c.
+
+The king employs a bold and poetical metaphor to describe duelling--to
+turn this hawk into a singing-bird, clip its wings, and cage it. "By
+comparing forraine mischiefes with home-bred accidents, it will not be
+hard to judge into what region this bolde bird of audacious presumption,
+in dealing blowes so confidently, will mount, if it bee once let flie,
+from the breast wherein it lurkes. And therefore it behoveth justice both
+to keep her still in her own close cage, with care that she learn neuer
+any other dittie then _Est bene_; but withall, that for preuention of the
+worst that may fall out, wee clippe her wings, that they grow not too
+fast. For according to that of the proverb, _It is labour lost to lay nets
+before the eyes of winged fowles,"_ &c. p. 13.]
+
+But, while extortion and monopoly prevailed among the monied men, and a
+hollow magnificence among the gentry, bribery had tainted even the lords.
+All were hurrying on in a stream of venality, dissipation, and want;
+and the nation, amid the prosperity of the kingdom in a long reign of
+peace, was nourishing in its breast the secret seeds of discontent and
+turbulence.
+
+From the days of Elizabeth to those of the Charleses, Cabinet transmitted
+to Cabinet the caution to preserve the kingdom from the evils of an
+overgrown metropolis. A political hypochondriacism: they imagined
+the head was becoming too large for the body, drawing to itself all the
+moisture of life from the middle and the extremities. A statute against
+the erection of new buildings was passed by Elizabeth; and from James to
+his successors proclamations were continually issued to forbid any growth
+of the city. This singular prohibition may have originated in their
+dread of infection from the plague, but it certainly became the policy
+of a weak and timid government, who dreaded, in the enlargement of
+the metropolis, the consequent concourse of those they designated as
+"masterless men,"--sedition was as contagious as the plague among the
+many. But proclamations were not listened to nor read; houses were
+continually built, for they were in demand,--and the esquires, with their
+wives and daughters, hastened to gay or busy London, for a knighthood, a
+marriage, or a monopoly. The government at length were driven to the
+desperate "Order in Council" to pull down all new houses within ten miles
+of the metropolis--and further, to direct the Attorney-General to indict
+all those sojourners in town who had country houses, and mulct them in
+ruinous fines. The rural gentry were "to abide in their own counties, and
+by their housekeeping in those parts were to guide and relieve the meaner
+people _according to the ancient usage of the English nation_." The
+Attorney-General, like all great lawyers, looking through the spectacles
+of his books, was short-sighted to reach to the new causes and the new
+effects which were passing around. The wisest laws are but foolish when
+Time, though not the lawyers, has annulled them. The popular sympathy was,
+however, with the Attorney-General, for it was imagined that the country
+was utterly ruined and depopulated by the town.
+
+And so in the view it appeared, and so all the satirists chorused! for in
+the country the ancient hospitality was not kept up; the crowd of
+retainers had vanished, the rusty chimneys of the mansion-house hardly
+smoked through a Christmas week, while in London all was exorbitantly
+prosperous; masses of treasure were melted down into every object of
+magnificence. "And is not this wealth drawn from our acres?" was the
+outcry of the rural censor. Yet it was clear that the country in no way
+was impoverished, for the land rose in price; and if manors sometimes
+changed their lords, they suffered no depreciation. A sudden wealth was
+diffused in the nation; the arts of commerce were first advancing; the
+first great ship launched for an Indian voyage, was then named the
+"Trade's Increase." The town, with its multiplied demands, opened a
+perpetual market for the country. The money-traders were breeding their
+hoards as the graziers their flocks; and while the goldsmiths' shops
+blazed in Cheap, the agriculturists beheld double harvests cover the soil.
+The innumerable books on agriculture published during these twenty years
+of peace is an evidence of the improvement of the country--sustained by
+the growing capitals of the men in trade. In this progress of domestic
+conveniency to metropolitan luxury, there was a transition of manners; new
+objects and new interests, and new modes of life, yet in their incipient
+state.
+
+The evils of these luxuriant times were of quick growth; and, as fast as
+they sprung, the Father of his people encountered them by his
+proclamations, which, during long intervals of parliamentary recess, were
+to be enforced as laws: but they passed away as morning dreams over a
+happy, but a thoughtless and wanton people.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+JAMES THE FIRST DISCOVERS THE DISORDERS AND DISCONTENTS OF A PEACE OF MORE
+THAN TWENTY YEARS.
+
+
+The king was himself amazed at the disorders and discontents he at length
+discovered; and, in one of his later speeches, has expressed a mournful
+disappointment:
+
+"And now, I confess, that when I looked before upon the face of the
+government, _I thought, as every man would have done_, that the people
+were never so happy as in my time; but even, as at divers times I have
+looked upon many of my coppices, riding about them, and they appeared, on
+the outside, very thick and well-grown unto me, but, when I turned into
+the midst of them, I found them all bitten within, and full of plains and
+bare spots; like the apple or pear, fair and smooth without, but when you
+cleave it asunder, you find it rotten at heart. Even so this kingdom, the
+_external_ government being as good as ever it was, and I am sure as
+learned judges as ever it had, and I hope as honest administering justice
+within it; and for peace, both at home and abroad, more settled, and
+longer lasting, than ever any before; together with as great plenty as
+ever: so as it may be thought, every man might sit in safety under his own
+vine and fig-tree," &c. &c.[A]
+
+But while we see this king of peace surrounded by national grievances, and
+that "this fair coppice was very thick and well-grown," yet loud in
+murmurs, to what cause are we to attribute them? Shall we exclaim with
+Catharine Macaulay against "the despotism of James," and "the intoxication
+of his power?"--a monarch who did not even enforce the proclamations or
+edicts his wisdom dictated;[B] and, as Hume has observed, while vaunting
+his prerogative, had not a single regiment of guards to maintain it. Must
+we agree with Hume, and reproach the king with his indolence and lore of
+amusement--"particularly of hunting?"[C]
+
+[Footnote A: Rushworth, vol. i. p. 29; sub anno 1621.]
+
+[Footnote B: James I. said, "I will never offer to bring a new custom upon
+my people without the people's consent; like a good physician, tell them
+what is amiss, if they will not concur to amend it, yet I have discharged
+my part." Among the difficulties of this king was that of being a
+foreigner, and amidst the contending factions of that day the "British
+Solomon" seems to have been unjustly reproached for his Scottish
+partialities.]
+
+[Footnote C: La Boderie, the French Ambassador, complains of the king's
+frequent absences; but James did not wish too close an intercourse with
+one who was making a French party about Prince Henry, and whose sole
+object was to provoke a Spanish war: the king foiled the French intriguer;
+but has incurred his contempt for being "timid and irresolute." James's
+cautious neutrality was no merit in the Frenchman's eye.
+
+La Boderie resided at our court from 1606 to 1611, and his "Ambassades,"
+in 5 vols., are interesting in English history. The most satirical
+accounts of the domestic life of James, especially in his unguarded hours
+of boisterous merriment, are found in the correspondence of the French
+ambassadors. They studied to flavour their dish, made of spy and gossip,
+to the taste of their master. Henry IV. never forgave James for his
+adherence to Spain and peace, instead of France and warlike designs.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE KING'S PRIVATE LIFE IN HIS OCCASIONAL RETIREMENTS.
+
+
+The king's occasional retirements to Royston and Newmarket have even been
+surmised to have borne some analogy to the horrid Capræa of Tiberius; but
+a witness has accidentally detailed the king's uniform life in these
+occasional seclusions. James I. withdrew at times from public life, but
+not from public affairs; and hunting, to which he then gave alternate
+days, was the cheap amusement and requisite exercise of his sedentary
+habits: but the chase only occupied a few hours. A part of the day was
+spent by the king in his private studies; another at his dinners, where he
+had a reader, and was perpetually sending to Cambridge for books of
+reference: state affairs were transacted at night; for it was observed, at
+the time, that his secretaries sat up later at night, in those occasional
+retirements, than when they were at London.[A] I have noticed, that the
+state papers were composed by himself; that he wrote letters on important
+occasions without consulting any one; and that he derived little aid from
+his secretaries. James was probably never indolent; but the uniform life
+and sedentary habits of literary men usually incur this reproach from
+those real idlers who bustle in a life of nothingness. While no one loved
+more the still-life of peace than this studious monarch, whose habits
+formed an agreeable combination of the contemplative and the active life,
+study and business--no king more zealously tried to keep down the growing
+abuses of his government, by personally concerning himself in the
+protection of the subject.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: Hacket's Scrinia Reserata, Part I. p. 27.]
+
+[Footnote B: As evidences of this zeal for reform, I throw into this note
+some extracts from the MS. letters of contemporaries.--Of the king's
+interference between the judges of two courts about prohibitions, Sir
+Dudley Carleton gives this account:--"The king played the best part in
+collecting arguments on both sides, and concluded that he saw much
+endeavour to draw water to their several mills; and advised them to take
+moderate courses, whereby the good of the subject might be more respected
+than their particular jurisdictions. The king sat also at the Admiralty,
+to look himself into certain disorders of government there; he told the
+lawyers 'he would leave hunting of hares, and hunt them in their quirks
+and subtilities, with which the subject had been too long abused.'"--MS.
+Letter of Sir Dudley Carleton.
+
+In "Winwood's Memorials of State" there is a letter from Lord Northampton,
+who was present at one of these strict examinations of the king; and his
+language is warm with admiration: the letter being a private one, can
+hardly be suspected of court flattery. "His Majesty hath in person, with
+the greatest dexterity of wit and strength of argument that mine ears ever
+heard, compounded between the parties of the civil and ecclesiastical
+courts, who begin to comply, by the king's sweet temper, on points that
+were held to be incompatible."--Winwood's Mem. iii. p. 54.
+
+In his progresses through the country, if any complained of having
+received injury from any of the court, the king punished, or had
+satisfaction made to the wronged, immediately.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+DISCREPANCIES OF OPINION AMONG THE DECRIERS OF JAMES THE FIRST.
+
+
+Let us detect, among the modern decriers of the character of James I.,
+those contradictory opinions, which start out in the same page; for the
+conviction of truth flashed on the eyes of those who systematically
+vilified him, and must often have pained them; while it embarrassed and
+confused those, who, being of no party, yet had adopted the popular
+notions. Even Hume is at variance with himself; for he censures James for
+his indolence, "which prevented him making any progress in the practice of
+foreign politics, and diminished that regard which all the neighbouring
+nations had paid to England during the reign of his predecessor," p. 29.
+Yet this philosopher observes afterwards, on the military character of
+Prince Henry, at p. 63, that "had he lived, he had probably promoted _the
+glory; perhaps not the felicity, of his people_. The unhappy prepossession
+of men in favour of ambition, &c., engages them into such pursuits _as
+destroy their own peace, and that of the rest of mankind_." This is true
+philosophy, however politicians may comment, and however the military may
+command the state. Had Hume, with all the sweetness of his temper, been a
+philosopher on the throne, himself had probably incurred the censure he
+passed on James I. Another important contradiction in Hume deserves
+detection. The king, it seems, "boasted of his management of Ireland as
+his masterpiece." According to the accounts of Sir John Davies, whose
+political works are still read, and whom Hume quotes, James I. "in the
+space of nine years made greater advances towards the reformation of that
+kingdom than had been effected in more than four centuries;" on this
+Hume adds that the king's "_vanity_ in this particular was not without
+foundation." Thus in describing that wisest act of a sovereign, the
+art of humanising his ruder subjects by colonisation, so unfortunate is
+James, that even his most skilful apologist, influenced by popular
+prepossessions, employs a degrading epithet--and yet he, who had indulged
+a sarcasm on the _vanity_ of James, in closing his general view of his
+wise administration in Ireland, is carried away by his nobler feelings.
+--"Such were the arts," exclaims the historian, "by which James introduced
+humanity and justice among a people who had ever been buried in the most
+profound barbarism. Noble cares! much superior to the vain and criminal
+glory of conquests." Let us add, that had the genius of James the First
+been warlike, had he commanded a battle to be fought and a victory to be
+celebrated, popular historians, the panders of ambition, had adorned their
+pages with bloody trophies; but the peace the monarch cultivated; the
+wisdom which dictated the plan of civilisation; and the persevering arts
+which put it into practice--these are the still virtues which give no
+motion to the _spectacle_ of the historian, and are even forgotten in his
+pages.
+
+What were the painful feelings of Catharine Macaulay, in summing up the
+character of James the First. The king has even extorted from her a
+confession, that "his conduct in Scotland was unexceptionable," but
+"despicable in his Britannic government." To account for this seeming
+change in a man who, from his first to his last day, was always the same,
+required a more sober historian. She tells us also, he affected "a
+sententious wit;" but she adds, that it consisted "only of quaint and
+stale conceits." We need not take the word of Mrs. Macaulay, since we have
+so much of this "sententious wit" recorded, of which probably she knew
+little. Forced to confess that James's education had been "a more learned
+one than is usually bestowed on princes," we find how useless it is to
+educate princes at all; for this "more learned education" made this prince
+"more than commonly deficient in all the points he pretended to have any
+knowledge of." This incredible result gives no encouragement for a prince;
+having a Buchanan for his tutor. Smollett, having compiled the popular
+accusations of the "vanity, the prejudices, the littleness of soul," of
+this abused monarch, surprises one in the same page by discovering enough
+good qualities to make something more than a tolerable king. "His reign,
+though ignoble to himself, was happy to his people, who were enriched by
+commerce, felt no severe impositions, while they made considerable
+progress in their liberties." So that, on the whole, the nation appears
+not to have had all the reason they have so fully exercised in deriding
+and vilifying a sovereign, who had made them prosperous at the price of
+making himself contemptible! I shall notice another writer, of an amiable
+character, as an evidence of the influence of popular prejudice, and the
+effect of truth.
+
+When James went to Denmark to fetch his queen, he passed part of his time
+among the learned; but such was his habitual attention in studying the
+duties of the sovereign, that he closely attended the Danish courts of
+justice; and Daines Barrington, in his curious "Observations on the
+Statutes," mentions, that the king borrowed from the Danish code three
+statutes for the punishment of criminals. But so provocative of sarcasm is
+the ill-used name of this monarch, that our author could not but shrewdly
+observe, that James "spent more time in those courts than in attending
+upon his destined consort." Yet this is not true: the king was jovial
+there, and was as indulgent a husband as he was a father. Osborne even
+censures James for once giving marks of his uxoriousness![A] But while
+Daines Barrington degrades, by unmerited ridicule, the honourable
+employment of the "British Solomon," he becomes himself perplexed at the
+truth that flashes on his eyes. He expresses the most perfect admiration
+of James the First, whose statutes he declares "deserve much to be
+enforced; nor do I find any one which hath the least tendency to extend
+the prerogative, or abridge the liberties and rights of his subjects." He
+who came to scoff remained to pray. Thus a lawyer, in examining the laws
+of James the First, concludes by approaching nearer to the truth: the step
+was a bold one! He says, "_It is at present a sort of fashion_ to suppose
+that this king, because he was a pedant, had no real understanding, or
+merit." Had Daines Barrington been asked for proofs of the pedantry of
+James the First, he had been still more perplexed; but what can be more
+convincing than a lawyer, on a review of the character of James the First,
+being struck, as he tells us, by "his desire of being instructed in the
+English law, and holding frequent conferences for this purpose with the
+most eminent lawyers,--as Sir Edward Coke, and others!" Such was the
+monarch whose character was perpetually reproached for indolent habits,
+and for exercising arbitrary power! Even Mr. Brodie, the vehement
+adversary of the Stuarts, quotes and admires James's prescient decision on
+the character of Laud in that remarkable conversation with Buckingham and
+Prince Charles recorded by Hacket.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 334.]
+
+[Footnote B: Brodie's "History of British Empire," vol. ii. p. 244, 411.]
+
+But let us leave these moderns perpetuating traditional prejudices, and
+often to the fiftieth echo, still sounding with no voice of its own, to
+learn what the unprejudiced contemporaries of James I. thought of the
+cause of the disorders of their age. They were alike struck by the wisdom
+and the zeal of the monarch, and the prevalent discontents of this long
+reign of peace. At first, says the continuator of Stowe, all ranks but
+those "who were settled in piracy," as he designates the cormorants of
+war, and curiously enumerates their classes, "were right joyful of the
+peace; but, in a few years afterwards, all the benefits were generally
+forgotten, and the happiness of the general peace of the most part
+contemned." The honest annalist accounts for this unexpected result by the
+natural reflection--"Such is the world's corruption, and man's vile
+ingratitude."[A] My philosophy enables me to advance but little beyond. A
+learned contemporary, Sir Symond D'Ewes, in his manuscript diary, notices
+the death of the monarch, whom he calls "our learned and peaceable
+sovereign."--"It did not a little amaze me to see all men generally slight
+and disregard the loss of so mild and gentle a prince, which made me even
+to feel, that the ensuing times might yet render his loss more sensible,
+and his memory more dear unto posterity." Sir Symond censures the king for
+not engaging in the German war to support the Palsgrave, and maintain "the
+true church of God;" but deeper politicians have applauded the king for
+avoiding a war, in which he could not essentially have served the
+interests of the rash prince who had assumed the title of King of
+Bohemia.[B] "Yet," adds Sir Symond, "if we consider his virtues and his
+learning, his augmenting the liberties of the English, rather than his
+oppressing them by any unlimited or illegal taxes and corrosions, his
+death deserved more sorrow and condolement from his subjects than it
+found."[C]
+
+[Footnote A: Stowe's Annals, p. 845.]
+
+[Footnote B: See Sir Edward Walker's "Hist. Discourses," p. 321; and
+Barrington's "Observ. on the Statutes," who says, "For this he deserves
+the highest praise and commendation from a nation of islanders."]
+
+[Footnote C: Harl. MSS. 646.]
+
+Another contemporary author, Wilson, has not ill-traced the generations
+of this continued peace--"peace begot plenty, plenty begot ease and
+wantonness, and ease and wantonness begot poetry, and poetry swelled out
+into that bulk in this king's time which begot monstrous satyrs." Such
+were the laseivious times, which dissolving the ranks of society in a
+general corruption, created on one part the imaginary and unlimited wants
+of prosperity; and on the other produced the riotous children of
+indolence, and the turbulent adventurers of want. The rank luxuriance of
+this reign was a steaming hot-bed of peace, which proved to be the
+seed-plot of that revolution which was reserved for the unfortunate son.
+
+In the subsequent reign a poet seems to have taken a retrospective view of
+the age of peace of James I. contemplating on its results in his own
+disastrous times--
+
+ --States that never know
+ A change but in their growth, which a long peace
+ Hath brought unto perfection, are like steel,
+ Which being neglected will consume itself
+ With its own rust; so doth Security
+ Eat through the hearts of states, while they are sleeping
+ And lulled into false quiet.
+
+ NABB'S _Hannibal and Scipio_.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+SUMMARY OF HIS CHARACTER.
+
+
+Thus the continued peace of James I. had calamities of its own! Are we to
+attribute them to the king? It has been usual with us, in the solemn
+expiations of our history, to convert the sovereign into the scape-goat
+for the people; the historian, like the priest of the Hebrews, laying his
+hands on Azazel,[A] the curses of the multitude are heaped on that devoted
+head. And thus the historian conveniently solves all ambiguous events.
+
+[Footnote A: The Hebrew name, which Calmet translates _Bouc Emissaire_,
+and we _Scape Goat_, or rather _Escape Goat_.]
+
+The character of James I. is a moral phenomenon, a singularity of a
+complex nature. We see that we cannot trust to those modern writers who
+have passed their censures upon him, however just may be those very
+censures; for when we look narrowly into their representations, as surely
+we find, perhaps without an exception, that an invective never closes
+without some unexpected mitigating circumstance, or qualifying abatement.
+At the moment of inflicting the censure, some recollection in opposition
+to what is asserted passes in the mind, and to approximate to Truth, they
+offer a discrepancy, a self-contradiction. James must always be condemned
+on a system, while his apology is only allowed the benefit of a
+parenthesis.
+
+How it has happened that our luckless crowned philosopher has been the
+common mark at which so many quivers have been emptied, should be quite
+obvious when so many causes were operating against him. The shifting
+positions into which he was cast, and the ambiguity of his character, will
+unriddle the enigma of his life. Contrarieties cease to be contradictions
+when operated on by external causes.
+
+James was two persons in one, frequently opposed to each other. He was an
+antithesis in human nature--or even a solecism. We possess ample evidence
+of his shrewdness and of his simplicity; we find the lofty regal style
+mingled with his familiar bonhommie. Warm, hasty, and volatile, yet with
+the most patient zeal to disentangle involved deception; such gravity in
+sense, such levity in humour; such wariness and such indiscretion; such
+mystery and such openness--all these must have often thrown his Majesty
+into some awkward dilemmas. He was a man of abstract speculation in the
+theory of human affairs; too witty or too aphoristic, he never seemed at a
+loss to decide, but too careless, perhaps too infirm, ever to come to a
+decision, he leaned on others. He shrunk from the council-table; he had
+that distaste for the routine of business which studious sedentary men are
+too apt to indulge; and imagined that his health, which he said was the
+health of the kingdom, depended on the alternate days which he devoted to
+the chase; Royston and Theobalds were more delectable than a deputation
+from the Commons, or the Court at Whitehall.
+
+It has not always been arbitrary power which has forced the people into
+the dread circle of their fate, seditions, rebellions, and civil wars; nor
+always oppressive taxation which has given rise to public grievances. Such
+were not the crimes of James the First. Amid the full blessings of peace,
+we find how the people are prone to corrupt themselves, and how a
+philosopher on the throne, the father of his people, may live without
+exciting gratitude, and die without inspiring regret--unregarded,
+unremembered!
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+ABERNETHY'S opinion of enthusiasm, 145.
+
+ABSTRACTION of mind in great men, 133-136.
+
+ACTORS, traits of character in great, 137.
+
+ADRIAN VI., Pope, persecutes literary men, 18.
+
+ÆSTHETIC Critics, 282.
+
+AKENSIDE on the nature of genius, 30.
+
+ALFIERI, childhood of, 32;
+ loneliness of his character, 96;
+ excited by Plutarch's works, 141.
+
+ANGELO, Michael, illustrates Dante, 21;
+ his ideas of intellectual labour, 85;
+ his reason for a solitary life, 111;
+ his picture of battle of Pisa destroyed by Bandinelli, 158;
+ his elevated character, 252;
+ his letter to Vasari describing the death of his servant, 373.
+
+ANTIPATHIES of men of genius, 160-163.
+
+ANXIETY of genius, 74;
+ of authors and artists over their labours, 80-88.
+
+ARISTOPHANES, popularised by a false preface, 287.
+
+ART FRIENDSHIPS, 209-210.
+
+ARTISTS, "Studies," or first thoughts, 131;
+ their mutual jealousies, 156-158.
+
+AUTOBIOGRAPHY, its interest, 295.
+
+
+BARRY the painter, his love of ancient literature, 23;
+ his general enthusiasm, 60;
+ his rude eloquence, 107.
+
+BAILLET and his catalogue, 352.
+
+BEATTIE describes the powerful effect on himself of metaphysical study,
+ 147.
+
+BIRCH, Dr., and Robertson the Historian, 342-350.
+
+BOCCACCIO'S friendship for Petrarch, 212-214.
+
+BOOK COLLECTORS, 227-231.
+
+BOOKSELLERS, the test of public opinion, 194.
+
+BOSIUS, his researches in the Roman catacombs, 144.
+
+BOYLE on the disposition of childhood, 31;
+ his advertisement against visitors, _n_, 113;
+ his idea of a literary retreat, 188.
+
+BRUCE the traveller disbelieved, 78.
+
+BUFFON gives a reason for his fame, 92.
+
+BUONAPARTE revives old military tactics, 266.
+
+BURNS'S diary of the heart, 71.
+
+BURTON, his constitutional melancholy, 220.
+
+BUNYAN a self-taught genius, 60.
+
+BYRON'S loneliness of feeling, _n._, 96.
+
+
+CALUMNY frequently attacks genius, 185.
+
+CANTENAC and his autobiography, 296.
+
+CARACCI, the, their unfortunate jealousies, 157.
+
+CASTAGNO murders a rival artist, 157.
+
+CHARLES V., friendship for Titian, 253;
+ Robertson's life of, 343.
+
+CHATELET, Madame de, a female philosopher and friend of Voltaire, 95.
+
+CHATHAM, Earl of, his constancy of study, 96.
+
+CHENIER a literary fratricide, 173.
+
+CICERO on youthful influence, 32.
+
+CLARENDON, his love of retirement, 111.
+
+COACHES, their first invention, 359.
+
+COAL, its first use as fuel, 362.
+
+COMA VIGIL, a disease produced by study, 147.
+
+COMPOSITION, its toils, 80-81.
+
+CONTEMPORARY criticism, frequently unjust, 75.
+
+CONVERSATIONS of men of genius, 99-109;
+ those who converse well seldom write well, 104.
+
+COTIN, Abbé, troubled by wealth, 188.
+
+CRACHERODE, Rev. C.M., his collections of art and literature, _n._, 13.
+
+CRITICISM not always just, 65-75.
+
+CURRIE, his idea of the power of genius, 26.
+
+CUVIER'S discoveries in natural history, 145.
+
+
+DANTE, his great abstraction of mind, 134.
+
+DEATHS of literary men, 243.
+
+DEPRECIATION, theory of, 160.
+
+DIARIES, their value, 122.
+
+DISEASE induced by severe study, 147.
+
+DOMENICHINO poisoned by rivals, 158.
+
+DOMESTIC Novelties at first condemned, 355-364.
+
+DOMESTIC life of literary men, 173-186.
+
+DREAMS of eminent men, 127-128.
+
+DROUAIS an enthusiastic painter, 153.
+
+
+ENGLAND and its tastes, 264.
+
+
+FAMILY affection an incentive to genius, 179-182.
+
+FENELON'S early enthusiasm for Greece, 151.
+
+FIRST STUDIES of great men, 55-59;
+ first thoughts for great works, 129-133.
+
+FORKS, when first used, 356.
+
+FRANKLIN, Dr., notes the calming of the sea, 133;
+ his influence on American manners, 272.
+
+FUSELI'S imaginative power, 151.
+
+
+GALILEO invents the pendulum, 132.
+
+GALVANISM first discovered, 133.
+
+GESNER recommends a study of literature to artists, 22;
+ on enthusiasm, 154;
+ his wife a model for those of literary men, 206-208.
+
+GLEIM and his portrait gallery, 211.
+
+GOLDSMITH contrasted with Johnson, 294.
+
+GOLDONI overworks his mind, 147.
+
+GOVERNMENT of the thoughts, 117.
+
+GRAY'S excitement in composing verse, 141;
+
+GUIBERT, his great work on military tactics, 265.
+
+
+HABITUAL PURSUITS, their power over the mind, 302-304.
+
+HALLUCINATIONS of genius, 148;
+ realities with some minds, 150.
+
+HAYDN, his regulation of his time, 92.
+
+HELMONT'S (Van) love of study, 152.
+
+HERBERT of Cherbury, Lord, questions the Deity as to the publication of
+ his book, 148.
+
+HOBBES, theory to explain his terror, 150.
+
+HOGARTH, attacks on, _n._ 87.
+
+HOLLIS, his miserable celibacy, 201.
+
+HONOURS awarded literary men, 249-258.
+
+HORNE (Bishop), his love of literary labour, 135.
+
+HUME the historian, his irritability, 86;
+ unfitted for gay life, 99;
+ gives his reason for literary labour, _n._ 177;
+ endeavours to correct Robertson, 342.
+
+HUNTER, Dr., fraternal jealousy, 156.
+
+HYPOCHONDRIA, its cause and effect, 150.
+
+
+IDEALITY defined, 137;
+ its power, 138-154.
+
+INCOMPLETED books, 350-355.
+
+INDUSTRY of great writers, 125.
+
+INFLUENCE of authors, 267-270; 273-277.
+
+INTELLECTUAL nobility, 250.
+
+IMITATION in literature, 305-307.
+
+IRRITABILITY of genius, 70, 86-88.
+
+ISOCRATES' belief in native character, 32.
+
+
+JAMES I., a critical disquisition on the character of, 385-455.
+
+JULIAN, Emperor, anecdotes of, 97.
+
+JEALOUSY in art and literature, 154-159;
+ of honours paid to literary men, 251.
+
+JOHNSON, Dr., defines the literary character, 12;
+ his moral dignity, 192;
+ his metaphysical loves, 200;
+ anecdotes of him and Goldsmith, 294.
+
+JUVENILE WORKS, their value, 67.
+
+
+LABOUR endured by great authors, 75;
+ a pleasure to some minds, 176-177.
+
+LETTERS in the vernacular idiom, 375-379.
+
+LINNÆUS sensitive to ridicule, 75;
+ honours awarded to, 191.
+
+LITERARY FRIENDSHIP, 209-217.
+
+LITERATURE an avenue to glory, 248.
+
+LOCKE'S simile of the human mind, 25.
+
+
+MANNERISTS in literature, 293.
+
+MARCO Polo ridiculed unjustly, _n._ 79.
+
+MATRIMONIAL STATE in literature and art, 198-208.
+
+MAZZUCHELLI a great literary historian, 352.
+
+MEDITATION, value of, 129.
+
+MEMORY, as an art, 120, 122.
+
+MENDELSSOHN, Moses, his remarkable history, 61-64.
+
+MEN of LETTERS, their definition, 226-238.
+
+METASTASIO a bad sportsman, 38;
+ his susceptibility, 140.
+
+MILTON, his high idea of the literary character, 12;
+ his theory of genius, 25;
+ his love of study, 135;
+ sacrifices sight to poetry, 152.
+
+MISCELLANISTS and their works, 282-286.
+
+MODES OF STUDY used by great men, 125.
+
+MOLIERE, his dramatic career, 310-325.
+
+MONTAIGNE, his personal traits, 223.
+
+MORE, Dr., on enthusiasm of genius, 149.
+
+MORERI devotes a life to literature, 152.
+
+MORTIMER the artist, his athletic exercises, 39.
+
+MURATORI, his literary industry, 351.
+
+
+NATIONAL tastes in literature, 260.
+
+NECESSITY, its influence on literature, 193-194.
+
+
+OBSCURE BIRTHS of great men, 248-249.
+
+OLD AGE of literary men, 238-244.
+
+
+PECULIAR habits of authors, 119-120.
+
+PEIRESC, his early bias toward literature, 234;
+ his studious career, 235.
+
+PERSONAL CHARACTER differs from the literary one, 217-226.
+
+PETRARCH'S remarkable conversation on his melancholy, 68;
+ his mode of life, 114.
+
+POPE, his anxiety over his Homer, 81;
+ severity of his early studies, 147.
+
+POUSSIN fears trading in art, 193.
+
+POVERTY of literary men, 186;
+ sometimes a choice, 188-190.
+
+PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE of life wanting in studious men, 183-185.
+
+PRAYERS of great men, 146.
+
+PRECIEUSES, 315-318.
+
+PREDISPOSITION of the mind, 118.
+
+PREFACES, their interest, 286;
+ their occasional falsehood, 287;
+ vanity of authors in, 288;
+ idle apologies in, 289;
+ Dryden's interesting, 290.
+
+PREJUDICES, literary, 160-163.
+
+PUBLIC TASTE formed by public writers, 268.
+
+
+RACINE, sensibility of, 83; 325-332.
+
+RAMBOUILLET, Hotel de, 315-317.
+
+READING analyzed, 298-302.
+
+RECLUSE manners in great authors, 98-99.
+
+RELICS of men of genius, 255-258.
+
+REMUNERATION of literature, 194-195.
+
+RESIDENCES of literary men, 255-257.
+
+REYNOLDS, Sir J., his "automatic system," 26;
+ discovers its inconsistencies, 27.
+
+RIDICULE the terror of genius, 94
+
+ROBERTSON the historian, 341-350.
+
+ROLAND, Madame, anecdote of the power of poetry on, 141.
+
+ROMNEY, his anxiety over his picture of the Tempest, 81-82.
+
+ROUSSEAU'S expedient to endure society, 73;
+ his domestic infelicity, 175.
+
+ROYAL SOCIETY, attacks on, _n._ 14.
+
+RUBENS' transcripts of the poets, 21.
+
+
+SANDWICH, Lord, his first idea of a stratagem at sea, 132.
+
+SCUDERY, Mademoiselle, 316.
+
+SENSITIVENESS of genius, 72, 78, 78; 139-140.
+
+SELF-IMMOLATION of genius to labour, 152.
+
+SELF-PRAISE of genius, 162-170.
+
+SERVANTS, a dissertation on, 364-374.
+
+SHEE, Sir M.A., relations of poetry and painting, _n._, 21.
+
+SHENSTONE, his early love, 199.
+
+SIDDONS, Mrs., anecdote of, 137.
+
+SINGLENESS of genius, 245-247.
+
+SOCIETY, artificial, an injury to genius, 90.
+
+SOLITUDE loved by men of genius, 35-40; 109-115.
+
+STEAM first discovered, 133.
+
+STUDIES of advanced life, 241-243.
+
+STERNE, anecdotes of, 332-340.
+
+STYLE and its peculiarities, 291-294.
+
+SUSCEPTIBILITY of men of genius, 170-172.
+
+SUGGESTIONS of one mind perfected by another, 275-276.
+
+
+TASSO uneasy in his labours, 84.
+
+TAYLOR, Dr. Brooke, his torpid melancholy, 175.
+
+TEMPLE, Sir W., his love of gardens, 283.
+
+THEORETICAL history, 342.
+
+THOMSON, his sensitiveness to grand poetry, 142;
+ irritability over false criticisms, 65.
+
+TOBACCO, its introduction to England, 362.
+
+TOOTHPICKS, origin of, 358.
+
+TOWNLEY Gallery of Sculpture, _n._, 13.
+
+TROUBADOURS, their influence, 285.
+
+
+UMBRELLAS, their history, 358.
+
+UTILITARIANISM and its narrow view of literature, 15.
+
+UNIVERSALITY Of genius, 244.
+
+
+VAN PRAUN refuses to part with his collection to an emperor, 229.
+
+VERNET sketches in a storm, 144.
+
+VERS DE SOCIETE, 308-310.
+
+VINDICTIVENESS of genius, 170-173.
+
+VISIONARIES of genius, 148.
+
+VISITORS disliked by literary men, 112-113.
+
+VOLTAIRE, anecdote of his visit to a country house, 95;
+ his universal genius, 245.
+
+WALPOLE's, Horace, opinion of Gray, 91;
+ of Burke, _ib._
+
+WATSON neglects research in his professorship, 17.
+
+WERNER'S discoveries in science, 145.
+
+WILKES desirous of literary glory, 17.
+
+WIT sometimes mechanical, 126.
+
+WIVES of literary men, 202-208.
+
+WORKS intended, but not executed, 123.
+
+WOOD, Anthony, sacrifices all to study, 152.
+
+
+YOUNG the poet, his want of sympathy, 185.
+
+YOUTH of great men, 34-54.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
+
+
+_FREDERICK WARNE & CO., PUBLISHERS,_
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE CHANDOS POETS.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_Under this distinctive title are now published New and Elegant Volumes of
+Standard Poetry, fully Illustrated, well Edited, and printed with a
+Red-line Border, Steel Portraits, &c._.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+In crown 8vo, price _7s. 6d._ each, cloth gilt, gilt edges; or morocco,
+ _16s._
+
+The Poetical Works of Longfellow.
+
+The Legendary Ballads of England and Scotland. Edited
+ and compiled by JOHN S. ROBERTS.
+
+Scott's Poetical Works. With numerous Notes.
+
+Eliza Cook's Poems. A Complete Edition, with Portrait and
+ Steel Illustrations.
+
+Moore's Poetical Works. With numerous Notes.
+
+Cowper's Poetical Works. Edited from the best Editions.
+
+Milton's Poetical Works. Edited from the best Editions.
+
+Wordsworth's Poetical Works.
+
+Byron's Poetical Works. With Explanatory Notes.
+
+Mrs. Hemans' Poetical Works. With Memoir, &c.
+
+Burns' Poetical Works. With Explanatory Glossarial Notes.
+
+Hood's Poetical Works. With Life.
+
+Campbell's Poetical Works. With Memoir.
+
+Coleridge's Poetical Works. With Memoir, Notes, &c.
+
+Shelley's Poetical Works. With Memoir, Notes, &c.
+
+Pope's Homer's Iliad & Odyssey. With Flaxman's Illustrations.
+
+Pope's Poetical Works. With Original Notes.
+
+Mackay's Complete Poetical Works; Revised by the Author.
+
+Herbert's (George) Poems and Prose. With Notes, &c.
+
+Heber's (Bishop) Poetical Works. With Notes, &c.
+
+Keble's (John) The Christian Year.
+
+
+_Uniform in size, price, and style, but without Red-line._
+
+
+Poets of the Nineteenth Century. With 120 Illustrations by
+ J.E. MILLAIS, TENNIEL, PICKERSGILL, Sir J. GILBERT, HARRISON
+ WEIR, &c.
+
+The Spirit of Praise. A Collection of Hymns, Old and New,
+ with upwards of One Hundred choice Illustrations.
+
+Christian Lyrics. From Modern Authors. With Two Hundred
+ and Fifty Illustrations.
+
+Shakspeare: The Plays and Poems. 1200 pp., with Portrait.
+
+Montgomery's (James) Poetical Works. With Prefatory
+ Memoir and Explanatory Notes. 100 Original Illustrations.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_BEDFORD STREET, STRAND_.
+
+
+_FREDERICK WARNE & CO., PUBLISHERS._
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE CHANDOS LIBRARY.
+
+_A Series of Standard Works in all Classes of Literature._
+
+ * * * * *
+
+In crown 8vo, price 3s. 6d. each, cloth gilt.
+
+The Percy Anecdotes. By REUBEN and SHOLTO PERCY.
+ Verbatim Reprint of Original Edition. Introduction by JOHN TIMBS.
+ Original Steel Portraits, and Index. Three Vols., each Complete in
+ itself.
+
+Pepys' Diary and Correspondence. With Seven Steel Portraits
+ arranged as a Frontispiece, Memoir, Introductory Preface, and full
+ Index.
+
+Abbeys, Castles, and Ancient Halls of England and Wales:
+ Their Legendary Lore and Popular History--South, Midland, North. By
+ JOHN TIMBS. Author of "Curiosities of London," and ALEXANDER GUNN.
+ New Frontispiece. Three Vols. Each Volume Complete in itself.
+
+Johnson's Lives of the Poets; with Critical Observations on
+ their Works, and a Sketch of the Author's Life by Sir WALTER SCOTT.
+
+Book of Authors. A Collection of Criticisms, Ana, Mots, Personal
+ Descriptions, &c. By W. CLARK RUSSELL.
+
+Evelyn's Diary and Correspondence. Edited by BRAY. 784 pp.
+ With Frontispiece and full Index.
+
+Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. With
+ Portrait. Three Vols.
+
+A Century of Anecdote. Compiled and Edited by JOHN TIMBS.
+ With Frontispiece.
+
+Pope's Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. FLAXMAN'S Illustrations.
+
+Scott's Lives of Eminent Novelists and Dramatists.
+
+Don Quixote (Life and Adventures of). By CERVANTES.
+
+The Koran: A verbatim Reprint. With Maps, Plans, &c.
+
+The Talmud (Selections from). H. POLANO. Maps, Plans, &c.
+
+Gil Blas (The Adventures of). By LE SAGE.
+
+Carpenter's Popular Elocutionist. With Portrait.
+
+Walton and Cotton's Angler. Edited, with Notes, by G.
+ CHRISTOPHER DAVIES.
+
+The Peninsular War and the Campaigns of Wellington in
+ France and Belgium. By H.R. CLINTON.
+
+Fugitive Poetry of the Last Three Centuries. Edited by
+ J.C. HUTCHIESON.
+
+White's Natural History of Selborne. Numerous Illustrations.
+
+Lamb's Poems and Essays.
+
+Spenser's Poetical Works. With Portrait.
+
+Roscoe's Italian Novelists. }
+Roscoe's German Novelists. } Complete Editions.
+Roscoe's Spanish Novelists. }
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Literary Character of Men of Genius, by Isaac
+Disraeli, Edited by Benjamin Disraeli
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Literary Character of Men of Genius
+ Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions
+
+
+Author: Isaac Disraeli
+
+Editor: Benjamin Disraeli
+
+Release Date: May 31, 2005 [eBook #15960]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY CHARACTER OF MEN OF
+GENIUS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, John R. Bilderback, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+Editorial note: Due to limitations in rendering some print characters,
+ the following abbreviations are used in this text to
+ represent the original printer's symbols:
+ "4^to" for "quarto"
+ "12^o" for "duodecimo"
+ "f^o" for "folio"
+
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY CHARACTER OF MEN OF GENIUS
+
+Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions
+
+by
+
+ISAAC DISRAELI
+
+A New Edition
+Edited by His Son
+THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD.
+
+London:
+Frederick Warne and Co.,
+Bedford Street, Strand.
+London:
+Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., Printers, Whitefriars.
+
+1850
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The following Preface is of interest for the expression of the author's
+own view of these works.
+
+This volume comprises my writings on subjects chiefly of our vernacular
+literature. Now collected together, they offer an unity of design, and
+afford to the general reader and to the student of classical antiquity
+some initiation into our national Literature. It is presumed also, that
+they present materials for thinking not solely on literary topics; authors
+and books are not alone here treated of,--a comprehensive view of human
+nature necessarily enters into the subject from the diversity of the
+characters portrayed, through the gradations of their faculties, the
+influence of their tastes, and those incidents of their lives prompted by
+their fortunes or their passions. This present volume, with its brother
+"CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE," now constitute a body of reading which may
+awaken knowledge in minds only seeking amusement, and refresh the deeper
+studies of the learned by matters not unworthy of their curiosity.
+
+The LITERARY CHARACTER has been an old favourite with many of my
+contemporaries departed or now living, who have found it respond to their
+own emotions.
+
+THE MISCELLANIES are literary amenities, should they be found to deserve
+the title, constructed on that principle early adopted by me, of
+interspersing facts with speculation.
+
+THE INQUIRY INTO THE LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST
+has surely corrected some general misconceptions, and thrown light on some
+obscure points in the history of that anomalous personage. It is a
+satisfaction to me to observe, since the publication of this tract, that
+while some competent judges have considered the "evidence irresistible," a
+material change has occurred in the tone of most writers. The subject
+presented an occasion to exhibit a minute picture of that age of
+transition in our national history.
+
+The titles of CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS and QUARRELS OF AUTHORS do not wholly
+designate the works, which include a considerable portion of literary
+history.
+
+Public favour has encouraged the republication of these various works,
+which often referred to, have long been difficult to procure. It has been
+deferred from time to time with the intention of giving the subjects a
+more enlarged investigation; but I have delayed the task till it cannot be
+performed. One of the Calamities of Authors falls to my lot, the delicate
+organ of vision with me has suffered a singular disorder,[A]--a disorder
+which no oculist by his touch can heal, and no physician by his experience
+can expound; so much remains concerning the frame of man unrevealed to
+man!
+
+In the midst of my library I am as it were distant from it. My unfinished
+labours, frustrated designs, remain paralysed. In a joyous heat I wander
+no longer through the wide circuit before me. The "strucken deer" has the
+sad privilege to weep when he lies down, perhaps no more to course amid
+those far-distant woods where once he sought to range.
+
+[Footnote A: I record my literary calamity as a warning to my sedentary
+brothers. When my eyes dwell on any object, or whenever they are closed,
+there appear on a bluish film a number of mathematical squares, which are
+the reflection of the fine network of the retina, succeeded by blotches
+which subside into printed characters, apparently forming distinct words,
+arranged in straight lines as in a printed book; the monosyllables are
+often legible. This is the process of a few seconds. It is remarkable that
+the usual power of the eye is not injured or diminished for distant
+objects, while those near are clouded over.]
+
+Although thus compelled to refrain in a great measure from all mental
+labour, and incapacitated from the use of the pen and the book, these
+works, notwithstanding, have received many important corrections, having
+been read over to me with critical precision.
+
+Amid this partial darkness I am not left without a distant hope, nor a
+present consolation; and to HER who has so often lent to me the light of
+her eyes, the intelligence of her voice, and the careful work of her hand,
+the author must ever owe "the debt immense" of paternal gratitude.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+ PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTION 3
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Of literary characters, and of the lovers of literature and art. 11
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Of the adversaries of literary men among themselves.--Matter-of-fact
+men, and men of wit.--The political economists.--Of those who
+abandon their studies.--Men in office.--The arbiters of public
+opinion.--Those who treat the pursuits of literature with levity. 14
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Of artists, in the history of men of literary genius.--Their habits
+and pursuits analogous.--The nature of their genius is similar in
+their distinct works.--Shown by their parallel areas, and by a
+common end pursued by both. 20
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Of natural genius.--Minds constitutionally different cannot have an
+equal aptitude.--Genius not the result of habit and education.--
+Originates in peculiar qualities of the mind.--The predisposition
+of genius.--A substitution for the white paper of Locke. 24
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Youth of genius.--Its first impulses may be illustrated by its
+subsequent actions.--Parents have another association of the man
+of genius than we.--Of genius, its first habits.--Its melancholy.
+--Its reveries.--Its love of solitude.--Its disposition to repose.
+--Of a youth distinguished by his equals.--Feebleness of its first
+attempts.--Of genius not discoverable even in manhood.--The
+education of the youth may not be that of his genius.--An unsettled
+impulse, querulous till it finds its true occupation.--With some,
+curiosity as intense a faculty as invention.--What the youth first
+applies to is commonly his delight afterwards.--Facts of the
+decisive character of genius. 31
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The first studies.--The self-educated are marked by stubborn
+peculiarities.--Their errors.--Their improvement from the neglect
+or contempt they incur.--The history of self-education in Moses
+Mendelssohn.--Friends usually prejudicial in the youth of genius.
+--A remarkable interview between Petrarch in his first studies,
+and his literary adviser.--Exhortation. 55
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Of the irritability of genius.--Genius in society often in a state
+of suffering.--Equality of temper more prevalent among men of
+letters.--Of the occupation of making a great name.--Anxieties of
+the most successful.--Of the inventors.--Writers of learning.--
+Writers of taste. --Artists. 69
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The spirit of literature and the spirit of society.--The inventors.
+--Society offers seduction and not reward to men of genius.--The
+notions of persons of fashion of men of genius.--The habitudes of
+the man of genius distinct from those of the man of society.--
+Study, meditation, and enthusiasm, the progress of genius.--The
+disagreement between the men of the world and the literary
+character. 89
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Conversations of men of genius.--Their deficient agreeableness may
+result from qualities which conduce to their greatness.--Slow-minded
+men not the dullest.--The conversationists not the ablest writers.
+--Their true excellence in conversation consists of associations
+with their pursuits. 99
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Literary solitude.--Its necessity.--Its pleasures.--Of visitors
+by profession.--Its inconveniences. 109
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The meditations of Genius.--A work on the Art of Meditation not yet
+produced.--Predisposing the mind.--Imagination awakens imagination.
+--Generating feelings by music.--Slight habits.--Darkness and
+silence, by suspending the exercise of our senses, increase the
+vivacity of our conceptions.--The arts of memory.--Memory the
+foundation of genius.--Inventions by several to preserve their own
+moral and literary character.--And to assist their studies.--The
+meditations of genius depend on habit.--Of the night-time.--A
+day of meditation should precede a day of composition.--Works of
+magnitude from slight conceptions.--Of thoughts never written.--The
+art of meditation exercised at all hours and places.--Continuity of
+attention the source of philosophical discoveries. --Stillness of
+meditation the first state of existence in genius. 116
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The enthusiasm of genius.--A state of mind resembling a waking
+dream distinct from reverie.--The ideal presence distinguished
+from the real presence.--The senses are really affected in the
+ideal world, proved by a variety of instances.--Of the rapture
+or sensation of deep study in art, science, and literature.
+--Of perturbed feelings, in delirium.--In extreme endurance
+of attention.--And in visionary illusions.--Enthusiasts in
+literature and art.--Of their self-immolations. 136
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Of the jealousy of genius.--Jealousy often proportioned to the
+degree of genius.--A perpetual fever among authors and artists.
+--Instances of its incredible excess among brothers and
+benefactors.--Of a peculiar species, where the fever consumes
+the sufferer without its malignancy. 154
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Want of mutual esteem among men of genius often originates in
+a deficiency of analogous ideas.--It is not always envy or
+jealousy which induces men of genius to undervalue each other. 159
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Self-praise of genius.--The love of praise instinctive in the
+nature of genius.--A high opinion of themselves necessary for
+their great designs.--The ancients openly claimed their own
+praise.--And several moderns.--An author knows more of his merits
+than his readers.--And less of his defects.--Authors versatile
+in their admiration and their malignity. 162
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+The domestic life of genius.--Defects of great compositions
+attributed to domestic infelicities.--The home of the literary
+character should be the abode of repose and silence.--Of the
+father.--Of the mother.--Of family genius.--Men of genius not
+more respected than other men in their domestic circle.--The
+cultivators of science and art do not meet on equal terms with
+others, in domestic life.--Their neglect of those around them.
+--Often accused of imaginary crimes. 173
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+The poverty of literary men.--Poverty, a relative quality.--Of
+the poverty of literary men in what degree desirable.--Extreme
+poverty.--Task-work.--Of gratuitous works.--A project to provide
+against the worst state of poverty among literary men. 186
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+The matrimonial state of literature.--Matrimony said not to be
+well-suited to the domestic life of genius.--Celibacy a concealed
+cause of the early querulousness of men of genius.--Of unhappy
+unions.--Not absolutely necessary that the wife should be a
+literary woman.--Of the docility and susceptibility of the higher
+female character.--A picture of a literary wife. 198
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+Literary friendships.--In early life.--Different from those of
+men of the world.--They suffer in unrestrained communication of
+their ideas, and bear reprimands and exhortations.--Unity of
+feelings.--A sympathy not of manners but of feelings.--Admit of
+dissimilar characters.--Their peculiar glory.--Their sorrow. 209
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+The literary and the personal character.--The personal
+dispositions of an author may be the reverse of those which
+appear in his writings.--Erroneous conceptions of the character
+of distant authors.--Paradoxical appearances in the history of
+genius.--Why the character of the man may be opposite to that
+of his writings. 217
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+The man of letters.--Occupies an intermediate station between
+authors and readers.--His solitude described.--Often the father
+of genius.--Atticus, a man of letters of antiquity.--The perfect
+character of a modern man of letters exhibited in Peiresc.--
+Their utility to authors and artists. 226
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+Literary old age still learning.--Influence of late studies in
+life.--Occupations in advanced age of the literary character.
+--Of literary men who have died at their studies. 238
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+Universality of genius.--Limited notion of genius entertained
+by the ancients.--Opposite faculties act with diminished force.
+--Men of genius excel only in a single art. 244
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+Literature an avenue to glory.--An intellectual nobility not
+chimerical, but created by public opinion.--Literary honours
+of various nations.--Local associations with the memory of the
+man of genius. 248
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+Influence of authors on society, and of society on authors.
+--National tastes a source of literary prejudices.--True
+genius always the organ of its nation.--Master-writers preserve
+the distinct national character.--Genius the organ of the state
+of the age.--Causes of its suppression in a people.--Often
+invented, but neglected.--The natural gradations of genius.--Men
+of genius produce their usefulness in privacy--The public mind
+is now the creation of the public writer.--Politicians affect to
+deny this principle.--Authors stand between the governors and
+the governed.--A view of the solitary author in his study.--They
+create an epoch in history.--Influence of popular authors.--The
+immortality of thought.--The family of genius illustrated by
+their genealogy. 258
+
+
+
+LITERARY MISCELLANIES.
+
+
+Miscellanists 281
+
+Prefaces 286
+
+Style 291
+
+Goldsmith and Johnson 294
+
+Self-characters 295
+
+On reading 298
+
+On habituating ourselves to an individual pursuit 302
+
+On novelty in literature 305
+
+Vers de Societe 308
+
+The genius of Moliere 310
+
+The sensibility of Racine 325
+
+Of Sterne 332
+
+Hume, Robertson, and Birch 340
+
+Of voluminous works incomplete by the deaths of the authors 350
+
+Of domestic novelties at first condemned 355
+
+Domesticity; or a dissertation on servants 364
+
+Printed letters in the vernacular idiom 375
+
+
+
+CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST.
+
+
+Advertisement 383
+
+Of the first modern assailants of the character of
+James I., Burnet, Bolingbroke and Pope, Harris, Macaulay,
+and Walpole 386
+
+His pedantry 388
+
+His polemical studies 389
+
+--how these were political 392
+
+The Hampton Court conference 393
+
+Of some of his writings 398
+
+Popular superstitions of the age 400
+
+The King's habits of life those of a man of letters 402
+
+Of the facility and copiousness of his composition 404
+
+Of his eloquence 405
+
+Of his wit 406
+
+Specimens of his humour, and observations on human life 407
+
+Some evidences of his sagacity in the discovery of truth 410
+
+Of his "Basilicon Doron" 413
+
+Of his idea of a tyrant and a king 414
+
+Advice to Prince Henry in the choice of his servants
+and associates 415
+
+Describes the Revolutionists of his time 416
+
+Of the nobility of Scotland 417
+
+Of colonising _ib._
+
+Of merchants 418
+
+Regulations for the prince's manners and habits _ib._
+
+Of his idea of the royal prerogative 421
+
+The lawyers' idea of the same _ib._
+
+Of his elevated conception of the kingly character 425
+
+His design in issuing "The Book of Sports" for the Sabbath-day 426
+
+The Sabbatarian controversy 428
+
+The motives of his aversion to war 430
+
+James acknowledges his dependence on the Commons; their conduct 431
+
+Of certain scandalous chronicles 434
+
+A picture of the age from a manuscript of the times 437
+
+Anecdotes of the manners of the age 441
+
+James I. discovers the disorders and discontents of a peace
+of more than twenty years 449
+
+The King's private life in his occasional retirements 450
+
+A detection of the discrepancies of opinion among the
+decriers of James I 451
+
+Summary of his character 455
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+ROBERT SOUTHEY, LL.D.,
+
+&c. &c. &c.
+
+
+In dedicating this Work to one of the most eminent literary characters of
+the age, I am experiencing a peculiar gratification, in which few, perhaps
+none, of my contemporaries can participate; for I am addressing him, whose
+earliest effusions attracted my regard, near half a century past; and
+during that awful interval of time--for fifty years is a trial of life of
+whatever may be good in us--you have multiplied your talents, and have
+never lost a virtue.
+
+When I turn from the uninterrupted studies of your domestic solitude to
+our metropolitan authors, the contrast, if not encouraging, is at least
+extraordinary. You are not unaware that the revolutions of Society have
+operated on our literature, and that new classes of readers have called
+forth new classes of writers. The causes and the consequences of the
+present state of this fugitive literature might form an inquiry which
+would include some of the important topics which concern the PUBLIC MIND,
+--but an inquiry which might be invidious shall not disturb a page
+consecrated to the record of excellence. They who draw their inspiration
+from the hour must not, however, complain if with that hour they pass
+away.
+
+I. DISRAELI.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+
+For the fifth time I revise a subject which has occupied my inquiries from
+early life, with feelings still delightful, and an enthusiasm not wholly
+diminished.
+
+Had not the principle upon which this work is constructed occurred to me
+in my youth, the materials which illustrate the literary character could
+never have been brought together. It was in early life that I conceived
+the idea of pursuing the history of genius by the similar events which had
+occurred to men of genius. Searching into literary history for the
+literary character formed a course of experimental philosophy in which
+every new essay verified a former trial, and confirmed a former truth. By
+the great philosophical principle of induction, inferences were deduced
+and results established, which, however vague and doubtful in speculation,
+are irresistible when the appeal is made to facts as they relate to
+others, and to feelings which must be decided on as they are passing in
+our own breast.
+
+It is not to be inferred from what I have here stated that I conceive that
+any single man of genius will resemble every man of genius; for not only
+man differs from man, but varies from himself in the different stages of
+human life. All that I assert is, that every man of genius will discover,
+sooner or later, that he belongs to the brotherhood of his class, and that
+he cannot escape from certain habits, and feelings, and disorders, which
+arise from the same temperament and sympathies, and are the necessary
+consequence of occupying the same position, and passing through the same
+moral existence. Whenever we compare men of genius with each other, the
+history of those who are no more will serve as a perpetual commentary on
+our contemporaries. There are, indeed, secret feelings which their
+prudence conceals, or their fears obscure, or their modesty shrinks from,
+or their pride rejects; but I have sometimes imagined that I have held
+the clue as they have lost themselves in their own labyrinth. I know
+that many, and some of great celebrity, have sympathised with the
+feelings which inspired these volumes; nor, while I have elucidated the
+idiosyncrasy of genius, have I less studied the habits and characteristics
+of the lovers of literature.
+
+It has been considered that the subject of this work might have been
+treated with more depth of metaphysical disquisition; and there has since
+appeared an attempt to combine with this investigation the medical
+science. A work, however, should be judged by its design and its
+execution, and not by any preconceived notion of what it ought to be
+according to the critic, rather than the author. The nature of this work
+is dramatic rather than metaphysical. It offers a narration or a
+description; a conversation or a monologue; an incident or a scene.
+
+Perhaps I have sometimes too warmly apologised for the infirmities of men
+of genius. From others we may hourly learn to treat with levity the man of
+genius because he is _only_ such. Perhaps also I may have been too fond of
+the subject, which has been for me an old and a favourite one--I may have
+exalted the literary character beyond the scale by which society is
+willing to fix it. Yet what is this Society, so omnipotent, so all
+judicial? The society of to-day was not the society of yesterday. Its
+feelings, its thoughts, its manners, its rights, its wishes, and its
+wants, are different and are changed: alike changed or alike created by
+those very literary characters whom it rarely comprehends and often would
+despise. Let us no longer look upon this retired and peculiar class as
+useless members of our busy race. There are mental as well as material
+labourers. The first are not less necessary; and as they are much rarer,
+so are they more precious. These are they whose "published labours" have
+benefited mankind--these are they whose thoughts can alone rear that
+beautiful fabric of social life, which it is the object of all good men to
+elevate or to support. To discover truth and to maintain it,--to develope
+the powers, to regulate the passions, to ascertain the privileges of man,
+--such have ever been, and such ever ought to be, the labours of AUTHORS!
+Whatever we enjoy of political and private happiness, our most necessary
+knowledge as well as our most refined pleasures, are alike owing to this
+class of men; and of these, some for glory, and often from benevolence,
+have shut themselves out from the very beings whom they love, and for whom
+they labour.
+
+Upwards of forty years have elapsed since, composed in a distant county,
+and printed at a provincial press, I published "An Essay on the Manners
+and Genius of the Literary Character." To my own habitual and inherent
+defects were superadded those of my youth. The crude production was,
+however, not ill received, for the edition disappeared, and the subject
+was found more interesting than the writer.
+
+During a long interval of twenty years, this little work was often
+recalled to my recollection by several, and by some who have since
+obtained celebrity. They imagined that their attachment to literary
+pursuits had been strengthened even by so weak an effort. An extraordinary
+circumstance concurred with these opinions. A copy accidentally fell into
+my hands which had formerly belonged to the great poetical genius of our
+times; and the singular fact, that it had been more than once read by him,
+and twice in two subsequent years at Athens, in 1810 and 1811, instantly
+convinced me that the volume deserved my renewed attention.
+
+It was with these feelings that I was again strongly attracted to a
+subject from which, indeed, during the course of a studious life, it
+had never been long diverted. The consequence of my labours was the
+publication, in 1818, of an octavo volume, under the title of "The
+Literary Character, illustrated by the History of Men of Genius, drawn
+from their own feelings and confessions."
+
+In the preface to this edition, in mentioning the fact respecting Lord
+Byron, which had been the immediate cause of its publication, I added
+these words: "I tell this fact assuredly not from any little vanity which
+it may appear to betray;--for the truth is, were I not as liberal and as
+candid in respect to my own productions, as I hope I am to others, I could
+not have been gratified by the present circumstance; for the marginal
+notes of the noble author convey no flattery;--but amidst their pungency,
+and sometimes their truth, the circumstance that a man of genius could
+reperuse this slight effusion at two different periods of his life, was a
+sufficient authority, at least for an author, to return it once more to
+the anvil."
+
+Some time after the publication of this edition of "The Literary
+Character," which was in fact a new work, I was shown, through the
+kindness of an English gentleman lately returned from Italy, a copy of it,
+which had been given to him by Lord Byron, and which again contained
+marginal notes by the noble author. These were peculiarly interesting, and
+were chiefly occasioned by observations on his character, which appeared
+in the work.
+
+In 1822 I published a new edition of this work, greatly enlarged, and in
+two volumes. I took this opportunity of inserting the manuscript Notes of
+Lord Byron, with the exception of one, which, however characteristic of
+the amiable feelings of the noble poet, and however gratifying to my own,
+I had no wish to obtrude on the notice of the public.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: As everything connected with the reading of a mind like Lord
+BYRON'S interesting to the philosophical inquirer, this note may now be
+preserved. On that passage of the Preface of the second Edition which I
+have already quoted, his Lordship was thus pleased to write:
+
+"I was wrong, but I was young and petulant, and probably wrote down
+anything, little thinking that those observations would be betrayed to the
+author, whose abilities I have always respected, and whose works in
+general I have read oftener than perhaps those of any English author
+whatever, except such as treat of Turkey."]
+
+Soon after the publication of this third edition, I received
+the following letter from his lordship:--
+
+
+_"Montenero, Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, June 10, 1822._
+
+"DEAR SIR,--If you will permit me to call you so,--I had some time ago
+taken up my pen at Pisa, to thank you for the present of your new edition
+of the 'Literary Character,' which has often been to me a consolation, and
+always a pleasure. I was interrupted, however, partly by business, and
+partly by vexation of different kinds,--for I have not very long ago lost
+a child by fever, and I have had a good deal of petty trouble with the
+laws of this lawless country, on account of the prosecution of a servant
+for an attack upon a cowardly scoundrel of a dragoon, who drew his sword
+upon some unarmed Englishmen, and whom I had done the honour to mistake
+for an officer, and to treat like a gentleman. He turned out to be
+neither,--like many other with medals, and in uniform; but he paid for his
+brutality with a severe and dangerous wound, inflicted by nobody knows
+whom, for, of three suspected, and two arrested, they have been able to
+identify neither; which is strange, since he was wounded in the presence
+of thousands, in a public street, during a feast-day and full promenade.
+--But to return to things more analogous to the 'Literary Character,' I
+wish to say, that had I known that the book was to fall into your hands,
+or that the MS. notes you have thought worthy of publication would have
+attracted your attention, I would have made them more copious, and perhaps
+not so careless.
+
+"I really cannot know whether I am, or am not, the genius you are pleased
+to call me,--but I am very willing to put up with the mistake, if it be
+one. It is a title dearly enough bought by most men, to render it
+endurable, even when not quite clearly made out, which it never _can_ be,
+till the Posterity, whose decisions are merely dreams to ourselves, have
+sanctioned or denied it, while it can touch us no further.
+
+"Mr. Murray is in possession of a MS. memoir of mine (not to be published
+till I am in my grave), which, strange as it may seem, I never read over
+since it was written, and have no desire to read over again. In it I have
+told what, as far as I know, is the _truth_--_not the whole_ truth--for if
+I had done so, I must have involved much private, and some dissipated
+history: but, nevertheless, nothing but truth, as far as regard for others
+permitted it to appear.
+
+"I do not know whether you have seen those MSS.; but, as you are curious
+in such things as relate to the human mind, I should feel gratified if you
+had. I also sent him (Murray), a few days since, a Common-place Book, by
+my friend Lord Clare, containing a few things, which may perhaps aid his
+publication in case of his surviving me. If there are any questions which
+you would like to ask me, as connected with your philosophy of the
+literary mind (_if_ mine be a literary mind), I will answer them fairly,
+or give a reason for _not_, good--bad--or indifferent. At present, I am
+paying the penalty of having helped to spoil the public taste; for, as
+long as I wrote in the false exaggerated style of youth and the times in
+which we live, they applauded me to the very echo; and within these few
+years, when I have endeavoured at better things, and written what I
+suspect to have the principle of duration in it: the Church, the
+Chancellor, and all men, even to my grand patron, Francis Jeffrey, Esq.,
+of the _Edinburgh Review_, have risen up against me, and my later
+publications. Such is Truth! men dare not look her in the face, except by
+degrees; they mistake her for a Gorgon, instead of knowing her to be
+Minerva. I do not mean to apply this mythological simile to my own
+endeavours, but I have only to turn over a few pages of your volumes to
+find innumerable and far more illustrious instances. It is lucky that I am
+of a temper not to be easily turned aside, though by no means difficult to
+irritate. But I am making a dissertation, instead of writing a letter. I
+write to you from the Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, with the islands of Elba
+and Corsica visible from my balcony, and my old friend the Mediterranean
+rolling blue at my feet. As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for
+Nature, I can partly soften or subdue my other passions, and resist or
+endure those of others.
+
+"I have the honour to be, truly,
+
+"Your obliged and faithful servant,
+
+"NOEL BYRON.
+
+"To I. D'Israeli, Esq."
+
+The ill-starred expedition to Greece followed this letter.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+This work, conceived in youth, executed by the research of manhood, and
+associated with the noblest feelings of our nature, is an humble but
+fervent tribute, offered to the memory of those Master Spirits from whose
+labours, as BURKE eloquently describes, "their country receives permanent
+service: those who know how to make the silence of their closets more
+beneficial to the world than all the noise and bustle of courts, senates,
+and camps."
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY CHARACTER.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Of Literary Characters, and of the Lovers of Literature and Art.
+
+
+Diffused over enlightened Europe, an order of men has arisen, who,
+uninfluenced by the interests or the passions which give an impulse to the
+other classes of society, are connected by the secret links of congenial
+pursuits, and, insensibly to themselves, are combining in the same common
+labours, and participating in the same divided glory. In the metropolitan
+cities of Europe the same authors are now read, and the same opinions
+become established: the Englishman is familiar with Machiavel and
+Montesquieu; the Italian and the Frenchman with Bacon and Locke; and the
+same smiles and tears are awakened on the banks of the Thames, of the
+Seine, or of the Guadalquivir, by Shakspeare, Moliere, and Cervantes--
+
+ Contemporains de tous les hommes,
+ Et citoyens de tous les lieux.
+
+A khan of Tartary admired the wit of Moliere, and discovered the Tartuffe
+in the Crimea; and had this ingenious sovereign survived the translation
+which he ordered, the immortal labour of the comic satirist of France
+might have laid the foundation of good taste even among the Turks and the
+Tartars. We see the Italian Pignotti referring to the opinion of an
+English critic, Lord Bolingbroke, for decisive authority on the peculiar
+characteristics of the historian Guicciardini: the German Schlegel writes
+on our Shakspeare like a patriot; and while the Italians admire the noble
+scenes which our Flaxman has drawn from their great poet, they have
+rejected the feeble attempts of their native artists. Such is the wide and
+the perpetual influence of this living intercourse of literary minds.
+
+Scarcely have two centuries elapsed since the literature of every nation
+was limited to its fatherland, and men of genius long could only hope for
+the spread of their fame in the single language of ancient Rome; which for
+them had ceased to be natural, and could never be popular. It was in the
+intercourse of the wealth, the power, and the novel arts of the nations of
+Europe, that they learned each other's languages; and they discovered
+that, however their manners varied as they arose from their different
+customs, they participated in the same intellectual faculties, suffered
+from the same wants, and were alive to the same pleasures; they perceived
+that there were no conventional fashions, nor national distinctions, in
+abstract truths and fundamental knowledge. A new spirit seems to bring
+them nearer to each other: and, as if literary Europe were intent to form
+but one people out of the populace of mankind, they offer their reciprocal
+labours; they pledge to each other the same opinions; and that knowledge
+which, like a small river, takes its source from one spot, at length
+mingles with the ocean-stream common to them all.
+
+But those who stand connected with this literary community are not always
+sensible of the kindred alliance; even a genius of the first order has not
+always been aware that he is the founder of a society, and that there will
+ever be a brotherhood where there is a father-genius.
+
+These literary characters are partially, and with a melancholy colouring,
+exhibited by JOHNSON. "To talk in private, to think in solitude, to
+inquire or to answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar. He wanders
+about the world without pomp or terror; and is neither known nor valued
+but by men like himself." Thus thought this great writer during those sad
+probationary years of genius when
+
+ Slow rises worth, by _poverty_ depress'd;
+
+not yet conscious that he himself was devoting his days to cast the minds
+of his contemporaries and of the succeeding age in the mighty mould of his
+own; JOHNSON was of that order of men whose individual genius becomes that
+of a people. A prouder conception rose in the majestic mind of MILTON, of
+"that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise which God and good men have
+consented shall be the reward of those whose PUBLISHED LABOURS advanced
+the good of mankind."
+
+The LITERARY CHARACTER is a denomination which, however vague, defines the
+pursuits of the individual, and separates him from other professions,
+although it frequently occurs that he is himself a member of one.
+Professional characters are modified by the change of manners, and are
+usually national; while the literary character, from the objects in which
+it concerns itself, retains a more permanent, and necessarily a more
+independent nature.
+
+Formed by the same habits, and influenced by the same motives,
+notwithstanding the contrast of talents and tempers, and the remoteness of
+times and places, the literary character has ever preserved among its
+followers the most striking family resemblance. The passion for study, the
+delight in books, the desire of solitude and celebrity, the obstructions
+of human life, the character of their pursuits, the uniformity of their
+habits, the triumphs and the disappointments of literary glory, were as
+truly described by CICERO and the younger PLINY as by PETRARCH and
+ERASMUS, and as they have been by HUME and GIBBON. And this similarity,
+too, may equally be remarked with respect to that noble passion of the
+lovers of literature and of art for collecting together their mingled
+treasures; a thirst which was as insatiable in ATTICUS and PEIRESC as in
+our CRACHERODE and TOWNLEY.[A] We trace the feelings of our literary
+contemporaries in all ages, and among every people who have ranked with
+nations far advanced in civilization; for among these may be equally
+observed both the great artificers of knowledge and those who preserve
+unbroken the vast chain of human acquisitions. The one have stamped the
+images of their minds on their works, and the others have preserved the
+circulation of this intellectual coinage, this
+
+ --Gold of the dead,
+Which Time does still disperse, but not devour.
+
+[Footnote A: The Rev. C.M. Cracherode bequeathed at his death, in 1799, to
+the British Museum, the large collection of literature, art, and virtu he
+had employed an industrious life in collecting. His books numbered nearly
+4500 volumes, many of great rarity and value. His drawings, many by early
+Italian masters, and all rare or curious, were deposited in the print-room
+of the same establishment; his antiquities, &c. were in a similar way
+added to the other departments. The "Townley Gallery" of classic sculpture
+was purchased of his executors by Government for 28,200_l_. It had been
+collected with singular taste and judgment, as well as some amount of good
+fortune also; Townley resided at Rome during the researches on the site of
+Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli; and he had for aids and advisers Sir William
+Hamilton, Gavin Hamilton, and other active collectors; and was the friend
+and correspondent of D'Haucarville and Winckelmann.--ED.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Of the Adversaries of Literary Men among themselves.--Matter-of-fact
+Men, and Men of Wit.--The Political Economist.--Of those who abandon
+their studies.--Men in office.--The arbiters of public opinion.--Those
+who treat the pursuits of literature with levity.
+
+
+The pursuits of literature have been openly or insidiously lowered by
+those literary men who, from motives not always difficult to penetrate,
+are eager to confound the ranks in the republic of letters, maliciously
+conferring the honours of authorship on that "Ten Thousand" whose recent
+list is not so much a muster-roll of heroes as a table of population.[A]
+
+Matter-of-fact men, or men of knowledge, and men of wit and taste, were
+long inimical to each other's pursuits.[B] The Royal Society in its origin
+could hardly support itself against the ludicrous attacks of literary
+men,[C] and the Antiquarian Society has afforded them amusement.[D] Such
+partial views have ceased to contract the understanding. Science yields a
+new substance to literature; literature combines new associations for the
+votaries of knowledge. There is no subject in nature, and in the history
+of man, which will not associate with our feelings and our curiosity,
+whenever genius extends its awakening hand. The antiquary, the naturalist,
+the architect, the chemist, and even writers on medical topics, have in
+our days asserted their claims, and discovered their long-interrupted
+relationship with the great family of genius and literature.
+
+[Footnote A: We have a Dictionary of "Ten Thousand living Authors" of our
+own nation. The alphabet is fatal by its juxtapositions. In France, before
+the Revolution, they counted about twenty thousand writers. When David
+would have his people numbered, Joab asked, "Why doth my lord delight in
+this?" In political economy, the population returns may be useful,
+provided they be correct; but in the literary republic, its numerical
+force diminishes the strength of the empire. "There you are numbered, we
+had rather you were weighed." Put aside the puling infants of literature,
+of whom such a mortality occurs in its nurseries; such as the writers of
+the single sermon, the single law-tract, the single medical dissertation,
+&c.; all writers whose subject is single, without being singular; count
+for nothing the inefficient mob of mediocrists; and strike out our
+literary _charlatans_; and then our alphabet of men of genius will not
+consist, as it now does, of the four-and-twenty letters.]
+
+[Footnote B: The cause is developed in the chapter on "Want of Mutual
+Esteem."]
+
+[Footnote C: See BUTLER, in his "Elephant in the Moon." SOUTH, in his
+oration at the opening of the theatre at Oxford, passed this bitter
+sarcasm on the naturalists,--"_Mirantur nihil nisi pulices, pediculos--et
+se ipsos_;"--nothing they admire but fleas, lice, and themselves! The
+illustrious SLOANE endured a long persecution from the bantering humour of
+Dr. KING. One of the most amusing declaimers against what he calls _les
+Sciences des faux Scavans_ is Father MALEBRANCHE; he is far more severe
+than Cornelius Agrippa, and he long preceded ROUSSEAU, so famous for his
+invective against the sciences. The seventh chapter of his fourth book is
+an inimitable satire. "The principal excuse," says he, "which engages men
+in _false studies_, is, that they have attached the _idea of learned_
+where they should not." Astronomy, antiquarianism, history, ancient
+poetry, and natural history, are all mowed down by his metaphysical
+scythe. When we become acquainted with the _idea_ Father Malebranche
+attaches to the term _learned_, we understand him--and we smile.]
+
+[Footnote D: See the chapter on "Puck the Commentator," in the
+"Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii.; also p. 304 of the same volume.]
+
+A new race of jargonists, the barbarous metaphysicians of political
+economy, have struck at the essential existence of the productions of
+genius in literature and art; for, appreciating them by their own
+standard, they have miserably degraded the professors. Absorbed in the
+contemplation of material objects, and rejecting whatever does not enter
+into their own restricted notion of "utility," these cold arithmetical
+seers, with nothing but millions in their imagination; and whose choicest
+works of art are spinning-jennies, have valued the intellectual tasks of
+the library and the studio by "the demand and the supply." They have sunk
+these pursuits into the class of what they term "unproductive labour;" and
+by another result of their line and level system, men of letters, with
+some other important characters, are forced down into the class "of
+buffoons, singers, opera-dancers, &c." In a system of political economy it
+has been discovered that "that _unprosperous race_ of men, called _men of
+letters_, must _necessarily_ occupy their present _forlorn state_ in
+society much as formerly, when a scholar and a beggar seem to have been
+terms very nearly synonymous."[A] In their commercial, agricultural, and
+manufacturing view of human nature, addressing society by its most
+pressing wants and its coarsest feelings, these theorists limit the moral
+and physical existence of man by speculative tables of population, planing
+and levelling society down in their carpentry of human nature. They would
+yoke and harness the loftier spirits to one common and vulgar destination.
+Man is considered only as he wheels on the wharf, or as he spins in the
+factory; but man, as a recluse being of meditation, or impelled to action
+by more generous passions, has been struck out of the system of our
+political economists. It is, however, only among their "unproductive
+labourers" that we shall find those men of leisure, whose habitual
+pursuits are consumed in the development of thought and the gradual
+accessions of knowledge; those men of whom the sage of Judea declares,
+that "It is he who hath little business who shall become wise: how can he
+get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and whose talk is of bullocks? But
+THEY,"--the men of leisure and study,--"WILL MAINTAIN THE STATE OF THE
+WORLD!" The prosperity and the happiness of a people include something
+more evident and more permanent than "the Wealth of a Nation."[B]
+
+[Footnote A: "Wealth of Nations," i. 182.]
+
+[Footnote B: Since this murmur has been uttered against the degrading
+views of some of those theorists, it afforded me pleasure to observe that
+Mr. Malthus has fully sanctioned its justness. On this head, at least, Mr.
+Malthus has amply confuted his stubborn and tasteless brothers. Alluding
+to the productions of genius, this writer observes, that, "to estimate the
+value of NEWTON'S discoveries, or the delight communicated by SHAKSPEAKE
+and MILTON, by the _price_ at which their works have sold, would be but a
+poor measure of the degree in which they have elevated and enchanted their
+country."--_Principles of Pol. Econ._ p. 48. And hence he acknowledges,
+that "_some unproductive labour is of much more use and importance_ than
+productive labour, but is incapable of being the subject of the gross
+calculations which relate to national wealth; contributing to _other
+sources of happiness_ besides those which are derived from matter."
+Political economists would have smiled with contempt on the querulous
+PORSON, who once observed, that "it seemed to him very hard, that with all
+his critical knowledge of Greek, he could not get a hundred pounds." They
+would have demonstrated to the learned Grecian, that this was just as it
+ought to be; the same occurrence had even happened to HOMER in his own
+country, where Greek ought to have fetched a higher price than in England;
+but, that both might have obtained this hundred pounds, had the Grecian
+bard and the Greek professor been employed at the same stocking-frame
+together, instead of the "Iliad."]
+
+There is a more formidable class of men of genius who are heartless to the
+interests of literature. Like CORNELIUS AGRIPPA, who wrote on "the vanity
+of the arts and sciences," many of these are only tracing in the arts
+which they have abandoned their own inconstant tempers, their feeble
+tastes, and their disordered judgments. But, with others of this class,
+study has usually served as the instrument, not as the object, of their
+ascent; it was the ladder which they once climbed, but it was not the
+eastern star which guided and inspired. Such literary characters were
+WARBURTON,[A] WATSON, and WILKES, who abandoned their studies when their
+studies had served a purpose.
+
+[Footnote A: For a full disquisition of the character and career of
+Warburton, see the essay in "Quarrels of Authors."]
+
+WATSON gave up his pursuits in chemistry the instant he obtained their
+limited reward, and the laboratory closed when the professorship was
+instituted. Such was the penurious love he bore for the science which he
+had adopted, that the extraordinary discoveries of thirty years subsequent
+to his own first essays could never excite even an idle inquiry. He tells
+us that he preferred "his larches to his laurels:" the wretched jingle
+expressed the mere worldliness that dictated it. In the same spirit of
+calculation with which he had at first embraced science and literature, he
+abandoned them; and his ingenuous confession is a memorable example of
+that egotistic pride which betrayed in the literary character the creature
+of selfism and political ambition.
+
+We are accustomed to consider WILKES merely as a political adventurer, and
+it may surprise to find this "city chamberlain" ranked among professed
+literary characters: yet in his variable life there was a period when he
+cherished the aspirations of a votary. Once he desired Lloyd to announce
+the edition of Churchill, which he designed to enrich by a commentary; and
+his correspondence on this subject, which has never appeared, would, as he
+himself tells us, afford a variety of hints and communications. Wilkes was
+then warmed by literary glory; for on his retirement into Italy, he
+declared, "I mean to give myself entirely to our friend's work, and to my
+History of England. I wish to equal the dignity of Livy: I am sure the
+greatness and majesty of our nation demand an historian equal to him."
+They who have only heard of the intriguing demagogue, and witnessed the
+last days of the used voluptuary, may hardly imagine that Wilkes had ever
+cherished such elevated projects; but mob-politics made this adventurer's
+fortune, which fell to the lot of an epicurean: and the literary glory he
+once sought he lived to ridicule, in the immortal diligence of Lord
+Chatham and of Gibbon. Dissolving life away, and consuming all his
+feelings on himself, Wilkes left his nearest relatives what he left the
+world--the memory of an anti-social being! This wit, who has bequeathed to
+us no wit; this man of genius, who has formed no work of genius; this
+bold advocate for popular freedom, who sunk his patriotism in the
+chamberlainship; was indeed desirous of leaving behind him some trace of
+the life of an _escroc_ in a piece of autobiography, which, for the
+benefit of the world, has been thrown to the flames.
+
+Men who have ascended into office through its gradations, or have been
+thrown upwards by accident, are apt to view others in a cloud of passions
+and politics. They who once commanded us by their eloquence, come at
+length to suspect the eloquent; and in their "pride of office" would now
+drive us by that single force of despotism which is the corruption of
+political power. Our late great Minister, Pitt, has been reproached even
+by his friends for the contemptuous indifference with which he treated
+literary men. Perhaps BURKE himself, long a literary character, might
+incur some portion of this censure, by involving the character itself in
+the odium of a monstrous political sect. These political characters
+resemble Adrian VI., who, obtaining the tiara as the reward of his
+studies, afterwards persecuted literary men, and, say the Italians,
+dreaded lest his brothers might shake the Pontificate itself.[A]
+
+Worst fares it with authors when minds of this cast become the arbiters of
+public opinion; for the greatest of writers may unquestionably be forced
+into ridiculous attitudes by the well-known artifices practised by modern
+criticism. The elephant, no longer in his forest struggling with his
+hunters, but falling entrapped by a paltry snare, comes at length, in the
+height of ill-fortune, to dance on heated iron at the bidding of the
+pantaloon of a fair. Whatever such critics may plead to mortify the
+vanity of authors, at least it requires as much vanity to give effect to
+their own polished effrontery.[B] Scorn, sarcasm, and invective, the
+egotism of the vain, and the irascibility of the petulant, where they
+succeed in debilitating genius of the consciousness of its powers, are
+practising the witchery of that ancient superstition of "tying the knot,"
+which threw the youthful bridegroom into utter despair by its ideal
+forcefulness.[C]
+
+[Footnote A: It has been suspected that Adrian VI. has been calumniated,
+for that this pontiff was only too sudden to begin the reform he
+meditated. But Adrian VI. was a scholastic whose austerity turned away
+with contempt from all ancient art, and was no brother to contemporary
+genius. He was one of the _cui bono_ race, a branch of our political
+economists. When they showed him the Laocooen, Adrian silenced their
+raptures by the frigid observation, that all such things were _idola
+antiquorum_: and ridiculed the _amena letteratura_ till every man of
+genius retreated from his court. Had Adrian's reign extended beyond its
+brief period, men of taste in their panic imagined that in his zeal the
+Pontiff would have calcined the fine statues of ancient art, to expedite
+the edifice of St. Peter.]
+
+[Footnote B: Listen to a confession and a recantation of an illustrious
+sinner; the Coryphaeus of the amusing and new-found art, or artifice, of
+modern criticism. In the character of BURNS, the Edinburgh Reviewer, with
+his peculiar felicity of manner, attacked the character of the man of
+genius; but when Mr. Campbell vindicated his immortal brother with all the
+inspiration of the family feeling, our critic, who is one of those great
+artists who acquire at length the utmost indifference even for their own
+works, generously avowed that, "a certain tone of exaggeration is
+incidental _we fear to the sort of writing in which we are engaged_.
+Reckoning a little too much on the dulness of our readers, we are often
+led to _overstate our sentiments_: when a little _controversial warmth_ is
+added to a little _love of effect_, an excess of colouring steals over the
+canvas, which ultimately offends no eye so much as our own." But what if
+this _love of effect_ in the critic has been too often obtained at the
+entire cost of the literary characters, the fruits of whose studious days
+at this moment lie withering in oblivion, or whose genius the critic has
+deterred from pursuing the career it had opened for itself! To have
+silenced the learned, and to have terrified the modest, is the barbarous
+triumph of a Hun or a Vandal; and the vaunted freedom of the literary
+republic departed from us when the vacillating public blindly consecrated
+the edicts of the demagogues of literature, whoever they may be.
+
+A reaction appears in the burlesque or bantering spirit. While one faction
+drives out another, the abuse of extraordinary powers is equally fatal.
+Thus we are consoled while we are afflicted, and we are protected while we
+are degraded.]
+
+[Footnote C: _Nouer l'aiguillette_, of which the extraordinary effect is
+described by Montaigne, is an Oriental custom still practised.--_Mr.
+Hobhouse's Journey through Albania_, p. 528.]
+
+That spirit of levity which would shake the columns of society, by
+detracting from or burlesquing the elevating principles which have
+produced so many illustrious men, has recently attempted to reduce the
+labours of literature to a mere curious amusement: a finished composition
+is likened to a skilful game of billiards, or a piece of music finely
+executed; and curious researches, to charades and other insignificant
+puzzles. With such, an author is an idler who will not be idle, amusing or
+fatiguing others who are completely so. The result of a work of genius
+is contracted to the art of writing; but this art is only its last
+perfection. Inspiration is drawn from a deeper source; enthusiasm is
+diffused through contagious pages; and without these movements of the
+soul, how poor and artificial a thing is that sparkling composition which
+flashes with the cold vibrations of mere art or artifice! We have been
+recently told, on critical authority, that "a great genius should never
+allow himself to be sensible to his own celebrity, nor deem his pursuits
+of much consequence, however important or successful." A sort of catholic
+doctrine, to mortify an author into a saint, extinguishing the glorious
+appetite of fame by one Lent all the year, and self-flagellation every
+day! BUFFON and GIBBON, VOLTAIRE and POPE,[A] who gave to literature
+all the cares, the industry, and the glory of their lives, assuredly
+were too "sensible to their celebrity, and deemed their pursuits of
+much consequence," particularly when "important and successful." The
+self-possession of great authors sustains their own genius by a sense of
+their own glory.
+
+Such, then, are some of the domestic treasons of the literary character
+against literature--"Et tu, Brute!" But the hero of literature outlives
+his assassins, and might address them in that language of poetry
+and affection with which a Mexican king reproached his traitorous
+counsellors:--"You were the feathers of my wings, and the eyelids of my
+eyes."
+
+[Footnote A: The claims of Pope to the title of a great poet were denied
+in the days of Byron; and occasioned a warm and noble defence of him by
+that poet. It has since been found necessary to do the same for Byron,
+whom some transcendentalists have attacked.--ED.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Of artists, in the history of men of literary genius.--Their habits and
+pursuits analogous.--The nature of their genius is similar in their
+distinct works.--Shown by their parallel eras, and by a common end pursued
+by both.
+
+
+Artists and literary men, alike insulated in their studies, pass through
+the same permanent discipline; and thus it has happened that the same
+habits and feelings, and the same fortunes, have accompanied men who have
+sometimes unhappily imagined their pursuits not to be analogous.
+
+ Let the artist share
+The palm; he shares the peril, and dejected
+Faints o'er the labour unapproved--alas!
+Despair and genius!--
+
+The congenial histories of literature and art describe the same periodical
+revolutions and parallel eras. After the golden age of Latinity, we
+gradually slide into the silver, and at length precipitately descend into
+the iron. In the history of painting, after the splendid epoch of Raphael,
+Titian, and Correggio, we meet with pleasure the Oarraccis, Domenichino,
+Guido, and Albano; as we read Paterculus, Quintilian, Seneca, Juvenal, and
+Silius Italicus, after their immortal masters, Cicero, Livy, Virgil, and
+Horace.
+
+It is evident that MILTON, MICHAEL ANGELO, and HANDEL, belong to the same
+order of minds; the same imaginative powers, and the same sensibility, are
+only operating with different materials. LANZI, the delightful historian
+of the _Storia Pittorica_, is prodigal of his comparisons of the painters
+with the poets; his delicacy of perception discerned the refined analogies
+which for ever unite the two sisters, and he fondly dwelt on the
+transplanted flowers of the two arts: "_Chi sente che sia Tibullo nel
+poetare sente chi sia Andrea (del Sarto) nel dipingere_;" he who feels
+what TIBULLUS is in poetry, feels what ANDREA is in painting. MICHAEL
+ANGELO, from his profound conception of the terrible and the difficult in
+art, was called its DANTE; from the Italian poet the Italian sculptor
+derived the grandeur of his ideas; and indeed the visions of the bard had
+deeply nourished the artist's imagination; for once he had poured about
+the margins of his own copy their ethereal inventions, in the rapid
+designs of his pen. And so Bellori informs us of a very curious volume in
+manuscript, composed by RUBENS, which contained, among other topics
+concerning art, descriptions of the passions and actions of men, drawn
+from the poets, and demonstrated to the eye by the painters. Here were
+battles, shipwrecks, sports, groups, and other incidents, which were
+transcribed from Virgil and other poets, and by their side RUBENS had
+copied what he had met with on those subjects from Raphael and the
+antique.[A]
+
+The poet and the painter are only truly great by the mutual influences of
+their studies, and the jealousy of glory has only produced an idle
+contest. This old family-quarrel for precedence was renewed by our
+estimable President, in his brilliant "Rhymes on Art;" where he maintains
+that "the narrative of an action is not comparable to the action itself
+before the eyes;" while the enthusiast BARRY considers painting "as poetry
+realised."[B] This error of genius, perhaps first caught from Richardson's
+bewildering pages, was strengthened by the extravagant principle adopted
+by Darwin, who, to exalt his solitary talent of descriptive poetry,
+asserted that "the essence of poetry was picture." The philosophical
+critic will find no difficulty in assigning to each, sister-art her
+distinct province; and it is only a pleasing delirium, in the enthusiasm
+of artists, which has confused the boundaries of these arts. The dread
+pathetic story of Dante's "Ugolino," under the plastic hand of Michael
+Angelo, formed the subject of a basso-relievo; and Reynolds, with his
+highest effort, embodied the terrific conception of the poet as much as
+his art permitted: but assuredly both these great artists would never have
+claimed the precedence of the Dantesc genius, and might have hesitated at
+the rivalry.
+
+[Footnote A: Rubens was an ardent collector of works of antique art; and
+in the "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 398, will be found an
+interesting account of his museum at Antwerp.--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: The late Sir Martin Archer Shee, P.R.A. This accomplished
+artist, who possessed a large amount of poetical and literary power, asks,
+"What is there of _intellectual_ in the operations of the poet which the
+painter does not equal? What is there of _mechanical_ which he does not
+surpass? The advantage which poetry possesses over painting in continued
+narration and successive impression, cannot be advanced as a peculiar
+merit of the poet, since it results from the nature of language, and is
+common to prose." Poetry he values as the earliest of arts, painting as
+the latest and most refined.--ED.]
+
+Who has not heard of that one common principle which unites the
+intellectual arts, and who has not felt that the nature of their genius is
+similar in their distinct works? Hence curious inquiries could never
+decide whether the group of the Laocooen in sculpture preceded or was
+borrowed from that in poetry. Lessing conjectures that the sculptor copied
+the poet. It is evident that the agony of Laocooen was the common end where
+the sculptor and the poet were to meet; and we may observe that the
+artists in marble and in verse skilfully adapted their variations to their
+respective art: the one having to prefer the _nude_, rejected the veiling
+fillet from the forehead, that he might not conceal its deep expression,
+and the drapery of the sacrificial robe, that he might display the human
+form in visible agony; but the other, by the charm of verse, could invest
+the priest with the pomp of the pontifical robe without hiding from us the
+interior sufferings of the human victim. We see they obtained by different
+means, adapted to their respective arts, that common end which each
+designed; but who will decide which invention preceded the other, or who
+was the greater artist?
+
+This approximation of men apparently of opposite pursuits is so natural,
+that when Gesner, in his inspiring letter on landscape-painting,[A]
+recommends to the young painter a constant study of poetry and literature,
+the impatient artist is made to exclaim, "Must we combine with so many
+other studies those which belong to literary men? Must we read as well as
+paint?" "It is useless to reply to this question; for some important
+truths must be instinctively felt, perhaps the fundamental ones in the
+arts." A truly imaginative artist, whose enthusiasm was never absent when
+he meditated on the art he loved, BARRY, thus vehemently broke forth: "Go
+home from the academy, light up your lamps, and exercise yourselves in the
+creative part of your art, with Homer, with Livy, and all the great
+characters, ancient and modern, for your companions and counsellors." This
+genial intercourse of literature with art may be proved by painters who
+have suggested subjects to poets, and poets who have selected them for
+painters. GOLDSMITH suggested the subject of the tragic and pathetic
+picture of Ugolino to the pencil of REYNOLDS.
+
+All the classes of men in society have their peculiar sorrows and
+enjoyments, as they have their peculiar habits and characteristics. In
+the history of men of genius we may often open the secret story of their
+minds, for they have above others the privilege of communicating their
+own feelings; and every life of a man of genius, composed by himself,
+presents us with the experimental philosophy of the mind. By living with
+their brothers, and contemplating their masters, they will judge from
+consciousness less erroneously than from discussion; and in forming
+comparative views and parallel situations, they will discover certain
+habits and feelings, and find these reflected in themselves.
+
+SYDENHAM has beautifully said, "Whoever describes a violet exactly as to
+its colour, taste, smell, form, and other properties, will find the
+description agree in most particulars with all the violets in the
+universe."
+
+[Footnote A: Few writers were so competent to instruct in art as Gesner,
+who was not only an author and a poet, but an artist who decorated his
+poems by designs as graceful as their subject.--ED.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Of natural genius.--Minds constitutionally different cannot have an equal
+aptitude.--Genius not the result of habit and education.--Originates in
+peculiar qualities of the mind.--The predisposition of genius.--A
+substitution for the white paper of Locke.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: In the second edition of this work in 1818, I touched on some
+points of this inquiry in the second chapter: I almost despaired to find
+any philosopher sympathise with the subject, so invulnerable, they
+imagine, are the entrenchments of their theories. I was agreeably
+surprised to find these ideas taken up in the _Edinburgh Review_ for
+August, 1820, in an entertaining article on Reynolds. I have, no doubt,
+profited by the perusal, though this chapter was prepared before I met
+with that spirited vindication of "an inherent difference in the organs or
+faculties to receive impressions of any kind."]
+
+That faculty in art which individualises the artist, belonging to him and
+to no other, and which in a work forms that creative part whose likeness
+is not found in any other work--is it inherent in the constitutional
+dispositions of the Creator, or can it be formed by patient acquisition?
+
+Astonished at their own silent and obscure progress, some have imagined
+that they have formed their genius solely by their own studies; when they
+generated, they conceived that they had acquired; and, losing the
+distinction between nature and habit, with fatal temerity the idolatry of
+philosophy substituted something visible and palpable, yet shaped by the
+most opposite fancies, called a Theory, for Nature herself! Men of genius,
+whose great occupation is to be conversant with the inspirations of
+Nature, made up a factitious one among themselves, and assumed that they
+could operate without the intervention of the occult original. But Nature
+would not be mocked; and whenever this race of idolaters have worked
+without her agency, she has afflicted them with the most stubborn
+sterility.
+
+Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our own philosophical
+times; ages of genius had passed away, and they left no other record than
+their works; no preconcerted theory described the workings of the
+imagination to be without imagination, nor did they venture to teach how
+to invent invention.
+
+The character of genius, viewed as the effect of habit and education, on
+the principle of the equality of the human mind, infers that men have an
+equal aptitude for the work of genius: a paradox which, with a more fatal
+one, came from the French school, and arose probably from an equivocal
+expression.
+
+Locke employed the well-known comparison of the mind with "white paper
+void of all characters," to free his famous "Inquiry" from that powerful
+obstacle to his system, the absurd belief of "innate ideas," of notions of
+objects before objects were presented to observation. Our philosopher
+considered that this simple analogy sufficiently described the manner in
+which he conceived the impressions of the senses write themselves on the
+mind. His French pupils, the amusing Helvetius, or Diderot, for they
+were equally concerned in the paradoxical "L'Esprit," inferred that this
+blank paper served also as an evidence that men had _an equal aptitude for
+genius_, just as the blank paper reflects to us whatever characters we
+trace on it. This _equality of minds_ gave rise to the same monstrous
+doctrine in the science of metaphysics which that of another verbal
+misconception, _the equality of men_, did in that of politics. The
+Scottish metaphysicians powerfully combined to illustrate the mechanism of
+the mind,--an important and a curious truth; for as rules and principles
+exist in the nature of things, and when discovered are only thence drawn
+out, genius unconsciously conducts itself by a uniform process; and
+when this process had been traced, they inferred that what was done by
+some men, under the influence of fundamental laws which regulate the
+march of the intellect, must also be in the reach of others, who, in the
+same circumstances, apply themselves to the same study. But these
+metaphysicians resemble anatomists, under whose knife all men are alike.
+They know the structure of the bones, the movement of the muscles, and
+where the connecting ligaments lie! but the invisible principle of life
+flies from their touch. It is the practitioner on the living body who
+studies in every individual that peculiarity of constitution which forms
+the idiosyncrasy.
+
+Under the influence of such novel theories of genius, JOHNSON defined it
+as "A Mind of large general powers ACCIDENTALLY determined by some
+_particular direction_." On this principle we must infer that the
+reasoning LOCKE, or the arithmetical DE MOIVRE, could have been the
+musical and fairy SPENSER.[A] This conception of the nature of genius
+became prevalent. It induced the philosophical BECCARIA to assert that
+every individual had an equal degree of genius for poetry and eloquence;
+it runs through the philosophy of the elegant Dugald Stewart; and
+REYNOLDS, the pupil of Johnson in literature, adopting the paradox,
+constructed his automatic system on this principle of _equal aptitude_. He
+says, "this excellence, however expressed by genius, taste, or the gift of
+Heaven, I am confident may be _acquired_." Reynolds had the modesty to
+fancy that so many rivals, unendowed by nature, might have equalled the
+magic of his own pencil: but his theory of industry, so essential to
+genius, yet so useless without it, too long stimulated the drudges of art,
+and left us without a Correggio or a Raphael! Another man of genius caught
+the fever of the new system. CURRIE, in his eloquent "Life of Burns,"
+swells out the scene of genius to a startling magnificence; for he asserts
+that, "the talents necessary to the construction of an 'Iliad,' under
+different discipline and application, might have led armies to victory or
+kingdoms to prosperity; might have wielded the thunder of eloquence, or
+discovered and enlarged the sciences." All this we find in the _text_; but
+in the clear intellect of this man of genius a vast number of intervening
+difficulties started up, and in a copious _note_ the numerous exceptions
+show that the assumed theory requires no other refutation than what the
+theorist has himself so abundantly and so judiciously supplied. There is
+something ludicrous in the result of a theory of genius which would
+place HOBBES and ERASMUS, those timid and learned recluses, to open a
+campaign with the military invention and physical intrepidity of a
+Marlborough; or conclude that the romantic bard of the "Fairy Queen,"
+amidst the quickly-shifting scenes of his visionary reveries, could have
+deduced, by slow and patient watchings of the mind, the system and the
+demonstrations of Newton.
+
+[Footnote A: It is more dangerous to define than to describe: a dry
+definition excludes so much, an ardent description at once appeals to our
+sympathies. How much more comprehensible our great critic becomes when he
+nobly describes genius, "as the power of mind that collects, combines,
+amplifies, and animates; the energy without which judgment is cold, and
+knowledge is inert!" And it is this POWER OF MIND, this primary faculty
+and native aptitude, which we deem may exist separately from education and
+habit, since these are often found unaccompanied by genius.]
+
+Such theorists deduce the faculty called genius from a variety of exterior
+or secondary causes: zealously rejecting the notion that genius may
+originate in constitutional dispositions, and be only a mode of the
+individual's existence, they deny that minds are differently constituted.
+Habit and education, being more palpable and visible in their operations,
+and progressive in the development of the intellectual faculties, have
+been imagined fully sufficient to make the creative faculty a subject of
+acquirement.
+
+But when these theorists had discovered the curious fact, that we have
+owed to _accident_ several men of genius, and when they laid open some
+sources which influenced genius in its progress, they did not go one step
+further, they did not inquire whether such sources and such accidents had
+ever supplied the _want of genius_ in the individual. Effects were here
+again mistaken for causes. Could Spenser have kindled a poet in Cowley,
+Richardson a painter in Reynolds, and Descartes a metaphysician in
+Malebranche, if those master-minds, pointed out as having been such from
+_accident_, had not first received the indelible mint-stamp struck by the
+hand of Nature, and which, to give it a name, we may be allowed to call
+the _predisposition_ of genius? The _accidents_ so triumphantly held
+forth, which are imagined to have created the genius of these men, have
+occurred to a thousand who have run the same career; but how does it
+happen that the multitude remain a multitude, and the man of genius
+arrives alone at the goal?
+
+This theory, which long dazzled its beholders, was in time found to stand
+in contradiction with itself, and perpetually with their own experience.
+Reynolds pared down his decision in the progress of his lectures, often
+wavered, often altered, and grew more confused as he lived longer to look
+about him.[A] The infirm votaries of the new philosophy, with all their
+sources of genius open before them, went on multiplying mediocrity, while
+inherent genius, true to nature, still continued rare in its solitary
+independence.
+
+[Footnote A: I transcribe the last opinions of Mr. Edgeworth. "As to
+original genius, and the effect of education in forming taste or directing
+talent, the last revisal of his opinions was given by himself, in the
+introduction to the second edition of 'Professional Education.' He was
+strengthened in his belief, that many of the great differences of
+intellect which appear in men, depend more upon the early cultivating the
+habit of attention than upon any disparity between the powers of one
+individual and another. Perhaps, he latterly allowed that there is more
+difference than he had formerly admitted between the _natural powers_ of
+different persons; but not so great as is generally supposed."--
+_Edgeworth's Memoirs_, ii. 388.]
+
+Others have strenuously denied that we are born with any peculiar species
+of mind, and resolve the mysterious problem into _capacity_, of which men
+only differ in the degree. They can perceive no distinction between the
+poetical and the mathematical genius; and they conclude that a man of
+genius, possessing a general capacity, may become whatever he chooses, but
+is determined by his first acquired habit to be what he is.[A]
+
+In substituting the term _capacity_ for that of _genius_, the origin or
+nature remains equally occult. How is it acquired, or how is it inherent?
+To assert that any man of genius may become what he wills, those most
+fervently protest against who feel that the character of genius is such
+that it cannot be other than it is; that there is an identity of minds,
+and that there exists an interior conformity as marked and as perfect as
+the exterior physiognomy. A Scotch metaphysician has recently declared
+that "Locke or Newton might have been as eminent poets as Homer or Milton,
+had they given themselves early to the study of poetry." It is well to
+know how far this taste will go. We believe that had these philosophers
+obstinately, against nature, persisted in the attempt, as some have
+unluckily for themselves, we should have lost two great philosophers, and
+have obtained two supernumerary poets.[B]
+
+It would be more useful to discover another source of genius for
+philosophers and poets, less fallible than the gratuitous assumptions of
+these theorists. An adequate origin for peculiar qualities in the mind may
+be found in that constitutional or secret propensity which adapts some for
+particular pursuits, and forms the _predisposition_ of genius.
+
+[Footnote A: Johnson once asserted, that "the supposition of one man
+having more imagination, another more judgment, is not true; it is only
+one man has _more mind_ than another. He who has vigour may walk to the
+east as well as the west, if he happens to turn his head that way." Godwin
+was persuaded that all genius is a mere _acquisition_, for he hints at
+"infusing it," and making it a thing "heritable." A reversion which has
+been missed by the many respectable dunces who have been sons of men of
+genius.]
+
+[Footnote B: This very Scotch metaphysician, at the instant he lays down
+this postulate, acknowledges that "Dr. Beattie had talents for a _poet_,
+but apparently not for a _philosopher_." It is amusing to learn another
+result of his ungenial metaphysics. This sage demonstrates and concludes
+in these words, "It will therefore be found, with little exception, that
+_a great poet is but an ordinary genius_." Let this sturdy Scotch
+metaphysician never approach Pegasus--he has to fear, not his wings, but
+his heels. If some have written on genius with a great deal too much,
+others have written without any.]
+
+Not that we are bound to demonstrate what our adversaries have failed
+in proving; we may still remain ignorant of the nature of genius, and
+yet be convinced that they have not revealed it. The phenomena of
+_predisposition_ in the mind are not more obscure and ambiguous than
+those which have been assigned as the sources of genius in certain
+individuals. For is it more difficult to conceive that a person bears in
+his constitutional disposition a germ of native aptitude which is
+developing itself to a predominant character of genius, which breaks forth
+in the temperament and moulds the habits, than to conjecture that these
+men of genius could not have been such but from _accident_, or that they
+differ only in their _capacity_?
+
+Every class of men of genius has distinct habits; all poets resemble one
+another, as all painters and all mathematicians. There is a conformity in
+the cast of their minds, and the quality of each is distinct from the
+other, and the very faculty which fits them for one particular pursuit, is
+just the reverse required for another. If these are truisms, as they may
+appear, we need not demonstrate that from which we only wish to draw our
+conclusion. Why does this remarkable similarity prevail through the
+classes of genius? Because each, in their favourite production, is working
+with the same appropriate organ. The poetical eye is early busied with
+imagery; as early will the reveries of the poetical mind be busied with
+the passions; as early will the painter's hand be copying forms and
+colours; as early will the young musician's ear wander in the creation of
+sounds, and the philosopher's head mature its meditations. It is then the
+aptitude of the appropriate organ, however it varies in its character, in
+which genius seems most concerned, and which is connatural and connate
+with the individual, and, as it was expressed in old days, is _born_ with
+him. There seems no other source of genius; for whenever this has been
+refused by nature, as it is so often, no theory of genius, neither habit
+nor education, have ever supplied its want. To discriminate between the
+_habit_ and the _predisposition_ is quite impossible; because whenever
+great genius discovers itself, as it can only do by continuity, it has
+become a habit with the individual; it is the fatal notion of habit having
+the power of generating genius, which has so long served to delude the
+numerous votaries of mediocrity. Natural or native power is enlarged by
+art; but the most perfect art has but narrow limits, deprived of natural
+disposition.
+
+A curious decision on this obscure subject may be drawn from an admirable
+judge of the nature of genius. AKENSIDE, in that fine poem which forms its
+history, tracing its source, sang,
+
+ From Heaven my strains begin, from Heaven descends
+ The flame of genius to _the human breast_.
+
+But in the final revision of that poem, which he left many years after,
+the bard has vindicated the solitary and independent origin of genius, by
+the mysterious epithet,
+
+ THE CHOSEN BREAST.
+
+The veteran poet was, perhaps, schooled by the vicissitudes of his own
+poetical life, and those of some of his brothers.
+
+Metaphors are but imperfect illustrations in metaphysical inquiries:
+usually they include too little or take in too much. Yet fanciful
+analogies are not willingly abandoned. The iconologists describe Genius as
+a winged child with a flame above its head; the wings and the flame
+express more than some metaphysical conclusions. Let me substitute
+for "the white paper" of Locke, which served the philosopher in his
+description of the operations of the senses on the mind, a less artificial
+substance. In the soils of the earth we may discover that variety of
+primary qualities which we believe to exist in human minds. The botanist
+and the geologist always find the nature of the strata indicative of its
+productions; the meagre light herbage announces the poverty of the soil it
+covers, while the luxuriant growth of plants betrays the richness of the
+matrix in which the roots are fixed. It is scarcely reasoning by analogy
+to apply this operating principle of nature to the faculties of men.
+
+But while the origin and nature of that faculty which we understand by the
+term Genius remain still wrapt up in its mysterious bud, may we not trace
+its history in its votaries? If Nature overshadow with her wings her first
+causes, still the effects lie open before us, and experience and
+observation will often deduce from consciousness what we cannot from
+demonstration. If Nature, in some of her great operations, has kept back
+her last secrets; if Newton, even in the result of his reasonings, has
+religiously abstained from penetrating into her occult connexions, is it
+nothing to be her historian, although we cannot be her legislator?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Youth of genius.--Its first impulses may be illustrated by its subsequent
+actions.--Parents have another association of the man of genius than
+we.--Of genius, its first habits.--Its melancholy.--Its reveries.--Its
+love of solitude.--Its disposition to repose.--Of a youth distinguished
+by his equals.--Feebleness of its first attempts.--Of genius not
+discoverable even in manhood.--The education of the youth may not be
+that of his genius.--An unsettled impulse, querulous till it finds its
+true occupation.--With some, curiosity as intense a faculty as invention.
+--What the youth first applies to is commonly his delight afterwards.
+--Facts of the decisive character of genius.
+
+
+We are entering into a fairy land, touching only shadows, and chasing the
+most changeable lights; many stories we shall hear, and many scenes will
+open on us; yet though realities are but dimly to be traced in this
+twilight of imagination and tradition, we think that the first impulses of
+genius may be often illustrated by the subsequent actions of the
+individual; and whenever we find these in perfect harmony, it will be
+difficult to convince us that there does not exist a secret connexion
+between those first impulses and these last actions.
+
+Can we then trace in the faint lines of his youth an unsteady outline of
+the man? In the temperament of genius may we not reasonably look for
+certain indications or predispositions, announcing the permanent
+character? Is not great sensibility born with its irritable fibres? Will
+not the deep retired character cling to its musings? And the unalterable
+being of intrepidity and fortitude, will he not, commanding even amidst
+his sports, lead on his equals? The boyhood of Cato was marked by the
+sternness of the man, observable in his speech, his countenance, and his
+puerile amusements; and BACON, DESCARTES, HOBBES, GRAY, and others,
+betrayed the same early appearance of their intellectual vigour and
+precocity of character.
+
+The virtuous and contemplative BOYLE imagined that he had discovered in
+childhood that disposition of mind which indicated an instinctive
+ingenuousness. An incident which he relates, evinced, as he thought, that
+even then he preferred to aggravate his fault rather than consent to
+suppress any part of the truth, an effort which had been unnatural to his
+mind. His fanciful, yet striking illustration may open our inquiry. "This
+trivial passage," the little story alluded to, "I have mentioned now, not
+that I think that in itself it deserves a relation, but because as the sun
+is seen best at his rising and his setting, so men's native dispositions
+are clearliest perceived whilst they are children, and when they are
+dying. These little sudden actions are the greatest discoverers of men's
+true humours."
+
+ALFIERI, that historian of the literary mind, was conscious that even in
+his childhood the peculiarity and the melancholy of his character
+prevailed: a boyhood passed in domestic solitude fed the interior feelings
+of his impassioned character; and in noticing some incidents of a childish
+nature, this man of genius observes, "Whoever will reflect on these inept
+circumstances, and explore into the seeds of the passions of man, possibly
+may find these neither so laughable nor so puerile as they may appear."
+His native genius, or by whatever other term we may describe it, betrayed
+the wayward predispositions of some of his poetical brothers: "Taciturn
+and placid for the most part, but at times loquacious and most vivacious,
+and usually in the most opposite extremes; stubborn and impatient against
+force, but most open to kindness, more restrained by the dread of
+reprimand than by anything else, susceptible of shame to excess, but
+inflexible if violently opposed." Such is the portrait of a child of seven
+years old, a portrait which induced the great tragic bard to deduce this
+result from his own self-experience, that "_man_ is a continuation of the
+_child_."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: See in his Life, chap. iv., entitled _Sviluppo dell' indole
+indicato da vari fattarelli_. "Development of genius, or natural
+inclination, indicated by various little matters."]
+
+That the dispositions of genius in early life presage its future
+character, was long the feeling of antiquity. CICERO, in his "Dialogue on
+Old Age," employs a beautiful analogy drawn from Nature, marking her
+secret conformity in all things which have life and come from her hands;
+and the human mind is one of her plants. "Youth is the vernal season of
+life, and the blossoms it then puts forth are indications of those future
+fruits which are to be gathered in the succeeding periods." One of the
+masters of the human mind, after much previous observation of those who
+attended his lectures, would advise one to engage in political studies,
+then exhorted another to compose history, elected these to be poets, and
+those to be orators; for ISOCRATES believed that Nature had some concern
+in forming a man of genius, and endeavoured to guess at her secret by
+detecting the first energetic inclination of the mind. This also was the
+principle which guided the Jesuits, those other great masters in the art
+of education. They studied the characteristics of their pupils with such
+singular care, as to keep a secret register in their colleges, descriptive
+of their talents, and the natural turn of their dispositions. In some
+cases they guessed with remarkable felicity. They described Fontenelle,
+_adolescens omnibus numeris absolutus et inter discipulos princeps_, "a
+youth accomplished in every respect, and the model for his companions;"
+but when they describe the elder Crebillon, _puer ingeniosus sed insignis
+nebulo_, "a shrewd boy, but a great rascal," they might not have erred so
+much as they appear to have done; for an impetuous boyhood showed the
+decision of a character which might not have merely and misanthropically
+settled in imaginary scenes of horror, and the invention of characters of
+unparalleled atrocity.
+
+In the old romance of King Arthur, when a cowherd comes to the king to
+request he would make his son a knight--"It is a great thing thou askest,"
+said Arthur, who inquired whether this entreaty proceeded from him or his
+son. The old man's answer is remarkable--"Of my son, not of me; for I have
+thirteen sons, and all these will fall to that labour I put them; but this
+child will not labour for me, for anything that I and my wife will do; but
+always he will be shooting and casting darts, and glad for to see battles,
+and to behold knights, and always day and night he desireth of me to be
+made a knight." The king commanded the cowherd to fetch all his sons;
+"they were all shapen much like the poor man; but Tor was not like none of
+them in shape and in countenance, for he was much more than any of them.
+And so Arthur knighted him." This simple tale is the history of genius--
+the cowherd's twelve sons were like himself, but the unhappy genius in the
+family, who perplexed and plagued the cowherd and his wife and his twelve
+brothers, was the youth averse to the common labour, and dreaming of
+chivalry amidst a herd of cows.
+
+A man of genius is thus dropped among the people, and has first to
+encounter the difficulties of ordinary men, unassisted by that feeble
+ductility which adapts itself to the common destination. Parents are too
+often the victims of the decided propensity of a son to a Virgil or a
+Euclid; and the first step into life of a man of genius is disobedience
+and grief. LILLY, our famous astrologer, has described the frequent
+situation of such a youth, like the cowherd's son who would be a knight.
+Lilly proposed to his father that he should try his fortune in the
+metropolis, where he expected that his learning and his talents would
+prove serviceable to him; the father, quite incapable of discovering the
+latent genius of his son in his studious disposition, very willingly
+consented to get rid of him, for, as Lilly proceeds, "I could not work,
+drive the plough, or endure any country labour; my father oft would say I
+was _good for nothing_,"--words which the fathers of so many men of genius
+have repeated.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: The father of Sir Joshua Reynolds reproached him frequently
+in his boyish days for his constant attention to drawing, and wrote on the
+back of one of his sketches the condemnatory words, "Done by Joshua out of
+pure idleness." Mignard distressed his father the surgeon, by sketching
+the expressive faces of his patients instead of attending to their
+diseases; and our own Opie, when a boy, and working with his father at his
+business as a carpenter, used frequently to excite his anger by drawing
+with red chalk on the deal boards he had carefully planed for his trade.
+--ED.]
+
+In reading the memoirs of a man of genius, we often reprobate the domestic
+persecutions of those who opposed his inclinations. No poet but is moved
+with indignation at the recollection of the tutor at the Port Royal thrice
+burning the romance which RACINE at length got by heart; no geometrician
+but bitterly inveighs against the father of PASCAL for not suffering him
+to study Euclid, which he at length understood without studying. The
+father of PETRARCH cast to the flames the poetical library of his son,
+amidst the shrieks, the groans, and the tears of the youth. Yet this
+burnt-offering neither converted Petrarch into a sober lawyer, nor
+deprived him of the Roman laurel. The uncle of ALFIERI for more than
+twenty years suppressed the poetical character of this noble bard; he was
+a poet without knowing how to write a verse, and Nature, like a hard
+creditor, exacted, with redoubled interest, all the genius which the uncle
+had so long kept from her. These are the men whose inherent impulse no
+human opposition, and even no adverse education, can deter from proving
+them to be great men.
+
+Let us, however, be just to the parents of a man of genius; they have
+another association of ideas respecting him than ourselves. We see a great
+man, they a disobedient child; we track him through his glory, they are
+wearied by the sullen resistance of one who is obscure and seems useless.
+The career of genius is rarely that of fortune or happiness; and the
+father, who himself may not be insensible to glory, dreads lest his
+son be found among that obscure multitude, that populace of mean artists,
+self-deluded yet self-dissatisfied, who must expire at the barriers of
+mediocrity.
+
+If the youth of genius be struggling with a concealed impulse, he will
+often be thrown into a train of secret instruction which no master can
+impart. Hippocrates profoundly observed, that "our _natures_ have not been
+taught us by any master." The faculty which the youth of genius displays
+in after-life may exist long ere it is perceived; and it will only make
+its own what is homogeneous with itself. We may often observe how the mind
+of this youth stubbornly rejects whatever is contrary to its habits, and
+alien to its affections. Of a solitary character, for solitariness is the
+wild nurse of his contemplations, he is fancifully described by one of the
+race--and here fancies are facts:
+
+ He is retired as noon-tide dew,
+ Or fountain in a noon-day grove.
+
+The romantic SIDNEY exclaimed, "Eagles fly alone, and they are but sheep
+which always herd together."
+
+As yet this being, in the first rudiments of his sensations, is touched by
+rapid emotions, and disturbed by a vague restlessness; for him the images
+of nature are yet dim, and he feels before he thinks; for imagination
+precedes reflection. One truly inspired unfolds the secret story--
+
+ Endow'd with all that Nature can bestow,
+ The child of fancy oft in silence bends
+ O'er the mixt treasures of his pregnant breast
+ With conscious pride. From thence he oft resolves
+ To frame he knows not what excelling things;
+ And win he knows not what sublime reward
+ Of praise and wonder!
+
+But the solitude of the youth of genius has a local influence; it is full
+of his own creations, of his unmarked passions, and his uncertain
+thoughts. The titles which he gives his favourite haunts often intimate
+the bent of his mind--its employment, or its purpose; as PETRARCH called
+his retreat _Linternum_, after that of his hero Scipio; and a young poet,
+from some favourite description in Cowley, called a spot he loved to muse
+in, "Cowley's Walk."
+
+A temperament of this kind has been often mistaken for melancholy.[A]
+"When the intermission of my studies allowed me leisure for recreation,"
+says BOYLE of his early life, "I would very often steal away from all
+company, and spend four or five hours alone in the fields, and think at
+random; making my delighted imagination the busy scene where some romance
+or other was daily acted." This circumstance alarmed his friends, who
+concluded that he was overcome with a growing melancholy. ALFIERI found
+himself in this precise situation, and experienced these undefinable
+emotions, when, in his first travels at Marseilles, his lonely spirit only
+haunted the theatre and the seashore: the tragic drama was then casting
+its influences over his unconscious genius. Almost every evening, after
+bathing in the sea, it delighted him to retreat to a little recess where
+the land jutted out; there would he sit, leaning his hack against a high
+rock, which he tells us, "concealed from my sight every part of the land
+behind me, while before and around me I beheld nothing but the sea and the
+heavens: the sun, sinking into the waves, was lighting up and embellishing
+these two immensities; there would I pass a delicious hour of fantastic
+ruminations, and there I should have composed many a poem, had I then
+known to write either in verse or prose in any language whatever."
+
+[Footnote A: This solemnity of manner was aped in the days of Elizabeth
+and James I. by such as affected scholar-like habits, and is frequently
+alluded to by the satirists of the time. BEN JONSON, in his "Every Man in
+his Humour," delineates the "country gull," Master Stephen, as affecting
+"to be mightily given to melancholy," and receiving the assurance, "It's
+your only fine humour, sir; your true melancholy breeds your perfect fine
+wit, sir."--ED.]
+
+An incident of this nature is revealed to us by the other noble and mighty
+spirit of our times, who could most truly exhibit the history of the youth
+of genius, and he has painted forth the enthusiasm of the boy TASSO:--
+
+ --From my very birth
+ My soul was drunk with love, which did pervade
+ And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth;
+ Of objects all inanimate I made
+ Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers
+ And rocks whereby they grew, a paradise,
+ Where I did lay me down within the shade
+ Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours,
+ Though I was chid for wandering.
+
+The youth of genius will be apt to retire from the active sports of his
+mates. BEATTIE paints himself in his own Minstrel:
+
+ Concourse, and noise, and toil he ever fled,
+ Nor cared to mingle in the clamorous fray
+ Of squabbling imps; but to the forest sped.
+
+BOSSUET would not join his young companions, and flew to his solitary
+task, while the classical boys avenged themselves by a schoolboy's
+villanous pun: stigmatising the studious application of Bossuet by the
+_bos suetus aratro_ which frequent flogging had made them classical enough
+to quote.
+
+The learned HUET has given an amusing detail of the inventive persecutions
+of his schoolmates, to divert him from his obstinate love of study. "At
+length, in order to indulge my own taste, I would rise with the sun, while
+they were buried in sleep, and hide myself in the woods, that I might read
+and study in quiet;" but they beat the bushes, and started in his burrow
+the future man of erudition. Sir WILLIAM JONES was rarely a partaker in
+the active sports of Harrow; it was said of GRAY that he was never a boy;
+the unhappy CHATTERTON and BURNS were singularly serious in youth;[A] as
+were HOBBES and BACON. MILTON has preserved for us, in solemn numbers, his
+school-life--
+
+ When I was yet a child, no childish play
+ To me was pleasing: all my mind was set
+ Serious to learn and know, and thence to do
+ What might be public good: myself I thought
+ Born to that end, born to promote all truth,
+ All righteous things.
+
+[Footnote A: Dr. Gregory says of Chatterton, "Instead of the thoughtless
+levity of childhood, he possessed the pensiveness, gravity, and melancholy
+of maturer life. He was frequently so lost in contemplation, that for many
+days together he would say but very little, and that apparently by
+constraint. His intimates in the school were few, and those of the most
+serious cast." Of Burns, his schoolmaster, Mr. Murdoch, says--"Robert's
+countenance was generally grave, and expressive of a serious,
+contemplative, and thoughtful mind:"--Ed.]
+
+It is remarkable that this love of repose and musing is retained
+throughout life. A man of fine genius is rarely enamoured of common
+amusements or of robust exercises; and he is usually unadroit where
+dexterity of hand or eye, or trivial elegances, are required. This
+characteristic of genius was discovered by HORACE in that Ode which
+schoolboys often versify. BEATTIE has expressly told us of his Minstrel,
+
+ The exploit of strength, dexterity or speed
+ To him nor vanity nor joy could bring.
+
+ALFIERI said he could never be taught by a French dancing-master, whose
+art made him at once shudder and laugh. HORACE, by his own confession, was
+a very awkward rider, and the poet could not always secure a seat on his
+mule: METASTASIO humorously complains of his gun; the poetical sportsman
+could only frighten the hares and partridges; the, truth was, as an elder
+poet sings,
+
+ Instead of hounds that make the wooded hills
+ Talk in a hundred voices to the rills,
+ I, like the pleasing cadence of a line,
+ Struck by the concert of the sacred Nine.
+
+And we discover the true "humour" of the indolent contemplative race in
+their great representatives VIRGIL and HORACE. When they accompanied
+Mecaenas into the country, while the minister amused himself at tennis,
+the two bards reposed on a vernal bank amidst the freshness of the shade.
+The younger Pliny, who was so perfect a literary character, was charmed by
+the Roman mode of hunting, or rather fowling by nets, which admitted him
+to sit a whole day with his tablets and stylus; so, says he, "should I
+return with empty nets, my tablets may at least be full." THOMSON was the
+hero of his own "Castle of Indolence;" and the elegant WALLER infuses into
+his luxurious verses the true feeling:
+
+ Oh, low I long my careless limbs to lay
+ Under the plantane shade, and all the day
+ Invoke the Muses and improve my vein.
+
+The youth of genius, whom Beattie has drawn after himself, and I after
+observation, a poet of great genius, as I understand, has declared to be
+"too effeminate and timid, and too much troubled with delicate nerves. The
+_greatest poets_ of all countries," he continues, "have been men eminently
+endowed with _bodily powers_, and rejoiced and excelled in all _manly
+exercises_." May not our critic of northern habits have often mistaken
+the art of the great poets in _describing_ such "manly exercises or bodily
+powers," for the proof of their "rejoicing and excelling in them?" Poets
+and artists, from their habits, are not usually muscular and robust.[A]
+Continuity of thought, absorbing reverie, and sedentary habits, will not
+combine with corporeal skill and activity. There is also a constitutional
+delicacy which is too often the accompaniment of a fine intellect.
+The inconveniences attached to the inferior sedentary labourers are
+participated in by men of genius; the analogy is obvious, and their fate
+is common. Literary men may be included in Ramazzini's "Treatise on the
+Diseases of Artizans." ROSSEAU has described the labours of the closet as
+enervating men, and weakening the constitution, while study wears the
+whole machinery of man, exhausts the spirits, destroys his strength, and
+renders him pusillanimous.[B] But there is a higher principle which guides
+us to declare, that men of genius should not _excel_ in "all manly
+exercises." SENECA, whose habits were completely literary, admonishes the
+man of letters that "Whatever amusement he chooses, he should not slowly
+return from those of the body to the mind, while he should be exercising
+the latter night and day." Seneca was aware that "to rejoice and excel in
+all manly exercises," would in some cases intrude into the habits of a
+literary man, and sometimes be even ridiculous. MORTIMER, once a
+celebrated artist, was tempted by his athletic frame to indulge in
+frequent violent exercises; and it is not without reason suspected, that
+habits so unfavourable to thought and study precluded that promising
+genius from attaining to the maturity of his talents, however he might
+have succeeded in invigorating his physical powers.
+
+[Footnote A: Dr. Currie, in his "Life of Burns," has a passage which may
+be quoted here: "Though by nature of an athletic form, Burns had in his
+constitution the peculiarities and the delicacies that belong to the
+temperament of genius. He was liable, from a very early period of life, to
+that interruption in the process of digestion which arises from deep and
+anxious thought, and which is sometimes the effect, and sometimes the
+cause, of depression of spirits."--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: In the Preface to the "Narcisse."]
+
+But to our solitude. So true is it that this love of loneliness is an
+early passion, that two men of genius of very opposite characters, the one
+a French wit and the other a French philosopher, have acknowledged that
+they have felt its influence, and even imagined that they had discovered
+its cause. The Abbe DE ST. PIERRE, in his political annals, tells us, "I
+remember to have heard old SEGRAIS remark, that most young people of both
+sexes had at one time of their lives, generally about seventeen or
+eighteen years of age, an inclination to retire from the world. He
+maintained this to be a species of melancholy, and humorously called it
+the small-pox of the mind, because scarce one in a thousand escaped the
+attack. I myself have had this distemper, but am not much marked with it."
+
+But if the youth of genius be apt to retire from the ordinary sports of
+his mates, he will often substitute for them others, which are the
+reflections of those favourite studies which are haunting his young
+imagination, as men in their dreams repeat the conceptions which have
+habitually interested them. The amusements of such an idler have often
+been analogous to his later pursuits. ARIOSTO, while yet a schoolboy,
+seems to have been very susceptible of poetry, for he composed a sort of
+tragedy from the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, to be represented by his
+brothers and sisters, and at this time also delighted himself in
+translating the old French and Spanish romances. Sir WILLIAM JONES, at
+Harrow, divided the fields according to a map of Greece, and to each
+schoolfellow portioned out a dominion; and when wanting a copy of the
+_Tempest_ to act from, he supplied it from his memory; we must confess
+that the boy Jones was reflecting in his amusements the cast of mind he
+displayed in his after-life, and evincing that felicity of memory and
+taste so prevalent in his literary character. FLORIAN'S earliest years
+were passed in shooting birds all day, and reading every evening an old
+translation of the Iliad: whenever he got a bird remarkable for its size
+or its plumage, he personified it by one of the names of his heroes, and
+raising a funeral pyre, consumed the body: collecting the ashes in an
+urn, he presented them to his grandfather, with a narrative of his
+Patroclus or Sarpedon. We seem here to detect, reflected in his boyish
+sports, the pleasing genius of the author of Numa Pompilius, Gonsalvo of
+Cordova, and William Tell. BACON, when a child, was so remarkable for
+thoughtful observation, that Queen Elizabeth used to call him "the young
+lord-keeper." The boy made a remarkable reply, when her Majesty,
+inquiring of him his age, he said, that "He was two years younger than
+her Majesty's happy reign." The boy may have been tutored; but this
+mixture of gravity, and ingenuity, and political courtiership,
+undoubtedly caught from his father's habits, afterwards characterised
+Lord Bacon's manhood. I once read the letter of a contemporary of HOBBES,
+where I found that this great philosopher, when a lad, used to ride on
+packs of skins to market, to sell them for his father, who was a
+fellmonger; and that in the market-place he thus early began to vent his
+private opinions, which long afterwards so fully appeared in his
+writings.
+
+For a youth to be distinguished by his equals is perhaps a criterion of
+talent. At that moment of life, with no flattery on the one side, and no
+artifice on the other, all emotion and no reflection, the boy who has
+obtained a predominance has acquired this merely by native powers. The
+boyhood of NELSON was characterised by events congenial with those of his
+after-days; and his father understood his character when he declared that,
+"in whatever station he might be placed, he would climb, if possible, to
+the top of the tree." Some puerile anecdotes which FRANKLIN remembered of
+himself, betray the invention and the firm intrepidity of his character,
+and even perhaps his carelessness of means to obtain a purpose. In boyhood
+he felt a desire for adventure; but as his father would not consent to a
+sea life, he made the river near him represent the ocean: he lived on the
+water, and was the daring Columbus of a schoolboy's boat. A part where he
+and his mates stood to angle, in time became a quagmire: in the course of
+one day, the infant projector thought of a wharf for them to stand on, and
+raised it with a heap of stones deposited there for the building of a
+house. With that sort of practical wisdom, or Ulyssean cunning, which
+marked his mature character, Franklin raised his wharf at the expense of
+another's house. His contrivances to aid his puny labourers, with his
+resolution not to quit the great work till it was effected, seem to strike
+out to us the invention and decision of his future character. But the
+qualities which would attract the companions of a schoolboy may not be
+those which are essential to fine genius. The captain or leader of his
+schoolmates is not to be disregarded; but it is the sequestered boy who
+may chance to be the artist or the literary character. Some facts which
+have been recorded of men of genius at this period are remarkable. We are
+told by Miss Stewart that JOHNSON, when a boy at the free-school, appeared
+"a huge overgrown, misshapen stripling;" but was considered as a
+stupendous stripling: "for even at that early period of life, Johnson
+maintained his opinions with the same sturdy, dogmatical, and arrogant
+fierceness." The puerile characters of Lord BOLINGBROKE and Sir ROBERT
+WALPOLE, schoolfellows and rivals, were observed to prevail through their
+after-life; the liveliness and brilliancy of Bolingbroke appeared in his
+attacks on Walpole, whose solid and industrious qualities triumphed by
+resistance. A parallel instance might be pointed out in two great
+statesmen of our own days; in the wisdom of the one, and the wit of the
+other--men whom nature made rivals, and time made friends or enemies, as
+it happened. A curious observer, in looking over a collection of the
+Cambridge poems, which were formerly composed by its students, has
+remarked that "Cowley from the first was quaint, Milton sublime, and
+Barrow copious." If then the characteristic disposition may reveal itself
+thus early, it affords a principle which ought not to be neglected at this
+obscure period of youth.
+
+Is there then a period in youth which yields decisive marks of the
+character of genius? The natures of men are as various as their fortunes.
+Some, like diamonds, must wait to receive their splendour from the slow
+touches of the polisher, while others, resembling pearls, appear at once
+born with their beauteous lustre.
+
+Among the inauspicious circumstances is the feebleness of the first
+attempts; and we must not decide on the talents of a young man by his
+first works. DRYDEN and SWIFT might have been deterred from authorship had
+their earliest pieces decided their fate. SMOLLETT, before he knew which
+way his genius would conduct him, had early conceived a high notion of his
+talents for dramatic poetry: his tragedy of the _Regicide_ was refused by
+Garrick, whom for a long time he could not forgive, but continued to abuse
+our Roscius, through his works of genius, for having discountenanced his
+first work, which had none. RACINE'S earliest composition, as we may judge
+by some fragments his son has preserved, remarkably contrasts with his
+writings; for these fragments abound with those points and conceits which
+he afterwards abhorred. The tender author of "Andromache" could not have
+been discovered while exhausting himself in running after _concetti_ as
+surprising as the worst parts of Cowley, in whose spirit alone he could
+have hit on this perplexing _concetto_, descriptive of Aurora: "Fille du
+Jour, qui nais devant ton pere!"--"Daughter of Day, but born before thy
+father!" GIBBON betrayed none of the force and magnitude of his powers in
+his "Essay on Literature," or his attempted "History of Switzerland,"
+JOHNSON'S cadenced prose is not recognisable in the humbler simplicity of
+his earliest years. Many authors have begun unsuccessfully the walk they
+afterwards excelled in. RAPHAEL, when he first drew his meagre forms under
+Perugino, had not yet conceived one line of that ideal beauty which one
+day he of all men could alone execute. Who could have imagined, in
+examining the _Dream_ of Raphael, that the same pencil could hereafter
+have poured out the miraculous _Transfiguration?_ Or that, in the
+imitative pupil of Hudson, our country was at length to pride herself on
+another Raphael?[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Hudson was the fashionable portrait-painter who succeeded
+Kneller, and made a great reputation and fortune; but he was a very mean
+artist, who merely copied the peculiarities of his predecessor without his
+genius. His stiff hard style was formality itself; but was approved in an
+age of formalism; the earlier half of the last century.--ED.]
+
+Even the manhood of genius may pass unobserved by his companions, and,
+like. AEneas, he may be hidden in a cloud amidst his associates. The
+celebrated FABIUS MAXIMUS in his boyhood was called in derision "the
+little sheep," from the meekness and gravity of his disposition. His
+sedateness and taciturnity, his indifference to juvenile amusements, his
+slowness and difficulty in learning, and his ready submission to his
+equals, induced them to consider him as one irrecoverably stupid. The
+greatness of mind, unalterable courage, and invincible character, which
+Fabius afterwards displayed, they then imagined had lain concealed under
+the apparent contrary qualities. The boy of genius may indeed seem slow
+and dull even to the phlegmatic; for thoughtful and observing dispositions
+conceal themselves in timorous silent characters, who have not yet
+experienced their strength; and that assiduous love, which cannot tear
+itself away from the secret instruction it is perpetually imbibing, cannot
+be easily distinguished from the pertinacity of the mere plodder. We often
+hear, from the early companions of a man of genius, that at school he
+appeared heavy and unpromising. Rousseau imagined that the childhood of
+some men is accompanied by this seeming and deceitful dulness, which is
+the sign of a profound genius; and Roger Ascham has placed among "the best
+natures for learning, the sad-natured and hard-witted child;" that is, the
+thoughtful, or the melancholic, and the slow. The young painters, to
+ridicule the persevering labours of DOMENICHINO, which were at first heavy
+and unpromising, called him "the great ox;" and Passeri, while he has
+happily expressed the still labours of his concealed genius, _sua
+taciturna lentezza_, his silent slowness, expresses his surprise at the
+accounts he received of the early life of this great artist. "It is
+difficult to believe, what many assert, that, from the beginning, this
+great painter had a ruggedness about him which entirely incapacitated him
+from learning his profession; and they have heard from himself that he
+quite despaired of success. Yet I cannot comprehend how such vivacious
+talents, with a mind so finely organised, and accompanied with such
+favourable dispositions for the art, would show such signs of utter
+incapacity; I rather think that it is a mistake in the proper knowledge of
+genius, which some imagine indicates itself most decisively by its sudden
+vehemence, showing itself like lightning, and like lightning passing
+away."
+
+A parallel case we find in GOLDSMITH, who passed through an unpromising
+youth; he declared that he was never attached to literature till he
+was thirty; that poetry had no peculiar charms for him till that age;[A]
+and, indeed, to his latest hour he was surprising his friends by
+productions which they had imagined he was incapable of composing. HUME
+was considered, for his sobriety and assiduity, as competent to become a
+steady merchant; and it was said of BOILEAU that he had no great
+understanding, but would speak ill of no one. This circumstance of the
+character in youth being entirely mistaken, or entirely opposite to the
+subsequent one of maturer life, has been noticed of many. Even a
+discerning parent or master has entirely failed to develope the genius of
+the youth, who has afterwards ranked among eminent men; we ought as little
+to decide from early unfavourable appearances, as from inequality of
+talent. The great ISAAC BARROW'S father used to say, that if it pleased
+God to take from him any of his children, he hoped it might be Isaac, as
+the least promising; and during the three years Barrow passed at the
+Charter-house, he was remarkable only for the utter negligence of his
+studies and of his person. The mother of SHERIDAN, herself a literary
+female, pronounced early that he was the dullest and most hopeless of her
+sons. BODMER, at the head of the literary class in Switzerland, who had so
+frequently discovered and animated the literary youths of his country,
+could never detect the latent genius of GESNER: after a repeated
+examination of the young man, he put his parents in despair with the
+hopeless award that a mind of so ordinary a cast must confine itself to
+mere writing and accompts. One fact, however, Bodmer had overlooked when
+he pronounced the fate of our poet and artist--the dull youth, who could
+not retain barren words, discovered an active fancy in the image of
+things. While at his grammar lessons, as it happened to Lucian, he was
+employing tedious hours in modelling in wax, groups of men, animals, and
+other figures, the rod of the pedagogue often interrupted the fingers of
+our infant moulder, who never ceased working to amuse his little sisters
+with his waxen creatures, which constituted all his happiness. Those arts
+of imitation were already possessing the soul of the boy Gesner, to which
+afterwards it became so entirely devoted.
+
+[Footnote A: This is a remarkable expression from Goldsmith: but it is
+much more so when we hear it from Lord Byron. See a note in the following
+chapter, on "The First Studies," p. 56.]
+
+Thus it happens that in the first years of life the education of the youth
+may not be the education of his genius; he lives unknown to himself and
+others. In all these cases nature had dropped the seeds in the soil: but
+even a happy disposition must be concealed amidst adverse circumstances: I
+repeat, that genius can only make that its own which is homogeneous with
+its nature. It has happened to some men of genius during a long period of
+their lives, that an unsettled impulse, unable to discover the object of
+its aptitude, a thirst and fever in the temperament of too sentient a
+being, which cannot find the occupation to which only it can attach
+itself, has sunk into a melancholy and querulous spirit, weary with the
+burthen of existence; but the instant the latent talent had declared
+itself, his first work, the eager offspring of desire and love, has
+astonished the world at once with the birth and the maturity of genius.
+
+We are told that PELEGRINO TIBALDI, who afterwards obtained the glorious
+title of "the reformed Michael Angelo," long felt the strongest internal
+dissatisfaction at his own proficiency, and that one day, in melancholy
+and despair, he had retired from the city, resolved to starve himself to
+death: his friend discovered him, and having persuaded him to change his
+pursuits from painting to architecture, he soon rose to eminence. This
+story D'Argenville throws some doubt over; but as Tibaldi during twenty
+years abstained from his pencil, a singular circumstance seems explained
+by an extraordinary occurrence. TASSO, with feverish anxiety pondered on
+five different subjects before he could decide in the choice of his epic;
+the same embarrassment was long the fate of GIBBON on the subject of his
+history. Some have sunk into a deplorable state of utter languishment,
+from the circumstance of being deprived of the means of pursuing their
+beloved study, as in the case of the chemist BERGMAN. His friends, to gain
+him over to the more lucrative professions, deprived him of his books of
+natural history; a plan which nearly proved fatal to the youth, who with
+declining health quitted the university. At length ceasing to struggle
+with the conflicting desire within him, his renewed enthusiasm for his
+favourite science restored the health he had lost in abandoning it.
+
+It was the view of the tomb of Virgil which so powerfully influenced the
+innate genius of BOCCACCIO, and fixed his instant decision. As yet young,
+and in the neighbourhood of Naples, wandering for recreation, he reached
+the tomb of the Mantuan. Pausing before it, his youthful mind began to
+meditate. Struck by the universal glory of that great name, he lamented
+his own fortune to be occupied by the obscure details of merchandise;
+already he sighed to emulate the fame of the Roman, and as Villani tells
+us, from that day he abandoned for ever the occupations of commerce,
+dedicating himself to literature. PROCTOR, the lost Phidias of our
+country, would often say, that he should never have quitted his mercantile
+situation, but for the accidental sight of Barry's picture of "Venus
+rising from the Sea;" a picture which produced so immediate an effect on
+his mind, that it determined him to quit a lucrative occupation. Surely we
+cannot account for such sudden effusions of the mind, and such instant
+decisions, but by the principle of that predisposition which only waits
+for an occasion to declare itself.
+
+Abundant facts exhibit genius unequivocally discovering itself in youth.
+In general, perhaps, a master-mind exhibits precocity. "Whatever a young
+man at first applies himself to, is commonly his delight afterwards." This
+remark was made by HARTLEY, who has related an anecdote of the infancy of
+his genius, which indicated the manhood. He declared to his daughter that
+the intention of writing a book upon the nature of man, was conceived in
+his mind when he was a very little boy--when swinging backwards and
+forwards upon a gate, not more than nine or ten years old; he was then
+meditating upon the nature of his own mind, how man was made, and for what
+future end. Such was the true origin, in a boy of ten years old, of his
+celebrated book on "The Frame, the Duty, and the Expectation of Man." JOHN
+HUNTER conceived his notion of the principle of life, which to his last
+day formed the subject of his inquiries and experiments, when he was very
+young; for at that period of life, Mr. Abernethy tells us, he began his
+observations on the incubated egg, which suggested or corroborated his
+opinions.
+
+A learned friend, and an observer of men of science, has supplied me with
+a remark highly deserving notice. It is an observation that will generally
+hold good, that the most important systems of theory, however late they
+may be published, have been formed at a very early period of life. This
+important observation may be verified by some striking facts. A most
+curious one will be found in Lord BACON'S letter to Father Fulgentio,
+where he gives an account of his projecting his philosophy thirty years
+before, during his youth. MILTON from early youth mused on the composition
+of an epic. DE THOU has himself told us, that from his tender youth his
+mind was full of the idea of composing a history of his own times; and his
+whole life was passed in preparation, and in a continued accession of
+materials for a future period. From the age of twenty, MONTESQUIEU was
+preparing the materials of _L'Esprit des Loix_, by extracts from the
+immense volumes of civil law. TILLEMONT'S vast labours were traced out in
+his mind at the early age of nineteen, on reading Baronius; and some of
+the finest passages in RACINE'S tragedies were composed while a pupil,
+wandering in the woods of the Port-Royal. So true is it that the seeds of
+many of our great literary and scientific works were lying, for many years
+antecedent to their being given to the world, in a latent state of
+germination.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: I need not to be reminded, that I am not worth mentioning
+among the illustrious men who have long formed the familiar subjects of my
+delightful researches. But with the middling as well as with the great,
+the same habits must operate. Early in life, I was struck by the inductive
+philosophy of Bacon, and sought after a Moral Experimental Philosophy; and
+I had then in my mind an observation of Lord Bolingbroke's, for I see I
+quoted it thirty years ago, that "Abstract or general propositions, though
+never so true, appear obscure or doubtful to us very often till they are
+explained by examples." So far back as in 1793 I published "A Dissertation
+on Anecdotes," with the simplicity of a young votary; there I deduced
+results, and threw out a magnificent project not very practicable. From
+that time to the hour I am now writing, my metal has been running in this
+mould, and I still keep casting philosophy into anecdotes, and anecdotes
+into philosophy. As I began I fear I shall end.]
+
+The predisposition of genius has declared itself in painters and poets,
+who were such before they understood the nature of colours and the arts of
+verse; and this vehement propensity, so mysteriously constitutional, may
+be traced in other intellectual characters besides those which belong to
+the class of imagination. It was said that PITT was _born_ a minister; the
+late Dr. SHAW I always considered as one _born_ a naturalist, and I know a
+great literary antiquary who seems to me to have been also _born_ such;
+for the passion of _curiosity_ is as intense a faculty, or instinct, with
+some casts of mind, as is that of _invention_ with poets and painters: I
+confess that to me it is _genius_ in a form in which genius has not yet
+been suspected to appear. One of the biographers of Sir HANS SLOANE
+expresses himself in this manner:--"Our author's _thirst_ for knowledge
+seems to have been _born_ with him, so that his _Cabinet of Rarities_ may
+be said to have commenced with _his being_." This strange metaphorical
+style has only confused an obscure truth. SLOANE, early in life, felt an
+irresistible impulse which inspired him with the most enlarged views of
+the productions of nature, and he exulted in their accomplishment; for in
+his will he has solemnly recorded, that his collections were the fruits of
+his early devotion, _having had from my youth a strong inclination to the
+study of plants and all other productions of nature_. The vehement passion
+of PEIRESC for knowledge, according to accounts which Gassendi received
+from old men who had known him as a child, broke out as soon as he had
+been taught his alphabet; for then his delight was to be handling books
+and papers, and his perpetual inquiries after their contents obliged
+them to invent something to quiet the child's insatiable curiosity,
+who was hurt when told that he had not the capacity to understand them. He
+did not study as an ordinary scholar, for he never read but with
+perpetual researches. At ten years of age, his passion for the studies of
+antiquity was kindled at the sight of some ancient coins dug up in his
+neighbourhood; then that vehement passion for knowledge "began to burn
+like fire in a forest," as Gassendi happily describes the fervour and
+amplitude of the mind of this man of vast learning. Bayle, who was an
+experienced judge in the history of genius, observes on two friars, one of
+whom was haunted by a strong disposition to _genealogical_, and the other
+to _geographical_ pursuits, that, "let a man do what he will, if nature
+incline us to certain things, there is no preventing the gratification of
+our desire, though it lies hid under a monk's frock." It is not,
+therefore, as the world is apt to imagine, only poets and painters for
+whom is reserved this restless and impetuous propensity for their
+particular pursuits; I claim it for the man of science as well as for the
+man of imagination. And I confess that I consider this strong bent of the
+mind in men eminent in pursuits in which imagination is little concerned,
+and whom men of genius have chosen to remove so far from their class, as
+another gifted aptitude. They, too, share in the glorious fever of genius,
+and we feel how just was the expression formerly used, of "their _thirst_
+for knowledge."
+
+But to return to the men of genius who answer more strictly to the popular
+notion of inventors. We have BOCCACCIO'S own words for a proof of his
+early natural tendency to tale-writing, in a passage of his genealogy of
+the gods:--"Before seven years of age, when as yet I had met with no
+stories, was without a master, and hardly knew my letters, I had a natural
+talent for fiction, and produced some little tales." Thus the "Decamerone"
+was appearing much earlier than we suppose. DESCARTES, while yet a boy,
+indulged such habits of deep meditation, that he was nicknamed by his
+companions "The Philosopher," always questioning, and ever settling the
+cause and the effect. He was twenty-five years of age before he left the
+army, but the propensity for meditation had been early formed; and he has
+himself given an account of the pursuits which occupied his youth, and of
+the progress of his genius; of the secret struggle which he so long
+maintained with his own mind, wandering in concealment over the world for
+more than twenty years, and, as he says of himself, like the statuary
+labouring to draw out a Minerva from the marble block. MICHAEL ANGELO, as
+yet a child, wherever he went, busied himself in drawing; and when his
+noble parents, hurt that a man of genius was disturbing the line of their
+ancestry, forced him to relinquish the pencil, the infant artist flew to
+the chisel: the art which was in his soul would not allow of idle hands.
+LOPE DE VEGA, VELASQUEZ, ARIOSTO, and TASSO, are all said to have betrayed
+at their school-tasks the most marked indications of their subsequent
+characteristics.
+
+This decision of the impulse of genius is apparent in MURILLO. This young
+artist was undistinguished at the place of his birth. A brother artist
+returning home from London, where he had studied under Van Dyk, surprised
+MURILLO by a chaste, and to him hitherto unknown, manner. Instantly he
+conceived the project of quitting his native Seville and flying to Italy
+--the fever of genius broke forth with all its restlessness. But he was
+destitute of the most ordinary means to pursue a journey, and forced to an
+expedient, he purchased a piece of canvas, which dividing into parts, he
+painted on each figures of saints, landscapes, and flowers--an humble
+merchandise of art adapted to the taste and devout feelings of the times,
+and which were readily sold to the adventurers to the Indies. With these
+small means he departed, having communicated his project to no one except
+to a beloved sister, whose tears could not prevail to keep the lad at
+home; the impetuous impulse had blinded him to the perils and the
+impracticability of his wild project. He reached Madrid, where the great
+VELASQUEZ, his countryman, was struck by the ingenuous simplicity of the
+youth, who urgently requested letters for Rome; but when that noble genius
+understood the purport of this romantic journey, VELASQUEZ assured him
+that he need not proceed to Italy to learn the art he loved. The great
+master opened the royal galleries to the youth, and cherished his studies.
+MURILLO returned to his native city, where, from his obscurity, he had
+never been missed, having ever lived a retired life of silent labour; but
+this painter of nature returned to make the city which had not noticed his
+absence the theatre of his glory.
+
+The same imperious impulse drove CALLOT, at the age of twelve years, from
+his father's roof. His parents, from prejudices of birth, had conceived
+that the art of engraving was one beneath the studies of their son; but
+the boy had listened to stories of the miracles of Italian art, and with a
+curiosity predominant over any self-consideration, one morning the genius
+flew away. Many days had not elapsed, when finding himself in the utmost
+distress, with a gang of gipsies he arrived at Florence. A merchant of
+Nancy discovered him, and returned the reluctant boy of genius to his
+home. Again he flies to Italy, and again his brother discovers him, and
+reconducts him to his parents. The father, whose patience and forgiveness
+were now exhausted, permitted his son to become the most original genius
+of French art--one who, in his vivacious groups, the touch of his graver,
+and the natural expression of his figures, anticipated the creations of
+Hogarth.
+
+Facts of this decisive character are abundant. See the boy NANTEUIL biding
+himself in a tree to pursue the delightful exercise of his pencil, while
+his parents are averse to their son practising his young art! See
+HANDEL, intended for a doctor of the civil laws, and whom no parental
+discouragement could deprive of his enthusiasm, for ever touching
+harpsichords, and having secretly conveyed a musical instrument to a
+retired apartment, listen to him when, sitting through the night, he
+awakens his harmonious spirit! Observe FERGUSON, the child of a peasant,
+acquiring the art of reading without any one suspecting it, by listening
+to his father teaching his brother; observe him making a wooden watch
+without the slightest knowledge of mechanism; and while a shepherd,
+studying, like an ancient Chaldean, the phenomena of the heavens, on a
+celestial globe formed by his own hand. That great mechanic, SMEATON, when
+a child, disdained the ordinary playthings of his age; he collected the
+tools of workmen, observed them at their work, and asked questions till he
+could work himself. One day, having watched some millwrights, the child
+was shortly after, to the distress of the family, discovered in a
+situation of extreme danger, fixing up at the top of a barn a rude
+windmill. Many circumstances of this nature occurred before his sixth
+year. His father, an attorney, sent him up to London to be brought up to
+the same profession; but he declared that "the study of the law did not
+suit the _bent of his genius_"--a term he frequently used. He addressed a
+strong memorial to his father, to show his utter incompetency to study
+law; and the good sense of the father abandoned Smeaton "to the bent of
+his genius in his own way." Such is the history of the man who raised the
+Eddystone Lighthouse, in the midst of the waves, like the rock on which it
+stands.
+
+Can we hesitate to believe that in such minds there was a resistless and
+mysterious propensity, "growing with the growth" of these youths, who seem
+to have been placed out of the influence of that casual excitement, or any
+other of those sources of genius, so frequently assigned for its
+production?
+
+Yet these cases are not more striking than one related of the Abbe LA
+CAILLE, who ranked among the first astronomers of the age. La Caille was
+the son of the parish clerk of a village. At the age of ten years his
+father sent him every evening to ring the church bell, but the boy always
+returned home late: his father was angry, and beat him, and still the boy
+returned an hour after he had rung the bell. The father, suspecting
+something mysterious in his conduct, one evening watched him. He saw his
+son ascend the steeple, ring the bell as usual, and remain there during an
+hour. When the unlucky boy descended, he trembled like one caught in the
+fact, and on his knees confessed that the pleasure he took in watching the
+stars from the steeple was the real cause which detained him from home. As
+the father was not born to be an astronomer, he flogged his son severely.
+The youth was found weeping in the streets by a man of science, who, when
+he discovered in a boy of ten years of age a passion for contemplating
+the stars at night, and one, too, who had discovered an observatory
+in a steeple, decided that the seal of Nature had impressed itself
+on the genius of that boy. Relieving the parent from the son, and the son
+from the parent, he assisted the young LA CAILLE in his passionate
+pursuit, and the event completely justified the prediction. How children
+feel a predisposition for the studies of astronomy, or mechanics, or
+architecture, or natural history, is that secret in nature we have not
+guessed. There may be a virgin thought as well as a virgin habit--nature
+before education--which first opens the mind, and ever afterwards is
+shaping its tender folds. Accidents may occur to call it forth, but
+thousands of youths have found themselves in parallel situations with
+SMEATON, FERGUSON, and LA CAILLE, without experiencing their energies.
+
+The case of CLAIRON, the great French tragic actress, who seems to have
+been an actress before she saw a theatre, deserves attention. This female,
+destined to be a sublime tragedian, was of the lowest extraction; the
+daughter of a violent and illiterate woman, who, with blows and menaces,
+was driving about the child all day to manual labour. "I know not," says
+Clairon, "whence I derive my disgust, but I could not bear the idea to be
+a mere workwoman, or to remain inactive in a corner." In her eleventh
+year, being locked up in a room as a punishment, with the windows
+fastened, she climbed upon a chair to look about her. A new object
+instantly absorbed her attention. In the house opposite she observed a
+celebrated actress amidst her family; her daughter was performing her
+dancing lesson: the girl Clairon, the future Melpomene, was struck by the
+influence of this graceful and affectionate scene. "All my little being
+collected itself into my eyes; I lost not a single motion; as soon as the
+lesson ended, all the family applauded, and the mother embraced the
+daughter. The difference of her fate and mine filled me with profound
+grief; my tears hindered me from seeing any longer, and when the
+palpitations of my heart allowed me to re-ascend the chair, all had
+disappeared." This scene was a discovery; from that moment Clairon knew no
+rest, and rejoiced when she could get her mother to confine her in that
+room. The happy girl was a divinity to the unhappy one, whose susceptible
+genius imitated her in every gesture and every motion; and Clairon soon
+showed the effect of her ardent studies. She betrayed in the common
+intercourse of life, all the graces she had taught herself; she charmed
+her friends, and even softened her barbarous mother; in a word, the
+enthusiastic girl was an actress without knowing what an actress was.
+
+In this case of the youth of genius, are we to conclude that the
+accidental view of a young actress practising her studies imparted the
+character of Clairon? Could a mere chance occurrence have given birth to
+those faculties which produced a sublime tragedian? In all arts there are
+talents which may be acquired by imitation and reflection,--and thus far
+may genius be educated; but there are others which are entirely the result
+of native sensibility, which often secretly torment the possessor, and
+which may even be lost from the want of development, dissolved into a
+state of languor from which many have not recovered. Clairon, before she
+saw the young actress, and having yet no conception of a theatre--for she
+had never entered one--had in her soul that latent faculty which creates a
+dramatic genius. "Had I not felt like Dido," she once exclaimed, "I could
+not have thus personified her!"
+
+The force of impressions received in the warm susceptibility of the
+childhood of genius, is probably little known to us; but we may perceive
+them also working in the _moral character_, which frequently discovers
+itself in childhood, and which manhood cannot always conceal, however it
+may alter. The intellectual and the moral character are unquestionably
+closely allied. ERASMUS acquaints us, that Sir THOMAS MORE had something
+ludicrous in his aspect, tending to a smile,--a feature which his
+portraits preserve; and that he was more inclined to pleasantry and
+jesting, than to the gravity of the chancellor. This circumstance he
+imputes to Sir Thomas More "being from a child so delighted with humour,
+that he seemed to be even born for it." And we know that he died as he had
+lived, with a jest on his lips. The hero, who came at length to regret
+that he had but one world to conquer, betrayed the majesty of his restless
+genius when but a youth. Had Aristotle been nigh when, solicited to join
+in the course, the princely boy replied, that "He would run in no career
+where kings were not the competitors," the prescient tutor might have
+recognised in his pupil the future and successful rival of Darius and
+Porus.
+
+A narrative of the earliest years of Prince Henry, by one of his
+attendants, forms an authentic collection of juvenile anecdotes, which
+made me feel very forcibly that there are some children who deserve to
+have a biographer at their side; but anecdotes of children are the rarest
+of biographies, and I deemed it a singular piece of good fortune to have
+recovered such a remarkable evidence of the precocity of character.[A]
+Professor Dugald Stewart has noticed a fact in ARNAULD'S infancy, which,
+considered in connexion with his subsequent life, affords a good
+illustration of the force of impressions received in the first dawn of
+reason. ARNAULD, who, to his eightieth year, passed through a life of
+theological controversy, when a child, amusing himself in the library of
+the Cardinal Du Perron, requested to have a pen given to him. "For what
+purpose?" inquired the cardinal. "To write books, like you, against the
+Huguenots." The cardinal, then aged and infirm, could not conceal his joy
+at the prospect of so hopeful a successor; and placing the pen in his
+hand, said, "I give it you as the dying shepherd, Damcetas, bequeathed his
+pipe to the little Corydon." Other children might have asked for a pen--
+but to write against the Huguenots evinced a deeper feeling and a wider
+association of ideas, indicating the future polemic.
+
+[Footnote A: I have preserved this manuscript narrative in "Curiosities of
+Literature," vol. ii.]
+
+Some of these facts, we conceive, afford decisive evidence of that
+instinct in genius, that primary quality of mind, sometimes called
+organization, which has inflamed a war of words by an equivocal term. We
+repeat that this faculty of genius can exist independent of education, and
+where it is wanting, education can never confer it: it is an impulse, an
+instinct always working in the character of "the chosen mind;"
+
+ One with our feelings and our powers,
+ And rather part of us, than ours.
+
+In the history of genius there are unquestionably many secondary causes of
+considerable influence in developing, or even crushing the germ--these
+have been of late often detected, and sometimes carried to a ridiculous
+extreme; but among them none seem more remarkable than the first studies
+and the first habits.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The first studies.--The self-educated are marked by stubborn
+peculiarities.--Their errors.--Their improvement from the neglect or
+contempt they incur.--The history of self-education in Moses Mendelssohn.
+--Friends usually prejudicial in the youth of genius.--A remarkable
+interview between Petrarch in his first studies, and his literary
+adviser.--Exhortation.
+
+
+The first studies form an epoch in the history of genius, and
+unquestionably have sensibly influenced its productions. Often have the
+first impressions stamped a character on the mind adapted to receive one,
+as the first step into life has often determined its walk. But this, for
+ourselves, is a far distant period in our existence, which is lost in the
+horizon of our own recollections, and is usually unobserved by others.
+Many of those peculiarities of men of genius which are not fortunate, and
+some which have hardened the character in its mould, may, however, be
+traced to this period. Physicians tell us that there is a certain point in
+youth at which the constitution is formed, and on which the sanity of life
+revolves; the character of genius experiences a similar dangerous period.
+Early bad tastes, early peculiar habits, early defective instructions, all
+the egotistical pride of an untamed intellect, are those evil spirits
+which will dog genius to its grave. An early attachment to the works of
+Sir Thomas Browne produced in JOHNSON an excessive admiration of that
+Latinised English, which violated the native graces of the language; and
+the peculiar style of Gibbon is traced by himself "to the constant habit
+of speaking one language, and writing another." The first studies of
+REMBRANDT affected his after-labours. The peculiarity of shadow which
+marks all his pictures, originated in the circumstance of his father's
+mill receiving light from an aperture at the top, which habituated the
+artist afterwards to view all objects as if seen in that magical light.
+The intellectual POUSSIN, as Nicholas has been called, could never, from
+an early devotion to the fine statues of antiquity, extricate his genius
+on the canvas from the hard forms of marble: he sculptured with his
+pencil; and that cold austerity of tone, still more remarkable in his last
+pictures, as it became mannered, chills the spectator on a first glance.
+When POPE was a child, he found in his mother's closet a small library of
+mystical devotion; but it was not suspected, till the fact was discovered,
+that the effusions of love and religion poured forth in his "Eloisa" were
+caught from the seraphic raptures of those erotic mystics, who to the last
+retained a place in his library among the classical bards of antiquity.
+The accidental perusal of Quintus Curtius first made BOYLE, to use his own
+words, "in love with other than pedantic books, and conjured up in him an
+unsatisfied appetite of knowledge; so that he thought he owed more to
+Quintus Curtius than did Alexander." From the perusal of Rycaut's folio of
+Turkish history in childhood, the noble and impassioned bard of our times
+retained those indelible impressions which gave life and motion to the
+"Giaour," "the Corsair," and "Alp." A voyage to the country produced the
+scenery. Rycaut only communicated the impulse to a mind susceptible of the
+poetical character; and without this Turkish history we should still have
+had the poet.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: The following manuscript note by Lord Byron on this passage,
+cannot fail to interest the lovers of poetry, as well as the inquirers
+into the history of the human mind. His lordship's recollections of his
+first readings will not alter the tendency of my conjecture; it only
+proves that he had read much more of Eastern history and manners than
+Rycaut's folio, which probably led to this class of books:
+
+"Knolles--Cantemir--De Tott--Lady M.W. Montagu--Hawkins's translation from
+Mignot's History of the Turks--the Arabian Nights--all travels or
+histories or books upon the East I could meet with, I had read, as well as
+Rycaut, before I was _ten years old_. I think the Arabian Nights first.
+After these I preferred the history of naval actions, Don Quixote, and
+Smollett's novels, particularly Roderick Random, and I was passionate for
+the Roman History.
+
+"When a boy I could never bear to read any poetry whatever without
+disgust and reluctance."--_MS. note by Lord Byron._ Latterly Lord Byron
+acknowledged in a conversation held in Greece with Count Gamba, not long
+before he died, "The Turkish History was one of the first books that gave
+me pleasure when a child; and I believe it had much influence on my
+subsequent wishes to visit the Levant; and gave perhaps the Oriental
+colouring which is observed in my poetry."
+
+I omitted the following note in my last edition, but I shall now preserve
+it, as it may enter into the history of his lordship's character:
+
+"When I was in Turkey I was oftener tempted to turn Mussulman than poet,
+and have often regretted since that I did not. 1818."]
+
+The influence of first studies in the formation of the character of genius
+is a moral phenomenon which has not sufficiently attracted our notice.
+FRANKLIN acquaints us that, when young and wanting books, he accidentally
+found De Foe's "Essay on Projects," from which work impressions were
+derived which afterwards influenced some of the principal events of his
+life. The lectures of REYNOLDS probably originated in the essays of
+Richardson. It is acknowledged that these first made him a painter, and
+not long afterwards an author; and it is said that many of the principles
+in his lectures may be traced in those first studies. Many were the
+indelible and glowing impressions caught by the ardent Reynolds from those
+bewildering pages of enthusiasm! Sir WALTER RAWLEIGH, according to a
+family tradition, when a young man, was perpetually reading and conversing
+on the discoveries of Columbus, and the conquests of Cortez and Pizarro.
+His character, as well as the great events of his life, seem to have been
+inspired by his favourite histories; to pass beyond the discoveries of the
+Spaniards became a passion, and the vision of his life. It is formally
+testified that, from a copy of Vegetius _de Re Militari_, in the school
+library of St. Paul's, MARLBOROUGH imbibed his passion for a military
+life. If he could not understand the text, the prints were, in such a
+mind, sufficient to awaken the passion for military glory. ROUSSEAU in
+early youth, full of his Plutarch, while he was also devouring the trash
+of romances, could only conceive human nature in the colossal forms, or be
+affected by the infirm sensibility of an imagination mastering all his
+faculties; thinking like a Roman, and feeling like a Sybarite. The same
+circumstance happened to CATHERINE MACAULEY, who herself has told us how
+she owed the bent of her character to the early reading of the Roman
+historians; but combining Roman admiration with English faction, she
+violated truth in English characters, and exaggerated romance in her
+Roman. But the permanent effect of a solitary bias in the youth of genius,
+impelling the whole current of his after-life, is strikingly displayed in
+the remarkable character of Archdeacon BLACKBURNE, the author of the
+famous "Confessional," and the curious "Memoirs of Hollis," written with
+such a republican fierceness.
+
+I had long considered the character of our archdeacon as a _lusus
+politicus et theologicus_. Having subscribed to the Articles, and enjoying
+the archdeaconry, he was writing against subscription and the whole
+hierarchy, with a spirit so irascible and caustic, that one would have
+suspected that, like Prynne and Bastwick, the archdeacon had already lost
+both his ears; while his antipathy to monarchy might have done honour to a
+Roundhead of the Rota Club. The secret of these volcanic explosions was
+only revealed in a letter accidentally preserved. In the youth of our
+spirited archdeacon, when fox-hunting was his deepest study, it happened
+at the house of a relation, that on a rainy day he fell, among other
+garret lumber, on some worm-eaten volumes which had once been the careful
+collections of his great-grandfather, an Oliverian justice. "These," says
+he, "I conveyed to my lodging-room, and there became acquainted with the
+manners and principles of many excellent old Puritans, and then laid the
+foundation of my own." The enigma is now solved! Archdeacon BLACKBURNE, in
+his seclusion in Yorkshire amidst the Oliverian justice's library, shows
+that we are in want of a Cervantes but not of a Quixote, and Yorkshire
+might yet be as renowned a country as La Mancha; for political romances,
+it is presumed, may be as fertile of ridicule as any of the folios of
+chivalry.
+
+We may thus mark the influence through life of those first unobserved
+impressions on the character of genius, which every author has not
+recorded.
+
+Education, however indispensable in a cultivated age, produces nothing on
+the side of genius. Where education ends, genius often begins. GRAY was
+asked if he recollected when he first felt the strong predilection to
+poetry; he replied that, "he believed it was when he began to read Virgil
+for his own amusement, and not in school hours as a task." Such is the
+force of self-education in genius, that the celebrated physiologist, JOHN
+HUNTER, who was entirely self-educated, evinced such penetration in his
+anatomical discoveries, that he has brought into notice passages from
+writers he was unable to read, and which had been overlooked by profound
+scholars.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Life of John Hunter, by Dr. Adams, p. 59, where the case is
+curiously illustrated. [The writer therein defends Hunter from a charge of
+plagiarism from the Greek writers, who had studied accurately certain
+phases of disease, which had afterwards been "overlooked by the most
+profound scholars for nearly two thousand years," until John Hunter by his
+own close observation had assumed similar conclusions.]]
+
+That the education of genius must be its own work, we may appeal to every
+one of the family. It is not always fortunate, for many die amidst a waste
+of talents and the wreck of mind.
+
+ Many a soul sublime
+ Has felt the influence of malignant star.
+
+An unfavourable position in society is a usual obstruction in the
+course of this self-education; and a man of genius, through half his
+life, has held a contest with a bad, or with no education. There is a race
+of the late-taught, who, with a capacity of leading in the first
+rank, are mortified to discover themselves only on a level with their
+contemporaries. WINCKELMANN, who passed his youth in obscure misery as a
+village schoolmaster, paints feelings which strikingly contrast with his
+avocations. "I formerly filled the office of a schoolmaster with the
+greatest punctuality; and I taught the A, B, C, to children with filthy
+heads, at the moment I was aspiring after the knowledge of the beautiful,
+and meditating, low to myself, on the similes of Homer; then I said to
+myself, as I still say, 'Peace, my soul, thy strength shall surmount thy
+cares.'" The obstructions of so unhappy a self-education essentially
+injured his ardent genius, and long he secretly sorrowed at this want of
+early patronage, and these habits of life so discordant with the habits of
+his mind. "I am unfortunately one of those whom the Greeks named [Greek:
+opsimatheis], _sero sapientes_, the late-learned, for I have appeared too
+late in the world and in Italy. To have done something, it was necessary
+that I should have had an education analogous to my pursuits, and at your
+age." This class of the _late-learned_ is a useful distinction. It is so
+with a sister-art; one of the greatest musicians of our country assures
+me that the ear is as latent with many; there are the late-learned even
+in the musical world. BUDAEUS declared that he was both "self-taught and
+late-taught."
+
+The SELF-EDUCATED are marked by stubborn peculiarities. Often abounding
+with talent, but rarely with talent in its place, their native prodigality
+has to dread a plethora of genius and a delirium of wit: or else, hard but
+irregular students rich in acquisition, they find how their huddled
+knowledge, like corn heaped in a granary, for want of ventilation and
+stirring, perishes in its own masses. Not having attended to the process
+of their own minds, and little acquainted with that of other men, they
+cannot throw out their intractable knowledge, nor with sympathy awaken by
+its softening touches the thoughts of others. To conduct their native
+impulse, which had all along driven them, is a secret not always
+discovered, or else discovered late in life. Hence it has happened with
+some of this race, that their first work has not announced genius, and
+their last is stamped with it. Some are often judged by their first
+work, and when they have surpassed themselves, it is long ere it is
+acknowledged. They have improved themselves by the very neglect or even
+contempt which their unfortunate efforts were doomed to meet; and when
+once they have learned what is beautiful, they discover a living but
+unsuspected source in their own wild but unregarded originality. Glorying
+in their strength at the time that they are betraying their weakness, yet
+are they still mighty in that enthusiasm which is only disciplined by its
+own fierce habits. Never can the native faculty of genius with its
+creative warmth be crushed out of the human soul; it will work itself out
+beneath the encumbrance of the most uncultivated minds, even amidst the
+deep perplexed feelings and the tumultuous thoughts of the most visionary
+enthusiast, who is often only a man of genius misplaced.[A] We may find a
+whole race of these self-taught among the unknown writers of the old
+romances, and the ancient ballads of European nations; there sleep many a
+Homer and Virgil--legitimate heirs of their genius, though possessors of
+decayed estates. BUNYAN is the Spenser of the people. The fire burned
+towards Heaven, although the altar was rude and rustic.
+
+[Footnote A: "One assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my own
+experience, that there exist folios on the human understanding and the
+nature of man which would have a far juster claim to their high rank and
+celebrity, if in the whole huge volume there could be found as much
+fulness of heart and intellect as burst forth in many a simple page of
+George Fox and Jacob Behmen."--_Mr. Coleridge's Biographia Litteraria_, i.
+143.]
+
+BARRY, the painter, has left behind him works not to be turned over by
+the connoisseur by rote, nor the artist who dares not be just. That
+enthusiast, with a temper of mind resembling Rousseau's, but with coarser
+feelings, was the same creature of untamed imagination consumed by
+the same passions, with the same fine intellect disordered, and the
+same fortitude of soul; but he found his self-taught pen, like his
+pencil, betray his genius.[B] A vehement enthusiasm breaks through his
+ill-composed works, throwing the sparks of his bold conceptions into the
+soul of the youth of genius. When, in his character of professor, he
+delivered his lectures at the academy, at every pause his auditors rose in
+a tumult, and at every close their hands returned to him the proud
+feelings he adored. This gifted but self-educated man, once listening to
+the children of genius whom he had created about him, exclaimed, "Go it,
+go it, my boys! they did so at Athens." This self-formed genius could
+throw up his native mud into the very heaven of his invention!
+
+[Footnote B: Like Hogarth, when he attempted to engrave his own works, his
+originality of style made them differ from the tamer and more mechanical
+labours of the professional engraver. They have consequently less beauty,
+but greater vigour.--ED.]
+
+But even such pages as those of BARRY'S are the aliment of young genius.
+Before we can discern the beautiful, must we not be endowed with the
+susceptibility of love? Must not the disposition be formed before even the
+object appears? I have witnessed the young artist of genius glow and start
+over the reveries of the uneducated BARRY, but pause and meditate, and
+inquire over the mature elegance of REYNOLDS; in the one he caught the
+passion for beauty, and in the other he discovered the beautiful; with the
+one he was warm and restless, and with the other calm and satisfied.
+
+Of the difficulties overcome in the self-education of genius, we have a
+remarkable instance in the character of MOSES MENDELSSOHN, on whom
+literary Germany has bestowed the honourable title of "the Jewish
+Socrates."[A] So great apparently were the invincible obstructions which
+barred out Mendelssohn from the world of literature and philosophy, that,
+in the history of men of genius, it is something like taking in the
+history of man the savage of Aveyron from his woods--who, destitute of a
+human language, should at length create a model of eloquence; who, without
+the faculty of conceiving a figure, should at length be capable of adding
+to the demonstrations of Euclid; and who, without a complex idea and with
+few sensations, should at length, in the sublimest strain of metaphysics,
+open to the world a new view of the immortality of the soul!
+
+[Footnote A: I composed the life of MENDELSSOHN so far back as in 1798, in
+a periodical publication, whence our late biographers have drawn their
+notices; a juvenile production, which happened to excite the attention of
+the late BARRY, then not personally known to me; and he gave all the
+immortality his poetical pencil could bestow on this man of genius, by
+immediately placing in his Elysium of Genius MENDELSSOHN shaking hands
+with ADDISON, who wrote on the truth of the Christian religion, and near
+LOCKE, the English master of MENDELSSOHN'S mind.]
+
+Mendelssohn, the son of a poor rabbin, in a village in Germany, received
+an education completely rabbinical, and its nature must be comprehended,
+or the term of _education_ would be misunderstood. The Israelites in
+Poland and Germany live with all the restrictions of their ceremonial law
+in an insulated state, and are not always instructed in the language of
+the country of their birth. They employ for their common intercourse a
+barbarous or _patois_ Hebrew; while the sole studies of the young rabbins
+are strictly confined to the Talmud, of which the fundamental principle,
+like the Sonna of the Turks, is a pious rejection of every species of
+profane learning. This ancient jealous spirit, which walls in the
+understanding and the faith of man, was to shut out what the imitative
+Catholics afterwards called heresy. It is, then, these numerous folios of
+the Talmud which the true Hebraic student contemplates through all the
+seasons of life, as the Patuecos in their low valley imagine their
+surrounding mountains to be the confines of the universe.
+
+Of such a nature was the plan of Mendelssohn's first studies; but even in
+his boyhood this conflict of study occasioned an agitation of his spirits,
+which affected his life ever after. Rejecting the Talmudical dreamers, he
+caught a nobler spirit from the celebrated Maimonides; and his native
+sagacity was already clearing up the surrounding darkness. An enemy not
+less hostile to the enlargement of mind than voluminous legends, presented
+itself in the indigence of his father, who was compelled to send away the
+youth on foot to Berlin, to find labour and bread.
+
+At Berlin, Mendelssohn becomes an amanuensis to another poor rabbin, who
+could only still initiate him into the theology, the jurisprudence, and
+the scholastic philosophy of his people. Thus, he was as yet no farther
+advanced in that philosophy of the mind in which he was one day to be the
+rival of Plato and Locke, nor in that knowledge of literature which was
+finally to place him among the first polished critics of Germany.
+
+Some unexpected event occurs which gives the first great impulse to the
+mind of genius. Mendelssohn received this from the companion of his misery
+and his studies, a man of congenial but maturer powers. He was a Polish
+Jew, expelled from the communion of the orthodox, and the calumniated
+student was now a vagrant, with more sensibility than fortitude. But this
+vagrant was a philosopher, a poet, a naturalist, and a mathematician.
+Mendelssohn, at a distant day, never alluded to him without tears. Thrown
+together into the same situation, they approached each other by the same
+sympathies, and communicating in the only language which Mendelssohn could
+speak, the Polander voluntarily undertook his literary education.
+
+Then was seen one of the most extraordinary spectacles in the history of
+modern literature. Two houseless Hebrew youths might be discovered, in the
+moonlit streets of Berlin, sitting in retired corners, or on the steps of
+some porch, the one instructing the other, with a Euclid in his hand; but
+what is more extraordinary, it was a Hebrew version, composed by the
+master for a pupil who knew no other language. Who could then have
+imagined that the future Plato of Germany was sitting on those steps!
+
+The Polander, whose deep melancholy had settled on his heart, died--yet he
+had not lived in vain, since the electric spark that lighted up the soul
+of Mendelssohn had fallen from his own.
+
+Mendelssohn was now left alone; his mind teeming with its chaos, and still
+master of no other language than that barren idiom which was incapable of
+expressing the ideas he was meditating on. He had scarcely made a step
+into the philosophy of his age, and the genius of Mendelssohn had probably
+been lost to Germany, had not the singularity of his studies and the cast
+of his mind been detected by the sagacity of Dr. Kisch. The aid of this
+physician was momentous; for he devoted several hours every day to the
+instruction of a poor youth, whose strong capacity he had the discernment
+to perceive, and the generous temper to aid. Mendelssohn was soon enabled
+to read Locke in a Latin version; but with such extreme pain, that,
+compelled to search for every word, and to arrange their Latin order, and
+at the same time to combine metaphysical ideas, it was observed that he
+did not so much translate, as guess by the force of meditation.
+
+This prodigious effort of his intellect retarded his progress, but
+invigorated his habit, as the racer, by running against the hill, at
+length courses with facility.
+
+A succeeding effort was to master the living languages, and chiefly the
+English, that he might read his favourite Locke in his own idiom. Thus a
+great genius for metaphysics and languages was forming itself alone,
+without aid.
+
+It is curious to detect, in the character of genius, the effects of local
+and moral influences. There resulted from Mendelssohn's early situation
+certain defects in his Jewish education, and numerous impediments in his
+studies. Inheriting but one language, too obsolete and naked to serve the
+purposes of modern philosophy, he perhaps overvalued his new acquisitions,
+and in his delight of knowing many languages, he with difficulty escaped
+from remaining a mere philologist; while in his philosophy, having adopted
+the prevailing principles of Wolf and Baumgarten, his genius was long
+without the courage or the skill to emancipate itself from their rusty
+chains. It was more than a step which had brought him into their circle,
+but a step was yet wanting to escape from it.
+
+At length the mind of Mendelssohn enlarged in literary intercourse: he
+became a great and original thinker in many beautiful speculations in
+moral and critical philosophy; while he had gradually been creating a
+style which the critics of Germany have declared to be their first
+luminous model of precision and elegance. Thus a Hebrew vagrant, first
+perplexed in the voluminous labyrinth of Judaical learning, in his middle
+age oppressed by indigence and malady, and in his mature life wrestling
+with that commercial station whence he derived his humble independence,
+became one of the master-writers in the literature of his country. The
+history of the mind of Mendelssohn is one of the noblest pictures of the
+self-education of genius.
+
+Friends, whose prudential counsels in the business of life are valuable in
+our youth, are usually prejudicial in the youth of genius. The multitude
+of authors and artists originates in the ignorant admiration of their
+early friends; while the real genius has often been disconcerted and
+thrown into despair by the false judgments of his domestic circle. The
+productions of taste are more unfortunate than those which depend on a
+chain of reasoning, or the detail of facts; these are more palpable to the
+common judgments of men; but taste is of such rarity, that a long life may
+be passed by some without once obtaining a familiar acquaintance with a
+mind so cultivated by knowledge, so tried by experience, and so practised
+by converse with the literary world, that its prophetic feeling can
+anticipate the public opinion. When a young writer's first essay is shown,
+some, through mere inability of censure, see nothing but beauties; others,
+from mere imbecility, can see none; and others, out of pure malice, see
+nothing but faults. "I was soon disgusted," says Gibbon, "with the modest
+practice of reading the manuscript to my friends. Of such friends some
+will praise for politeness, and some will criticise for vanity." Had
+several of our first writers set their fortunes on the cast of their
+friends' opinions, we might have lost some precious compositions.
+The friends of Thompson discovered nothing but faults in his early
+productions, one of which happened to be his noblest, the "Winter;" they
+just could discern that these abounded with luxuriances, without being
+aware that, they were the luxuriances of a poet. He had created a new
+school in art--and appealed from his circle to the public. From a
+manuscript letter of our poet's, written when employed on his "Summer," I
+transcribe his sentiments on his former literary friends in Scotland--he
+is writing to Mallet: "Far from defending these two lines, I damn them to
+the lowest depth of the poetical Tophet, prepared of old for Mitchell,
+Morrice, Rook, Cook, Beckingham, and a long &c. Wherever I have evidence,
+or think I have evidence, which is the same thing, I'll be as obstinate as
+all the mules in Persia." This poet of warm affections felt so irritably
+the perverse criticisms of his learned friends, that they were to share
+alike a poetic Hell--probably a sort of _Dunciad_, or lampoons. One of
+these "blasts" broke out in a vindictive epigram on Mitchell, whom he
+describes with a "blasted eye;" but this critic literally having one, the
+poet, to avoid a personal reflection, could only consent to make the
+blemish more active--
+
+ Why all not faults, injurious Mitchell! why
+ Appears one beauty to thy _blasting_ eye?
+
+He again calls him "the planet-blasted Mitchell." Of another of these
+critical friends he speaks with more sedateness, but with a strong
+conviction that the critic, a very sensible man, had no sympathy with the
+poet. "Aikman's reflections on my writings are very good, but he does not
+in them regard the turn of my genius enough; should I alter my way, I
+would write poorly. I must choose what appears to me the most significant
+epithet, or I cannot with any heart proceed." The "Mirror,"[A] when
+periodically published in Edinburgh, was "fastidiously" received, as all
+"home-productions" are: but London avenged the cause of the author. When
+SWIFT introduced PARNELL to Lord Bolingbroke, and to the world, he
+observes, in his Journal, "it is pleasant to see one who hardly passed for
+anything in Ireland, make his way here with a little friendly forwarding."
+MONTAIGNE has honestly told us that in his own province they considered
+that for him to attempt to become an author was perfectly ludicrous: at
+home, says he, "I am compelled to purchase printers; while at a distance,
+printers purchase me." There is nothing more trying to the judgment of the
+friends of a young man of genius than the invention of a new manner:
+without a standard to appeal to, without bladders to swim, the ordinary
+critic sinks into irretrievable distress; but usually pronounces against
+novelty. When REYNOLDS returned from Italy, warm with all the excellence
+of his art, and painted a portrait, his old master, Hudson, viewing it,
+and perceiving no trace of his own manner, exclaimed that he did not paint
+so well as when he left England; while another, who conceived no higher
+excellence than Kneller, treated with signal contempt the future Raphael
+of England.
+
+[Footnote A: This weekly journal was chiefly supported by the abilities of
+the rising young men of the Scottish Bar. Henry Mackenzie, the author of
+the "Man of Feeling," was the principal contributor. The publication was
+commenced in January, 1779, and concluded May, 1790.--ED.]
+
+If it be dangerous for a young writer to resign himself to the opinions of
+his friends, he also incurs some peril in passing them with inattention.
+He wants a Quintilian. One mode to obtain such an invaluable critic is the
+cultivation of his own judgment in a round of reading and meditation. Let
+him at once supply the marble and be himself the sculptor: let the
+great authors of the world be his gospels, and the best critics their
+expounders; from the one he will draw inspiration, and from the others he
+will supply those tardy discoveries in art which he who solely depends on
+his own experience may obtain too late. Those who do not read criticism
+will rarely merit to be criticised; their progress is like those who
+travel without a map of the country. The more extensive an author's
+knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his powers in knowing
+what to do. To obtain originality, and effect discovery, sometimes
+requires but a single step, if we only know from what point to set
+forwards. This important event in the life of genius has too often
+depended on chance and good fortune, and many have gone down to their
+graves without having discovered their unsuspected talent. CURRAN'S
+predominant faculty was an exuberance of imagination when excited by
+passion; but when young he gave no evidence of this peculiar faculty, nor
+for several years, while a candidate for public distinction, was he aware
+of his particular powers, so slowly his imagination had developed itself.
+It was when assured of the secret of his strength that his confidence, his
+ambition, and his industry were excited.
+
+Let the youth preserve his juvenile compositions, whatever these may be;
+they are the spontaneous growth, and like the plants of the Alps, not
+always found in other soils; they are his virgin fancies. By contemplating
+them, he may detect some of his predominant habits, resume a former manner
+more happily, invent novelty from an old subject he had rudely designed,
+and often may steal from himself some inventive touches, which, thrown
+into his most finished compositions, may seem a happiness rather than an
+art. It was in contemplating on some of their earliest and unfinished
+productions, that more than one artist discovered with WEST that "there
+were inventive touches of art in his first and juvenile essay, which, with
+all his subsequent knowledge and experience, he had not been able to
+surpass." A young writer, in the progress of his studies, should often
+recollect a fanciful simile of Dryden--
+
+ As those who unripe veins in mines explore
+ On the rich bed again the warm turf lay,
+ Till time digests the yet imperfect ore;
+ And know it will be gold another day.
+
+The youth of genius is that "age of admiration" as sings the poet of
+"Human Life," when the spell breathed into our ear by our genius,
+fortunate or unfortunate, is--"Aspire!" Then we adore art and the artists.
+It was RICHARDSON'S enthusiasm which gave REYNOLDS the raptures he caught
+in meditating on the description of a great painter; and REYNOLDS thought
+RAPHAEL the most extraordinary man the world had ever produced. WEST, when
+a youth, exclaimed that "A painter is a companion for kings and emperors!"
+This was the feeling which rendered the thoughts of obscurity painful and
+insupportable to their young minds.
+
+But this sunshine of rapture is not always spread over the spring of the
+youthful year. There is a season of self-contest, a period of tremors, and
+doubts, and darkness. These frequent returns of melancholy, sometimes of
+despondence, which is the lot of inexperienced genius, is a secret history
+of the heart, which has been finely conveyed to us by Petrarch, in a
+conversation with John of Florence, to whom the young poet often resorted
+when dejected, to reanimate his failing powers, to confess his faults, and
+to confide to him his dark and wavering resolves. It was a question with
+Petrarch, whether he should not turn away from the pursuit of literary
+fame, by giving another direction to his life.
+
+"I went one day to John of Florence in one of those ague-fits of
+faint-heartedness which often happened to me; he received me with his
+accustomed kindness. 'What ails you?' said he, 'you seem oppressed with
+thought: if I am not deceived, something has happened to you.' 'You do not
+deceive yourself, my father (for thus I used to call him), and yet nothing
+newly has happened to me; but I come to confide to you that my old
+melancholy torments me more than usual. You know its nature, for my heart
+has always been opened to you; you know all which I have done to draw
+myself out of the crowd, and to acquire a name; and surely not without
+some success, since I have your testimony in my favour. Are you not the
+truest man, and the best of critics, who have never ceased to bestow on me
+your praise--and what need I more? Have you not often told me that I am
+answerable to God for the talents he has endowed me with, if I neglected
+to cultivate them? Your praises were to me as a sharp spur: I applied
+myself to study with more ardour, insatiable even of my moments.
+Disdaining the beaten paths, I opened a new road; and I flattered myself
+that assiduous labour would lead to something great; but I know not how,
+when I thought myself highest, I feel myself fallen; the spring of my mind
+has dried up; what seemed easy once, now appears to me above my strength;
+I stumble at every step, and am ready to sink for ever into despair. I
+return to you to teach me, or at least advise me. Shall I for ever quit my
+studies? Shall I strike into some new course of life? My father, have pity
+on me! draw me out of the frightful state in which I am lost.' I could
+proceed no farther without shedding tears. 'Cease to afflict yourself, my
+son,' said that good man; 'your condition is not so bad as you think: the
+truth is, you knew little at the time you imagined you knew much. The
+discovery of your ignorance is the first great step you have made towards
+true knowledge. The veil is lifted up, and you now view those deep shades
+of the soul which were concealed from you by excessive presumption. In
+ascending an elevated spot, we gradually discover many things whose
+existence before was not suspected by us. Persevere in the career which
+you entered with my advice; feel confident that God will not abandon you:
+there are maladies which the patient does not perceive; but to be aware of
+the disease, is the first step towards the cure.'"
+
+This remarkable literary interview is here given, that it may perchance
+meet the eye of some kindred youth at one of those lonely moments when a
+Shakspeare may have thought himself no poet, and a Raphael believed
+himself no painter. Then may the tender wisdom of a John of Florence, in
+the cloudy despondency of art, lighten up the vision of its glory!
+
+INGENUOUS YOUTH! if, in a constant perusal of the master-writers, you see
+your own sentiments anticipated--if, in the tumult of your mind, as it
+comes in contact with theirs, new sentiments arise--if, sometimes, looking
+on the public favourite of the hour, you feel that within which prompts
+you to imagine that you could rival or surpass him--if, in meditating
+on the confessions of every man of genius, for they all have their
+confessions, you find you have experienced the same sensations from the
+same circumstances, encountered the same difficulties and overcome them by
+the same means; then let not your courage be lost in your admiration, but
+listen to that "still small voice" in your heart which cries with
+CORREGGIO and with MONTESQUIEU, "Ed io anche son pittore!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Of the irritability of genius.--Genius in society often in a state of
+suffering.--Equality of temper more prevalent among men of letters.--Of
+the occupation of making a great name.--Anxieties of the most successful.
+--Of the inventors.--Writers of learning.--Writers of taste.--Artists.
+
+
+The modes of life of a man of genius, often tinctured by eccentricity and
+enthusiasm, maintain an eternal conflict with the monotonous and imitative
+habits of society, as society is carried on in a great metropolis, where
+men are necessarily alike, and where, in perpetual intercourse, they shape
+themselves to one another.
+
+The occupations, the amusements, and the ardour of the man of genius are
+at discord with the artificial habits of life: in the vortexes of
+business, or the world of pleasure, crowds of human beings are only
+treading in one another's steps. The pleasures and the sorrows of this
+active multitude are not his, while his are not obvious to them; and his
+favourite occupations strengthen his peculiarities, and increase his
+sensibility. Genius in society is often in a state of suffering.
+Professional characters, who are themselves so often literary, yielding to
+their predominant interests, conform to that assumed urbanity which levels
+them with ordinary minds; but the man of genius cannot leave himself
+behind in the cabinet he quits; the train of his thoughts is not stopped
+at will, and in the range of conversation the habits of his mind will
+prevail: the poet will sometimes muse till he modulates a verse; the
+artist is sketching what a moment presents, and a moment changes; the
+philosophical historian is suddenly absorbed by a new combination of
+thought, and, placing his hands over his eyes, is thrown back into the
+Middle Ages. Thus it happens that an excited imagination, a high-toned
+feeling, a wandering reverie, a restlessness of temper, are perpetually
+carrying the man of genius out of the processional line of the mere
+conversationists. Like all solitary beings, he is much too sentient, and
+prepares for defence even at a random touch or a chance hit. His
+generalising views take things only in masses, while in his rapid emotions
+he interrogates, and doubts, and is caustic; in a word, he thinks he
+converses while he is at his studies. Sometimes, apparently a complacent
+listener, we are mortified by detecting the absent man: now he appears
+humbled and spiritless, ruminating over some failure which probably may be
+only known to himself; and now haughty and hardy for a triumph he has
+obtained, which yet remains a secret to the world. No man is so apt to
+indulge the extremes of the most opposite feelings: he is sometimes
+insolent, and sometimes querulous; now the soul of tenderness and
+tranquillity,--then stung by jealousy, or writhing in aversion! A fever
+shakes his spirit; a fever which has sometimes generated a disease, and
+has even produced a slight perturbation of the faculties.[A] In one of
+those manuscript notes by Lord BYRON on this work, which I have wished to
+preserve, I find his lordship observing on the feelings of genius, that
+"the depreciation of the lowest of mankind is more painful than the
+applause of the highest is pleasing." Such is the confession of genius,
+and such its liability to hourly pain.
+
+[Footnote A: I have given a history of _literary quarrels from personal
+motives_, in "Quarrels of Authors," p. 529. There we find how many
+controversies, in which the public get involved, have sprung from some
+sudden squabbles, some neglect of petty civility, some unlucky epithet, or
+some casual observation dropped without much consideration, which
+mortified or enraged the _genus irritabile_; a title which from ancient
+days has been assigned to every description of authors. The late Dr.
+WELLS, who had some experience in his intercourse with many literary
+characters, observed, that "in whatever regards the fruits of their mental
+labours, this is universally acknowledged to be true. Some of the
+malevolent passions indeed frequently become in learned men more than
+ordinarily strong, from want of that restraint upon their excitement which
+society imposes." A puerile critic has reproached me for having drawn my
+description entirely from my own fancy:--I have taken it from life!
+See further symptoms of this disease at the close of the chapter on
+_Self-praise_ in the present work.]
+
+Once we were nearly receiving from the hand of genius the most curious
+sketches of the temper, the irascible humours, the delicacy of soul, even
+to its shadowiness, from the warm _sbozzos_ of BURNS, when he began a
+diary of the heart,--a narrative of characters and events, and a
+chronology of his emotions. It was natural for such a creature of
+sensation and passion to project such a regular task, but quite impossible
+for him to get through it. The paper-book that he conceived would have
+recorded all these things turns out, therefore, but a very imperfect
+document. Imperfect as it was, it has been thought proper not to give it
+entire. Yet there we view a warm original mind, when he first stepped
+into the polished circles of society, discovering that he could no
+longer "pour out his bosom, his every thought and floating fancy, his very
+inmost soul, with unreserved confidence to another, without hazard of
+losing part of that respect which man deserves from man; or, from the
+unavoidable imperfections attending human nature, of one day repenting his
+confidence." This was the first lesson he learned at Edinburgh, and it was
+as a substitute for such a human being that he bought a paper-book to keep
+under lock and key: "a security at least equal," says he, "to the bosom of
+any friend whatever." Let the man of genius pause over the fragments of
+this "paper-book;"--it will instruct as much as any open confession of a
+criminal at the moment he is about to suffer. No man was more afflicted
+with that miserable pride, the infirmity of men of imagination, which is
+so jealously alive, even among their best friends, as to exact a perpetual
+acknowledgment of their powers. Our poet, with all his gratitude and
+veneration for "the noble Glencairn," was "wounded to the soul" because
+his lordship showed "so much attention, engrossing attention, to the only
+blockhead at table; the whole company consisted of his lordship,
+Dunderpate, and myself." This Dunderpate, who dined with Lord Glencairn,
+might have been a useful citizen, who in some points is of more value than
+an irritable bard. Burns was equally offended with another patron, who was
+also a literary brother, Dr. Blair. At the moment, he too appeared to be
+neglecting the irritable poet "for the mere carcass of greatness, or when
+his eye measured the difference of their point of elevation; I say to
+myself, with scarcely any emotion," (he might have added, except a good
+deal of painful contempt,) "what do I care for him or his pomp either?"
+--"Dr. Blair's vanity is proverbially known among his acquaintance," adds
+Burns, at the moment that the solitary haughtiness of his own genius had
+entirely escaped his self-observation.
+
+This character of genius is not singular. Grimm tells of MARIVAUX, that
+though a good man, there was something dark and suspicious in his
+character, which made it difficult to keep on terms with him; the most
+innocent word would wound him, and he was always inclined to think that
+there was an intention to mortify him; this disposition made him unhappy,
+and rendered his acquaintance too painful to endure.
+
+What a moral paradox, but what an unquestionable fact, is the wayward
+irritability of some of the finest geniuses, which is often weak to
+effeminacy, and capricious to childishness! while minds of a less delicate
+texture are not frayed and fretted by casual frictions; and plain sense
+with a coarser grain, is sufficient to keep down these aberrations of
+their feelings. How mortifying is the list of--
+
+ Fears of the brave and follies of the wise!
+
+Many have been sore and implacable on an allusion to some personal defect
+--on the obscurity of their birth--on some peculiarity of habit; and have
+suffered themselves to be governed in life by nervous whims and chimeras,
+equally fantastic and trivial. This morbid sensibility lurks in the
+temperament of genius, and the infection is often discovered where it is
+not always suspected. Cumberland declared that the sensibility of some men
+of genius is so quick and captious, that you must first consider whom they
+can be happy with, before you can promise yourself any happiness with
+them: if you bring uncongenial humours into contact with each other, all
+the objects of society will be frustrated by inattention to the proper
+grouping of the guests. Look round on our contemporaries; every day
+furnishes facts which confirm our principle. Among the vexations of POPE
+was the libel of "the pictured shape;"[A] and even the robust mind of
+JOHNSON could not suffer to be exhibited as "blinking Sam."[B] MILTON must
+have delighted in contemplating his own person; and the engraver not
+having reached our sublime bard's ideal grace, he has pointed his
+indignation in four iambics. The praise of a skipping ape raised the
+feeling of envy in that child of nature and genius, GOLDSMITH. VOITURE,
+the son of a vintner, like our PRIOR, was so mortified whenever reminded
+of his original occupation, that it was bitterly said, that wine, which
+cheered the hearts of all men, sickened the heart of Voiture. AKENSIDE
+ever considered his lameness as an unsupportable misfortune, for it
+continually reminded him of the fall of the cleaver from one of his
+father's blocks. BECCARIA, invited to Paris by the literati, arrived
+melancholy and silent, and abruptly returned home. At that moment this
+great man was most miserable from a fit of jealousy: a young female had
+extinguished all his philosophy. The poet ROUSSEAU was the son of a
+cobbler; and when his honest parent waited at the door of the theatre to
+embrace his son on the success of his first piece, genius, whose
+sensibility is not always virtuous, repulsed the venerable father with
+insult and contempt. But I will no longer proceed from folly to crime.
+
+[Footnote A: He was represented as an ill-made monkey in the frontispiece
+to a satire noted in "Quarrels of Authors," p. 286 (last edition).--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: Johnson was displeased at the portrait Reynolds painted of
+him which dwelt on his nearsightedness; declaring that "a man's defects
+should never be painted." The same defect was made the subject of a
+caricature particularly allusive to critical prejudices in his "Lives of
+the Poets," in which he is pictured as an owl "blinking at the stars."
+--ED.]
+
+Those who give so many sensations to others must themselves possess an
+excess and a variety of feelings. We find, indeed, that they are censured
+for their extreme irritability; and that happy equality of temper so
+prevalent among MEN OF LETTERS, and which is conveniently acquired by men
+of the world, has been usually refused to great mental powers, or to
+fervid dispositions--authors and artists. The man of wit becomes petulant,
+the profound thinker morose, and the vivacious ridiculously thoughtless.
+
+When ROUSSEAU once retired to a village, he had to learn to endure its
+conversation; for this purpose he was compelled to invent an expedient to
+get rid of his uneasy sensations. "Alone, I have never known ennui,
+even when perfectly unoccupied: my imagination, filling the void, was
+sufficient to busy me. It is only the inactive chit-chat of the room, when
+every one is seated face to face, and only moving their tongues, which I
+never could support. There to be a fixture, nailed with one hand on the
+other, to settle the state of the weather, or watch the flies about
+one, or, what is worse, to be bandying compliments, this to me is not
+bearable." He hit on the expedient of making lace-strings, carrying his
+working cushion in his visits, to keep the peace with the country gossips.
+
+Is the occupation of making a great name less anxious and precarious than
+that of making a great fortune? the progress of a man's capital is
+unequivocal to him, but that of the fame of authors and artists is for the
+greater part of their lives of an ambiguous nature. They become whatever
+the minds or knowledge of others make them; they are the creatures of the
+prejudices and the predispositions of others, and must suffer from those
+precipitate judgments which are the result of such prejudices and such
+predispositions. Time only is the certain friend of literary worth, for
+time makes the world disagree among themselves; and when those who condemn
+discover that there are others who approve, the weaker party loses itself
+in the stronger, and at length they learn that the author was far more
+reasonable than their prejudices had allowed them to conceive. It is thus,
+however, that the regard which men of genius find in one place they lose
+in another. We may often smile at the local gradations of genius; the
+fervid esteem in which an author is held here, and the cold indifference,
+if not contempt, he encounters in another place; here the man of learning
+is condemned as a heavy drone, and there the man of wit annoys the unwitty
+listener.
+
+And are not the anxieties of even the most successful men of genius
+renewed at every work--often quitted in despair, often returned to with
+rapture? the same agitation of the spirits, the same poignant delight, the
+same weariness, the same dissatisfaction, the same querulous languishment
+after excellence? Is the man of genius an INVENTOR? the discovery is
+contested, or it is not comprehended for ten years after, perhaps not
+during his whole life; even men of science are as children before him. Sir
+Thomas Bodley wrote to Lord Bacon, remonstrating with him on his _new mode
+of philosophising_. It seems the fate of all originality of thinking to be
+immediately opposed; a contemporary is not prepared for its comprehension,
+and too often cautiously avoids it, from the prudential motive which turns
+away from a new and solitary path. BACON was not at all understood at home
+in his own day; his reputation--for it was not celebrity--was confined to
+his history of Henry VII., and his Essays; it was long after his death
+before English writers ventured to quote Bacon as an authority; and with
+equal simplicity and grandeur, BACON called himself "the servant of
+posterity." MONTESQUIEU gave his _Esprit des Loix_ to be read by that man
+in France, whom he conceived to be the best judge, and in return received
+the most mortifying remarks. The great philosopher exclaimed in despair,
+"I see my own age is not ripe enough to understand my work; however, it
+shall be published!" When KEPLER published the first rational work on
+comets, it was condemned, even by the learned, as a wild dream. COPERNICUS
+so much dreaded the prejudice of mankind against his treatise on "The
+Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies," that, by a species of continence of
+all others most difficult to a philosopher, says Adam Smith, he detained
+it in his closet for thirty years together. LINNAEUS once in despair
+abandoned his beloved studies, from a too irritable feeling of the
+ridicule in which, as it appeared to him, a professor Siegesbeck had
+involved his famous system. Penury, neglect, and labour LINNAEUS could
+endure, but that his botany should become the object of ridicule for all
+Stockholm, shook the nerves of this great inventor in his science. Let him
+speak for himself. "No one cared how many sleepless nights and toilsome
+hours I had passed, while all with one voice declared, that Siegesbeck had
+annihilated me. I took my leave of Flora, who bestows on me nothing but
+Siegesbecks; and condemned my too numerous observations a thousand times
+over to eternal oblivion. What a fool have I been to waste so much time,
+to spend my days in a study which yields no better fruit, and makes me the
+laughing stock of the world." Such are the cries of the irritability of
+genius, and such are often the causes. The world was in danger of losing a
+new science, had not LINNAEUS returned to the discoveries which he had
+forsaken in the madness of the mind! The great SYDENHAM, who, like our
+HARVEY and our HUNTER, effected a revolution in the science of medicine,
+and led on alone by the independence of his genius, attacked the most
+prevailing prejudices, so highly provoked the malignant emulation of his
+rivals, that a conspiracy was raised against the father of our modern
+practice to banish him out of the college, as "guilty of medical heresy."
+JOHN HUNTER was a great discoverer in his own science; but one who well
+knew him has told us, that few of his contemporaries perceived the
+ultimate object of his pursuits; and his strong and solitary genius
+laboured to perfect his designs without the solace of sympathy, without
+one cheering approbation. "We bees do not provide honey for ourselves,"
+exclaimed VAN HELMONT, when worn out by the toils of chemistry, and still
+contemplating, amidst tribulation and persecution, and approaching death,
+his "Tree of Life," which he imagined he had discovered in the cedar. But
+with a sublime melancholy his spirit breaks out; "My mind breathes some
+unheard-of thing within; though I, as unprofitable for this life, shall be
+buried!" Such were the mighty but indistinct anticipations of this
+visionary inventor, the father of modern chemistry!
+
+I cannot quit this short record of the fates of the inventors in science,
+without adverting to another cause of that irritability of genius which is
+so closely connected with their pursuits. If we look into the history of
+theories, we shall be surprised at the vast number which have "not left a
+rack behind." And do we suppose that the inventors themselves were not at
+times alarmed by secret doubts of their soundness and stability? They
+felt, too often for their repose, that the noble architecture which they
+had raised might be built on moveable sands, and be found only in the dust
+of libraries; a cloudy day, or a fit of indigestion, would deprive an
+inventor of his theory all at once; and as one of them said, "after
+dinner, all that I have written in the morning appears to me dark,
+incongruous, nonsensical." At such moments we should find this man of
+genius in no pleasant mood. The true cause of this nervous state cannot,
+nay, must not, be confided to the world: the honour of his darling theory
+will always be dearer to his pride than the confession of even slight
+doubts which may shake its truth. It is a curious fact which we have
+but recently discovered, that ROUSSEAU was disturbed by a terror he
+experienced, and which we well know was not unfounded, that his theories
+of education were false and absurd. He could not endure to read a page in
+his own "Emile"[A] without disgust after the work had been published! He
+acknowledged that there were more suffrages against his notions than for
+them. "I am not displeased," says he, "with myself on the style and
+eloquence, but I still dread that my writings are good for nothing at the
+bottom, and that all my theories are full of extravagance." [_Je crains
+toujours que je peche par le fond, et que tous mes systemes ne sont que
+des extravagances._] HARTLEY with his "Vibrations and Vibrationeles,"
+LEIBNITZ with his "Monads," CUDWORTH with his "Plastic Natures,"
+MALEBRANCHE with his paradoxical doctrine of "Seeing all things in God,"
+and BURNET with his heretical "Theory of the Earth," must unquestionably
+at times have betrayed an irritability which those about them may have
+attributed to temper, rather than to genius.
+
+[Footnote A: In a letter by Hume to Blair, written in 1766, apparently
+first published in the _Literary Gazette_, Nov. 17, 1821.]
+
+Is our man of genius--not the victim of fancy, but the slave of truth--a
+learned author? Of the living waters of human knowledge it cannot be said
+that "If a man drink thereof, he shall never thirst again." What volumes
+remain to open! what manuscript but makes his heart palpitate! There is no
+term in researches which new facts may not alter, and a single date may
+not dissolve. Truth! thou fascinating, but severe mistress, thy adorers
+are often broken down in thy servitude, performing a thousand unregarded
+task-works! Now winding thee through thy labyrinth with a single thread,
+often unravelling--now feeling their way in darkness, doubtful if it be
+thyself they are touching. How much of the real labour of genius and
+erudition must remain concealed from the world, and never be reached by
+their penetration! MONTESQUIEU has described this feeling after its agony:
+"I thought I should have killed myself these three months to finish a
+_morceau_ (for his great work), which I wished to insert, on the origin
+and revolutions of the civil laws in France. You will read it in three
+hours; but I do assure you that it cost me so much labour that it has
+whitened my hair." Mr. Hallam, stopping to admire the genius of GIBBON,
+exclaims, "In this, as in many other places, the masterly boldness and
+precision of his outline, which astonish those who have trodden parts of
+the same field, is apt to escape an uninformed reader." Thrice has my
+learned friend, SHARON TURNER, recomposed, with renewed researches, the
+history of our ancestors, of which Milton and Hume had despaired--thrice,
+amidst the self-contests of ill-health and professional duties!
+
+The man of erudition in closing his elaborate work is still exposed to the
+fatal omissions of wearied vigilance, or the accidental knowledge of some
+inferior mind, and always to the reigning taste, whatever it chance to be,
+of the public. Burnet criticised VARILLAS unsparingly;[A] but when he
+wrote history himself, Harmer's "Specimen of Errors in Burnet's History,"
+returned Burnet the pangs which he had inflicted on another. NEWTON'S
+favourite work was his "Chronology," which he had written over fifteen
+times, yet he desisted from its publication during his life-time, from the
+ill-usage of which he complained. Even the "Optics" of Newton had no
+character at home till noticed in France. The calm temper of our great
+philosopher was of so fearful a nature in regard to criticism, that
+Whiston declares that he would not publish his attack on the "Chronology,"
+lest it might have killed our philosopher; and thus Bishop STILLINGFLEET'S
+end was hastened by LOCKE's confutation of his metaphysics. The feelings
+of Sir JOHN MARSHAM could hardly be less irritable when he found his great
+work tainted by an accusation that it was not friendly to revelation.[B]
+When the learned POCOCK published a specimen of his translation of
+Abulpharagias, an Arabian historian, in 1649, it excited great interest;
+but in 1663, when he gave the world the complete version, it met with no
+encouragement: in the course of those thirteen years, the genius of the
+times had changed, and Oriental studies were no longer in request.
+
+[Footnote A: For an account of this work, and Burnet's _expose_ of it, see
+"Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 132.--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: This great work the _Canon Chronicus_, was published in 1672,
+and was the first attempt to make the Egyptian chronology clear and
+intelligible, and to reconcile the whole to the Scripture chronology; a
+labour he had commenced in _Diatriba Chronologica_, published in 1649.
+--ED.]
+
+The great VERULAM profoundly felt the retardment of his fame; for he has
+pathetically expressed this sentiment in his testament, where he bequeaths
+his name to posterity, AFTER SOME GENERATIONS SHALL BE past. BRUCE sunk
+into his grave defrauded of that just fame which his pride and vivacity
+perhaps too keenly prized, at least for his happiness, and which he
+authoritatively exacted from an unwilling public. Mortified and indignant
+at the reception of his great labour by the cold-hearted scepticism of
+little minds, and the maliciousness of idling wits, he, whose fortitude
+had toiled through a life of difficulty and danger, could not endure the
+laugh and scorn of public opinion; for BRUCE there was a simoon more
+dreadful than the Arabian, and from which genius cannot hide its head. Yet
+BRUCE only met with the fate which MARCO POLO had before encountered;
+whose faithful narrative had been contemned by his contemporaries, and who
+was long thrown aside among legendary writers.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: His stories of the wealth and population of China, which he
+described as consisting of _millions_ obtained for him the nickname of
+_Marco Milione_ among the Venetians and other small Italian states, who
+were unable to comprehend the greatness of his truthful narratives of
+Eastern travel. Upon his death-bed he was adjured by his friends to
+retract his statements, which he indignantly refused. It was long after
+ere his truthfulness was established by other travellers; the Venetian
+populace gave his house the name _La Corte di Milioni_: and a vulgar
+caricature of the great traveller was always introduced in their
+carnivals, who was termed _Marco Milione_; and delighted them with the
+most absurd stories, in, which everything was computed by millions.--ED.]
+
+HARVEY, though his life was prolonged to his eightieth year, hardly lived
+to see his great discovery of the circulation of the blood established: no
+physician adopted it; and when at length it was received, one party
+attempted to rob Harvey of the honour of the discovery, while another
+asserted that it was so obvious, that they could only express their
+astonishment that it had ever escaped observation. Incredulity and envy
+are the evil spirits which have often dogged great inventors to their
+tomb, and there only have vanished.--But I seem writing the "calamities of
+authors," and have only begun the catalogue.
+
+The reputation of a writer of taste is subject to more difficulties than
+any other. Similar was the fate of the finest ode-writers in our poetry.
+On their publication, the odes of COLLINS could find no readers; and those
+of GRAY, though ushered into the reading world by the fashionable press of
+Walpole, were condemned as failures. When RACINE produced his "Athalie,"
+it was not at all relished: Boileau indeed declared that he understood
+these matters better than the public, and prophesied that the public would
+return to it: they did so; but it was sixty years afterwards; and Racine
+died without suspecting that "Athalie" was his masterpiece. I have heard
+one of our great poets regret that he had devoted so much of his life to
+the cultivation of his art, which arose from a project made in the golden
+vision of his youth: "at a time," said he, "when I thought that the
+fountain could never be dried up."--"Your baggage will reach posterity,"
+was observed.--"There is much to spare," was the answer.
+
+Every day we may observe, of a work of genius, that those parts which have
+all the raciness of the soil, and as such are most liked by its admirers,
+are those which are the most criticised. Modest critics shelter themselves
+under that general amnesty too freely granted, that tastes are allowed to
+differ; but we should approximate much nearer to the truth, if we were to
+say, that but few of mankind are prepared to relish the beautiful with
+that enlarged taste which comprehends all the forms of feeling which
+genius may assume; forms which may be necessarily associated with defects.
+A man of genius composes in a state of intellectual emotion, and the magic
+of his style consists in the movements of his soul; but the art of
+conveying those movements is far separated from the feeling which inspires
+them. The idea in the mind is not always found under the pen, any more
+than the artist's conception can always breathe in his pencil. Like
+FIAMINGO'S image, which he kept polishing till his friend exclaimed, "What
+perfection would you have?"--"Alas!" exclaimed the sculptor, "the original
+I am labouring to come up to is in my head, but not yet in my hand."
+
+The writer toils, and repeatedly toils, to throw into our minds that
+sympathy with which we hang over the illusion of his pages, and become
+himself. ARIOSTO wrote sixteen different ways the celebrated stanza
+descriptive of a tempest, as appears by his MSS. at Ferrara; and the
+version he preferred was the last of the sixteen. We know that PETRARCH
+made forty-four alterations of a single verse: "whether for the thought,
+the expression, or the harmony, it is evident that as many operations in
+the heart, the head, or the ear of the poet occurred," observes a man of
+genius, Ugo Foscolo. Quintilian and Horace dread the over-fondness of an
+author for his compositions: alteration is not always improvement. A
+picture over-finished fails in its effect. If the hand of the artist
+cannot leave it, how much beauty may it undo! yet still he is lingering,
+still strengthening the weak, still subduing the daring, still searching
+for that single idea which awakens so many in the minds of others, while
+often, as it once happened, the dash of despair hangs the foam on the
+horse's nostrils. I have known a great sculptor, who for twenty years
+delighted himself with forming in his mind the nymph his hand was always
+creating. How rapturously he beheld her! what inspiration! what illusion!
+Alas! the last five years spoiled the beautiful which he had once reached,
+and could not stop and finish!
+
+The art of composition, indeed, is of such slow attainment, that a man of
+genius, late in life, may discover how its secret conceals itself in the
+habit; how discipline consists in exercise, how perfection comes from
+experience, and how unity is the last effort of judgment. When Fox
+meditated on a history which should last with the language, he met his
+evil genius in this new province. The rapidity and the fire of his
+elocution were extinguished by a pen unconsecrated by long and previous
+study; he saw that he could not class with the great historians of every
+great people; he complained, while he mourned over the fragment of genius
+which, after such zealous preparation, he dared not complete. CURRAN, an
+orator of vehement eloquence, often strikingly original, when late in life
+he was desirous of cultivating literary composition, unaccustomed to its
+more gradual march, found a pen cold, and destitute of every grace.
+ROUSSEAU has glowingly described the ceaseless inquietude by which he
+obtained the seductive eloquence of his style; and has said, that with
+whatever talent a man may be born, the art of writing is not easily
+obtained. The existing manuscripts of ROUSSEAU display as many erasures as
+those of Ariosto or Petrarch; they show his eagerness to dash down his
+first thoughts, and the art by which he raised them to the impassioned
+style of his imagination. The memoir of GIBBON was composed seven or nine
+times, and, after all, was left unfinished; and BUFFON tells us that he
+wrote his "Epoques de la Nature" eighteen times before it satisfied his
+taste. BURNS'S anxiety in finishing his poems was great; "all my poetry,"
+said he, "is the effect of easy composition, but of laborious correction."
+
+POPE, when employed on the _Iliad_, found it not only occupy his thoughts
+by day, but haunting his dreams by night, and once wished himself hanged,
+to get rid of Homer: and that he experienced often such literary agonies,
+witness his description of the depressions and elevations of genius:
+
+ Who pants for glory, finds but short repose;
+ A breath revives him, or a breath o'erthrows!
+
+When ROMNEY undertook to commence the first subject for the Shakspeare
+Gallery, in the rapture of enthusiasm, amidst the sublime and pathetic
+labouring in his whole mind, arose the terror of failure. The subject
+chosen was "The Tempest;" and, as Hayley truly observes, it created many a
+tempest in the fluctuating spirits of Romney. The vehement desire of that
+perfection which genius conceives, and cannot always execute, held a
+perpetual contest with that dejection of spirits which degrades the
+unhappy sufferer, and casts him, grovelling among the mean of his class.
+In a national work, a man of genius pledges his honour to the world for
+its performance; but to redeem that pledge, there is a darkness in the
+uncertain issue, and he is risking his honour for ever. By that work he
+will always be judged, for public failures are never forgotten, and it is
+not then a party, but the public itself, who become his adversaries. With
+ROMNEY it was "a fever of the mad;" and his friends could scarcely inspire
+him with sufficient courage to proceed with his arduous picture, which
+exercised his imagination and his pencil for several years. I have heard
+that he built a painting-room purposely for this picture; and never did an
+anchorite pour fourth a more fervent orison to Heaven, than Romney when
+this labour was complete. He had a fine genius, with all its solitary
+feelings, but he was uneducated, and incompetent even to write a letter;
+yet on this occasion, relieved from his intense anxiety under so long a
+work, he wrote one of the most eloquent. It is a document in the history
+of genius, and reveals all those feelings which are here too faintly
+described.[A] I once heard an amiable author, whose literary career has
+perhaps not answered the fond hopes of his youth, half in anger and in
+love, declare that he would retire to some solitude, where, if any
+one would follow him, he would found a new order--the order of THE
+DISAPPOINTED.
+
+[Footnote A: "My DEAR FRIEND,--Your kindness in rejoicing so heartily at
+the birth of my picture has given me great satisfaction.
+
+"There has been an anxiety labouring in my mind the greater part of the
+last twelvemonth. At times it had nearly overwhelmed me. I thought I
+should absolutely have sunk into despair. O! what a kind friend is in
+those times! I thank God, whatever my picture may be, I can say thus much,
+I am a greater philosopher and a better Christian."]
+
+Thus the days of a man of genius are passed in labours as unremitting and
+exhausting as those of the artisan. The world is not always aware, that to
+some, meditation, composition, and even conversation, may inflict pains
+undetected by the eye and the tenderness of friendship. Whenever ROUSSEAU
+passed a morning in society, it was observed, that in the evening he was
+dissatisfied and distressed; and JOHN HUNTER, in a mixed company, found
+that conversation fatigued, instead of amusing him. HAWKESWORTH, in the
+second paper of the "Adventurer," has drawn, from his own feelings, an
+eloquent comparative estimate of intellectual with corporeal labour; it
+may console the humble mechanic; and Plato, in his work on "Laws," seems
+to have been aware of this analogy, for he consecrates all working men or
+artisans to Vulcan and Minerva, because both those deities alike are hard
+labourers. Yet with genius all does not terminate, even with the most
+skilful labour. What the toiling Vulcan and the thoughtful Minerva may
+want, will too often be absent--the presence of the Graces. In the
+allegorical picture of the School of Design, by Carlo Maratti, where the
+students are led through their various studies, in the opening clouds
+above the academy are seen the Graces, hovering over their pupils, with an
+inscription they must often recollect--_Senza di noi ogni fatica e vana_.
+
+The anxious uncertainty of an author for his compositions resembles the
+anxiety of a lover when he has written to a mistress who has not yet
+decided on his claims; he repents his labour, for he thinks he has written
+too much, while he is mortified at recollecting that he had omitted some
+things which he imagines would have secured the object of his wishes.
+Madame DE STAEL, who has often entered into feelings familiar to a
+literary and political family, in a parallel between ambition and genius,
+has distinguished them in this; that while "ambition _perseveres_ in the
+desire of acquiring power, genius _flags_ of itself. Genius in the midst
+of society is a pain, an internal fever which would require to be treated
+as a real disease, if the records of glory did not soften the sufferings
+it produces."--"Athenians! what troubles have you not cost me," exclaimed
+DEMOSTHENES, "that I may be talked of by you!"
+
+These moments of anxiety often darken the brightest hours of genius.
+RACINE had extreme sensibility; the pain inflicted by a severe criticism
+outweighed all the applause he received. He seems to have felt, what he
+was often reproached with, that his Greeks, his Jews, and his Turks, were
+all inmates of Versailles. He had two critics, who, like our Dennis with
+Pope and Addison, regularly dogged his pieces as they appeared[A].
+Corneille's objections he would attribute to jealousy--at his pieces when
+burlesqued at the Italian theatre[B] he would smile outwardly, though sick
+at heart; but his son informs us, that a stroke of raillery from his witty
+friend Chapelle, whose pleasantry hardly sheathed its bitterness, sunk
+more deeply into his heart than the burlesques at the Italian theatre, the
+protest of Corneille, and the iteration of the two Dennises. More than
+once MOLIERE and Racine, in vexation of spirit, resolved to abandon their
+dramatic career; it was BOILEAU who ceaselessly animated their languor:
+"Posterity," he cried, "will avenge the injustice of our age!" And
+CONGREVE'S comedies met with such moderate success, that it appears the
+author was extremely mortified, and on the ill reception of _The Way of
+the World_, determined to write no more for the stage. When he told
+Voltaire, on the French wit's visit, that Voltaire must consider him as a
+private gentleman, and not as an author,--which apparent affectation
+called down on Congreve the sarcastic severity of the French author,[C]
+--more of mortification and humility might have been in Congreve's
+language than of affectation or pride.
+
+[Footnote A: See the article "On the Influence of a bad temper in
+Criticism" in "Calamities of Authors," for a notice of Dennis and his
+career.--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: See the article on "The Sensibility of Racine" in "Literary
+Miscellanies," (in the present volume) and that on "Parody," in
+"Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p. 459.--ED.]
+
+[Footnote C: Voltaire quietly said he should not have troubled himself to
+visit him if he had been merely a private gentleman.--ED.]
+
+The life of TASSO abounds with pictures of a complete exhaustion of this
+kind. His contradictory critics had perplexed him with the most intricate
+literary discussions, and either occasioned or increased a mental
+alienation. In one of his letters, we find that he repents the composition
+of his great poem, for although his own taste approved of that marvellous,
+which still forms a noble part of its creation, yet he confesses that his
+cold reasoning critics have decided that the history of his hero, Godfrey,
+required another species of conduct. "Hence," cries the unhappy bard,
+"doubts torment me; but for the past, and what is done, I know of no
+remedy;" and he longs to precipitate the publication, that "he may be
+delivered from misery and agony." He solemnly swears--"Did not the
+circumstances of my situation compel me, I would not print it, even
+perhaps during my life, I so much doubt of its success." Such was the
+painful state of fear and doubt experienced by the author of the
+"Jerusalem Delivered," when he gave it to the world; a state of suspense,
+among the children of imagination, in which none are more liable to
+participate than the true sensitive artist. We may now inspect the severe
+correction of Tasso's muse, in the fac-simile of a page of his manuscripts
+in Mr. Dibdin's late "Tour." She seems to have inflicted tortures on his
+pen, surpassing even those which may be seen in the fac-simile page which,
+thirty years ago, I gave of Pope's Homer.[A] At Florence may still be
+viewed the many works begun and abandoned by the genius of MICHAEL ANGELO;
+they are preserved inviolate--"so sacred is the terror of Michael Angelo's
+genius!" exclaims Forsyth. These works are not always to be considered as
+failures of the chisel; they appear rather to have been rejected for
+coming short of the artist's first conceptions: yet, in a strain
+of sublime poetry, he has preserved his sentiments on the force of
+intellectual labour; he thought that there was nothing which the
+imagination conceived, that could not be made visible in marble, if the
+hand were made to obey the mind:--
+
+ Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto,
+ Ch' un marmo solo in se non circoseriva
+ Col suo soverchio, e solo a quello arriva
+ La man che obbedisce all' intelletto.
+
+ IMITATED.
+
+ The sculptor never yet conceived a thought
+ That yielding marble has refused to aid;
+ But never with a mastery he wrought--
+ Save when the hand the intellect obeyed.
+
+[Footnote A: It now forms the frontispiece to vol. ii. of the last edition
+of the "Curiosities of Literature."--ED.]
+
+An interesting domestic story has been preserved of GESNER, who so
+zealously devoted his graver and his pencil to the arts. His sensibility
+was ever struggling after that ideal excellence which he could not attain.
+Often he sunk into fits of melancholy, and, gentle as he was, the
+tenderness of his wife and friends could not soothe his distempered
+feelings; it was necessary to abandon him to his own thoughts, till, after
+a long abstinence from his neglected works, in a lucid moment, some
+accident occasioned him to return to them. In one of these hypochondria of
+genius, after a long interval of despair, one morning at breakfast with
+his wife, his eye fixed on one of his pictures: it was a group of fauns
+with young shepherds dancing at the entrance of a cavern shaded with
+vines; his eye appeared at length to glisten; and a sudden return
+to good humour broke out in this lively apostrophe--"Ah! see those
+playful children, they always dance!" This was the moment of gaiety and
+inspiration, and he flew to his forsaken easel.
+
+La Harpe, an author by profession, observes, that as it has been shown
+that there are some maladies peculiar to artisans[A]--there are also some
+sorrows peculiar to them, and which the world can neither pity nor soften,
+because they do not enter into their experience. The querulous language of
+so many men of genius has been sometimes attributed to causes very
+different from the real ones--the most fortunate live to see their talents
+contested and their best works decried. Assuredly many an author has sunk
+into his grave without the consciousness of having obtained that fame for
+which he had sacrificed an arduous life. The too feeling SMOLLETT has left
+this testimony to posterity:--"Had some of those, who are pleased to call
+themselves my friends, been at any pains to deserve the character, and
+told me ingenuously what I had to expect in the capacity of an _author_, I
+should, in all probability, have spared myself the _incredible labour_ and
+_chagrin_ I have since undergone." And Smollett was a popular writer!
+POPE'S solemn declaration in the preface to his collected works comes by
+no means short of Smollett's avowal. HUME'S philosophical indifference
+could often suppress that irritability which Pope and Smollett fully
+indulged.
+
+[Footnote A: See Ramazini, "De Morbis Artificium Diatriba," which Dr.
+James translated in 1750. It is a sad reflection, resulting from this
+curious treatise, that the arts entail no small mischief upon their
+respective workmen; so that the means by which they live are too often the
+occasion of their being hurried out of the world.]
+
+But were the feelings of HUME more obtuse, or did his temper, gentle as it
+was by constitution, bear, with a saintly patience, the mortifications his
+literary life so long endured? After recomposing two of his works, which
+incurred the same neglect in their altered form, he raised the most
+sanguine hopes of his History, but he tells us, "miserable was my
+disappointment!" Although he never deigned to reply to his opponents, yet
+they haunted him; and an eye-witness has thus described the irritated
+author discovering in conversation his suppressed resentment--"His
+forcible mode of expression, the brilliant quick movements of his eyes,
+and the gestures of his body," these betrayed the pangs of contempt, or of
+aversion! HOGARTH, in a fit of the spleen, advertised that he had
+determined not to give the world any more original works, and intended to
+pass the rest of his days in painting portraits. The same advertisement is
+marked by farther irritability. He contemptuously offers the purchasers of
+his "Analysis of Beauty," to present them _gratis_ with "an eighteenpenny
+pamphlet," published by Ramsay the painter, written in opposition to
+Hogarth's principles. So untameable was the irritability of this great
+inventor in art, that he attempts to conceal his irritation by offering to
+dispose gratuitously of the criticism which had disturbed his nights.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Hogarth was not without reason for exasperation. He was
+severely attacked for his theories about the curved line of beauty, which
+was branded as a foolish attempt to prove crookedness elegant, and himself
+vulgarly caricatured. It was even asserted that the theory was stolen from
+Lomazzo. ED.]
+
+Parties confederate against a man of genius,--as happened to Corneille, to
+D'Avenant,[A] and Milton; and a Pradon and a Settle carry away the meed of
+a Racine and a Dryden. It was to support the drooping spirit of his friend
+Racine on the opposition raised against Phaedra, that Boileau addressed to
+him an epistle "On the Utility to be drawn from the Jealousy of the
+Envious." The calm dignity of the historian DE THOU, amidst the passions
+of his times, confidently expected that justice from posterity which his
+own age refused to his early and his late labour. That great man was,
+however, compelled by his injured feelings, to compose a poem under the
+name of another, to serve as his apology against the intolerant court of
+Rome, and the factious politicians of France; it was a noble subterfuge to
+which a great genius was forced. The acquaintances of the poet COLLINS
+probably complained of his wayward humours and irritability; but how could
+they sympathise with the secret mortification of the poet, who imagined
+that he had composed his Pastorals on wrong principles, or when, in the
+agony of his soul, he consigned to the flames with his own hands his
+unsold, but immortal odes? Can we forget the dignified complaint of the
+Rambler, with which he awfully closes his work, appealing to posterity?
+
+[Footnote A: See "Quarrels of Authors," p. 403, on the confederacy of
+several wits against D'Avenant, a great genius; where I discovered that a
+volume of poems, said "to be written by the author's friends," which had
+hitherto been referred to as a volume of panegyrics, contains nothing but
+irony and satire, which had escaped the discovery of so many transcribers
+of title-pages, frequently miscalled literary historians.]
+
+Genius contracts those peculiarities of which it is so loudly accused
+in its solitary occupations--that loftiness of spirit, those quick
+jealousies, those excessive affections and aversions which view everything
+as it passes in its own ideal world, and rarely as it exists in the
+mediocrity of reality. If this irritability of genius be a malady which
+has raged even among philosophers, we must not be surprised at the
+temperament of poets. These last have abandoned their country; they have
+changed their name; they have punished themselves with exile in the rage
+of their disorder. No! not poets only. DESCARTES sought in vain, even in
+his secreted life, for a refuge for his genius; he thought himself
+persecuted in France, he thought himself calumniated among strangers, and
+he went and died in Sweden; and little did that man of genius think that
+his countrymen would beg to have his ashes restored to them. Even the
+reasoning HUME once proposed to change his name and his country; and I
+believe did. The great poetical genius of our own times has openly
+alienated himself from the land of his brothers. He becomes immortal in
+the language of a people whom he would contemn.[A] Does he accept with
+ingratitude the fame he loves more than life?
+
+[Footnote A: I shall preserve a manuscript note of Lord BYRON on this
+passage; not without a hope that we shall never receive from him the
+genius of Italian poetry, otherwise than in the language of his "_father
+land_"; an expressive term, which I adopted from the Dutch language some
+years past, and which I have seen since sanctioned by the pens of Lord
+Byron and of Mr. Southey.
+
+His lordship has here observed, "It is not my fault that I am obliged to
+write in English. If I understood my present language equally well, I
+would write in it; but this will require ten years at least to form a
+style: no tongue so easy to acquire a little of, or so difficult to master
+thoroughly, as Italian." On the same page I find the following note: "What
+was rumoured of me in that language? If true, I was unfit for England: if
+false, England was unfit for me:--'There is a world elsewhere.' I have
+never regretted for a moment that country, but often that I ever returned
+to it at all."]
+
+Such, then, is that state of irritability in which men of genius
+participate, whether they be inventors, men of learning, fine writers, or
+artists. It is a state not friendly to equality of temper. In the various
+humours incidental to it, when they are often deeply affected, the cause
+escapes all perception of sympathy. The intellectual malady eludes even
+the tenderness of friendship. At those moments, the lightest injury to the
+feelings, which at another time would make no impression, may produce a
+perturbed state of feeling in the warm temper, or the corroding chagrin of
+a self-wounded spirit. These are moments which claim the encouragements of
+a friendship animated by a high esteem for the intellectual excellence of
+the man of genius; not the general intercourse of society; not the
+insensibility of the dull, nor the levity of the volatile.
+
+Men of genius are often reverenced only where they are known by their
+writings--intellectual beings in the romance of life; in its history, they
+are men! ERASMUS compared them to the great figures in tapestry-work,
+which lose their effect when not seen at a distance. Their foibles and
+their infirmities are obvious to their associates, often only capable of
+discerning these qualities. The defects of great men are the consolation
+of the dunces.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The spirit of literature and the spirit of society.--The Inventors.
+--Society offers seduction and not reward to men of genius.--The notions
+of persons of fashion of men of genius.--The habitudes of the man of
+genius distinct from those of the man of society.--Study, meditation, and
+enthusiasm, the progress of genius.--The disagreement between the men of
+the world and the literary character.
+
+
+The Inventors, who inherited little or nothing from their predecessors,
+appear to have pursued their insulated studies in the full independence of
+their mind and development of their inventive faculty; they stood apart,
+in seclusion, the solitary lights of their age. Such were the founders of
+our literature--Bacon and Hobbes, Newton and Milton. Even so late as the
+days of Dryden, Addison, and Pope, the man of genius drew his circle round
+his intimates; his day was uniform, his habits unbroken; and he was never
+too far removed, nor too long estranged from meditation and reverie: his
+works were the sources of his pleasure ere they became the labours of his
+pride.
+
+But when a more uniform light of knowledge illuminates from all sides, the
+genius of society, made up of so many sorts of genius, becomes greater
+than the genius of the individual who has entirely yielded himself up
+to his solitary art. Hence the character of a man of genius becomes
+subordinate. A conversation age succeeds a studious one; and the family of
+genius, the poet, the painter, and the student, are no longer recluses.
+They mix with their rivals, who are jealous of equality, or with others
+who, incapable of valuing them for themselves alone, rate them but as
+parts of an integral.
+
+The man of genius is now trammelled with the artificial and mechanical
+forms of life; and in too close an intercourse with society, the
+loneliness and raciness of thinking is modified away in its seductive
+conventions. An excessive indulgence in the pleasures of social life
+constitutes the great interests of a luxuriant and opulent age; but of
+late, while the arts of assembling in large societies have been practised,
+varied by all forms, and pushed on to all excesses, it may become a
+question whether by them our happiness is as much improved, or our
+individual character as well formed as in a society not so heterogeneous
+and unsocial as that crowd termed, with the sort of modesty peculiar to
+our times, "a small party:" the simplicity of parade, the humility of
+pride engendered by the egotism which multiplies itself in proportion to
+the numbers it assembles.
+
+It may, too, be a question whether the literary man and the artist are not
+immolating their genius to society when, in the shadowiness of assumed
+talents--that counterfeiting of all shapes--they lose their real form,
+with the mockery of Proteus. But nets of roses catch their feet, and a
+path, where all the senses are flattered, is now opened to win an
+Epictetus from his hut. The art of multiplying the enjoyments of society
+is discovered in the morning lounge, the evening dinner, and the midnight
+coterie. In frivolous fatigues, and vigils without meditation, perish the
+unvalued hours which, true genius knows, are always too brief for art, and
+too rare to catch its inspirations. Hence so many of our contemporaries,
+whose card-racks are crowded, have produced only flashy fragments.
+Efforts, but not works--they seem to be effects without causes; and as a
+great author, who is not one of them, once observed to me, "They waste a
+barrel of gunpowder in squibs."
+
+And yet it is seduction, and not reward, which mere fashionable society
+offers the man of true genius. He will be sought for with enthusiasm, but
+he cannot escape from his certain fate--that of becoming tiresome to his
+pretended admirers.
+
+At first the idol--shortly he is changed into a victim. He forms,
+indeed, a figure in their little pageant, and is invited as a sort of
+_improvisatore_; but the esteem they concede to him is only a part of the
+system of politeness; and should he be dull in discovering the favourite
+quality of their self-love, or in participating in their volatile tastes,
+he will find frequent opportunities of observing, with the sage at the
+court of Cyprus, that "what he knows is not proper for this place, and
+what is proper for this place he knows not." This society takes little
+personal interest in the literary character. HORACE WALPOLE lets us into
+this secret when writing to another man of fashion, on such a man of
+genius as GRAY--"I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about
+Gray; he is the worst company in the world. From a melancholy turn, from
+living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses
+easily; all his words are measured and chosen, and formed into sentences:
+his writings are admirable--he himself is not agreeable." This volatile
+being in himself personified the quintessence of that society which is
+called "the world," and could not endure that equality of intellect which
+genius exacts. He rejected Chatterton, and quarrelled with every literary
+man and every artist whom he first invited to familiarity--and then hated.
+Witness the fates of Bentley, of Muntz, of Gray, of Cole, and others. Such
+a mind was incapable of appreciating the literary glory on which the
+mighty mind of BURKE was meditating. WALPOLE knew BURKE at a critical
+moment of his life, and he has recorded his own feelings:--"There was a
+young Mr. BURKE who wrote a book, in the style of Lord Bolingbroke, that
+was much admired. He is a sensible man, but has not _worn off his
+authorism yet_, and thinks there is nothing so charming as writers, and to
+be one: _he will know better one of these days_" GRAY and BURKE! What
+mighty men must be submitted to the petrifying sneer--that indifference of
+selfism for great sympathies--of this volatile and heartless man of
+literature and rank!
+
+ That thing of silk,
+ Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk!
+
+The confidential confession of RACINE to his son is remarkable:--"Do not
+think that I am sought after by the great for my dramas; Corneille
+composes nobler verses than mine, but no one notices him, and he only
+pleases by the mouth of the actors. I never allude to my works when with
+men of the world, but I amuse them about matters they like to hear. My
+talent with them consists, not in making them feel that I have any, but in
+showing them that they have." Racine treated the great like the children
+of society; CORNEILLE would not compromise for the tribute he exacted, but
+he consoled himself when, at his entrance into the theatre, the audience
+usually rose to salute him. The great comic genius of France, who indeed
+was a very thoughtful and serious man, addressed a poem to the painter
+MIONARD, expressing his conviction that "the court," by which a Frenchman
+of the court of Louis XIV. meant the society we call "fashionable," is
+fatal to the perfection of art--
+
+ Qui se donne a la cour se derobe a son art;
+ Un esprit partage rarement se consomme,
+ Et les emplois de feu demandent tout l'homme.
+
+Has not the fate in society of our reigning literary favourites been
+uniform? Their mayoralty hardly exceeds the year: they are pushed aside to
+put in their place another, who, in his turn, must descend. Such is the
+history of the literary character encountering the perpetual difficulty of
+appearing what he really is not, while he sacrifices to a few, in a
+certain corner of the metropolis, who have long fantastically styled
+themselves "the world," that more dignified celebrity which makes an
+author's name more familiar than his person. To one who appeared
+astonished at the extensive celebrity of BUFFON, the modern Pliny replied,
+"I have passed fifty years at my desk." HAYDN would not yield up to
+society more than those hours which were not devoted to study. These were
+indeed but few: and such were the uniformity and retiredness of his life,
+that "He was for a long time the only musical man in Europe who was
+ignorant of the celebrity of Joseph Haydn." And has not one, the most
+sublime of the race, sung,
+
+ --che seggendo in piuma,
+ In Fama non si vien, ne sotto coltre;
+ Sanza la qual chi sua vita consuma
+ Cotal vestigio in terra di se lascia
+ Qual fummo in aere, ed in acqua la schiuma
+
+ For not on downy plumes, nor under shade
+ Of canopy reposing, Fame is won:
+ Without which, whosoe'er consumes his days,
+ Leaveth such vestige of himself on earth
+ As smoke in air, or foam upon the wave.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Cary's Dante, Canto xxiv.]
+
+But men of genius, in their intercourse with persons of fashion, have a
+secret inducement to court that circle. They feel a perpetual want of
+having the reality of their talents confirmed to themselves, and they
+often step into society to observe in what degree they are objects of
+attention; for, though ever accused of vanity, the greater part of men of
+genius feel that their existence, as such, must depend on the opinion of
+others. This standard is in truth always problematical and variable; yet
+they cannot hope to find a more certain one among their rivals, who at all
+times are adroitly depreciating their brothers, and "dusking" their
+lustre. They discover among those cultivators of literature and the arts
+who have recourse to them for their pleasure, impassioned admirers, rather
+than unmerciful judges--judges who have only time to acquire that degree
+of illumination which is just sufficient to set at ease the fears of these
+claimants of genius.
+
+When literary men assemble together, what mimetic friendships, in their
+mutual corruption! Creatures of intrigue, they borrow other men's eyes,
+and act by feelings often even contrary to their own: they wear a mask on
+their face, and only sing a tune they have caught. Some hierophant in
+their mysteries proclaims their elect whom they have to initiate, and
+their profane who are to stand apart under their ban. They bend to the
+spirit of the age, but they do not elevate the public to them; they care
+not for truth, but only study to produce effect, and they do nothing for
+fame but what obtains an instant purpose. Yet their fame is not therefore
+the more real, for everything connected with fashion becomes obsolete. Her
+ear has a great susceptibility of weariness, and her eye rolls for
+incessant novelty. Never was she earnest for anything. Men's minds with
+her become tarnished and old-fashioned as furniture. But the steams of
+rich dinners, the eye which sparkles with the wines of France, the
+luxurious night which flames with more heat and brilliancy than God has
+made the day, this is the world the man of coterie-celebrity has chosen;
+and the Epicurean, as long as his senses do not cease to act, laughs at
+the few who retire to the solitary midnight lamp. Posthumous fame is--a
+nothing! Such men live like unbelievers in a future state, and their
+narrow calculating spirit coldly dies in their artificial world: but true
+genius looks at a nobler source of its existence; it catches inspiration
+in its insulated studies; and to the great genius, who feels how his
+present is necessarily connected with his future celebrity, posthumous
+fame is a reality, for the sense acts upon him!
+
+The habitudes of genius, before genius loses its freshness in this
+society, are the mould in which the character is cast; and these, in spite
+of all the disguise of the man, will make him a distinct being from the
+man of society. Those who have assumed the literary character often for
+purposes very distinct from literary ones, imagine that their circle is
+the public; but in this factitious public all their interests, their
+opinions, and even their passions, are temporary, and the admirers with
+the admired pass away with their season. "It is not sufficient that we
+speak the same language," says a witty philosopher, "but we must learn
+their dialect; we must think as they think, and we must echo their
+opinions, as we act by imitation." Let the man of genius then dread to
+level himself to the mediocrity of feeling and talent required in such
+circles of society, lest he become one of themselves; he will soon find
+that to think like them will in time become to act like them. But he who
+in solitude adopts no transient feelings, and reflects no artificial
+lights, who is only himself, possesses an immense advantage: he has not
+attached importance to what is merely local and fugitive, but listens to
+interior truths, and fixes on the immutable nature of things. He is the
+man of every age. Malebranche has observed, that "It is not indeed thought
+to be charitable to disturb common opinions, because it is not truth which
+unites society as it exists so much as opinion and custom:" a principle
+which the world would not, I think, disagree with; but which tends to
+render folly wisdom itself, and to make error immortal.
+
+Ridicule is the light scourge of society, and the terror of genius.
+Ridicule surrounds him with her chimeras, which, like the shadowy monsters
+opposing aeneas, are impalpable to his strokes: but remember when the sibyl
+bade the hero proceed without noticing them, he found these airy nothings
+as harmless as they were unreal. The habits of the literary character
+will, however, be tried by the men and women of the world by their own
+standard: they have no other; the salt of ridicule gives a poignancy to
+their deficient comprehension, and their perfect ignorance, of the persons
+or things which are the subjects of their ingenious animadversions. The
+habits of the literary character seem inevitably repulsive to persons of
+the world. VOLTAIRE, and his companion, the scientific Madame DE CHATELET,
+she who introduced Newton to the French nation, lived entirely devoted to
+literary pursuits, and their habits were strictly literary. It happened
+once that this learned pair dropped unexpectedly into a fashionable circle
+in the _chateau_ of a French nobleman. A Madame de Stael, the _persifleur_
+in office of Madame Du Deffand, has copiously narrated the whole affair.
+They arrived at midnight like two famished spectres, and there was some
+trouble to put them to supper and bed. They are called apparitions,
+because they were never visible by day, only at ten at night; for the one
+is busied in describing great deeds, and the other in commenting on
+Newton. Like other apparitions, they are uneasy companions: they will
+neither play nor walk; they will not dissipate their mornings with the
+charming circle about them, nor allow the charming circle to break into
+their studies. Voltaire and Madame de Chatelet would have suffered the
+same pain in being forced to an abstinence of their regular studies, as
+this circle of "agreables" would have at the loss of their meals and their
+airings. However, the _persifleur_ declares they were ciphers "en
+societe," adding no value to the number, and to which their learned
+writings bear no reference.
+
+But if this literary couple would not play, what was worse, Voltaire
+poured out a vehement declamation against a fashionable species of
+gambling, which appears to have made them all stare. But Madame de
+Chatelet is the more frequent victim of our _persifleur_. The learned lady
+would change her apartment--for it was too noisy, and it had smoke without
+fire--which last was her emblem. "She is reviewing her _Principia_; an
+exercise she repeats every year, without which precaution they might
+escape from her, and get so far away that she might never find them again.
+I believe that her head in respect to them is a house of imprisonment
+rather than the place of their birth; so that she is right to watch them
+closely; and she prefers the fresh air of this occupation to our
+amusements, and persists in her invisibility till night-time. She has six
+or seven tables in her apartments, for she wants them of all sizes;
+immense ones to spread out her papers, solid ones to hold her instruments,
+lighter ones, &c. Yet with all this she could not escape from the accident
+which happened to Philip II., after passing the night in writing, when a
+bottle of ink fell over the despatches; but the lady did not imitate the
+moderation of the prince; indeed, she had not written on State affairs,
+and what was spoilt in her room was algebra, much more difficult to
+copy out." Here is a pair of portraits of a great poet and a great
+mathematician, whose habits were discordant with the fashionable circle in
+which they resided--the representation is just, for it is by one of the
+coterie itself.
+
+Study, meditation, and enthusiasm,--this is the progress of genius, and
+these cannot be the habits of him who lingers till he can only live among
+polished crowds; who, if he bear about him the consciousness of genius,
+will still be acting under their influences. And perhaps there never was
+one of this class of men who had not either first entirely formed himself
+in solitude, or who amidst society will not be often breaking out to seek
+for himself. WILKES, no longer touched by the fervours of literary and
+patriotic glory, suffered life to melt away as a domestic voluptuary; and
+then it was that he observed with some surprise of the great Earl of
+CHATHAM, that he sacrificed every pleasure of social life, even in youth,
+to his great pursuit of eloquence. That ardent character studied Barrow's
+Sermons so often as to repeat them from memory, and could even read twice
+from beginning to end Bailey's Dictionary; these are little facts which
+belong only to great minds! The earl himself acknowledged an artifice he
+practised in his intercourse with society, for he said, "when he was
+young, he always came late into company, and left it early." VITTORIO
+ALFIERI, and a brother-spirit, our own noble poet, were rarely seen amidst
+the brilliant circle in which they were born. The workings of their
+imagination were perpetually emancipating them, and one deep loneliness of
+feeling proudly insulated them among the unimpassioned triflers of their
+rank. They preserved unbroken the unity of their character, in constantly
+escaping from the processional _spectacle_ of society.[A] It is no trivial
+observation of another noble writer, Lord SHAFTESBURY, that "it may happen
+that a person may be so much the worse author, for being the finer
+gentleman."
+
+[Footnote A: In a note which Lord BYRON has written in a copy of this work
+his lordship says, "I fear this was not the case; I have been but too much
+in that circle, especially in 1812-13-14."
+
+To the expression of "one deep loneliness of feeling," his lordship has
+marked in the margin "True." I am gratified to confirm the theory of my
+ideas of the man of genius, by the practical experience of the greatest of
+our age.]
+
+An extraordinary instance of this disagreement between the man of the
+world and the literary character, we find in a philosopher seated on a
+throne. The celebrated JULIAN stained the imperial purple with an author's
+ink; and when he resided among the Antiochians, his unalterable character
+shocked that volatile and luxurious race. He slighted the plaudits of
+their theatre, he abhorred their dances and their horse-races, he was
+abstinent even at a festival, and incorrupt himself, perpetually
+admonished the dissipated citizens of their impious abandonment of the
+laws of their country. The Antiochians libelled their emperor, and
+petulantly lampooned his beard, which the philosopher carelessly wore
+neither perfumed nor curled. Julian, scorning to inflict a sharper
+punishment, pointed at them his satire of "the Misopogon, or the
+Antiochian; the Enemy of the Beard," where, amidst irony and invective,
+the literary monarch bestows on himself many exquisite and characteristic
+touches. All that the persons of fashion alleged against the literary
+character, Julian unreservedly confesses--his undressed beard and
+awkwardness, his obstinacy, his unsociable habits, his deficient tastes,
+while at the same time he represents his good qualities as so many
+extravagances. But, in this Cervantic pleasantry of self-reprehension, the
+imperial philosopher has not failed to show this light and corrupt people
+that the reason he could not possibly resemble them, existed in the
+unhappy circumstance of having been subject to too strict an education
+under a family tutor, who had never suffered him to swerve from the one
+right way, and who (additional misfortune!) had inspired him with such a
+silly reverence for Plato and Socrates, Aristotle and Theophrastus, that
+he had been induced to make them his models. "Whatever manners," says the
+emperor, "I may have previously contracted, whether gentle or boorish, it
+is impossible for me now to alter or unlearn. Habit is said to be a second
+nature; to oppose it is irksome, but to counteract _the study of more than
+thirty years_ is extremely difficult, especially when it has been imbibed
+with so much attention."
+
+And what if men of genius, relinquishing their habits, could do this
+violence to their nature, should we not lose the original for a factitious
+genius, and spoil one race without improving the other? If nature and
+habit, that second nature which prevails even over the first, have created
+two beings distinctly different, what mode of existence shall ever
+assimilate them? Antipathies and sympathies, those still occult causes,
+however concealed, will break forth at an unguarded moment. Clip the wings
+of an eagle that he may roost among domestic fowls,--at some unforeseen
+moment his pinions will overshadow and terrify his tiny associates, for
+"the feathered king" will be still musing on the rock and the cloud.
+
+The man of genius will be restive even in his trammelled paces. Too
+impatient amidst the heartless courtesies of society, and little practised
+in the minuter attentions, he has rarely sacrificed to the unlaughing
+graces of Lord Chesterfield. Plato ingeniously compares Socrates to the
+gallipots of the Athenian apothecaries; the grotesque figures of owls and
+apes were painted on their exterior, but they contained within precious
+balsams. The man of genius amidst many a circle may exclaim with
+Themistocles, "I cannot fiddle, but I can make a little village a great
+city;" and with Corneille, he may be allowed to smile at his own
+deficiencies, and even disdain to please in certain conventional manners,
+asserting that "wanting all these things, he was not the less Corneille."
+
+But with the great thinkers and students, their character is still more
+obdurate. ADAM SMITH could never free himself from the embarrassed manners
+of a recluse; he was often absent, and his grave and formal conversation
+made him seem distant and reserved, when in fact no man had warmer
+feelings for his intimates. One who knew Sir ISAAC NEWTON tells us, that
+"he would sometimes be silent and thoughtful, and look all the while as if
+he were saying his prayers." A French princess, desirous of seeing the
+great moralist NICOLLE, experienced an inconceivable disappointment when
+the moral instructor, entering with the most perplexing bow imaginable,
+silently sank into his chair. The interview promoted no conversation, and
+the retired student, whose elevated spirit might have endured martyrdom,
+shrunk with timidity in the unaccustomed honour of conversing with a
+princess and having nothing to say. Observe Hume thrown into a most
+ridiculous attitude by a woman of talents and coterie celebrity. Our
+philosopher was called on to perform his part in one of those inventions
+of the hour to which the fashionable, like children in society, have
+sometimes resorted to attract their world by the rumour of some new
+extravagance. In the present, poor HUME was to represent a sultan on a
+sofa, sitting between two slaves, who were the prettiest and most
+vivacious of Parisians. Much was anticipated from this literary
+exhibition. The two slaves were ready at repartee, but the utter
+simplicity of the sultan displayed a blockishness which blunted all edge.
+The phlegmatic metaphysician and historian only gave a sign of life by
+repeating the same awkward gesture, and the same ridiculous exclamation,
+without end. One of the fair slaves soon discovered the unchangeable
+nature of the forlorn philosopher, impatiently exclaiming, "I guessed as
+much, never was there such a calf of a man!"--"Since this affair," adds
+Madame d'Epinay, "Hume is at present banished to the class of spectators."
+The philosopher, indeed, had formed a more correct conception of his own
+character than the volatile sylphs of the Parisian circle, for in writing
+to the Countess de Boufflers, on an invitation to Paris, he said, "I have
+rusted on amid books and study; have been little engaged in the active,
+and not much in the pleasurable, scenes of life; and am more accustomed to
+a select society than to general companies." If Hume made a ridiculous
+figure in these circles, the error did not lie on the side of that
+cheerful and profound philosopher.--This subject leads our inquiries to
+the nature of _the conversations of men of genius_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Conversations of men of genius.--Their deficient agreeableness may result
+from qualities which conduce to their greatness.--Slow-minded men not the
+dullest.--The conversationists not the ablest writers.--Their true
+excellence in conversation consists of associations with their pursuits.
+
+
+In conversation the sublime DANTE was taciturn or satirical; BUTLER sullen
+or caustic; GRAY and ALFIERI seldom talked or smiled; DESCARTES, whose
+habits had formed him for solitude and meditation, was silent; ROUSSEAU
+was remarkably trite in conversation, not an idea, not a word of fancy or
+eloquence warmed him; ADDISON and MOLIERE in society were only observers;
+and DRYDEN has very honestly told us, "My conversation is slow and dull,
+my humour saturnine and reserved; in short, I am none of those who
+endeavour to break jests in company, or make repartees." POPE had lived
+among "the great," not only in rank but in intellect, the most delightful
+conversationists; but the poet felt that he could not contribute to these
+seductive pleasures, and at last confessed that he could amuse and
+instruct himself much more by another means: "As much company as I have
+kept, and as much as I love it, I love reading better, and would rather be
+employed in reading, than in the most agreeable conversation." Pope's
+conversation, as preserved by Spence, was sensible; and it would seem that
+he had never said but one witty thing in his whole life, for only one has
+been recorded. It was ingeniously said of VAUCANSON, that he was as much
+an automaton as any which he made. HOGARTH and SWIFT, who looked on the
+circles of society with eyes of inspiration, were absent in company; but
+their grossness and asperity did not prevent the one from being the
+greatest of comic painters, nor the other as much a creator of manners in
+his way. Genius, even in society, is pursuing its own operations, and it
+would cease to be itself were it always to act like others.
+
+Men of genius who are habitually eloquent, who have practised conversation
+as an art, for some, even sacrifice their higher pursuits to this
+perishable art of acting, have indeed excelled, and in the most opposite
+manner. HORNE TOOKE finely discriminates the wit in conversation of
+SHERIDAN and CURRAN, after having passed an evening in their company.
+"Sheridan's wit was like steel highly polished and sharpened for display
+and use; Curran's was a mine of virgin gold, incessantly crumbling away
+from its own richness." CHARLES BUTLER, whose reminiscences of his
+illustrious contemporaries are derived from personal intercourse, has
+correctly described the familiar conversations of PITT, FOX, and BURKE:
+"The most intimate friends of Mr. Fox complained of his too frequent
+ruminating silence. Mr. Pitt talked, and his talk was fascinating. Mr.
+Burke's conversation was rambling, but splendid and instructive beyond
+comparison." Let me add, that the finest genius of our times, is also the
+most delightful man; he is that rarest among the rare of human beings,
+whom to have known is nearly to adore; whom to have seen, to have heard,
+forms an era in our life; whom youth remembers with enthusiasm, and whose
+presence the men and women of "the world" feel like a dream from which
+they would not awaken. His _bonhomie_ attaches our hearts to him by its
+simplicity; his legendary conversation makes us, for a moment, poets like
+himself.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: This was written under the inspiration of a night's
+conversation, or rather listening to Sir WALTER SCOTT.--I cannot bring
+myself to erase what now, alas! has closed in the silence of a swift
+termination of his glorious existence.]
+
+But that deficient agreeableness in social life with which men of genius
+have been often reproached, may really result from the nature of those
+qualities which conduce to the greatness of their public character. A
+thinker whose mind is saturated with knowledge on a particular subject,
+will be apt to deliver himself authoritatively; but he will then pass for
+a dogmatist: should he hesitate, that he may correct an equivocal
+expression, or bring nearer a remote idea, he is in danger of sinking
+into pedantry or rising into genius. Even the fulness of knowledge
+has its tediousness. "It is rare," said MALEBRANCHE, "that those who
+meditate profoundly can explain well the objects they have meditated on;
+for they hesitate when they have to speak; they are scrupulous to convey
+false ideas or use inaccurate terms. They do not choose to speak, like
+others, merely for the sake of talking." A vivid and sudden perception of
+truth, or a severe scrutiny after it, may elevate the voice, and burst
+with an irruptive heat on the subdued tone of conversation. These men are
+too much in earnest for the weak or the vain. Such seriousness kills their
+feeble animal spirits. SMEATON, a creative genius of his class, had a
+warmth of expression which seemed repulsive to many: it arose from an
+intense application of mind, which impelled him to break out hastily when
+anything was said that did not accord with his ideas. Persons who are
+obstinate till they can give up their notions with a safe conscience, are
+troublesome intimates. Often too the cold tardiness of decision is only
+the strict balancing of scepticism or candour, while obscurity as
+frequently may arise from the deficiency of previous knowledge in the
+listener. It was said that NEWTON in conversation did not seem to
+understand his own writings, and it was supposed that his memory had
+decayed. The fact, however, was not so; and Pemberton makes a curious
+distinction, which accounts for Newton _not always being ready to speak_
+on subjects of which he was the sole master. "Inventors seem to treasure
+up in their own minds what they have found out, after another manner than
+those do the same things that have not this inventive faculty. The former,
+when they have occasion to produce their knowledge, in some means are
+obliged immediately to investigate part of what they want. For this they
+are not equally fit at all times; and thus it has often happened, that
+such as retain things chiefly by means of a very strong memory, have
+appeared off-hand more expert than the discoverers themselves."
+
+A peculiar characteristic in the conversations of men of genius, which has
+often injured them when the listeners were not intimately acquainted with
+the men, are those sports of a vacant mind, those sudden impulses to throw
+out paradoxical opinions, and to take unexpected views of things in some
+humour of the moment. These fanciful and capricious ideas are the
+grotesque images of a playful mind, and are at least as frequently
+misrepresented as they are misunderstood. But thus the cunning Philistines
+are enabled to triumph over the strong and gifted man, because in the hour
+of confidence, and in the abandonment of the mind, he had laid his head in
+the lap of wantonness, and taught them how he might be shorn of his
+strength. Dr. JOHNSON appears often to have indulged this amusement, both
+in good and ill humour. Even such a calm philosopher as ADAM SMITH, as
+well as such a child of imagination as BURNS, were remarked for this
+ordinary habit of men of genius; which, perhaps, as often originates in a
+gentle feeling of contempt for their auditors, as from any other cause.
+Many years after having written the above, I discovered two recent
+confessions which confirm the principle. A literary character, the late
+Dr. LEYDEN, acknowledged, that "in conversation I often verge so nearly on
+absurdity, that I know it is perfectly easy to misconceive me, as well as
+to misrepresent me." And Miss Edgeworth, in describing her father's
+conversation, observes that, "his openness went too far, almost to
+imprudence; exposing him not only to be misrepresented, but to be
+misunderstood. Those who did not know him intimately, often took literally
+what was either said in sport, or spoken with the intention of making a
+strong impression for some good purpose." CUMBERLAND, whose conversation
+was delightful, happily describes the species I have noticed. "Nonsense
+talked by men of wit and understanding in the hour of relaxation is of the
+very finest essence of conviviality, and a treat delicious to those who
+have the sense to comprehend it; but it implies a trust in the company not
+always to be risked." The truth is, that many, eminent for their genius,
+have been remarkable in society for a simplicity and playfulness almost
+infantine. Such was the gaiety of Hume, such the _bonhomie_ of Fox; and
+one who had long lived in a circle of men of genius in the last age, was
+disposed to consider this infantine simplicity as characteristic of
+genius. It is a solitary grace, which can never lend its charm to a man of
+the world, whose purity of mind has long been lost in a hacknied
+intercourse with everything exterior to himself.
+
+But above all, what most offends, is that freedom of opinion which a man
+of genius can no more divest himself of, than of the features of his face.
+But what if this intractable obstinacy be only resistance of character?
+Burns never could account to himself why, "though when he had a mind he
+was pretty generally beloved, he could never get the art of commanding
+respect," and imagined it was owing to his deficiency in what Sterne calls
+"that understrapping virtue of discretion;" "I am so apt to a _lapsus
+linguae_" says this honest sinner. Amidst the stupidity of a formal
+circle, and the inanity of triflers, however such men may conceal their
+impatience, one of them has forcibly described the reaction of this
+suppressed feeling: "The force with which it burst out when the pressure
+was taken off, gave the measure of the constraint which had been endured."
+Erasmus, that learned and charming writer, who was blessed with the genius
+which could enliven a folio, has well described himself, _sum natura
+propensior ad jocos quam fortasse deceat_:--more constitutionally inclined
+to pleasantry than, as he is pleased to add, perhaps became him. We know
+in his intimacy with Sir Thomas More, that Erasmus was a most exhilarating
+companion; yet in his intercourse with the great he was not fortunate. At
+the first glance he saw through affectation and parade, his praise of
+folly was too ironical, and his freedom carried with it no pleasantry for
+those who knew not to prize a laughing sage.
+
+In conversation the operations of the intellect with some are habitually
+slow, but there will be found no difference between the result of
+their perceptions and those of a quicker nature; and hence it is that
+slow-minded men are not, as men of the world imagine, always the dullest.
+NICOLLE said of a scintillant wit, "He vanquishes me in the drawing-room,
+but surrenders to me at discretion on the stairs." Many a great wit has
+thought the wit it was too late to speak, and many a great reasoner has
+only reasoned when his opponent has disappeared. Conversation with such
+men is a losing game; and it is often lamentable to observe how men of
+genius are reduced to a state of helplessness from not commanding their
+attention, while inferior intellects habitually are found to possess what
+is called "a ready mind." For this reason some, as it were in despair,
+have shut themselves up in silence. A lively Frenchman, in describing the
+distinct sorts of conversation of his literary friends, among whom was Dr.
+Franklin, energetically hits off that close observer and thinker, wary,
+even in society, by noting down "the silence of the celebrated Franklin."
+We learn from Cumberland that Lord Mansfield did not promote that
+conversation which gave him any pains to carry on. He resorted to
+society for simple relaxation, and could even find a pleasure in dulness
+when accompanied with placidity. "It was a kind of cushion to his
+understanding," observes the wit. CHAUCER, like LA FONTAINE, was more
+facetious in his tales than in his conversation; for the Countess of
+Pembroke used to rally him, observing that his silence was more agreeable
+to her than his talk. TASSO'S conversation, which his friend Manso has
+attempted to preserve for us, was not agreeable. In company he sat
+absorbed in thought, with a melancholy air; and it was on one of these
+occasions that a person present observing that this conduct was indicative
+of madness, that TASSO, who had heard him, looking on him without emotion,
+asked whether he was ever acquainted with a madman who knew when to hold
+his tongue! Malebranche tells us that one of these mere men of learning,
+who can only venture to praise antiquity, once said, "I have seen
+DESCARTES; I knew him, and frequently have conversed with him; he was a
+good sort of man, and was not wanting in sense, but he had nothing
+extraordinary in him." Had Aristotle spoken French instead of Greek, and
+had this man frequently conversed with him, unquestionably he would not
+have discovered, even in this idol of antiquity, anything extraordinary.
+Two thousand years would have been wanting for our learned critic's
+perceptions.
+
+It is remarkable that the conversationists have rarely proved to be the
+abler writers. He whose fancy is susceptible of excitement in the presence
+of his auditors, making the minds of men run with his own, seizing on the
+first impressions, and touching the shadows and outlines of things--with a
+memory where all lies ready at hand, quickened by habitual associations,
+and varying with all those extemporary changes and fugitive colours which
+melt away in the rainbow of conversation; with that wit, which is only wit
+in one place, and for a time; with that vivacity of animal spirits which
+often exists separately from the more retired intellectual powers--this
+man can strike out wit by habit, and pour forth a stream of phrase which
+has sometimes been imagined to require only to be written down to be read
+with the same delight with which it was heard; but he cannot print his
+tone, nor his air and manner, nor the contagion of his hardihood. All the
+while we were not sensible of the flutter of his ideas, the incoherence of
+his transitions, his vague notions, his doubtful assertions, and his
+meagre knowledge. A pen is the extinguisher of this luminary.
+
+A curious contrast occurred between BUFFON and his friend MONTBELLIARD,
+who was associated in his great work. The one possessed the reverse
+qualities of the other: BUFFON, whose style in his composition is
+elaborate and declamatory, was in conversation coarse and careless.
+Pleading that conversation with him was only a relaxation, he rather
+sought than avoided the idiom and slang of the mob, when these seemed
+expressive and facetious; while MONTBELLIARD threw every charm of
+animation over his delightful talk: but when he took his seat at the rival
+desk of Buffon, an immense interval separated them; he whose tongue
+dropped the honey and the music of the bee, handled a pen of iron; while
+Buffon's was the soft pencil of the philosophical painter of nature.
+COWLEY and KILLEGREW furnish another instance. COWLEY was embarrassed in
+conversation, and had no quickness in argument or reply: a mind pensive
+and elegant could not be struck at to catch fire: while with KILLEGREW the
+sparkling bubbles of his fancy rose and dropped.[A] When the delightful
+conversationist wrote, the deception ceased. Denham, who knew them both,
+hit off the difference between them:
+
+ Had Cowley ne'er spoke, Killegrew ne'er writ,
+ Combined in one they had made a matchless wit.
+
+[Footnote A: Killegrew's eight plays, upon which his character as an
+author rests, have not been republished with one exception--_the Parson's
+Wedding_--which is given in Dodsley's collection; and which is sufficient
+to satisfy curiosity. He was a favourite with Charles the Second, and had
+great influence with him. Some of his witty court jests are preserved, but
+are too much imbued with the spirit of the age to be quoted here. He was
+sometimes useful by devoting his satiric sallies to urge the king to his
+duties.--ED.]
+
+Not, however, that a man of genius does not throw out many things in
+conversation which have only been found admirable when the public
+possessed them. The public often widely differ from the individual, and a
+century's opinion may intervene between them. The fate of genius is
+sometimes that of the Athenian sculptor, who submitted his colossal
+Minerva to a private party for inspection. Before the artist they trembled
+for his daring chisel, and the man of genius smiled; behind him they
+calumniated, and the man of genius forgave. Once fixed in a public place,
+in the eyes of the whole city, the statue was the Divinity! There is a
+certain distance at which opinions, as well as statues, must be viewed.
+
+But enough of those defects of men of genius which often attend their
+conversations. Must we then bow to authorial dignity, and kiss hands,
+because they are inked? Must we bend to the artist, who considers us as
+nothing unless we are canvas or marble under his hands? Are there not men
+of genius the grace of society and the charm of their circle? Fortunate
+men! more blest than their brothers; but for this, they are not the more
+men of genius, nor the others less. To how many of the ordinary intimates
+of a superior genius who complain of his defects might one say, "Do his
+productions not delight and sometimes surprise you?--You are silent! I beg
+your pardon; the _public_ has informed you of a great name; you would not
+otherwise have perceived the precious talent of your neighbour: you know
+little of your friend but his _name_." The personal familiarity of
+ordinary minds with a man of genius has often produced a ludicrous
+prejudice. A Scotchman, to whom the name of _a_ Dr. Robertson had
+travelled down, was curious to know who he was.--"Your neighbour!"--But he
+could not persuade himself that the man whom he conversed with was the
+great historian of his country. Even a good man could not believe in the
+announcement of the Messiah, from the same sort of prejudice: "Can there
+anything good come out of Nazareth?"
+
+Suffer a man of genius to be such as nature and habit have formed him, and
+he will then be the most interesting companion; then will you see nothing
+but his character. AKENSIDE, in conversation with select friends, often
+touched by a romantic enthusiasm, would pass in review those eminent
+ancients whom he loved; he imbued with his poetic faculty even the details
+of their lives; and seemed another Plato while he poured libations to
+their memory in the language of Plato, among those whose studies and
+feelings were congenial with his own. ROMNEY, with a fancy entirely his
+own, would give vent to his effusions, uttered in a hurried accent and
+elevated tone, and often accompanied by tears, to which by constitution he
+was prone; thus Cumberland, from personal intimacy, describes the
+conversation of this man of genius. Even the temperate sensibility
+of HUME was touched by the bursts of feeling of ROUSSEAU; who, he says,
+"in conversation kindles often to a degree of heat which looks like
+inspiration." BARRY, that unhappy genius! was the most repulsive of men in
+his exterior. The vehemence of his language, the wildness of his glance,
+his habit of introducing vulgar oaths, which, by some unlucky association
+of habit, served him as expletives and interjections, communicated even a
+horror to some. A pious and a learned lady, who had felt intolerable
+uneasiness in his presence, did not, however, leave this man of genius
+that very evening without an impression that she had never heard so divine
+a man in her life. The conversation happening to turn on that principle of
+benevolence which pervades Christianity, and on the meekness of the
+Founder, it gave BARRY an opportunity of opening on the character of Jesus
+with that copiousness of heart and mind which, once heard, could never be
+forgotten. That artist indeed had long in his meditations an ideal head of
+Christ, which he was always talking of executing: "It is here!" he would
+cry, striking his head. That which baffled the invention, as we are told,
+of Leonardo da Vinci, who left his Christ headless, having exhausted his
+creative faculty among the apostles, this imaginative picture of the
+mysterious union of a divine and human nature, never ceased, even when
+conversing, to haunt the reveries of BARRY.
+
+There are few authors and artists who are not eloquently instructive on
+that class of knowledge or that department of art which reveals the
+mastery of their life. Their conversations of this nature affect the mind
+to a distant period of life. Who, having listened to such, has forgotten
+what a man of genius has said at such moments? Who dwells not on the
+single thought or the glowing expression, stamped in the heat of the
+moment, which came from its source? Then the mind of genius rises as the
+melody of the AEolian harp, when the winds suddenly sweep over the strings
+--it comes and goes--and leaves a sweetness beyond the harmonies of art.
+
+The _Miscellanea_ of POLITIAN are not only the result of his studies in
+the rich library of Lorenzo de' Medici, but of conversations which had
+passed in those rides which Lorenzo, accompanied by Politian, preferred to
+the pomp of cavalcades. When the Cardinal de Cabassolle strayed with
+PETRARCH about his valley in many a wandering discourse, they sometimes
+extended their walks to such a distance, that the servant sought them in
+vain to announce the dinner-hour, and found them returning in the evening.
+When HELVETIUS enjoyed the social conversation of a literary friend, he
+described it as "a chase of ideas." Such are the literary conversations
+which HORNE TOOKE alluded to, when he said "I assure you, we find more
+difficulty to finish than to begin our conversations."
+
+The natural and congenial conversations of men of letters and of artists
+must then be those which are associated with their pursuits, and these are
+of a different complexion with the talk of men of the world, the objects
+of which are drawn from the temporary passions of party-men, or the
+variable _on dits_ of triflers--topics studiously rejected from these more
+tranquillising conversations. Diamonds can only be polished by their own
+dust, and are only shaped by the friction of other diamonds; and so it
+happens with literary men and artists.
+
+A meeting of this nature has been recorded by CICERO, which himself and
+ATTICUS had with VARRO in the country. Varro arriving from Rome in their
+neighbourhood somewhat fatigued, had sent a messenger to his friends. "As
+soon as we had heard these tidings," says Cicero, "we could not delay
+hastening to see one who was attached to us by the same pursuits and by
+former friendship." They set off, but found Varro half way, urged by the
+same eager desire to join them. They conducted him to Cicero's villa.
+Here, while Cicero was inquiring after the news of Rome, Atticus
+interrupted the political rival of Caesar, observing, "Let us leave off
+inquiring after things which cannot be heard without pain. Rather ask
+about what we know, for Varro's muses are longer silent than they used to
+be, yet surely he has not forsaken them, but rather conceals what he
+writes."--"By no means!" replied Varro, "for I deem him to be a whimsical
+man to write what he wishes to suppress. I have indeed a great work in
+hand (on the Latin language), long designed for Cicero." The conversation
+then took its natural turn by Atticus having got rid of the political
+anxiety of Cicero. Such, too, were the conversations which passed at the
+literary residence of the Medici family, which was described, with as
+much truth as fancy, as "the Lyceum of philosophy, the Arcadia of poets,
+and the Academy of painters." We have a pleasing instance of such a
+meeting of literary friends in those conversations which passed in POPE'S
+garden, where there was often a remarkable union of nobility and literary
+men. There Thomson, Mallet, Gay, Hooke, and Glover met Cobham, Bathurst,
+Chesterfield, Lyttleton, and other lords; there some of these poets found
+patrons, and POPE himself discovered critics. The contracted views of
+Spence have unfortunately not preserved these literary conversations, but
+a curious passage has dropped from the pen of Lord BOLINGBROKE, in what
+his lordship calls "a letter to Pope," often probably passed over among
+his political tracts. It breathes the spirit of those delightful
+conversations. "My thoughts," writes his lordship, "in what order soever
+they flow, shall be communicated to you just _as they pass through my
+mind_--just as they used to be when _we conversed together_ on these or
+any other subject; when _we sauntered alone_, or as we have often done
+with good Arbuthnot, and the jocose Dean of St. Patrick, among the
+_multiplied scenes of your little garden._ The theatre is large enough for
+my ambition." Such a scene opens a beautiful subject for a curious
+portrait-painter. These literary groups in the garden of Pope, sauntering,
+or divided in confidential intercourse, would furnish a scene of literary
+repose and enjoyment among some of the most illustrious names in our
+literature.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Literary solitude.--Its necessity.--Its pleasures.--Of visitors by
+profession.--Its inconveniences.
+
+
+The literary character is reproached with an extreme passion for
+retirement, cultivating those insulating habits, which, while they are
+great interruptions, and even weakeners, of domestic happiness, induce at
+the same time in public life to a secession from its cares, and an
+avoidance of its active duties. Yet the vacancies of retired men are
+eagerly filled by the many unemployed men of the world happily framed for
+its business. We do not hear these accusations raised against the painter
+who wears away his days by his easel, or the musician by the side of his
+instrument; and much less should we against the legal and the commercial
+character; yet all these are as much withdrawn from public and private
+life as the literary character. The desk is as insulating as the library.
+Yet the man who is working for his individual interest is more highly
+estimated than the retired student, whose disinterested pursuits are at
+least more profitable to the world than to himself. La Bruyere discovered
+the world's erroneous estimate of literary labour: "There requires a
+better name," he says, "to be bestowed on the leisure (the idleness he
+calls it) of the literary character,--to meditate, to compose, to read and
+to be tranquil, should be called _working_." But so invisible is the
+progress of intellectual pursuits and so rarely are the objects palpable
+to the observers, that the literary character appears to be denied for his
+pursuits, what cannot be refused to every other. That unremitting
+application and unbroken series of their thoughts, admired in every
+profession, is only complained of in that one whose professors with so
+much sincerity mourn over the brevity of life, which has often closed on
+them while sketching their works.
+
+It is, however, only in solitude that the genius of eminent men has been
+formed. There their first thoughts sprang, and there it will become them
+to find their last: for the solitude of old age--and old age must be often
+in solitude--may be found the happiest with the literary character.
+Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the true parent of
+genius. In all ages solitude has been called for--has been flown to. No
+considerable work was ever composed till its author, like an ancient
+magician, first retired to the grove, or to the closet, to invocate. When
+genius languishes in an irksome solitude among crowds, that is the moment
+to fly into seclusion and meditation. There is a society in the deepest
+solitude; in all the men of genius of the past
+
+ First of your kind, Society divine!
+
+and in themselves; for there only can they indulge in the romances of
+their soul, and there only can they occupy themselves in their dreams and
+their vigils, and, with the morning, fly without interruption to the
+labour they had reluctantly quitted. If there be not periods when they
+shall allow their days to melt harmoniously into each other, if they do
+not pass whole weeks together in their study, without intervening
+absences, they will not be admitted into the last recess of the Muses.
+Whether their glory come from researches, or from enthusiasm, time, with
+not a feather ruffled on his wings, time alone opens discoveries and
+kindles meditation. This desert of solitude, so vast and so dreary to the
+man of the world, to the man of genius is the magical garden of Armida,
+whose enchantments arose amidst solitude, while solitude was everywhere
+among those enchantments.
+
+Whenever MICHAEL ANGELO, that "divine madman," as Richardson once wrote on
+the back of one of his drawings, was meditating on some great design, he
+closed himself up from the world, "Why do you lead so solitary a life?"
+asked a friend. "Art," replied the sublime artist, "Art is a jealous god;
+it requires the whole and entire man." During his mighty labour in the
+Sistine Chapel, he refused to have any communication with any person even
+at his own house. Such undisturbed and solitary attention is demanded even
+by undoubted genius as the price of performance. How then shall we deem of
+that feebler race who exult in occasional excellence, and who so often
+deceive themselves by mistaking the evanescent flashes of genius for that
+holier flame which burns on its altar, because the fuel is incessantly
+supplied?
+
+We observe men of genius, in public situations, sighing for this solitude.
+Amidst the impediments of the world, they are doomed to view their
+intellectual banquet often rising before them, like some fairy delusion,
+never to taste it. The great VERULAM often complained of the disturbances
+of his public life, and rejoiced in the occasional retirement he stole
+from public affairs. "And now, because I am in the country, I will send
+you some of my country fruits, which with me are good meditations; when I
+am in the city, they are choked with business." Lord CLARENDON, whose life
+so happily combined the contemplative with the active powers of man,
+dwells on three periods of retirement which he enjoyed; he always took
+pleasure in relating the great tranquillity of spirit experienced during
+his solitude at Jersey, where for more than two years, employed on his
+history, he daily wrote "one sheet of large paper with his own hand." At
+the close of his life, his literary labours in his other retirements are
+detailed with a proud satisfaction. Each of his solitudes occasioned a new
+acquisition; to one he owed the Spanish, to another the French, and to a
+third the Italian literature. The public are not yet acquainted with the
+fertility of Lord Clarendon's literary labours. It was not vanity that
+induced Scipio to declare of solitude, that it had no loneliness for him,
+since he voluntarily retired amidst a glorious life to his Linternum.
+CICERO was uneasy amid applauding Rome, and has distinguished his numerous
+works by the titles of his various villas. AULUS GELLIUS marked his
+solitude by his "Attic Nights." The "Golden Grove" of JEREMY TAYLOR is the
+produce of his retreat at the Earl of Carberry's seat in Wales; and the
+"Diversions of Purley" preserved a man of genius for posterity. VOLTAIRE
+had talents well adapted for society; but at one period of his life he
+passed five years in the most secret seclusion, and indeed usually lived
+in retirement. MONTESQUIEU quitted the brilliant circles of Paris for his
+books and his meditations, and was ridiculed by the gay triflers he
+deserted; "but my great work," he observes in triumph, "avance a pas de
+geant." Harrington, to compose his "Oceana," severed himself from the
+society of his friends. DESCARTES, inflamed by genius, hires an obscure
+house in an unfrequented quarter at Paris, and there he passes two years,
+unknown to his acquaintance. ADAM SMITH, after the publication of his
+first work, withdrew into a retirement that lasted ten years: even Hume
+rallies him for separating himself from the world; but by this means the
+great political inquirer satisfied the world by his great work. And thus
+it was with men of genius long ere Petrarch withdrew to his Val chiusa.
+
+The interruption of visitors by profession has been feelingly lamented by
+men of letters. The mind, maturing its speculations, feels the unexpected
+conversation of cold ceremony chilling as March winds over the blossoms of
+the Spring. Those unhappy beings who wander from house to house,
+privileged by the charter of society to obstruct the knowledge they cannot
+impart, to weary because they are wearied, or to seek amusement at the
+cost of others, belong to that class of society which have affixed no
+other idea to time than that of getting rid of it. These are judges not
+the best qualified to comprehend the nature and evil of their depredations
+in the silent apartment of the studious, who may be often driven to
+exclaim, in the words of the Psalmist, "Verily I have cleansed my heart in
+vain, and washed my hands in innocency: _for all the day long have I been
+plagued, and chastened every morning._"
+
+When Montesquieu was deeply engaged in his great work, he writes to a
+friend:--"The favour which your friend Mr. Hein, often does me to pass his
+mornings with me, occasions great damage to my work as well by his impure
+French as the length of his details."--"We are afraid," said some of those
+visitors to BAXTER, "that we break in upon your time."--"To be sure you
+do," replied the disturbed and blunt scholar. To hint as gently as he
+could to his friends that he was avaricious of time, one of the learned
+Italians had a prominent inscription over the door of his study,
+intimating that whoever remained there must join in his labours. The
+amiable MELANCTHON, incapable of a harsh expression, when he received
+these idle visits, only noted down the time he had expended, that he might
+reanimate his industry, and not lose a day. EVELYN, continually importuned
+by morning visitors, or "taken up by other impertinencies of my life in
+the country," stole his hours from his night rest "to redeem his losses."
+The literary character has been driven to the most inventive shifts to
+escape the irruption of a formidable party at a single rush, who enter,
+without "besieging or beseeching," as Milton has it. The late Mr. Ellis, a
+man of elegant tastes and poetical temperament, on one of these occasions,
+at his country-house, assured a literary friend, that when driven to the
+last, he usually made his escape by a leap out of the window; and Boileau
+has noticed a similar dilemma when at the villa of the President
+Lamoignon, while they were holding their delightful conversations in his
+grounds.
+
+ Quelquefois de facheux arrivent trois volees,
+ Que du parc a l'instant assiegent les allees;
+ Alors sauve qui peut, et quatre fois heureux
+ Qui sait s'echapper, a quelque autre ignore d'eux.
+
+BRAND HOLLIS endeavoured to hold out "the idea of singularity as a
+shield;" and the great ROBERT BOYLE was compelled to advertise in a
+newspaper that he must decline visits on certain days, that he might have
+leisure to finish some of his works.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: This curious advertisement is preserved in Dr. Birch's "Life
+of Boyle," p. 272. Boyle's labours were so exhausting to his naturally
+weak frame, and so continuous from his eager desire for investigation,
+that this advertisement was concocted by the advice of his physician, "to
+desire to be excused from receiving visits (unless upon occasions very
+extraordinary) two days in the week, namely, on the forenoon of Tuesdays
+and Fridays (both foreign post days), and on Wednesdays and Saturdays in
+the afternoons, that he may have some time, both to recruit his spirits,
+to range his papers, and fill up the _lacunae_ of them, and to take some
+care of his affairs in Ireland, which are very much disordered and have
+their face often changed by the public calamities there." He ordered
+likewise a board to be placed over his door, with an inscription
+signifying when he did, and when he did not receive visits.--ED.]
+
+BOCCACCIO has given an interesting account of the mode of life of the
+studious Petrarch, for on a visit he found that Petrarch would not suffer
+his hours of study to be broken into even, by the person whom of all men
+he loved most, and did not quit his morning studies for his guest, who
+during that time occupied himself by reading or transcribing the works of
+his master. At the decline of day, Petrarch quitted his study for his
+garden, where he delighted to open his heart in mutual confidence.
+
+But this solitude, at first a necessity, and then a pleasure, at length is
+not borne without repining. To tame the fervid wildness of youth to the
+strict regularities of study, is a sacrifice performed by the votary; but
+even MILTON appears to have felt this irksome period of life; for in the
+preface to "Smectymnuus" he says:--"It is but justice not to defraud of
+due esteem the _wearisome labours_ and _studious watchings_ wherein I have
+spent and _tired out_ almost a whole youth." COWLEY, that enthusiast for
+seclusion, in his retirement calls himself "the Melancholy Cowley." I have
+seen an original letter of this poet to Evelyn, where he expresses his
+eagerness to see Sir George Mackenzie's "Essay on Solitude;" for a copy of
+which he had sent over the town, without obtaining one, being "either all
+bought up, or burnt in the fire of London."[A]--"I am the more desirous,"
+he says, "because it is a subject in which I am most deeply interested."
+Thus Cowley was requiring a book to confirm his predilection, and we know
+he made the experiment, which did not prove a happy one. We find even
+GIBBON, with all his fame about him, anticipating the dread he entertained
+of solitude in advanced life. "I feel, and shall continue to feel, that
+domestic solitude, however it may be alleviated by the world, by study,
+and even by friendship, is a comfortless state, which will grow more
+painful as I descend in the vale of years." And again:--"Your visit has
+only served to remind me that man, however amused or occupied in his
+closet, was not made to live alone."
+
+[Footnote A: This event happening when London was the chief emporium of
+books, occasioned many printed just before the time to be excessively
+rare. The booksellers of Paternoster-row had removed their stock to the
+vaults below St. Paul's for safety as the fire approached them. Among the
+stock was Prynne's records, vol. iii., which were all burnt, except a few
+copies which had been sent into the country, a perfect set has been valued
+in consequence at one hundred pounds. The rarity of all books published
+about the era of the great fire of London induced one curious collector,
+Dr. Bliss, of Oxford, to especially devote himself to gathering such in
+his library.--ED.]
+
+Had the mistaken notions of Sprat not deprived us of Cowley's
+correspondence, we doubtless had viewed the picture of lonely genius
+touched by a tender pencil.[A] But we have SHENSTONE, and GRAY, and
+SWIFT. The heart of Shenstone bleeds in the dead oblivion of solitude:
+--"Now I am come from a visit, every little uneasiness is sufficient to
+introduce my whole train of melancholy considerations, and to make me
+utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life I foresee I
+shall lead. I am angry, and envious, and dejected, and frantic, and
+disregard all present things, as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely
+pleased, though it is a gloomy joy, with the application of Dr. Swift's
+complaint, that he is forced to die in a rage, like a rat in a poisoned
+hole." Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture throughout the year,
+in this stanza, by the same amiable but suffering poet:--
+
+ Tedious again to curse the drizzling day,
+ Again to trace the wintry tracks of snow,
+ Or, soothed by vernal airs, again survey
+ The self-same hawthorns bud, and cowslips blow.
+
+Swift's letters paint with terrifying colours a picture of solitude;
+and at length his despair closed with idiotism. Even the playful muse
+of GRESSET throws a sombre querulousness over the solitude of men of
+genius:--
+
+ --Je les vois, victimes du genie,
+ Au foible prix d'un eclat passager,
+ Vivre isoles, sans jouir de la vie!
+ Vingt ans d'ennuis pour quelques jours de gloire.
+
+Such are the necessity, the pleasures, and the inconveniences of solitude!
+It ceases to be a question whether men of genius should blend with the
+masses of society; for whether in solitude, or in the world, of all others
+they must learn to live with themselves. It is in the world that they
+borrow the sparks of thought that fly upwards and perish but the flame of
+genius can only be lighted in their own solitary breast.
+
+[Footnote A: See the article on Cowley in "Calamities of Authors."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The meditations of genius.--A work on the art of meditation not yet
+produced.--Predisposing the mind.--Imagination awakens imagination.
+--Generating feelings by music.--Slight habits.--Darkness and silence, by
+suspending the exercise of our senses, increase the vivacity of our
+conceptions.--The arts of memory.--Memory the foundation of genius.
+--Inventions by several to preserve their own moral and literary
+character.--And to assist their studies.--The meditations of genius depend
+on habit.--Of the night-time.--A day of meditation should precede a day of
+composition.--Works of magnitude from slight conceptions.--Of thoughts
+never written.--The art of meditation exercised at all hours and places.
+--Continuity of attention the source of philosophical discoveries.
+--Stillness of meditation the first state of existence in genius.
+
+
+A continuity of attention, a patient quietness of mind, forms one of the
+characteristics of genius. To think, and to feel, constitute the two
+grand divisions of men of genius--the men of reasoning and the men of
+imagination. There is a thread in our thoughts, as there is a pulse in our
+hearts; he who can hold the one, knows how to think; and he who can move
+the other, knows how to feel.
+
+A work on the art of meditation has not yet been produced; yet such a work
+might prove of immense advantage to him who never happened to have more
+than one solitary idea. The pursuit of a single principle has produced a
+great system. Thus probably we owe ADAM SMITH to the French economists.
+And a loose hint has conducted to a new discovery. Thus GIRARD, taking
+advantage of an idea first started by Fenelon, produced his "Synonymes."
+But while, in every manual art, every great workman improves on his
+predecessor, of the art of the mind, notwithstanding the facility of
+practice, and our incessant experience, millions are yet ignorant of the
+first rudiments; and men of genius themselves are rarely acquainted with
+the materials they are working on. Certain constituent principles of the
+mind itself, which the study of metaphysics curiously developes, offer
+many important regulations in this desirable art. We may even suspect,
+since men of genius in the present age have confided to us the secrets of
+their studies, that this art may be carried on by more obvious means than
+at first would appear, and even by mechanical contrivances and practical
+habits. A mind well organised may be regulated by a single contrivance, as
+by a bit of lead we govern the fine machinery by which we track the flight
+of time. Many secrets in this art of the mind yet remain as insulated
+facts, which may hereafter enter into an experimental history.
+
+Johnson has a curious observation on the Mind itself. He thinks it obtains
+a stationary point, from whence it can never advance, occurring before the
+middle of life. "When the powers of nature have attained their intended
+energy, they can be no more advanced. The shrub can never become a tree.
+Nothing then remains but _practice_ and _experience_; and perhaps _why
+they do so little may be worth inquiry_."[A] The result of this inquiry
+would probably lay a broader foundation for this art of the mind than we
+have hitherto possessed, ADAM FERGUSON has expressed himself with
+sublimity:--"The lustre which man casts around him, like the flame
+of a meteor, shines only while his motion continues; the moments of rest
+and of obscurity are the same." What is this art of meditation, but the
+power of withdrawing ourselves from the world, to view that world moving
+within ourselves, while we are in repose? As the artist, by an optical
+instrument, reflects and concentrates the boundless landscape around him,
+and patiently traces all nature in that small space.
+
+[Footnote A: I recommend the reader to turn to the whole passage, in
+Johnson's "Betters to Mrs. Thrale," vol. i. p. 296.]
+
+There is a government of our thoughts. The mind of genius can be made to
+take a particular disposition or train of ideas. It is a remarkable
+circumstance in the studies of men of genius, that previous to composition
+they have often awakened their imagination by the imagination of their
+favourite masters. By touching a magnet, they become a magnet. A
+circumstance has been, recorded of GRAY, by Mr. Mathias, "as worthy of all
+acceptation among the higher votaries of the divine art, when they are
+assured that Mr. Gray never sate down to compose any poetry without
+previously, and for a considerable time, reading the works of Spenser."
+But the circumstance was not unusual with Malherbe, Corneille, and Racine;
+and the most fervid verses of Homer, and the most tender of Euripides,
+were often repeated by Milton. Even antiquity exhibits the same exciting
+intercourse of the mind of genius. Cicero informs us how his eloquence
+caught inspiration from a constant study of the Latin and Grecian poetry;
+and it has been recorded of Pompey, who was great even in his youth, that
+he never undertook any considerable enterprise without animating his
+genius by having read to him the character of Achilles in the first
+_Iliad_; although he acknowledged that the enthusiasm he caught came
+rather from the poet than the hero. When BOSSUET had to compose a funeral
+oration, he was accustomed to retire for several days to his study, to
+ruminate over the pages of Homer; and when asked the reason of this habit,
+he exclaimed, in these lines--
+
+ --magnam mihi mentem, animumque
+ Delius inspiret Vates.
+
+It is on the same principle of predisposing the mind, that many have first
+generated their feelings by the symphonies of music. ALFIERI often before
+he wrote prepared his mind by listening to music: "Almost all my tragedies
+were sketched in my mind either in the act of hearing music, or a few
+hours after"--a circumstance which has been recorded of many others. Lord
+BACON had music often played in the room adjoining his study: MILTON
+listened to his organ for his solemn inspiration, and music was even
+necessary to WARBURTON. The symphonies which awoke in the poet sublime
+emotions, might have composed the inventive mind of the great critic in
+the visions of his theoretical mysteries. A celebrated French preacher,
+Bourdaloue or Massillon, was once found playing on a violin, to screw his
+mind up to the pitch, preparatory for his sermon, which within a short
+interval he was to preach before the court. CURRAN'S favourite mode of
+meditation was with his violin in his hand; for hours together would
+he forget himself, running voluntaries over the strings, while his
+imagination in collecting its tones was opening all his faculties for the
+coming emergency at the bar. When LEONARDO DA VINCI was painting his
+"Lisa," commonly called _La Joconde_, he had musicians constantly in
+waiting, whose light harmonies, by their associations, inspired feelings
+of
+
+ Tipsy dance and revelry.
+
+There are slight habits which may be contracted by genius, which assist
+the action of the mind; but these are of a nature so trivial, that they
+seem ridiculous when they have not been experienced: but the imaginative
+race exist by the acts of imagination. HAYDN would never sit down to
+compose without being in full dress, with his great diamond ring, and the
+finest paper to write down his musical compositions. ROUSSEAU has told
+us, when occupied by his celebrated romance, of the influence of the
+rose-coloured knots of ribbon which tied his portfolio, his fine paper,
+his brilliant ink, and his gold sand. Similar facts are related of many.
+Whenever APOSTOLO ZENO, the predecessor of Metastasio, prepared himself to
+compose a new drama, he used to say to himself, "_Apostolo! recordati che
+questa e la prima opera che dai in luce._"--"Apostolo! remember that this
+is the first opera you are presenting to the public." We are scarcely
+aware how we may govern our thoughts by means of our sensations: DE LUC
+was subject to violent bursts of passion; but he calmed the interior
+tumult by the artifice of filling his mouth with sweets and comfits. When
+GOLDONI found his sleep disturbed by the obtrusive ideas still floating
+from the studies of the day, he contrived to lull himself to rest by
+conning in his mind a vocabulary of the Venetian dialect, translating some
+word into Tuscan and French; which being a very uninteresting occupation,
+at the third or fourth version this recipe never failed. This was an art
+of withdrawing attention from the greater to the less emotion; by which,
+as the interest weakened, the excitement ceased. MENDELSSOHN, whose feeble
+and too sensitive frame was often reduced to the last stage of suffering
+by intellectual exertion, when engaged in any point of difficulty, would
+in an instant contrive a perfect cessation from thinking, by mechanically
+going to the window, and counting the tiles upon the roof of his
+neighbour's house. Such facts show how much art may be concerned in the
+government of our thoughts.
+
+It is an unquestionable fact that some profound thinkers cannot pursue
+their intellectual operations amidst the distractions of light and noise.
+With them, attention to what is passing within is interrupted by the
+discordant impressions from objects pressing and obtruding on the
+external senses. There are indeed instances, as in the case of Priestley
+and others, of authors who have pursued their literary works amidst
+conversation and their family; but such minds are not the most original
+thinkers, and the most refined writers; or their subjects are of a nature
+which requires little more than judgment and diligence. It is the mind
+only in its fulness which can brood over thoughts till the incubation
+produces vitality. Such is the feeling in this act of study. In Plutarch's
+time they showed a subterraneous place of study built by Demosthenes, and
+where he often continued for two or three months together. Malebranche,
+Hobbes, Corneille, and others, darkened their apartment when they wrote,
+to concentrate their thoughts, as Milton says of the mind, "in the
+spacious circuits of her musing." It is in proportion as we can suspend
+the exercise of all our other senses that the liveliness of our conception
+increases--this is the observation of the most elegant metaphysician of
+our times; and when Lord Chesterfield advised that his pupil--whose
+attention wandered on every passing object, which unfitted him for study
+--should be instructed in a darkened apartment, he was aware of this
+principle; the boy would learn, and retain what he learned, ten times as
+well. We close our eyes whenever we would collect our mind together, or
+trace more distinctly an object which seems to have faded away in our
+recollection. The study of an author or an artist would be ill placed in
+the midst of a beautiful landscape; the "Penseroso" of Milton, "hid from
+day's garish eye," is the man of genius. A secluded and naked apartment,
+with nothing but a desk, a chair, and a single sheet of paper, was for
+fifty years the study of BUFFON; the single ornament was a print of Newton
+placed before his eyes--nothing broke into the unity of his reveries.
+Cumberland's liveliest comedy, _The West Indian_, was written in an
+unfurnished apartment, close in front of an Irish turf-stack; and our
+comic writer was fully aware of the advantages of the situation. "In all
+my hours of study," says that elegant writer, "it has been through life my
+object so to locate myself as to have little or nothing to distract my
+attention, and therefore brilliant rooms or pleasant prospects I have ever
+avoided. A dead wall, or, as in the present case, an Irish turf-stack, are
+not attractions that can call off the fancy from its pursuits; and whilst
+in these pursuits it can find interest and occupation, it wants no outward
+aid to cheer it. My father, I believe, rather wondered at my choice." The
+principle ascertained, the consequences are obvious.
+
+The arts of memory have at all times excited the attention of the
+studious; they open a world of undivulged mysteries, where every one seems
+to form some discovery of his own, rather exciting his astonishment than
+enlarging his comprehension. LE SAGE, a modern philosopher, had a memory
+singularly defective. Incapable of acquiring languages, and deficient in
+all those studies which depend on the exercise of the memory, it became
+the object of his subsequent exertions to supply this deficiency by the
+order and method he observed in arranging every new fact or idea he
+obtained; so that in reality with a very bad memory, it appears that he
+was still enabled to recall at will any idea or any knowledge which he had
+stored up. JOHN HUNTER happily illustrated the advantages which every one
+derives from putting his thoughts in writing, "it resembles a tradesman
+taking stock; without which he never knows either what he possesses, or in
+what he is deficient." The late WILLIAM HUTTON, a man of an original cast
+of mind, as an experiment in memory, opened a book which he had divided
+into 365 columns, according to the days of the year: he resolved to try to
+recollect an anecdote, for every column, as insignificant and remote as he
+was able, rejecting all under ten years of age; and to his surprise, he
+filled those spaces for small reminiscences, within ten columns; but till
+this experiment had been made, he never conceived the extent of his
+faculty. WOLF, the German metaphysician, relates of himself that he had,
+by the most persevering habit, in bed and amidst darkness, resolved his
+algebraic problems, and geometrically composed all his methods merely by
+the aid of his imagination and memory; and when in the daytime he verified
+the one and the other of these operations, he had always found them
+true. Unquestionably, such astonishing instances of a well-regulated
+memory depend on the practice of its art gradually formed by frequent
+associations. When we reflect that whatever we know, and whatever we feel,
+are the very smallest portions of all the knowledge we have been
+acquiring, and all the feelings we have experienced through life, how
+desirable would be that art which should again open the scenes which have
+vanished, and revivify the emotions which other impressions have effaced?
+But the faculty of memory, although perhaps the most manageable of all
+others, is considered a subordinate one; it seems only a grasping and
+accumulating power, and in the work of genius is imagined to produce
+nothing of itself; yet is memory the foundation of Genius, whenever this
+faculty is associated with imagination and passion; with men of genius it
+is a chronology not merely of events, but of emotions; hence they remember
+nothing that is not interesting to their feelings. Persons of inferior
+capacity have imperfect recollections from feeble impressions. Are not the
+incidents of the great novelist often founded on the common ones of life?
+and the personages so admirably alive in his fictions, were they not
+discovered among the crowd? The ancients have described the Muses as the
+daughters of Memory; an elegant fiction, indicating the natural and
+intimate connexion between imagination and reminiscence.
+
+The arts of memory will form a saving-bank of genius, to which it may have
+recourse, as a wealth which it can accumulate imperceptibly amidst the
+ordinary expenditure. LOCKE taught us the first rudiments of this art,
+when he showed us how he stored his thoughts and his facts, by an
+artificial arrangement; and Addison, before he commenced his "Spectators,"
+had amassed three folios of materials. But the higher step will be the
+volume which shall give an account of a man to himself, in which a single
+observation immediately becomes a clue of past knowledge, restoring to him
+his lost studies, and his evanescent existence. Self-contemplation makes
+the man more nearly entire: and to preserve the past, is half of
+immortality.
+
+The worth of the diary must depend on the diarist; but "Of the things
+which concern himself," as MARCUS ANTONINUS entitles his celebrated work
+--this volume, reserved for solitary contemplation, should be considered
+as a future relic of ourselves. The late Sir SAMUEL ROMILLY commenced,
+even in the most occupied period of his life, a diary of his last twelve
+years; which he declares in his will, "I bequeath to my children, as it
+may be serviceable to them." Perhaps in this Romilly bore in mind the
+example of another eminent lawyer, the celebrated WHITELOCKE, who
+had drawn up a great work, entitled "Remembrances of the Labours of
+Whitelocke, in the Annals of his Life, for the Instruction of his
+Children." That neither of these family books has appeared, is our common
+loss. Such legacies from such men ought to become the inheritance of their
+countrymen.
+
+To register the transactions of the day, with observations on what, and on
+whom, he had seen, was the advice of Lord KAIMES to the late Mr. CURWEN;
+and for years his head never reached its pillow without performing a task
+which habit had made easy. "Our best and surest road to knowledge," said
+Lord Kaimes, "is by profiting from the labours of others, and making their
+experience our own." In this manner Curwen tells us he acquired by habit
+_the art of thinking_; and he is an able testimony of the practicability
+and success of the plan, for he candidly tells us, "Though many would
+sicken at the idea of imposing such a task upon themselves, yet the
+attempt, persevered in for a short time, would soon become a custom more
+irksome to omit than it was difficult to commence."
+
+Could we look into the libraries of authors, the studios of artists, and
+the laboratories of chemists, and view what they have only sketched, or
+what lie scattered in fragments, and could we trace their first and last
+thoughts, we might discover that we have lost more than we possess. There
+we might view foundations without superstructures, once the monuments of
+their hopes! A living architect recently exhibited to the public an
+extraordinary picture of his mind, in his "Architectural Visions of Early
+Fancy in the Gay Morning of Youth," and which now were "dreams in the
+evening of life." In this picture he had thrown together all the
+architectural designs his imagination had conceived, but which remained
+unexecuted. The feeling is true, however whimsical such unaccomplished
+fancies might appear when thrown together into one picture. In literary
+history such instances have occurred but too frequently: the imagination
+of youth, measuring neither time nor ability, creates what neither time
+nor ability can execute. ADAM SMITH, in the preface to the first edition
+of his "Theory of Sentiments," announced a large work on law and
+government; and in a late edition he still repeated the promise, observing
+that "Thirty years ago I entertained no doubt of being able to execute
+everything which it announced." The "Wealth of Nations" was but a fragment
+of this greater work. Surely men of genius, of all others, may mourn over
+the length of art and the brevity of life!
+
+Yet many glorious efforts, and even artificial inventions, have been
+contrived to assist and save its moral and literary existence in that
+perpetual race which genius holds with time. We trace its triumph in the
+studious days of such men as GIBBON, Sir WILLIAM JONES, and PRIESTLEY. An
+invention by which the moral qualities and the acquisitions of the
+literary character were combined and advanced together, is what Sir
+WILLIAM JONES ingeniously calls his "Andrometer." In that scale of human
+attainments and enjoyments which ought to accompany the eras of human
+life, it reminds us of what was to be learned, and what to be practised,
+assigning to stated periods their appropriate pursuits. An occasional
+recurrence, even to so fanciful a standard, would be like looking on a
+clock to remind the student how he loiters, or how he advances in the
+great day's work. Such romantic plans have been often invented by the
+ardour of genius. There was no communication between Sir WILLIAM JONES and
+Dr. FRANKLIN; yet, when young, the self-taught philosopher of America
+pursued the same genial and generous devotion to his own moral and
+literary excellence.
+
+"It was about this time I conceived," says Franklin, "the bold and arduous
+project of arriving at moral perfection," &c. He began a daily journal, in
+which against thirteen virtues accompanied by seven columns to mark the
+days of the week, he dotted down what he considered to be his failures; he
+found himself fuller of faults than he had imagined, but at length his
+blots diminished. This self-examination, or this "Faultbook," as Lord
+Shaftesbury would have called it, was always carried about him. These
+books still exist. An additional contrivance was that of journalising his
+twenty-four hours, of which he has furnished us both with descriptions and
+specimens of the method; and he closes with a solemn assurance, that "It
+may be well my posterity should be informed, that to this _little
+artifice_ their ancestor owes the constant felicity of his life." Thus we
+see the fancy of Jones and the sense of Franklin, unconnected either by
+character or communication, but acted on by the same glorious feeling to
+create their own moral and literary character, inventing similar although
+extraordinary methods.
+
+The memorials of Gibbon and Priestley present us with the experience and
+the habits of the literary character. "What I have known," says Dr.
+Priestley, "with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my
+admiration and my contempt of others. Could we have entered into the mind
+of Sir Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by which he produced
+his great works, we might see nothing very extraordinary in the process."
+Our student, with an ingenuous simplicity, opens to us that "variety of
+mechanical expedients by which he secured and arranged his thoughts," and
+that discipline of the mind, by means of a peculiar arrangement of his
+studies for the day and for the year, in which he rivalled the calm and
+unalterable system pursued by Gibbon, Buffon, and Voltaire, who often only
+combined the knowledge they obtained by humble methods. They knew what to
+ask for; and where what is wanted may be found: they made use of an
+intelligent secretary; aware, as Lord Bacon has expressed it, that some
+books "may be read by deputy."
+
+Buffon laid down an excellent rule to obtain originality, when he advised
+the writer first to exhaust his own thoughts, before he attempted to
+consult other writers; and Gibbon, the most experienced reader of all our
+writers, offers the same important advice to an author. When engaged on a
+particular subject, he tells us, "I suspended my perusal of any new book
+on the subject, till I had reviewed all that I knew, or believed, or had
+thought on it, that I might be qualified to discern how much the authors
+added to my original stock." The advice of Lord Bacon, that we should
+pursue our studies in whatever disposition the mind may be, is excellent.
+If happily disposed, we shall gain a great step; and if indisposed, we
+"shall work out the knots and strands of the mind, and make the middle
+times the more pleasant." Some active lives have passed away in incessant
+competition, like those of Mozart, Cicero, and Voltaire, who were
+restless, perhaps unhappy, when their genius was quiescent. To such minds
+the constant zeal they bring to their labour supplies the absence of that
+inspiration which cannot always be the same, nor always at its height.
+
+Industry is the feature by which the ancients so frequently describe an
+eminent character; such phrases as "_incredibili industria; diligentia
+singulars_" are usual. We of these days cannot conceive the industry of
+Cicero; but he has himself told us that he suffered no moments of his
+leisure to escape from him. Not only his spare hours were consecrated to
+his books; but even on days of business he would take a few turns in his
+walk, to meditate or to dictate; many of his letters are dated before
+daylight, some from the senate, at his meals, and amid his morning levees.
+The dawn of day was the summons of study to Sir William Jones. John
+Hunter, who was constantly engaged in the search and consideration of
+new facts, described what was passing in his mind by a remarkable
+illustration:--he said to Abernethy, "My mind is like a bee-hive." A
+simile which was singularly correct; "for," observes Abernethy, "in the
+midst of buzz and apparent confusion there was great order, regularity of
+structure, and abundant food, collected with incessant industry from the
+choicest stores of nature." Thus one man of genius is the ablest
+commentator on the thoughts and feelings of another. When we reflect on
+the magnitude of the labours of Cicero and the elder Pliny, on those of
+Erasmus, Petrarch, Baronius, Lord Bacon, Usher, and Bayle, we seem at the
+base of these monuments of study, we seem scarcely awake to admire. These
+were the laborious instructors of mankind; their age has closed.
+
+Yet let not those other artists of the mind, who work in the airy looms of
+fancy and wit, imagine that they are weaving their webs, without the
+direction of a principle, and without a secret habit which they have
+acquired, and which some have imagined, by its quickness and facility, to
+be an instinct. "Habit," says Reid, "differs from instinct, not in its
+nature, but in its origin; the last being natural, the first acquired."
+What we are accustomed to do, gives a facility and proneness to do on like
+occasions; and there may be even an art, unperceived by themselves, in
+opening and pursuing a scene of pure invention, and even in the happiest
+turns of wit. One who had all the experience of such an artist has
+employed the very terms we have used, of "mechanical" and "habitual." "Be
+assured," says Goldsmith, "that wit is in some measure mechanical; and
+that a man long habituated to catch at even its resemblance, will at last
+be happy enough to possess the substance. By a long habit of writing he
+acquires a justness of thinking, and a mastery of manner which holiday
+writers, even with ten times his genius, may vainly attempt to equal." The
+wit of BUTLER was not extemporaneous, but painfully elaborated from notes
+which he incessantly accumulated; and the familiar _rime_ of BERNT, the
+burlesque poet, his existing manuscripts will prove, were produced by
+perpetual re-touches. Even in the sublime efforts of imagination, this
+art of meditation may be practised; and ALFIERI has shown us, that in
+those energetic tragic dramas which were often produced in a state of
+enthusiasm, he pursued a regulated process. "All my tragedies have been
+composed three times;" and he describes the three stages of conception,
+development, and versifying. "After these three operations, I proceed,
+like other authors, to publish, correct, or amend."
+
+"All is habit in mankind, even virtue itself!" exclaimed METASTASIO;
+and we may add, even the meditations of genius. Some of its boldest
+conceptions, are indeed fortuitous, starting up and vanishing almost in
+the perception; like that giant form, sometimes seen amidst the glaciers,
+afar from the opposite traveller, moving as he moves, stopping as he
+stops, yet, in a moment lost, and perhaps never more seen, although but
+his own reflection! Often in the still obscurity of the night, the ideas,
+the studies, the whole history of the day, is acted over again. There are
+probably few mathematicians who have not dreamed of an interesting
+problem, observes Professor Dugald Stewart. In these vivid scenes we are
+often so completely converted into spectators, that a great poetical
+contemporary of our country thinks that even his dreams should not pass
+away unnoticed, and keeps what he calls a register of nocturnals. TASSO
+has recorded some of his poetical dreams, which were often disturbed by
+waking himself in repeating a verse aloud. "This night I awaked with this
+verse in my mouth--
+
+ "_E i duo che manda il nero adusto suolo_.
+ The two, the _dark_ and burning soil has sent."
+
+He discovered that the epithet _black_ was not suitable; "I again fell
+asleep, and in a dream I read in Strabo that the sand of Ethiopia and
+Arabia is extremely _white_, and this morning I have found the place. You
+see what learned dreams I have."
+
+But incidents of this nature are not peculiar to this great bard. The
+_improvvisatori_ poets, we are told, cannot sleep after an evening's
+effusion; the rhymes are still ringing in their ears, and imagination, if
+they have any, will still haunt them. Their previous state of excitement
+breaks into the calm of sleep; for, like the ocean, when its swell is
+subsiding, the waves still heave and beat. A poet, whether a Milton or a
+Blackmore, will ever find that his muse will visit his "slumbers nightly."
+His fate is much harder than that of the great minister, Sir Robert
+Walpole, who on retiring to rest could throw aside his political intrigues
+with his clothes; but Sir Robert, to judge by his portrait and anecdotes
+of him, had a sleekiness and good-humour, and an unalterable equanimity of
+countenance, not the portion of men of genius: indeed one of these has
+regretted that his sleep was so profound as not to be interrupted by
+dreams; from a throng of fantastic ideas he imagined that he could have
+drawn new sources of poetic imagery. The historian DE THOU was one of
+those great literary characters who, all his life, was preparing to write
+the history which he afterwards composed; omitting nothing in his travels
+and his embassies, which went to the formation of a great man. DE THOU has
+given a very curious account of his dreams. Such was his passion for
+study, and his ardent admiration of the great men whom he conversed with,
+that he often imagined in his sleep that he was travelling in Italy,
+Germany, and in England, where he saw and consulted the learned, and
+examined their curious libraries. He had all his lifetime these literary
+dreams, but more particularly in his travels they reflected these images
+of the day.
+
+If memory do not chain down these hurrying fading children of the
+imagination, and
+
+ Snatch the faithless fugitives to light
+
+with the beams of the morning, the mind suddenly finds itself forsaken and
+solitary.[A] ROUSSEAU has uttered a complaint on this occasion. Full of
+enthusiasm, he devoted to the subject of his thoughts, as was his custom,
+the long sleepless intervals of his nights. Meditating in bed with his
+eyes closed, he turned over his periods in a tumult of ideas; but when he
+rose and had dressed, all was vanished; and when he sat down to his
+breakfast he had nothing to write. Thus genius has its vespers and its
+vigils, as well as its matins, which we have been so often told are the
+true hours of its inspiration; but every hour may be full of inspiration
+for him who knows to meditate. No man was more practised in this art of
+the mind than POPE, and even the night was not an unregarded portion of
+his poetical existence, not less than with LEONARDO DA VINCI, who tells us
+how often he found the use of recollecting the ideas of what he had
+considered in the day after he had retired to bed, encompassed by the
+silence and obscurity of the night. Sleepless nights are the portion of
+genius when engaged in its work; the train of reasoning is still pursued;
+the images of fancy catch a fresh illumination; and even a happy
+expression shall linger in the ear of him who turns about for the soft
+composure to which his troubled spirit cannot settle.
+
+[Footnote A: One of the most extraordinary instances of inspiration in
+dreams is told of Tartini, the Italian musician, whose "Devil's Sonata" is
+well known to musicians. He dreamed that the father of evil played this
+piece to him, and upon waking he put it on paper. It is a strange wild
+performance, possessing great originality and vigour.--ED.]
+
+But while with genius so much seems fortuitous, in its great operations
+the march of the mind appears regular, and requires preparation. The
+intellectual faculties are not always co-existent, or do not always act
+simultaneously. Whenever any particular faculty is highly active, while
+the others are languid, the work, as a work of genius, may be very
+deficient. Hence the faculties, in whatever degree they exist, are
+unquestionably enlarged by _meditation_. It seems trivial to observe that
+meditation should precede composition, but we are not always aware of its
+importance; the truth is, that it is a difficulty unless it be a habit. We
+write, and we find we have written ill; we re-write, and feel we have
+written well: in the second act of composition we have acquired the
+necessary meditation. Still we rarely carry on our meditation so far as
+its practice would enable us. Many works of mediocrity might have
+approached to excellence, had this art of the mind been exercised. Many
+volatile writers might have reached even to deep thinking, had they
+bestowed a day of meditation before a day of composition, and thus
+engendered their thoughts. Many productions of genius have originally been
+enveloped in feebleness and obscurity, which have only been brought to
+perfection by repeated acts of the mind. There is a maxim of Confucius,
+which in the translation seems quaint, but which is pregnant with sense--
+
+ Labour, but slight not meditation;
+ Meditate, but slight not labour.
+
+Few works of magnitude presented themselves at once, in their extent
+and with their associations, to their authors. Two or three striking
+circumstances, unobserved before, are perhaps all which the man of genius
+perceives. It is in revolving the subject that the whole mind becomes
+gradually agitated; as a summer landscape, at the break of day, is wrapped
+in mist: at first, the sun strikes on a single object, but the light and
+warmth increasing, the whole scene glows in the noonday of imagination.
+How beautifully this state of the mind, in the progress of composition,
+is described by DRYDEN, alluding to his work, "when it was only a confused
+mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy
+was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards
+the light, there to be distinguished, and then either to be chosen or
+rejected by the judgment!" At that moment, he adds, "I was in that
+eagerness of imagination which, by over-pleasing fanciful men, flatters
+them into the danger of writing." GIBBON tells us of his history, "At the
+onset all was dark and doubtful; even the title of the work, the true era
+of the decline and fall of the empire, &c. I was often tempted to cast
+away the labour of seven years." WINCKELMANN was long lost in composing
+his "History of Art;" a hundred fruitless attempts were made, before he
+could discover a plan amidst the labyrinth. Slight conceptions kindle
+finished works. A lady asking for a few verses on rural topics of the Abbe
+de Lille, his specimens pleased, and sketches heaped on sketches produced
+"Les Jardins." In writing the "Pleasures of Memory," as it happened with
+"The Rape of the Lock," the poet at first proposed a simple description in
+a few lines, till conducted by meditation the perfect composition of
+several years closed in that fine poem. That still valuable work, _L'Art
+de Penser_ of the Port-Royal, was originally projected to teach a young
+nobleman all that was practically useful in the art of logic in a few
+days, and was intended to have been written in one morning by the great
+ARNAULD; but to that profound thinker so many new ideas crowded in that
+slight task, that he was compelled to call in his friend NICOLLE; and thus
+a few projected pages closed in a volume so excellent, that our elegant
+metaphysician has recently declared, that "it is hardly possible to
+estimate the merits too highly." Pemberton, who knew NEWTON intimately,
+informs us that his Treatise on Natural Philosophy, full of a variety of
+profound inventions, was composed by him from scarcely any other materials
+than the _few propositions he had set down several years before_, and
+which having resumed, occupied him in writing one year and a half. A
+curious circumstance has been preserved in the life of the other immortal
+man in philosophy, Lord BACON. When young, he wrote a letter to Father
+Fulgentio concerning an Essay of his, to which he gave the title of "The
+Greatest Birth of Time," a title which he censures as too pompous. The
+Essay itself is lost, but it was the first outline of that great design
+which he afterwards pursued and finished in his "Instauration of the
+Sciences." LOCKE himself has informed us, that his great work on "The
+Human Understanding," when he first put pen to paper, he thought "would
+have been contained in one sheet, but that the farther he went on, the
+larger prospect he had." In this manner it would be beautiful to trace the
+history of the human mind, and observe how a NEWTON and a BACON and a
+LOCKE were proceeding for thirty years together, in accumulating truth
+upon truth, and finally building up these fabrics of their invention.
+
+Were it possible to collect some thoughts of great thinkers, which were
+never written, we should discover vivid conceptions, and an originality
+they never dared to pursue in their works! Artists have this advantage
+over authors, that their virgin fancies, their chance felicities, which
+labour cannot afterwards produce, are constantly perpetuated; and those
+"studies," as they are called, are as precious to posterity as their more
+complete designs. In literature we possess one remarkable evidence of
+these fortuitous thoughts of genius. POPE and SWIFT, being in the country
+together, observed, that if contemplative men were to notice "the thoughts
+which suddenly present themselves to their minds when walking in the
+fields, &c., they might find many as well worth preserving as some of
+their more deliberate reflections." They made a trial, and agreed to write
+down such involuntary thoughts as occurred during their stay there. These
+furnished out the "Thoughts" in Pope's and Swift's Miscellanies.[A] Among
+Lord Bacon's Remains, we find a paper entitled "_Sudden Thoughts,_ set
+down for Profit." At all hours, by the side of VOLTAIRE'S bed, or on his
+table, stood his pen and ink with slips of paper. The margins of his books
+were covered with his "sudden thoughts." CICERO, in reading, constantly
+took notes and made comments. There is an art of reading, as well as an
+art of thinking, and an art of writing.
+
+[Footnote A: This anecdote is found in Ruffhead's "Life of Pope,"
+evidently given by Warburton, as was everything of personal knowledge in
+that tasteless volume of a mere lawyer, who presumed to write the life of
+a poet.]
+
+The art of meditation may be exercised at all hours, and in all places;
+and men of genius, in their walks, at table, and amidst assemblies,
+turning the eye of the mind inwards, can form an artificial solitude;
+retired amidst a crowd, calm amidst distraction, and wise amidst folly.
+When DOMENICHINO was reproached for his dilatory habits, in not finishing
+a great picture for which he had contracted, his reply described this
+method of study: _Eh! lo la sto continuamente dipingendo entro di me_--I
+am continually painting it within myself. HOGARTH, with an eye always
+awake to the ridiculous, would catch a character on his thumb-nail.
+LEONARDO DA VINCI has left a great number of little books which lie
+usually carried in his girdle, that he might instantly sketch whatever he
+wished to recal to his recollection; and Amoretti discovered, that, in
+these light sketches, this fine genius was forming a system of physiognomy
+which he frequently inculcated to his pupils.[A] HAYDN carefully noted
+down in a pocket-book the passages and ideas which came to him in his
+walks or amid company. Some of the great actions of men of this habit of
+mind were first meditated on amidst the noise of a convivial party, or the
+music of a concert. The victory of Waterloo might have been organized in
+the ball-room at Brussels: and thus RODNEY, at the table of Lord Sandwich,
+while the bottle was briskly circulating, being observed arranging bits of
+cork, and his solitary amusement having excited inquiry, said that he was
+practising a plan to annihilate an enemy's fleet. This proved to be that
+discovery of breaking the line, which the happy audacity of the hero
+afterwards executed. What situation is more common than a sea-voyage,
+where nothing presents itself to the reflections of most men than irksome
+observations on the desert of waters? But the constant exercise of the
+mind by habitual practice is the privilege of a commanding genius, and, in
+a similar situation, we discover CICERO and Sir WILLIAM JONES acting
+alike. Amidst the Oriental seas, in a voyage of 12,000 miles, the mind of
+JONES kindled with delightful enthusiasm, and he has perpetuated those
+elevating feelings in his discourse to the Asiatic Society; so CICERO on
+board a ship, sailing slowly along the coast, passing by a town where his
+friend Trebatius resided, wrote a work which the other had expressed a
+wish to possess, and of which wish the view of the town had reminded him.
+
+[Footnote A: A collection of sixty-four of these sketches were published
+at Paris in 1730. They are remarkable as delineations of mental character
+in feature as strongly felt as if done under the direction of Larater
+himself.--ED.]
+
+To this habit of continuity of attention, tracing the first simple idea to
+its remoter consequences, the philosophical genius owes many of its
+discoveries. It was one evening in the cathedral of Pisa that GALILEO
+observed the vibrations of a brass lustre pendent from the vaulted roof,
+which had been left swinging by one of the vergers. The habitual
+meditation of genius combined with an ordinary accident a new idea of
+science, and hence conceived the invention of measuring time by the medium
+of a pendulum. Who but a genius of this order, sitting in his orchard,
+and observing the descent of an apple, could have discovered a new quality
+in matter, and have ascertained the laws of attraction, by perceiving
+that the same causes might perpetuate the regular motions of the planetary
+system; who but a genius of this order, while viewing boys blowing
+soap-bladders, could have discovered the properties of light and colours,
+and then anatomised a ray? FRANKLIN, on board a ship, observing a partial
+stillness in the waves when they threw down water which had been used for
+culinary purposes, by the same principle of meditation was led to the
+discovery of the wonderful property in oil of calming the agitated ocean;
+and many a ship has been preserved in tempestuous weather, or a landing
+facilitated on a dangerous surf, by this solitary meditation of genius.
+
+Thus meditation draws out of the most simple truths the strictness
+of philosophical demonstration, converting even the amusements of
+school-boys, or the most ordinary domestic occurrences, into the principle
+of a new science. The phenomenon of galvanism was familiar to students;
+yet was there but one man of genius who could take advantage of an
+accident, give it his name, and fix it as a science. It was while lying in
+his bath, but still meditating on the means to detect the fraud of the
+goldsmith who had made Hiero's crown, that the most extraordinary
+philosopher of antiquity was led to the investigation of a series of
+propositions demonstrated in the two books of ARCHIMEDES, _De insidentibus
+in fluido,_ still extant; and which a great mathematician admires both for
+the strictness and elegance of the demonstrations. To as minute a domestic
+occurrence as GALVANI'S we owe the steam-engine. When the Marquis of
+WORCESTER was a State prisoner in the Tower, he one day observed, while
+his meal was preparing in his apartment, that the cover of the vessel
+being tight, was, by the expansion of the steam, suddenly forced off, and
+driven up the chimney. His inventive mind was led on in a train of thought
+with reference to the practical application of steam as a first mover. His
+observations, obscurely exhibited in his "Century of Inventions," were
+successively wrought out by the meditations of others, and an incident, to
+which one can hardly make a formal reference without a risible emotion,
+terminated in the noblest instance of mechanical power.
+
+Into the stillness of meditation the mind of genius must be frequently
+thrown; it is a kind of darkness which hides from us all surrounding
+objects, even in the light of day. This is the first state of existence in
+genius. In Cicero's "Treatise on Old Age," we find Cato admiring Caius
+Sulpitius Gallus, who, when he sat down to write in the morning, was
+surprised by the evening; and when he took up his pen in the evening, was
+surprised by the appearance of the morning. SOCRATES sometimes remained a
+whole day in immovable meditation, his eyes and countenance directed to
+one spot, as if in the stillness of death. LA FONTAINE, when writing his
+comic tales, has been observed early in the morning and late in the
+evening in the same recumbent posture under the same tree. This quiescent
+state is a sort of enthusiasm, and renders everything that surrounds us as
+distant as if an immense interval separated us from the scene. Poggius has
+told us of DANTE, that he indulged his meditations more strongly than any
+man he knew; for when deeply busied in reading, he seemed to live only in
+his ideas. Once the poet went to view a public procession; having entered
+a bookseller's shop, and taken up a book, he sunk into a reverie; on his
+return he declared that he had neither seen nor heard a single occurrence
+in the public exhibition, which had passed unobserved before him. It has
+been told of a modern astronomer, that one summer night, when he was
+withdrawing to his chamber, the brightness of the heavens showed a
+phenomenon: he passed the whole night in observing it; and when they came
+to him early in the morning, and found him in the same attitude, he said,
+like one who had been recollecting his thoughts for a few moments, "It
+must be thus; but I'll go to bed before it is late." He had gazed the
+entire night in meditation, and was not aware of it. Abernethy has finely
+painted the situation of NEWTON in this state of mind. I will not change
+his words, for his words are his feelings. "It was this power of mind
+--which can contemplate the greatest number of facts or propositions with
+accuracy--that so eminently distinguished Newton from other men. It was
+this power that enabled him to arrange the whole of a treatise in his
+thoughts before he committed a single idea to paper. In the exercise of
+this power, he was known occasionally to have passed a whole night or day,
+entirely inattentive to surrounding objects."
+
+There is nothing incredible in the stories related of some who have
+experienced this entranced state in study, where the mind, deliciously
+inebriated with the object it contemplates, feels nothing, from the excess
+of feeling, as a philosopher well describes it. The impressions from our
+exterior sensations are often suspended by great mental excitement.
+ARCHIMEDES, involved in the investigation of mathematical truth, and the
+painters PROTOGENES and PARMEGIANO, found their senses locked up as it
+were in meditation, so as to be incapable of withdrawing themselves from
+their work, even in the midst of the terrors and storming of the place by
+the enemy. MARINO was so absorbed in the composition of his "Adonis," that
+he suffered his leg to be burned before the painful sensation grew
+stronger than the intellectual pleasure of his imagination. Monsieur
+THOMAS, a modern French writer, and an intense thinker, would sit for
+hours against a hedge, composing with a low voice, taking the same pinch
+of snuff for half an hour together without being aware that it had long
+disappeared. When he quitted his apartment, after prolonging his studies
+there, a visible alteration was observed in his person, and the agitation
+of his recent thoughts was still traced in his air and manner. With
+eloquent truth BUFFON described those reveries of the student, which
+compress his day, and mark the hours by the sensations of minutes!
+"Invention depends on patience: contemplate your subject long; it will
+gradually unfold till a sort of electric spark convulses for a moment the
+brain, and spreads down to the very heart a glow of irritation. Then come
+the luxuries of genius, the true hours for production and composition
+--hours so delightful, that I have spent twelve or fourteen successively
+at my writing-desk, and still been in a state of pleasure." Bishop HORNE,
+whose literary feelings were of the most delicate and lively kind, has
+beautifully recorded them in his progress through a favourite and
+lengthened work--his Commentary on the Psalms. He alludes to himself in
+the third person; yet who but the self-painter could have caught those
+delicious emotions which are so evanescent in the deep occupation of
+pleasant studies? "He arose fresh in the morning to his task; the silence
+of the night invited him to pursue it; and he can truly say, that food and
+rest were not preferred before it. Every part improved infinitely upon his
+acquaintance with it, and no one gave him uneasiness but the last, for
+then he grieved that his work was done."
+
+This eager delight of pursuing study, this impatience of interruption, and
+this exultation in progress, are alike finely described by MILTON in a
+letter to his friend Diodati.
+
+"Such is the character of my mind, that no delay, none of the ordinary
+cessations for rest or otherwise, I had nearly said care or thinking of
+the very subject, can hold me back from being hurried on to the destined
+point, and from completing the great circuit, as it were, of the study in
+which I am engaged."
+
+Such is the picture of genius viewed in the stillness of MEDITATION; but
+there is yet a more excited state, when, as if consciousness were mixing
+with its reveries, in the allusion of a scene, of a person, of a passion,
+the emotions of the soul affect even the organs of sense. This excitement
+is experienced when the poet in the excellence of invention, and the
+philosopher in the force of intellect, alike share in the hours of
+inspiration and the ENTHUSIASM of genius.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The enthusiasm of genius.--A state of mind resembling a waking dream
+distinct from reverie.--The ideal presence distinguished from the real
+presence.--The senses are really affected in the ideal world, proved by a
+variety of instances.--Of the rapture or sensation of deep study in art,
+in science, and literature.--Of perturbed feelings in delirium.--In
+extreme endurance of attention.--And in visionary illusions.--Enthusiasts
+in literature and art--of their self-immolations.
+
+
+We left the man of genius in the stillness of meditation. We have now
+to pursue his history through that more excited state which occurs in
+the most active operations of genius, and which the term _reverie_
+inadequately indicates. Metaphysical distinctions but ill describe it, and
+popular language affords no terms for those faculties and feelings which
+escape the observation of the multitude not affected by the phenomenon.
+
+The illusion produced by a drama on persons of great sensibility, when all
+the senses are awakened by a mixture of reality with imagination, is the
+effect experienced by men of genius in their own vivified ideal world.
+Real emotions are raised by fiction. In a scene, apparently passing in
+their presence, where the whole train of circumstances succeeds in all the
+continuity of nature, and where a sort of real existences appear to rise
+up before them, they themselves become spectators or actors. Their
+sympathies are excited, and the exterior organs of sense are visibly
+affected--they even break out into speech, and often accompany their
+speech with gestures.
+
+In this equivocal state the enthusiast of genius produces his
+masterpieces. This waking dream is distinct from reverie, where, our
+thoughts wandering without connexion, the faint impressions are so
+evanescent as to occur without even being recollected. A day of _reverie_
+is beautifully painted by ROUSSEAU as distinct from a day of _thinking_:
+"J'ai des journees delicieuses, errant sans souci, sans projet, sans
+affaire, de bois en bois, et de rocher en rocher, _revant toujours et ne
+pensant point."_ Far different, however, is one closely-pursued act of
+meditation, carrying the enthusiast of genius beyond the precinct of
+actual existence. The act of contemplation then creates the thing
+contemplated. He is now the busy actor in a world which he himself only
+views; alone, he hears, he sees, he touches, he laughs, he weeps; his
+brows and lips, and his very limbs move.
+
+Poets and even painters, who, as Lord Bacon describes witches, "are
+imaginative," have often involuntarily betrayed, in the act of
+composition, those gestures which accompany this enthusiasm. Witness
+DOMENICHINO enraging himself that he might portray anger. Nor were these
+creative gestures quite unknown to QUINTILIAN, who has nobly compared them
+to the lashings of the lion's tail, rousing him to combat. Actors of
+genius have accustomed themselves to walk on the stage for an hour before
+the curtain was drawn, that they might fill their minds with all the
+phantoms of the drama, and so suspend all communion with the external
+world. The great actress of our age, during representation, always had the
+door of her dressing-room open, that she might listen to, and if possible
+watch the whole performance, with the same attention as was experienced by
+the spectators. By this means she possessed herself of all the illusion of
+the scene; and when she herself entered on the stage, her dreaming
+thoughts then brightened into a vision, where the perceptions of the soul
+were as firm and clear as if she were really the Constance or the
+Katherine whom she only represented.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: The late Mrs. SIDDONS. She herself communicated this striking
+circumstance to me.]
+
+Aware of this peculiar faculty, so prevalent in the more vivid exercise of
+genius, Lord KAIMES seems to have been the first who, in a work on
+criticism, attempted to name _the ideal presence_, to distinguish it from
+the _real presence_ of things. It has been called the representative
+faculty, the imaginative state, and many other states and faculties. Call
+it what we will, no term opens to us the invisible mode of its operations,
+no metaphysical definition expresses its variable nature. Conscious of the
+existence of such a faculty, our critic perceived that the conception of
+it is by no means clear when described in words.
+
+Has not the difference between an actual thing, and its image in a glass,
+perplexed some philosophers? and it is well known how far the ideal
+philosophy has been carried by so fine a genius as Bishop BERKELEY. "All
+are pictures, alike painted on the retina, or optical sensorium!"
+exclaimed the enthusiast BARRY, who only saw pictures in nature, and
+nature in pictures. This faculty has had a strange influence over the
+passionate lovers of statues. We find unquestionable evidence of the
+vividness of the representative faculty, or the ideal presence, vying with
+that of reality. EVELYN has described one of this cast of mind, in the
+librarian of the Vatican, who haunted one of the finest collections at
+Rome. To these statues he would frequently talk as if they were living
+persons, often kissing and embracing them. A similar circumstance might be
+recorded of a man of distinguished talent and literature among ourselves.
+Wondrous stories are told of the amatorial passion for marble statues; but
+the wonder ceases, and the truth is established, when the irresistible
+ideal presence is comprehended; the visions which now bless these lovers
+of statues, in the modern land of sculpture, Italy, had acted with equal
+force in ancient Greece. "The Last Judgment," the stupendous ideal
+presence of MICHAEL ANGELO, seems to have communicated itself to some of
+his beholders: "As I stood before this picture," a late traveller tells
+us, "my blood chilled as if the reality were before me, and the very sound
+of the trumpet seemed to pierce my ears."
+
+Cold and barren tempers without imagination, whose impressions of objects
+never rise beyond those of memory and reflection, which know only to
+compare, and not to excite, will smile at this equivocal state of the
+ideal presence; yet it is a real one to the enthusiast of genius, and it
+is his happiest and peculiar condition. Destitute of this faculty, no
+metaphysical aid, no art to be taught him, no mastery of talent will
+avail him: unblest with it, the votary will find each sacrifice lying cold
+on the altar, for no accepting flame from heaven shall kindle it.
+
+This enthusiasm indeed can only be discovered by men of genius themselves;
+yet when most under its influence, they can least perceive it, as the eye
+which sees all things cannot view itself; or, rather, such an attempt
+would be like searching for the principle of life, which were it found
+would cease to be life. From an enchanted man we must not expect a
+narrative of his enchantment; for if he could speak to us reasonably, and
+like one of ourselves, in that case he would be a man in a state of
+disenchantment, and then would perhaps yield us no better account than we
+may trace by our own observations.
+
+There is, however, something of reality in this state of the ideal
+presence; for the most familiar instances will show how the nerves of each
+external sense are put in motion by the idea of the object, as if the real
+object had been presented to it. The difference is only in the degree. The
+senses are more concerned in the ideal world than at first appears. The
+idea of a thing will make us shudder; and the bare imagination of it will
+often produce a real pain. A curious consequence may be deduced from this
+principle; MILTON, lingering amid the freshness of nature in Eden, felt
+all the delights of those elements which he was creating; his nerves moved
+with the images which excited them. The fierce and wild DANTE, amidst the
+abysses of his "Inferno," must often have been startled by its horrors,
+and often left his bitter and gloomy spirit in the stings he inflicted on
+the great criminal. The moveable nerves, then, of the man of genius are a
+reality, he sees, he hears, he feels, by each. How mysterious to us is the
+operation of this faculty!
+
+A HOMER and a RICHARDSON,[A] like nature, open a volume large as life
+itself--embracing a circuit of human existence! This state of the mind has
+even a reality in it for the generality of persons. In a romance or a
+drama, tears are often seen in the eyes of the reader or the spectator,
+who, before they have time to recollect that the whole is fictitious, have
+been surprised for a moment by a strong conception of a present and
+existing scene.
+
+[Footnote A: Richardson assembles a family about him, writing down what
+they said, seeing their very manner of saying, living with them as often
+and as long as he wills--with such a personal unity, that an ingenious
+lawyer once told me that he required no stronger evidence of a fact in any
+court of law than a circumstantial scene in Richardson.]
+
+Can we doubt of the reality of this faculty, when the visible and outward
+frame of the man of genius bears witness to its presence? When FIELDING
+said, "I do not doubt but the most pathetic and affecting scenes have been
+writ with tears," he probably drew that discovery from an inverse feeling
+to his own. Fielding would have been gratified to have confirmed the
+observation by facts which never reached him. Metastasio, in writing the
+ninth scene of the second act of his _Olympiad_, found himself suddenly
+moved--shedding tears. The imagined sorrows had inspired real tears; and
+they afterwards proved contagious. Had our poet not perpetuated his
+surprise by an interesting sonnet, the circumstance had passed away with
+the emotion, as many such have. Pope could never read Priam's speech for
+the loss of his son without tears, and frequently has been observed to
+weep over tender and melancholy passages. ALFIERI, the most energetic poet
+of modern times, having composed, without a pause, the whole of an act,
+noted in the margin--"Written under a paroxysm of enthusiasm, and while
+shedding a flood of tears." The impressions which the frame experiences in
+this state, leave deeper traces behind them than those of reverie. A
+circumstance accidentally preserved has informed us of the tremors of
+DRYDEN after having written that ode,[A] which, as he confessed, he had
+pursued without the power of quitting it; but these tremors were not
+unusual with him--for in the preface to his "Tales," he tells us, that "in
+translating Homer he found greater pleasure than in Virgil; but it was not
+a pleasure without pain; the continual agitation of the spirits must needs
+be a weakener to any constitution, especially in age, and many pauses are
+required for refreshment betwixt the heats."
+
+[Footnote A: This famous and unparalleled ode was probably afterwards
+retouched; but Joseph Warton discovered in it the rapidity of the
+thoughts, and the glow and the expressiveness of the images; which are the
+certain marks of the _first sketch_ of a master.]
+
+We find Metastasio, like others of the brotherhood, susceptible of this
+state, complaining of his sufferings during the poetical aestus. "When I
+apply with attention, the nerves of my sensorium are put into a violent
+tumult; I grow as red as a drunkard, and am obliged to quit my work." When
+BUFFON was absorbed on a subject which presented great objections to his
+opinions, he felt his head burn, and saw his countenance flushed; and this
+was a warning for him to suspend his attention. GRAY could never compose
+voluntarily: his genius resembled the armed apparition in Shakspeare's
+master-tragedy. "He would not be commanded." When he wished to compose the
+Installation Ode, for a considerable time he felt himself without the
+power to begin it: a friend calling on him, GRAY flung open his door
+hastily, and in a hurried voice and tone, exclaiming in the first verse of
+that ode--
+
+ Hence, avaunt! 'tis holy ground!--
+
+his friend started at the disordered appearance of the bard,
+whose orgasm had disturbed his very air and countenance.
+
+Listen to one labouring with all the magic of the spell. Madame ROLAND has
+thus powerfully described the ideal presence in her first readings of
+Telemachus and Tassot:--"My respiration rose, I felt a rapid fire
+colouring my face, and my voice changing had betrayed my agitation. I was
+Eucharis for Telemachus, and Erminia for Tancred. However, during this
+perfect transformation, I did not yet think that I myself was anything,
+for any one: the whole had no connexion with myself. I sought for nothing
+around me; I was they; I saw only the objects which existed for them; it
+was a dream, without being awakened."
+
+The description which so calm and exquisite an investigator of taste and
+philosophy as our sweet and polished REYNOLDS has given of himself at one
+of these moments, is too rare not to be recorded in his own words.
+Alluding to the famous "Transfiguration," our own RAFFAELLE says--"When I
+have stood looking at that picture from figure to figure, the eagerness,
+the spirit, the close unaffected attention of each figure to the principal
+action, my thoughts have carried me away, that I have forgot myself; and
+for that time might be looked upon as an enthusiastic madman; for I could
+really fancy the whole action was passing before my eyes."
+
+The effect which the study of Plutarch's Illustrious Men produced on the
+mighty mind of ALFIERI, during a whole winter, while he lived as it were
+among the heroes of antiquity, he has himself described. Alfieri wept and
+raved with grief and indignation that he was born under a government which
+favoured no Roman heroes and sages. As often as he was struck with the
+great deeds of these great men, in his extreme agitation he rose from his
+seat as one possessed. The feeling of genius in Alfieri was suppressed for
+more than twenty years, by the discouragement of his uncle: but as the
+natural temperament cannot be crushed out of the soul of genius, he was a
+poet without writing a single verse; and as a great poet, the ideal
+presence at times became ungovernable, verging to madness. In traversing
+the wilds of Arragon, his emotions would certainly have given birth to
+poetry, could he have expressed himself in verse. It was a complete state
+of the imaginative existence, or this ideal presence; for he proceeded
+along the wilds of Arragon in a reverie, weeping and laughing by turns. He
+considered this as a folly, because it ended in nothing but in laughter
+and tears. He was not aware that he was then yielding to a demonstration,
+could he have judged of himself, that he possessed those dispositions of
+mind and that energy of passion which form the poetical character.
+
+Genius creates by a single conception; the statuary conceives the statue
+at once, which he afterwards executes by the slow process of art; and the
+architect contrives a whole palace in an instant. In a single principle,
+opening as it were on a sudden to genius, a great and new system of things
+is discovered. It has happened, sometimes, that this single conception,
+rushing over the whole concentrated spirit, has agitated the frame
+convulsively. It comes like a whispered secret from Nature. When
+MALEBRANCHE first took up Descartes's Treatise on Man, the germ of his own
+subsequent philosophic system, such was his intense feeling, that a
+violent palpitation of the heart, more than once, obliged him to lay down
+the volume. When the first idea of the "Essay on the Arts and Sciences"
+rushed on the mind of ROUSSEAU, a feverish symptom in his nervous system
+approached to a slight delirium. Stopping under an oak, he wrote with a
+pencil the Proso-popeia of Fabricius. "I still remember my solitary
+transport at the discovery of a philosophical argument against the
+doctrine of transubstantiation," exclaimed GIBBON in his Memoirs.
+
+This quick sensibility of genius has suppressed the voice of poets in
+reciting their most pathetic passages. THOMSON was so oppressed by a
+passage in Virgil or Milton when he attempted to read, that "his voice
+sunk in ill-articulated sounds from the bottom of his breast." The
+tremulous figures of the ancient Sibyl appear to have been viewed in the
+land of the Muses, by the energetic description which Paulus Jovius gives
+us of the impetus and afflatus of one of the Italian improvvisatori, some
+of whom, I have heard from one present at a similar exhibition, have not
+degenerated in poetic inspiration, nor in its corporeal excitement. "His
+eyes fixed downwards, kindle as he gives utterance to his effusions, the
+moist drops flow down his cheeks, the veins of his forehead swell, and
+wonderfully his learned ear, as it were, abstracted and intent, moderates
+each impulse of his flowing numbers."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: The passage is curious:--"Canenti defixi exardent oculi,
+sudores manant, frontis venae contumescunt, et quod mirum est, eruditae
+aures, tanquam alienae et intentae, omnem impetum profluentium numerorum
+exactissima ratione moderantur."]
+
+This enthusiasm throws the man of genius amid Nature into absorbing
+reveries when the senses of other men are overcome at the appearance of
+destruction; he continues to view only Nature herself. The mind of PLINY,
+to add one more chapter to his mighty scroll, sought Nature amidst the
+volcano in which he perished. VERNET was on board a ship in a raging
+tempest where all hope was given up. The astonished captain beheld the
+artist of genius, his pencil in his hand, in calm enthusiasm sketching the
+terrible world of waters--studying the wave that was rising to devour
+him.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Vernet was the artist whose sea-ports of France still
+decorate the Louvre. He was marine painter to Louis XV. and grandfather of
+the celebrated Horace Vernet, whose recent death has deprived France of
+her best painter of battle-scenes.--ED.]
+
+There is a tender enthusiasm in the elevated studies of antiquity. Then
+the ideal presence or the imaginative existence prevails, by its perpetual
+associations, or as the late Dr. Brown has, perhaps, more distinctly
+termed them, _suggestions._ "In contemplating antiquity, the mind itself
+becomes antique," was finely observed by Livy, long ere our philosophy of
+the mind existed as a system. This rapture, or sensation of deep study,
+has been described by one whose imagination had strayed into the occult
+learning of antiquity, and in the hymns of Orpheus it seemed to him that
+he had lifted the veil from Nature. His feelings were associated with her
+loneliness. I translate his words:--"When I took these dark mystical hymns
+into my hands, I appeared as it were to be descending into an abyss of the
+mysteries of venerable antiquity; at that moment, the world in silence and
+the stars and moon only, watching me." This enthusiasm is confirmed by Mr.
+Mathias, who applies this description to his own emotions on his first
+opening the manuscript volumes of the poet Gray on the philosophy of
+Plato; "and many a learned man," he adds, "will acknowledge as his own the
+feelings of this animated scholar."
+
+Amidst the monuments of great and departed nations, our Imagination is
+touched by the grandeur of local impressions, and the vivid associations,
+or suggestions, of the manners, the arts, and the individuals, of a great
+people. The classical author of Anacharsis, when in Italy, would often
+stop as if overcome by his recollections. Amid camps, temples, circuses,
+hippodromes, and public and private edifices, he, as it were, held an
+interior converse with the manes of those who seemed hovering about the
+capital of the old world; as if he had been a citizen of ancient Rome
+travelling in the modern. So men of genius have roved amid the awful ruins
+till the ideal presence has fondly built up the city anew, and have become
+Romans in the Rome of two thousand years past. POMPONOIUS LETUS, who
+devoted his life to this study, was constantly seen wandering amidst the
+vestiges of this "throne of the world." There, in many a reverie, as his
+eye rested on the mutilated arch and the broken column, abstracted and
+immovable, he dropped tears in the ideal presence of Rome and of the
+Romans.[A] Another enthusiast of this class was BOSIUS, who sought beneath
+Rome for another Rome, in those catacombs built by the early Christians
+for their asylum and their sepulchre. His work of "Roma Sotteranea" is the
+production of a subterraneous life, passed in fervent and perilous
+labours. Taking with him a hermit's meal for the week, this new Pliny
+often descended into the bowels of the earth, by lamp-light, clearing away
+the sand and ruins till a tomb broke forth, or an inscription became
+legible. Accompanied by some friend whom his enthusiasm had inspired with
+his own sympathy, here he dictated his notes, tracing the mouldering
+sculpture, and catching the fading picture. Thrown back into the primitive
+ages of Christianity, amid the local impressions, the historian of the
+Christian catacombs collected the memorials of an age and of a race which
+were hidden beneath the earth.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: Shelley caught much of his poetry in wandering among the
+ruins of the palace of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill; and the
+impression made by historic ruins on the mind of Byron is powerfully
+evinced in his "Childe Harold."--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: A large number of these important memorials have been since
+removed to the _Galleria Lapidaria_ of the Vatican, and arranged on the
+walls by Marini. They are invaluable as mementoes of the early Church at
+Rome. Aringhi has also devoted a work to their elucidation. The Rev. C.
+Maitland's "Church in the Catacombs" is an able general summary, clearly
+displaying their intrinsic historic value--ED.]
+
+The same enthusiasm surrounds the world of science with that creative
+imagination which has startled even men of science by its peculiar
+discoveries. WERNER, the mineralogist, celebrated for his lectures,
+appears, by some accounts transmitted by his auditors, to have exercised
+this faculty. Werner often said that "he always depended on the muse for
+inspiration." His unwritten lecture was a reverie--till kindling in his
+progress, blending science and imagination in the grandeur of his
+conceptions, at times, as if he had gathered about him the very elements
+of nature, his spirit seemed to be hovering over the waters and the
+strata. With the same enthusiasm of science, CUVIER meditated on some
+bones, and some fragments of bones, which could not belong to any known
+class of the animal kingdom. The philosopher dwelt on these animal ruins
+till he constructed numerous species which had disappeared from the globe.
+This sublime naturalist has ascertained and classified the fossil remains
+of animals whose existence can no longer be traced in the records of
+mankind. His own language bears testimony to the imagination which carried
+him on through a career so strange and wonderful. "It is a rational object
+of ambition in the mind of man, to whom only a short space of time is
+allotted upon earth, to have the glory of restoring the history of
+_thousands of ages which preceded the existence of his race, and of
+thousands of animals that never were contemporaneous with his species_."
+Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of
+genius. Even in the practical part of a science, painful to the operator
+himself, Mr. Abernethy has declared, and eloquently declared, that this
+enthusiasm is absolutely requisite. "We have need of enthusiasm, or some
+strong incentive, to induce us to spend our nights in study, and our days
+in the disgusting and health-destroying observation of human diseases,
+which alone can enable us to understand, alleviate, or remove them. On no
+other terms can we be considered as real students of our profession--to
+confer that which sick kings would fondly purchase with their diadem--that
+which wealth cannot purchase, nor state nor rank bestow--to alleviate the
+most insupportable of human afflictions." Such is the enthusiasm of the
+physiologist of genius, who elevates the demonstrations of anatomical
+inquiries by the cultivation of the intellectual faculties, connecting
+"man with the common Master of the universe."
+
+This enthusiasm inconceivably fills the mind of genius in all great and
+solemn operations. It is an agitation amidst calmness, and is required hot
+only in the fine arts, but wherever a great and continued exertion of the
+soul must be employed. The great ancients, who, if they were not always
+philosophers, were always men of genius, saw, or imagined they saw, a
+divinity within the man. This enthusiasm is alike experienced in the
+silence of study and amidst the roar of cannon, in painting a picture or
+in scaling a rampart. View DE THOU, the historian, after his morning
+prayers, imploring the Divinity to purify his heart from partiality and
+hatred, and to open his spirit in developing the truth, amidst the
+contending factions of his times; and HAYDN, employed in his "Creation,"
+earnestly addressing the Creator ere he struck his instrument. In moments
+like these, man becomes a perfect unity--one thought and one act,
+abstracted from all other thoughts and all other acts. This intensity of
+the mind was felt by GRAY in his loftiest excursions, and is perhaps the
+same power which impels the villager, when, to overcome his rivals in a
+contest for leaping, he retires hack some steps, collects all exertion
+into his mind, and clears the eventful bound. One of our admirals in the
+reign of Elizabeth held as a maxim, that a height of passion, amounting to
+frenzy, was necessary to qualify a man for the command of a fleet; and
+NELSON, decorated by all his honours about him, on the day of battle, at
+the sight of those emblems of glory emulated himself. This enthusiasm was
+necessary for his genius, and made it effective.
+
+But this enthusiasm, prolonged as it often has been by the operation of
+the imaginative existence, becomes a state of perturbed feeling, and can
+only be distinguished from a disordered intellect by the power of volition
+possessed by a sound mind of withdrawing from the ideal world into the
+world of sense. It is but a step which may carry us from the wanderings of
+fancy into the aberrations of delirium. The endurance of attention, even
+in minds of the highest order, is limited by a law of nature; and when
+thinking is goaded on to exhaustion, confusion of ideas ensues, as
+straining any one of our limbs by excessive exertion produces tremor and
+torpor.
+
+ With curious art the brain too finely wrought
+ Preys on herself and is destroyed by Thought;
+ Constant attention wears the active mind,
+ Blots out her powers, and leaves a blank behind--
+ The greatest genius to this fate may bow.
+
+Even minds less susceptible than high genius may become overpowered by
+their imagination. Often, in the deep silence around us, we seek to
+relieve ourselves by some voluntary noise or action which may direct our
+attention to an exterior object, and bring us back to the world, which we
+had, as it were, left behind us. The circumstance is sufficiently
+familiar; as well as another; that whenever we are absorbed in profound
+contemplation, a startling noise scatters the spirits, and painfully
+agitates the whole frame. The nerves are then in a state of the utmost
+relaxation. There may be an agony in thought which only deep thinkers
+experience. The terrible effect of metaphysical studies on BEATTIE has
+been told by himself. "Since the 'Essay on Truth' was printed in quarto, I
+have never _dared_ to read it over. I durst not even read the sheets to
+see whether there were any errors in the print, and was obliged to get a
+friend to do that office for me. These studies came in time to have
+dreadful effects upon my nervous system; and I cannot read what I then
+wrote without some degree of horror, because it recalls to my mind the
+horrors that I have sometimes felt after passing a long evening in those
+severe studies."
+
+GOLDONI, after a rash exertion of writing sixteen plays in a year,
+confesses he paid the penalty of the folly. He flew to Genoa, leading a
+life of delicious vacuity. To pass the day without doing anything, was all
+the enjoyment he was now capable of feeling. But long after he said, "I
+felt at that time, and have ever since continued to feel, the consequence
+of that exhaustion of spirits I sustained in composing my sixteen
+comedies."
+
+The enthusiasm of study was experienced by POPE in his self-education, and
+once it clouded over his fine intellect. It was the severity of his
+application which distorted his body; and he then partook of a calamity
+incidental to the family of genius, for he sunk into that state of
+exhaustion which SMOLLETT experienced during half a year, called a _coma
+vigil,_ an affection of the brain, where the principle of life is so
+reduced, that all external objects appear to be passing in a dream.
+BOERHAAVE has related of himself, that having imprudently indulged in
+intense thought on a particular subject, he did not close his eyes for six
+weeks after; and TISSOT, in his work on the health of men of letters,
+abounds in similar cases, where a complete stupor has affected the unhappy
+student for a period of six months.
+
+Assuredly the finest geniuses have not always the power to withdraw
+themselves from that intensely interesting train of ideas, which we have
+shown has not been removed from about them by even the violent stimuli of
+exterior objects; and the scenical illusion which then occurs, has been
+called the _hallucinatio studiosa,_ or false ideas in reverie. Such was
+the state in which PETRARCH found himself, in that minute narrative
+of a vision in which Laura appeared to him; and TASSO, in the lofty
+conversations he held with a spirit that glided towards him on the beams
+of the sun. In this state was MALEBRANCHE listening to the voice of God
+within him; and Lord HERBEBT, when, to know whether he should publish his
+book, he threw himself on his knees, and interrogated the Deity in the
+stillness of the sky.[A] And thus PASCAL started at times at a fiery gulf
+opening by his side. SPINELLO having painted the fall of the rebellious
+angels, had so strongly imagined the illusion, and more particularly the
+terrible features of Lucifer, that he was himself struck with such horror
+as to have been long afflicted with the presence of the demon to which his
+genius had given birth. The influence of the game ideal presence operated
+on the religious painter ANGELONI, who could never represent the
+sufferings of Jesus without his eyes overflowing with tears. DESCARTES,
+when young, and in a country seclusion, his brain exhausted with
+meditation, and his imagination heated to excess, heard a voice in the air
+which called him to pursue the search of truth; nor did he doubt the
+vision, and this delirious dreaming of genius charmed him even in his
+after-studies. Our COLLINS and COWPER were often thrown into that
+extraordinary state of mind, when the ideal presence converts us into
+visionaries; and their illusions were as strong as SEEDENBORG'S, who saw a
+terrestrial heaven in the glittering streets of his New Jerusalem; or
+JACOB BEHMEN'S, who listened to a celestial voice till he beheld the
+apparition of an angel; or CARDAN'S, when he so carefully observed a
+number of little armed men at his feet; or BENVENUTO CELLINI'S, whose
+vivid imagination and glorious egotism so frequently contemplated "a
+resplendent light hovering over his shadow."
+
+[Footnote A: In his curious autobiography he has given the prayer he used,
+ending "I am not satisfied whether I shall publish this book _de
+veritate_; if it be for thy glory, I beseech thee give me some sign from
+heaven; if not I shall suppress it." His lordships adds, "I had no sooner
+spoken these words but a loud, though gentle noise came from the heavens
+(for it was like nothing on earth) which did so comfort and cheer me, that
+I took my petition as granted, and that I had the sign I demanded,
+whereupon also I resolved to print my book. This (how strange soever it
+may seem) I protest before the eternal God is true, neither am I any way
+superstitiously deceived therein, since I did not only clearly hear the
+noise, but in the serenest sky that ever I saw, being without all cloud,
+did to my thinking see the place from whence it came."--ED.]
+
+Such minds identified themselves with their visions! If we pass them over
+by asserting that they were insane, we are only cutting the knot which we
+cannot untie. We have no right to deny what some maintain, that a sympathy
+of the corporeal with the incorporeal nature of man, his imaginative with
+his physical existence, is an excitement which appears to have been
+experienced by persons of a peculiar organization, and which
+metaphysicians in despair must resign to the speculations of enthusiasts
+themselves, though metaphysicians reason about phenomena far removed from
+the perceptions of the eye. The historian of the mind cannot omit this
+fact, unquestionable, however incomprehensible. According to our own
+conceptions, this state must produce a strange mysterious personage: a
+concentration of a human being within himself, endowed with inward eyes,
+ears which listen to interior sounds, and invisible hands touching
+impalpable objects, for whatever they act or however they are acted on, as
+far as respects themselves all must have passed within their own minds.
+The Platonic Dr. MORE flattered himself that he was an enthusiast without
+enthusiasm, which seems but a suspicious state of convalescence. "I must
+ingenuously confess," he says, "that I have a natural touch of enthusiasm,
+in my complexion, but such as I thank God was ever governable enough, and
+have found at length perfectly subduable. In virtue of which victory I
+know better what is in enthusiasts than they themselves; and therefore was
+able to write with life and judgment, and shall, I hope, contribute not a
+little to the peace and quiet of this kingdom thereby." Thus far one of
+its votaries: and all that he vaunts to have acquired by this mysterious
+faculty of enthusiasm is the having rendered it "at length perfectly
+subduable." Yet those who have written on "Mystical devotion," have
+declared that, "it is a sublime state of mind to which whole sects have
+aspired, and some individuals appear to have attained."[A] The histories
+of great visionaries, were they correctly detailed, would probably prove
+how their delusions consisted of the ocular _spectra_ of their brain and
+the accelerated sensations of their nerves. BAYLE has conjured up an
+amusing theory of apparitions, to show that HOBBES, who was subject to
+occasional terrors, might fear that a certain combination of atoms
+agitating his brain might so disorder his mind as to expose him to
+spectral visions; and so being very timid, and distrusting his own
+imagination, he was averse at times to be left alone. Apparitions often
+happen in dreams, but they may happen to a man when awake, for reading and
+hearing of them would revive their images, and these images might play
+even an incredulous philosopher some unlucky trick.
+
+[Footnote A: CHARLES BUTLER has drawn up a sensible essay on "Mystical
+Devotion." He was a Roman Catholic. NORRIS, and Dr. HENRY MORE, and Bishop
+BERKELEY, may be consulted by the curious.]
+
+But men of genius whose enthusiasm has not been past recovery, have
+experienced this extraordinary state of the mind, in those exhaustions of
+study to which they unquestionably are subject. Tissot, on "The Health of
+Men of Letters," has produced a terrifying number of cases. They
+see and hear what none but themselves do. Genius thrown into this
+peculiar state has produced some noble effusions. KOTZEBUE was once
+absorbed in hypochondriacal melancholy, and appears to have meditated on
+self-destruction; but it happened that he preserved his habit of dramatic
+composition, and produced one of his most energetic dramas--that of
+"Misanthropy and Repentance." He tells us that he had never experienced
+such a rapid flow of thoughts and images, and he believed, what a
+physiological history would perhaps show, that there are some maladies,
+those of the brain and the nerves, which actually stretch the powers of
+the mind beyond their usual reach. It is the more vivid world of ideal
+existence.
+
+But what is more evident, men of the finest genius have experienced these
+hallucinations in society acting on their moral habits. They have
+insulated the mind. With them ideas have become realities, and suspicions
+certainties; while events have been noted down as seen and heard, which in
+truth had never occurred. ROUSSEAU'S phantoms scarcely ever quitted him
+for a day. BARRY imagined that he was invisibly persecuted by the Royal
+Academy, who had even spirited up a gang of housebreakers. The vivid
+memoirs of ALFIERI will authenticate what DONNE, who himself had suffered
+from them, calls "these eclipses, sudden offuscations and darkening of the
+senses." Too often the man of genius, with a vast and solitary power,
+darkens the scene of life; he builds a pyramid between himself and the
+sun. Mocking at the expedients by which society has contrived to protect
+its feebleness, he would break down the institutions from which he has
+shrunk away in the loneliness of his feelings. Such is the insulating
+intellect in which some of the most elevated spirits have been reduced. To
+imbue ourselves with the genius of their works, even to think of them, is
+an awful thing! In nature their existence is a solecism, as their genius
+is a paradox; for their crimes seem to be without guilt, their curses have
+kindness in them, and if they afflict mankind it is in sorrow.
+
+Yet what less than enthusiasm is the purchase-price of high passion and
+invention? Perhaps never has there been a man of genius of this rare cast,
+who has not betrayed the ebullitions of imagination in some outward
+action, at that period when the illusions of life are more real to genius
+than its realities. There is a _fata morgana_, that throws into the air a
+pictured land, and the deceived eye trusts till the visionary shadows
+glide away. "I have dreamt of a golden land," exclaimed FUSELI, "and
+solicit in vain for the barge which is to carry me to its shore." A slight
+derangement of our accustomed habits, a little perturbation of the
+faculties, and a romantic tinge on the feelings, give no indifferent
+promise of genius; of that generous temper which knowing nothing of the
+baseness of mankind, with indefinite views carries on some glorious design
+to charm the world or to make it happier. Often we hear, from the
+confessions of men of genius, of their having in youth indulged the most
+elevating and the most chimerical projects; and if age ridicule thy
+imaginative existence, be assured that it is the decline of its genius.
+That virtuous and tender enthusiast, FENELON, in his early youth, troubled
+his friends with a classical and religious reverie. He was on the point of
+quitting them to restore the independence of Greece, with the piety of a
+missionary, and with the taste of a classical antiquary. The Peloponnesus
+opened to him the Church of Corinth where St. Paul preached, the Piraeus
+where Socrates conversed; while the latent poet was to pluck laurels from
+Delphi, and rove amidst the amenities of Tempe. Such was the influence of
+the ideal presence; and barren will be his imagination, and luckless his
+fortune, who, claiming the honours of genius, has never been touched by
+such a temporary delirium.
+
+To this enthusiasm, and to this alone, can we attribute the
+self-immolation of men of genius. Mighty and laborious works have been
+pursued, as a forlorn hope, at the certain destruction of the fortune of
+the individual. Vast labours attest the enthusiasm which accompanied their
+progress. Such men have sealed their works with their blood: they have
+silently borne the pangs of disease; they have barred themselves from the
+pursuits of fortune; they have torn themselves away from all they loved in
+life, patiently suffering these self-denials, to escape from interruptions
+and impediments to their studies. Martyrs of literature and art, they
+behold in their solitude the halo of immortality over their studious
+heads--that fame which is "a life beyond life." VAN HELMONT, in his
+library and his laboratory, preferred their busy solitude to the honours
+and the invitations of Rodolphus II., there writing down what he daily
+experienced during thirty years; nor would the enthusiast yield up to the
+emperor one of those golden and visionary days! MILTON would not desist
+from proceeding with one of his works, although warned by the physician of
+the certain loss of his sight. He declared he preferred his duty to his
+eyes, and doubtless his fame to his comfort. ANTHONY WOOD, to preserve the
+lives of others, voluntarily resigned his own to cloistered studies; nor
+did the literary passion desert him in his last moments, when with his
+dying hands the hermit of literature still grasped his beloved papers, and
+his last mortal thoughts dwelt on his "Athenae Oxonienses." MORERI, the
+founder of our great biographical collections, conceived the design with
+such enthusiasm, and found such seduction in the labour, that he willingly
+withdrew from the popular celebrity he had acquired as a preacher, and the
+preferment which a minister of state, in whose house he resided, would
+have opened to his views.[A] After the first edition of his "Historical
+Dictionary," he had nothing so much at heart as its improvement. His
+unyielding application was converting labour into death; but collecting
+his last renovated vigour, with his dying hands he gave the volume to the
+world, though he did not live to witness even its publication. All objects
+in life appeared mean to him, compared with that exalted delight of
+addressing, to the literary men of his age, the history of their brothers.
+Such are the men, as BACON says of himself, who are "the servants of
+posterity,"--
+
+ Who scorn delights, and live laborious days!
+
+[Footnote A: Louis Moreri was born in Provence in 1643, and died in 1680,
+at the early age of 37, while engaged on a second edition of his great
+work. The minister alluded to in the text was M. de Pomponne, Secretary of
+State to Louis XIV. until the year 1679.--ED.]
+
+The same enthusiasm inspires the pupils of art consumed by their own
+ardour. The young and classical sculptor who raised the statue of Charles
+II., placed in the centre of the Royal Exchange, was, in the midst of his
+work, advised by his medical friends to desist; for the energy of his
+labour, with the strong excitement of his feelings, already had made fatal
+inroads in his constitution: but he was willing, he said, to die at the
+foot of his statue. The statue was raised, and the young sculptor, with
+the shining eye and hectic flush of consumption, beheld it there--returned
+home--and died. DROUAIS, a pupil of David, the French painter, was a youth
+of fortune, but the solitary pleasure of his youth was his devotion to
+Raphael; he was at his studies from four in the morning till night.
+"Painting or nothing!" was the cry of this enthusiast of elegance; "First
+fame, then amusement," was another. His sensibility was great as his
+enthusiasm; and he cut in pieces the picture for which David declared he
+would inevitably obtain the prize. "I have had my reward in your
+approbation; but next year I shall feel more certain of deserving it," was
+the reply of this young enthusiast. Afterwards he astonished Paris with
+his "Marius;" but while engaged on a subject which he could never quit,
+the principle of life itself was drying up in his veins. HENRY HEADLEY and
+KIRKE WHITE were the early victims of the enthusiasm of study, and are
+mourned by the few who are organized like themselves.
+
+ 'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow,
+ And help'd to plant the wound that laid thee low;
+ So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain,
+ No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
+ View'd his own feather on the fatal dart,
+ And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart;
+ Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel
+ He nursed the pinion which impell'd the steel,
+ While the same plumage that had warm'd his nest,
+ Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast,
+
+One of our former great students, when reduced in health by excessive
+study, was entreated to abandon it, and in the scholastic language of the
+day, not to _perdere substantiam propter accidentia_. With a smile the
+martyr of study repeated a verse from Juvenal:
+
+ Nec propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.
+ No! not for life lose that for which I live!
+
+Thus the shadow of death falls among those who are existing with more than
+life about them. Yet "there is no celebrity for the artist," said GESNER,
+"if the love of his own art do not become a vehement passion; if the hours
+he employs to cultivate it be not for him the most delicious ones of his
+life; if study become not his true existence and his first happiness; if
+the society of his brothers in art be not that which most pleases him; if
+even in the night-time the ideas of his art do not occupy his vigils or
+his dreams; if in the morning he fly not to his work, impatient to
+recommence what he left unfinished. These are the marks of him who labours
+for true glory and posterity; but if he seek only to please the taste of
+his age, his works will not kindle the desires nor touch the hearts of
+those who love the arts and the artists."
+
+Unaccompanied by enthusiasm, genius will produce nothing but uninteresting
+works of art; not a work of art resembling the dove of Archytas, which
+beautiful piece of mechanism, while other artists beheld flying, no one
+could frame such another dove to meet it in the air. Enthusiasm is that
+secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius,
+throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very
+ideal presence whence these works have really originated. A great work
+always leaves us in a state of musing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Of the jealousy of Genius.--Jealousy often proportioned to the degree of
+genius.--A perpetual fever among Authors and Artists.--Instances of its
+incredible excess among brothers and benefactors.--Of a peculiar species,
+where the fever consumes the sufferer, without its malignancy.
+
+
+Jealousy, long supposed to be the offspring of little minds, is not,
+however, confined to them. In the literary republic, the passion fiercely
+rages among the senators as well as among the people. In that curious
+self-description which LINNAEUS comprised in a single page, written with
+the precision of a naturalist, that great man discovered that his
+constitution was liable to be afflicted with jealousy. Literary jealousy
+seems often proportioned to the degree of genius, and the shadowy and
+equivocal claims of literary honour is the real cause of this terrible
+fear; for in cases where the object is more palpable and definite than
+intellectual excellence, jealousy does not appear so strongly to affect
+the claimant for admiration. The most beautiful woman, in the season of
+beauty, is more haughty than jealous; she rarely encounters a rival;
+and while her claims exist, who can contend with a fine feature or a
+dissolving glance? But a man of genius has no other existence than in the
+opinion of the world; a divided empire would obscure him, and a contested
+one might prove his annihilation.
+
+The lives of authors and artists exhibit a most painful disease in that
+jealousy which is the perpetual fever of their existence. Why does PLATO
+never mention XENOPHON, and why does XENOPHON inveigh against PLATO,
+studiously collecting every little rumour which may detract from his fame?
+They wrote on the same subject! The studied affectation of ARISTOTLE to
+differ from the doctrines of his master PLATO while he was following them,
+led him into ambiguities and contradictions which have been remarked. The
+two fathers of our poetry, CHAUCER and GOWER, suffered their friendship to
+be interrupted towards the close of their lives. Chaucer bitterly reflects
+on his friend for the indelicacy of some of his tales: "Of all such
+_cursed stories_ I say fy!" and GOWER, evidently in return, erased those
+verses in praise of his friend which he had inserted in the first copy of
+his "Confessio Amantis." Why did CORNEILLE, tottering to the grave, when
+RACINE consulted him on his first tragedy, advise the author never to
+write another? Why does VOLTAIRE continually detract from the sublimity of
+Corneille, the sweetness of Racine, and the fire of Crebillon? Why did
+DRYDEN never speak of OTWAY with kindness but when in his grave, then
+acknowledging that Otway excelled him in the pathetic? Why did LEIBNITZ
+speak slightingly of LOCKE's Essay, and meditate on nothing less than the
+complete overthrow of NEWTON'S system? Why, when Boccaccio sent to
+PETRARCH a copy of DANTE, declaring that the work was like a first light
+which had illuminated his mind, did Petrarch boldly observe that he had
+not been anxious to inquire after it, for intending himself to compose in
+the vernacular idiom, he had no wish to be considered as a plagiary? and
+he only allows Dante's superiority from having written in the vulgar
+idiom, which he did not consider an enviable merit. Thus frigidly Petrarch
+could behold the solitary AEtna before him, in the "Inferno," while he
+shrunk into himself with the painful consciousness of the existence of
+another poet, obscuring his own majesty. It is curious to observe Lord
+SHAFTESBURY treating with the most acrimonious contempt the great writers
+of his own times--Cowley, Dryden, Addison, and Prior. We cannot imagine
+that his lordship was so entirely destitute of every feeling of wit and
+genius as would appear by this damnatory criticism on all the wit and
+genius of his age. It is not, indeed, difficult to comprehend a different
+motive for this extravagant censure in the jealousy which even a great
+writer often experiences when he comes in contact with his living rivals,
+and hardily, if not impudently, practises those arts of critical
+detraction to raise a moment's delusion, which can gratify no one but
+himself.
+
+The moral sense has often been found too weak to temper the malignancy of
+literary jealousy, and has impelled some men of genius to an incredible
+excess. A memorable example offers in the history of the two brothers, Dr.
+WILLIAM and JOHN HUNTER, both great characters fitted to be rivals; but
+Nature, it was imagined, in the tenderness of blood, had placed a bar to
+rivalry. John, without any determined pursuit in his youth, was received
+by his brother at the height of his celebrity; the doctor initiated him
+into his school; they performed their experiments together; and William
+Hunter was the first to announce to the world the great genius of his
+brother. After this close connexion in all their studies and discoveries,
+Dr. William Hunter published his magnificent work--the proud favourite of
+his heart, the assertor of his fame. Was it credible that the genius of
+the celebrated anatomist, which had been nursed under the wing of his
+brother, should turn on that wing to clip it? John Hunter put in his claim
+to the chief discovery; it was answered by his brother. The Royal Society,
+to whom they appealed, concealed the documents of this unnatural feud. The
+blow was felt, and the jealousy of literary honour for ever separated the
+brothers--the brothers of genius.
+
+Such, too, was the jealousy which separated AGOSTINO and ANNIBAL CARRACCI,
+whom their cousin LUDOVICO for so many years had attempted to unite, and
+who, during the time their academy existed, worked together, combining
+their separate powers.[A] The learning and the philosophy of Agostino
+assisted the invention of the master genius, Annibal; but Annibal was
+jealous of the more literary and poetical character of Agostino, and, by
+his sarcastic humour, frequently mortified his learned brother. Alike
+great artists, when once employed on the same work, Agostino was thought
+to have excelled his brother. Annibal, sullen and scornful, immediately
+broke with him; and their patron, Cardinal Farnese, was compelled to
+separate the brothers. Their fate is striking: Agostino, divided from his
+brother Annibal, sunk into dejection and melancholy, and perished by a
+premature death, while Annibal closed his days not long after in a state
+of distraction. The brothers of Nature and Art could not live together,
+and could not live separate.
+
+[Footnote A: See an article on the Carracci in "Curiosities of
+Literature." vol. ii.]
+
+The history of artists abounds with instances of jealousy, perhaps more
+than that of any other class of men of genius. HUDSON, the master of
+REYNOLDS, could not endure the sight of his rising pupil, and would not
+suffer him to conclude the term of his apprenticeship; while even the mild
+and elegant Reynolds himself became so jealous of WILSON, that he took
+every opportunity of depreciating his singular excellence. Stung by the
+madness of jealousy, BARRY one day addressing Sir Joshua on his lectures,
+burst out, "Such poor flimsy stuff as your discourses!" clenching his fist
+in the agony of the convulsion. After the death of the great artist, BARRY
+bestowed on him the most ardent eulogium, and deeply grieved over the
+past. But the race of genius born too "near the sun" have found their
+increased sensibility flame into crimes of a deeper dye--crimes attesting
+the treachery and the violence of the professors of an art which, it
+appears, in softening the souls of others, does not necessarily mollify
+those of the artists themselves. The dreadful story of ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO
+seems not doubtful. Having been taught the discovery of painting in oil by
+Domenico Venetiano, yet, still envious of the merit of the generous friend
+who had confided that great secret to him, Andrea with his own hand
+secretly assassinated him, that he might remain without a rival. The
+horror of his crime only appeared in his confession on his death-bed.
+DOMENICHINO seems to have been poisoned for the preference he obtained
+over the Neapolitan artists, which raised them to a man against him, and
+reduced him to the necessity of preparing his food With his own hand. On
+his last return to Naples, Passeri says, "_Non fu mai piu veduto da buon
+occhio da quelli Napoletani: e li Pittori lo detestavano perche egli
+era ritornato--mori con qualche sospetto di veleno, e questo non e
+inverisimile perche l'interesso e un perfido tiranno_." So that the
+Neapolitans honoured Genius at Naples by poison, which they might have
+forgotten had it flourished at Rome. The famous cartoon of the battle
+of Pisa, a work of Michael Angelo, which he produced in a glorious
+competition with the Homer of painting, Leonardo da Vinci, and in which he
+had struck out the idea of a new style, is only known by a print which has
+preserved the wonderful composition; for the original, it is said, was cut
+into pieces by the mad jealousy of BACCIO BANDINELLI, whose whole life was
+made miserable by his consciousness of a superior rival.
+
+In the jealousy of genius, however, there is a peculiar case where the
+fever silently consumes the sufferer, without possessing the malignant
+character of the disease. Even the gentlest temper declines under its slow
+wastings, and this infection may happen among dear friends, whenever a man
+of genius loses that self-opinion which animates his solitary labours and
+constitutes his happiness. Perhaps when at the height of his class, he
+suddenly views himself eclipsed by another genius--and that genius his
+friend! This is the jealousy, not of hatred, but of despair. Churchill
+observed the feeling, but probably included in it a greater degree of
+malignancy than I would now describe.
+
+ Envy which turns pale,
+ And sickens even if a friend prevail.
+
+SWIFT, in that curious poem on his own death, said of POPE that
+
+ --He can in one couplet fix
+ More sense than I can do in six.
+
+The Dean, perhaps, is not quite serious, but probably is in the next
+lines--
+
+ It gives me such a jealous fit,
+ I cry "Pox take him and his wit."
+
+If the reader pursue this hint throughout the poem, these compliments to
+his friends, always at his own expense, exhibit a singular mixture of the
+sensibility and the frankness of true genius, which Swift himself has
+honestly confessed.
+
+ What poet would not grieve to see
+ His brother write as well as he?[A]
+
+ADDISON experienced this painful and mixed emotion in his intercourse
+with POPE, to whose rising celebrity he soon became too jealously
+alive.[B] It was more tenderly, but not less keenly, felt by the Spanish
+artist CASTILLO, a man distinguished by every amiable disposition. He was
+the great painter of Seville; but when some of his nephew MURILLO'S
+paintings were shown to him, he stood in meek astonishmont before them,
+and turning away, he exclaimed with a sigh--"_Ya murio Castillo_!"
+Castillo is no more! Returning home, the stricken genius relinquished his
+pencil, and pined away, in hopelessness. The same occurrence happened to
+PIETRO PERUGINO, the master of Raphael, whose general character as a
+painter was so entirely eclipsed by his far-renowned scholar; yet, while
+his real excellences in the ease of his attitudes and the mild grace of
+his female countenances have been passed over, it is probable that
+Raphael himself might have caught from them his first feelings of ideal
+beauty.
+
+[Footnote A: The plain motive of all these dislikes is still more amusing,
+as given in this couplet of the same poem:--
+
+ "If with such genius heaven has blest 'em,
+ Have I not reason to detest 'em."--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: See article on Pope and Addison in "Quarrels of Authors." ]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Want of mutual esteem among men of genius often originates in a deficiency
+of analogous ideas.--It is not always envy or jealousy which induces men
+of genius to undervalue each other.
+
+
+Among men of genius, that want of mutual esteem, usually attributed to
+envy or jealousy, often originates in a deficiency of analogous ideas, or
+of sympathy, in the parties. On this principle, several curious phenomena
+in the history of genius may be explained.
+
+Every man of genius has a manner of his own; a mode of thinking and a
+habit of style, and usually decides on a work as it approximates or varies
+from his own. When one great author depreciates another, his depreciation
+has often no worse source than his own taste. The witty Cowley despised
+the natural Chaucer; the austere classical Boileau the rough sublimity of
+Creibillon; the refining Marivaux the familiar Moliere. Fielding ridiculed
+Richardson, whose manner so strongly contrasted with his own; and
+Richardson contemned Fielding, and declared he would not last. Cumberland
+escaped a fit of unforgiveness, not living to read his own character by
+Bishop Watson, whose logical head tried the lighter elegancies of that
+polished man by his own nervous genius, destitute of the beautiful in
+taste. There was no envy in the breast of Johnson when he advised Mrs.
+Thrale not to purchase "Gray's Letters," as trifling and dull, no more
+than there was in Gray himself when he sunk the poetical character of
+Shenstone, and debased his simplicity and purity of feeling by an image of
+ludicrous contempt. I have heard that WILKES, a mere wit and elegant
+scholar, used to treat GIBBON as a mere bookmaker; and applied to that
+philosophical historian the verse by which Voltaire described, with so
+much caustic facetiousness, the genius of the Abbe Trablet--
+
+ Il a compile, compile, compile.
+
+The deficient sympathy in these men of genius for modes of feeling
+opposite to their own was the real cause of their opinions; and thus it
+happens that even superior genius is so often liable to be unjust and
+false in its decisions.
+
+The same principle operates still more strikingly in the remarkable
+contempt of men of genius for those pursuits which require talents
+distinct from their own, and a cast of mind thrown by nature into another
+mould. Hence we must not be surprised at the poetical antipathies of
+Selden and Locke, as well as Longuerue and Buffon. Newton called poetry
+"ingenious nonsense." On the other side, poets undervalue the pursuits of
+the antiquary, the naturalist, and the metaphysician, forming their
+estimate by their own favourite scale of imagination. As we can only
+understand in the degree we comprehend, and feel in the degree in which we
+sympathize, we may be sure that in both these cases the parties will be
+found altogether deficient in those qualities of genius which constitute
+the excellence of the other. To this cause, rather than to the one the
+friends of MICKLE ascribed to ADAM SMITH, namely, a personal dislike to
+the poet, may we place the severe mortification which the unfortunate
+translator of Camoens suffered from the person to whom he dedicated "The
+Lusiad." The Duke of Buccleugh was the pupil of the great political
+economist, and so little valued an epic poem, that his Grace had not even
+the curiosity to open the leaves of the presentation copy.
+
+A professor of polite literature condemned the study of botany, as adapted
+to mediocrity of talent, and only demanding patience; but LINNAEUS showed
+how a man of genius becomes a creator even in a science which seems to
+depend only on order and method. It will not be a question with some
+whether a man must be endowed with the energy and aptitude of genius, to
+excel in antiquarianism, in natural history, and similar pursuits. The
+prejudices raised against the claims of such to the honours of genius have
+probably arisen from the secluded nature of their pursuits, and the little
+knowledge which the men of wit and imagination possess of these persons,
+who live in a society of their own. On this subject a very curious
+circumstance has been revealed respecting PEIRESC, whose enthusiasm for
+science was long felt throughout Europe. His name was known in every
+country, and his death was lamented in forty languages; yet was this great
+literary character unknown to several men of genius in his own country;
+Rochefoucauld declared he had never heard of his name, and Malherbe
+wondered why his death created so universal a sensation.
+
+Madame DE STAEEL was an experienced observer of the habits of the literary
+character, and she has remarked how one student usually revolts from
+the other when _their occupations are different_, because they are a
+reciprocal annoyance. The scholar has nothing to say to the poet, the
+poet to the naturalist; and even among men of science, those who are
+differently occupied avoid each other, taking little interest in what is
+out of their own circle. Thus we see the classes of literature, like the
+planets, revolving as distinct worlds; and it would not be less absurd for
+the inhabitants of Venus to treat with contempt the powers and faculties
+of those of Jupiter, than it is for the men of wit and imagination those
+of the men of knowledge and curiosity. The wits are incapable of exerting
+the peculiar qualities which give a real value to these pursuits, and
+therefore they must remain ignorant of their nature and their result.
+
+It is not then always envy or jealousy which induces men of genius to
+undervalue each other; the want of sympathy will sufficiently account for
+the want of judgment. Suppose NEWTON, QUINAULT, and MACHIAVEL accidentally
+meeting together, and unknown to each other, would they not soon have
+desisted from the vain attempt of communicating their ideas? The
+philosopher would have condemned the poet of the Graces as an intolerable
+trifler, and the author of "The Prince" as a dark political spy. Machiavel
+would have conceived Newton to be a dreamer among the stars, and a mere
+almanack-maker among men; and the other a rhymer, nauseously _doucereux_.
+Quinault might have imagined that he was seated between two madmen. Having
+annoyed each other for some time, they would have relieved their ennui by
+reciprocal contempt, and each have parted with a determination to avoid
+henceforward two such disagreeable companions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Self-praise of genius.--The love of praise instinctive in the nature of
+genius.--A high opinion of themselves necessary for their great designs.
+--The Ancients openly claimed their own praise.--And several Moderns.--An
+author knows more of his merits than his readers.--And less of his
+defects.--Authors versatile in their admiration and their malignity.
+
+
+Vanity, egotism, a strong sense of their own sufficiency, form another
+accusation against men of genius; but the complexion of self-praise must
+alter with the occasion; for the simplicity of truth may appear vanity,
+and the consciousness of superiority seem envy--to Mediocrity. It is we
+who do nothing, and cannot even imagine anything to be done, who are so
+much displeased with self-lauding, self-love, self-independence,
+self-admiration, which with the man of genius may often be nothing but an
+ostensible modification of the passion of glory.
+
+He who exults in himself is at least in earnest; but he who refuses to
+receive that praise in public for which he has devoted so much labour in
+his privacy, is not; for he is compelled to suppress the very instinct of
+his nature. We censure no man for loving fame, but only for showing us how
+much he is possessed by the passion: thus we allow him to create the
+appetite, but we deny him its aliment. Our effeminate minds are the
+willing dupes of what is called the modesty of genius, or, as it has been
+termed, "the polished reserve of modern times;" and this from the selfish
+principle that it serves at least to keep out of the company its painful
+pre-eminence. But this "polished reserve," like something as fashionable,
+the ladies' rouge, at first appearing with rather too much colour, will in
+the heat of an evening die away till the true complexion come out. What
+subterfuges are resorted to by these pretended modest men of genius, to
+extort that praise from their private circle which is thus openly denied
+them! They have been taken by surprise enlarging their own panegyric,
+which might rival Pliny's on Trajan, for care and copiousness; or
+impudently veiling themselves with the transparency of a third person; or
+never prefixing their name to the volume, which they would not easily
+forgive a friend to pass unnoticed.
+
+Self-love is a principle of action; but among no class of human beings has
+nature so profusely distributed this principle of life and action as
+through the whole sensitive family of genius. It reaches even to a
+feminine susceptibility. The love of praise is instinctive in their
+nature. Praise with them is the evidence of the past and the pledge of the
+future. The generous qualities and the virtues of a man of genius are
+really produced by the applause conferred on him. "To him whom the world
+admires, the happiness of the world must be dear," said Madame DE STAeEL.
+ROMNEY, the painter, held as a maxim that every diffident artist required
+"almost a daily portion of cheering applause." How often do such find
+their powers paralysed by the depression of confidence or the appearance
+of neglect! When the North American Indians, amid their circle, chant
+their gods and their heroes, the honest savages laud the living worthies,
+as well as their departed; and when, as we are told, an auditor hears the
+shout of his own name, he answers by a cry of pleasure and of pride. The
+savage and the man of genius are here true to nature, but pleasure and
+pride in his own name must raise no emotion in the breast of genius amidst
+a polished circle. To bring himself down to their usual mediocrity, he
+must start at an expression of regard, and turn away even from one of his
+own votaries. Madame De Staeel, an exquisite judge of the feelings of the
+literary character, was aware of this change, which has rather occurred in
+our manners than in men of genius themselves. "Envy," says that eloquent
+writer, "among the Greeks, existed sometimes between rivals; it has now
+passed to the spectators; and by a strange singularity the mass of men are
+jealous of the efforts which are tried to add to their pleasures or to
+merit their approbation."
+
+But this, it seems, is not always the case with men of genius, since the
+accusation we are noticing has been so often reiterated. Take from some
+that supreme confidence in themselves, that pride of exultation, and you
+crush the germ of their excellence. Many vast designs must have perished
+in the conception, had not their authors breathed this vital air of
+self-delight, this creative spirit, so operative in great undertakings. We
+have recently seen this principle in the literary character unfold itself
+in the life of the late Bishop of Landaff. Whatever he did, he felt it was
+done as a master: whatever he wrote, it was, as he once declared, the best
+work on the subject yet written. With this feeling he emulated Cicero in
+retirement or in action. "When I am dead, you will not soon meet with
+another JOHN HUNTER," said the great anatomist to one of his garrulous
+friends. An apology is formed by his biographer for relating the fact, but
+the weakness is only in the apology. When HOGARTH was engaged in his work
+of the _Marriage a-la-Mode_, he said to Reynolds, "I shall very soon
+gratify the world with such a sight as they have never seen equalled."
+--"One of his foibles," adds Northcote, "it is well known, was the
+excessive high opinion he had of his own abilities." So pronounced
+Northcote, who had not an atom of his genius. Was it a _foible_ in Hogarth
+to cast the glove, when he always more than redeemed the pledge?
+CORNEILLE has given a very noble full-length of the sublime egotism which
+accompanied him through life;[A] but I doubt, if we had any such author in
+the present day, whether he would dare to be so just to himself, and so
+hardy to the public. The self-praise of BUFFON at least equalled his
+genius; and the inscription beneath his statue in the library of the
+Jardin des Plantes, which I have been told was raised to him in his
+lifetime, exceeds all panegyric; it places him alone in nature, as the
+first and the last interpreter of her works. He said of the great geniuses
+of modern ages, that "there were not more than five; Newton, Bacon,
+Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and Myself." With this spirit he conceived and
+terminated his great works, and sat in patient meditation at his desk for
+half a century, till all Europe, even in a state of war, bowed to the
+modern Pliny.
+
+[Footnote A: See it versified in "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p.
+431.]
+
+Nor is the vanity of Buffon, and Voltaire, and Rousseau purely national;
+for men of genius in all ages have expressed a consciousness of the
+internal force of genius. No one felt this self-exultation more potent
+than our HOBBES; who has indeed, in his controversy with Wallis, asserted
+that there may be nothing more just than self-commendation.[A] There is a
+curious passage in the "Purgatorio" of DANTE, where, describing the
+transitory nature of literary fame, and the variableness of human opinion,
+the poet alludes with confidence to his own future greatness. Of two
+authors of the name of Guido, the one having eclipsed the other, the poet
+writes:--
+
+ Cosi ha tolto l'uno all'altro Guido
+ La gloria della lingua; e _forse e nato
+ Chi l'uno e l'altro caccera di nido_.
+
+ Thus has one Guido from the other snatch'd
+ The letter'd pride; _and he perhaps is born
+ Who shall drive either from their nest_.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: See "Quarrels of Authors," p. 471.]
+
+[Footnote B: Cary.]
+
+DE THOU, one of the most noble-minded of historians, in the Memoirs of his
+own life, composed in the third person, has surprised and somewhat puzzled
+the critics, by that frequent distribution of self-commendation which they
+knew not how to reconcile with the modesty and gravity with which the
+President was so amply endowed. After his great and solemn labour, amidst
+the injustice of his persecutors, this eminent man had sufficient
+experience of his real worth to assert it. KEPLER, amidst his sublime
+discoveries, looks down like a superior being on other men. He breaks
+forth in glory and daring egotism: "I dare insult mankind by confessing
+that I am he who has turned science to advantage. If I am pardoned, I
+shall rejoice; if blamed, I shall endure. The die is cast; I have written
+this book, and whether it be read by posterity or by my contemporaries is
+of no consequence; it may well wait for a reader during one century, when
+God himself during six thousand years has not sent an observer like
+myself." He truly predicts that "his discoveries would be verified in
+succeeding ages," and prefers his own glory to the possession of the
+electorate of Saxony. It was this solitary majesty, this futurity of their
+genius, which hovered over the sleepless pillow of Bacon, of Newton, and
+of Montesquieu; of Ben Jonson, of Milton, and Corneille; and of Michael
+Angelo. Such men anticipate their contemporaries; they know they are
+creators, long before they are hailed as such by the tardy consent of the
+public. These men stand on Pisgah heights, and for them the sun shines on
+a land which none can view but themselves.
+
+There is an admirable essay in Plutarch, "On the manner by which we may
+praise ourselves without exciting envy in others." The sage seems to
+consider self-praise as a kind of illustrious impudence, and has one very
+striking image: he compares these eulogists to famished persons, who
+finding no other food, in their rage have eaten their own flesh, and thus
+shockingly nourished themselves by their own substance. He allows persons
+in high office to praise themselves, if by this they can repel calumny and
+accusation, as did Pericles before the Athenians: but the Romans found
+fault with Cicero, who so frequently reminded them of his exertions in the
+conspiracy of Catiline; while, when Scipio told them that "they should not
+presume to judge of a citizen to whom they owed the power of judging all
+men," the people covered themselves with flowers, and followed him to the
+capitol to join in a thanksgiving to Jove. "Cicero," adds Plutarch,
+"praised himself without necessity. Scipio was in personal danger, and
+this took away what is odious in self-praise." An author seems sometimes
+to occupy the situation of a person in high office; and there may be
+occasions when with a noble simplicity, if he appeal to his works, of
+which all men may judge, he may be permitted to assert or to maintain his
+claims. It has at least been the practice of men of genius, for in this
+very essay we find Timotheus, Euripides, and Pindar censured, though they
+deserved all the praise they gave themselves.
+
+EPICURUS, writing to a minister of state, declares, "If you desire glory,
+nothing can bestow it more than the letters I write to you:" and SENECA,
+in quoting these words, adds, "What Epicurus promised to his friend, that,
+my Lucilius, I promise you." _Orna me!_ was the constant cry of CICERO;
+and he desires the historian Lucceius to write separately the conspiracy
+of Catiline, and to publish quickly, that while he yet lived he might
+taste the sweetness of his glory. HORACE and OVID wore equally sensible to
+their immortality; but what modern poet would be tolerated with such an
+avowal? Yet DRYDEN honestly declares that it was better for him to own
+this failing of vanity, than the world to do it for him; and adds, "For
+what other reason have I spent my life in so unprofitable a study? Why am
+I grown old in seeking so barren a reward as fame? The same parts and
+application which have made me a poet might have raised me to any honours
+of the gown." Was not CERVANTES very sensible to his own merits when a
+rival started up? and did he not assert them too, and distinguish his own
+work by a handsome compliment? LOPE DE VEGA celebrated his own poetic
+powers under the pseudonyme of a pretended editor, Thomas Barguillos. I
+regret that his noble biographer, than whom no one can more truly
+sympathise with the emotions of genius, has censured the bard for
+his querulous or his intrepid tone, and for the quaint conceit of his
+title-page, where his detractor is introduced as a beetle in a _vega_ or
+garden, attacking its flowers, but expiring in the very sweetness he would
+injure. The inscription under BOILEAU'S portrait, which gives a preference
+to the French satirist over Juvenal and Horace, is known to have been
+written by himself. Nor was BUTLER less proud of his own merits;
+for he has done ample justice to his "Hudibras," and traced out, with
+great self-delight, its variety of excellences. RICHARDSON, the novelist,
+exhibits one of the most striking instances of what is called literary
+vanity, the delight of an author in his works; he has pointed out all the
+beauties of his three great works, in various manners.[A] He always taxed
+a visitor by one of his long letters. It was this intense self-delight
+which produced his voluminous labours.
+
+[Footnote A: I have observed them in "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii.
+p. 64.]
+
+There are certain authors whose very existence seems to require a high
+conception of their own talents; and who must, as some animals appear to
+do, furnish the means of life out of their own substance. These men of
+genius open their career with peculiar tastes, or with a predilection for
+some great work of no immediate interest; in a word, with many unpopular
+dispositions. Yet we see them magnanimous, though defeated, proceeding
+with the public feeling against them. At length we view them ranking with
+their rivals. Without having yielded up their peculiar tastes or their
+incorrigible viciousness, they have, however, heightened their individual
+excellences. No human opinion can change their self-opinion. Alive to the
+consciousness of their powers, their pursuits are placed above impediment,
+and their great views can suffer no contraction; _possunt quia posse
+videntur_. Such was the language Lord BACON once applied to himself when
+addressing a king. "I know," said the great philosopher, "that I am
+censured of some conceit of my ability or worth; but I pray your majesty
+impute it to desire--_possunt quia posse videntur_." These men of genius
+bear a charmed mail on their breast; "hopeless, not heartless," may be
+often the motto of their ensign; and if they do not always possess
+reputation, they still look onwards for fame; for these do not necessarily
+accompany each other.
+
+An author is more sensible of his own merits, as he also is of his labour,
+which is invisible to all others, while he is unquestionably much less
+sensible to his defects than most of his readers. The author not only
+comprehends his merits better, because they have passed through a long
+process in his mind, but he is familiar with every part, while the reader
+has but a vague notion of the whole. Why does an excellent work, by
+repetition, rise in interest? Because in obtaining this gradual intimacy
+with an author, we appear to recover half the genius which we had lost on
+a first perusal. The work of genius too is associated, in the mind of the
+author, with much more than it contains; and the true supplement, which he
+only can give, has not always accompanied the work itself. We find great
+men often greater than the books they write. Ask the man of genius if he
+have written all that he wished to have written? Has he satisfied himself
+in this work, for which you accuse his pride? Has he dared what required
+intrepidity to achieve? Has he evaded difficulties which he should have
+overcome? The mind of the reader has the limits of a mere recipient, while
+that of the author, even after his work, is teeming with creation. "On
+many occasions, my soul seems to know more than it can say, and to be
+endowed with a mind by itself, far superior to the mind I really have,"
+said MARIVAUX, with equal truth and happiness.
+
+With these explanations of what are called the vanity and egotism of
+Genius, be it remembered, that the sense of their own sufficiency is
+assumed by men at their own risk. The great man who thinks greatly of
+himself, is not diminishing that greatness in heaping fuel on his fire. It
+is indeed otherwise with his unlucky brethren, with whom an illusion of
+literary vanity may end in the aberrations of harmless madness; as it
+happened to PERCIVAL STOCKDALE. After a parallel between himself and
+Charles XII. of Sweden, he concludes that "some parts will be to _his_
+advantage, and some to _mine_;" but in regard to fame, the main object
+between himself and Charles XII., Percival imagined that "his own will not
+probably take its fixed and immovable station, and shine with its expanded
+and permanent splendour, till it consecrates his ashes, till it illumines
+his tomb." After this the reader, who may never have heard of the name of
+Percival Stockdale, must be told that there exist his own "Memoirs of his
+Life and Writings."[A] The memoirs of a scribbler who saw the prospects of
+life close on him while he imagined that his contemporaries were unjust,
+are instructive to literary men. To correct, and to be corrected, should
+be their daily practice, that they may be taught not only to exult in
+themselves, but to fear themselves.
+
+[Footnote A: I have sketched a character of PERCIVAL STOCKDALE, in
+"Calamities of Authors" (pp. 218--224); it was taken _ad vivum_.]
+
+It is hard to refuse these men of genius that _aura vitalis_, of which
+they are so apt to be liberal to others. Are they not accused of the
+meanest adulations? When a young writer experiences the notice of a person
+of some eminence, he has expressed himself in language which transcends
+that of mortality. A finer reason than reason itself inspires it. The
+sensation has been expressed with all its fulness by Milton:--
+
+ The debt immense of endless gratitude.
+
+Who ever pays an "immense debt" in small sums? Every man of genius has
+left such honourable traces of his private affections; from LOCKE, whose
+dedication of his great work is more adulative than could be imagined from
+a temperate philosopher, to CHURCHILL, whose warm eulogiums on his friends
+beautifully contrast with his satire. Even in advanced age, the man of
+genius dwells on the praise he caught in his youth from veteran genius,
+which, like the aloe, will flower at the end of life. When Virgil was yet
+a youth, it is said that Cicero heard one of his eclogues, and exclaimed
+with his accustomed warmth,
+
+ Magna spes altera Romae!
+
+"The second hope of mighty Rome!" intending by the first either himself or
+Lucretius. The words of Cicero were the secret honey on which the
+imagination of Virgil fed for many a year; for in one of his latest
+productions, the twelfth book of the AEneid, he applies these very words
+to Ascanius. So long had the accents of Cicero's praise lingered in the
+poet's ear!
+
+This extreme susceptibility of praise in men of genius is the same
+exuberant sensibility which is so alive to censure. I have elsewhere fully
+shown how some have died of criticism.[A] The self-love of genius is
+perhaps much more delicate than gross.
+
+But this fatal susceptibility is the cause of that strange facility which
+has often astonished the world, by the sudden transitions of sentiment
+which literary characters have frequently exhibited. They have eulogised
+men and events which they had reprobated, and reprobated what they had
+eulogised. The recent history of political revolutions has furnished some
+monstrous examples of this subservience to power. Guicciardini records one
+of his own times, which has been often repeated in ours. JOVIANUS
+PONTANUS, the secretary of Ferdinand, King of Naples, was also selected to
+be the tutor of the prince, his son. When Charles VIII. of France invaded
+Naples, Pontanus was deputed to address the French conqueror. To render
+himself agreeable to the enemies of his country, he did not avoid
+expatiating on the demerits of his expelled patrons: "So difficult it is,"
+adds the grave and dignified historian, "for ourselves to observe that
+moderation and those precepts which no man knew better than Pontanus, who
+was endowed with such copious literature, and composed with such facility
+in moral philosophy, and possessed such acquirements in universal
+erudition, that he had made himself a prodigy to the eye of the world."[B]
+The student, occupied by abstract pursuits, may not indeed always take
+much interest in the change of dynasties; and perhaps the famous cancelled
+dedication to Cromwell, by the learned orientalist Dr. CASTELL,[C] who
+supplied its place by another to Charles II., ought not to be placed to
+the account of political tergiversation. But the versatile adoration of
+the continental _savans_ of the republic or the monarchy, the consul or
+the emperor, has inflicted an unhealing wound on the literary character;
+since, like PONTANUS, to gratify their new master, they had not the
+greatness of mind to save themselves from ingratitude to their old.
+
+[Footnote A: In the article entitled "Anecdotes of Censured Authors," in
+vol. i. of "Curiosities of Literature."]
+
+[Footnote B: Guicciardini, Book II.]
+
+[Footnote C: For the melancholy history of this devoted scholar, see note
+to the article on "The Rewards of Oriental Students," in "Calamities of
+Authors," p. 189.]
+
+Their vengeance, as quickly kindled, lasts as long. Genius is a dangerous
+gift of nature. The same effervescent passions form a Catiline or a
+Cicero. Plato lays great stress on his man of genius possessing the most
+vehement passions, but he adds reason to restrain them. It is Imagination
+which by their side stands as their good or evil spirit. Glory or infamy
+is but a different direction of the same passion.
+
+How are we to describe symptoms which, flowing from one source, yet show
+themselves in such opposite forms as those of an intermittent fever, a
+silent delirium, or a horrid hypochondriasm? Have we no other opiate to
+still the agony, no other cordial to warm the heart, than the great
+ingredient in the recipe of Plato's visionary man of genius--calm
+reason? Must men, who so rarely obtain this tardy panacea, remain with all
+their tortured and torturing passions about them, often self-disgusted,
+self-humiliated? The enmities of genius are often connected with their
+morbid imagination. These originate in casual slights, or in unguarded
+expressions, or in hasty opinions, or in witty derision, or even in the
+obtruding goodness of tender admonition. The man of genius broods over the
+phantom that darkens his feelings: he multiplies a single object; he
+magnifies the smallest; and suspicions become certainties. It is in this
+unhappy state that he sharpens his vindictive fangs, in a libel called his
+"Memoirs," or in another species of public outrage, styled a "Criticism."
+
+We are told that COMINES the historian, when residing at the court of the
+Count de Charolois, afterwards Duke of Burgundy, one day returning from
+hunting, with inconsiderate jocularity sat down before the Count, and
+ordered the prince to pull off his boots. The Count would not affect
+greatness, and having executed his commission, in return for the princely
+amusement, the Count dashed the boot on Comines' nose, which bled; and
+from that time, he was mortified at the court of Burgundy, by retaining
+the nickname of _the booted head._ The blow rankled in the heart of the
+man of genius, and the Duke of Burgundy has come down to us in COMINE'S
+"Memoirs," blackened by his vengeance. Many, unknown to their readers,
+like COMINES, have had a booted head; but the secret poison is distilled
+on their lasting page, as we have recently witnessed in Lord Waldegrave's
+"Memoirs." Swift's perpetual malevolence to Dryden originated in that
+great poet's prediction, that "cousin Swift would never be a poet;" a
+prediction which the wit never could forget. I have elsewhere fully
+written a tale of literary hatred, where is seen a man of genius, in the
+character of GILBERT STUART, devoting a whole life to harassing the
+industry or the genius which he himself could not attain.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: See "Calamities of Authors," pp. 131--139.]
+
+A living Italian poet, of great celebrity, when at the court of Rome,
+presented a magnificent edition of his poetry to Pius VI. The bard, Mr.
+Hobhouse informs us, lived not in the good graces of his holiness, and
+although the pontiff accepted the volume, he did not forbear a severity of
+remark which could not fall unheeded by the modern poet; for on this
+occasion, repeating some verses of Metastasio, his holiness drily added,
+"No one now-a-days writes like that great poet." Never was this to be
+erased from memory: the stifled resentment of MONTI vehemently broke forth
+at the moment the French carried off Pius VI. from Rome. Then the long
+indignant secretary poured forth an invective more severe "against the
+great harlot," than was ever traced by a Protestant pen--MONTI now invoked
+the rock of Sardinia: the poet bade it fly from its base, that _the last
+of monsters_ might not find even a tomb to shelter him. Such was the curse
+of a poet on his former patron, now an object of misery--a return for
+"placing him below Metastasio!"
+
+The French Revolution affords illustrations of the worst human passions.
+When the wretched COLLOT D'HERBOIS was tossed up in the storm to the
+summit of power, a monstrous imagination seized him; he projected razing
+the city of Lyons and massacring its inhabitants. He had even the heart to
+commence, and to continue this conspiracy against human nature; the
+ostensible crime was royalism, but the secret motive is said to have been
+literary vengeance! As wretched a poet and actor as a man, D'Herbois had
+been hissed off the theatre at Lyons, and to avenge that ignominy, he had
+meditated over this vast and remorseless crime. Is there but one Collot
+D'Herbois in the universe? Long since this was written, a fact has been
+recorded of CHENIER, the French dramatic poet, which parallels the horrid
+tale of Collot D'Herbois, which some have been willing to doubt from its
+enormity. It is said, that this monster, in the revolutionary period, when
+he had the power to save the life of his brother Andre, while his father,
+prostrate before a wretched son, was imploring for the life of an innocent
+brother, remained silent; it is further said that he appropriated to
+himself a tragedy which he found among his brother's manuscripts.
+"Fratricide from literary jealousy," observes the relator of this
+anecdote, "was a crime reserved for a modern French revolutionist."[A]
+There are some pathethic stanzas which Andre was composing in his last
+moments, when awaiting his fate; the most pathetic of all stanzas is that
+one which he left unfinished--
+
+ Peut-etre, avant que l'heure en cercle promenee
+ Ait pose, sur l'email brillant,
+ Dans les soixante pas ou sa route est bornee,
+ Son pied sonore et vigilant,
+ Le sommeil du tombeau pressera ma paupiere--
+
+At this unfinished stanza was the pensive poet summoned to the guillotine!
+
+[Footnote A: _Edinburgh Review_, xxxv. 159]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+The domestic life of genius.--Defects of great compositions attributed to
+domestic infelicities.--The home of the literary character should be the
+abode of repose and silence.--Of the Father.--Of the Mother.--Of family
+genius.--Men of genius not more respected than other men in their domestic
+circle.--The cultivators of science and art do not meet on equal terms
+with others, in domestic life.--Their neglect of those around them.--Often
+accused of imaginary crimes.
+
+
+When the temper and the leisure of the literary character are alike
+broken, even his best works, the too faithful mirrors of his state of
+mind, will participate in its inequalities; and surely the incubations of
+genius, in its delicate and shadowy combinations, are not less sensible in
+their operation than the composition of sonorous bodies, where, while the
+warm metal is settling in the mould, even an unusual vibration of the air
+during the moment of fusion will injure the tone.
+
+Some of the conspicuous blemishes of several great compositions may be
+attributed to the domestic infelicities of their authors. The desultory
+life of CAMOENS is imagined to be perceptible in the deficient connexion
+of his epic; and MILTON'S blindness and divided family prevented that
+castigating criticism, which otherwise had erased passages which have
+escaped from his revising hand. He felt himself in the situation of his
+Samson Agonistes, whom he so pathetically describes--
+
+ His foes' derision, captive, poor, and blind.
+
+Even LOCKE complains of his "discontinued way of writing," and "writing by
+incoherent parcels," from the avocations of a busy and unsettled life,
+which undoubtedly produced a deficiency of method in the disposition of
+the materials of his great work. The careless rapid lines of DRYDEN
+are justly attributed to his distress, and indeed he pleads for his
+inequalities from his domestic circumstances. JOHNSON often silently, but
+eagerly, corrected the "Ramblers" in their successive editions, of which
+so many had been despatched in haste. The learned GREAVES offered some
+excuses for his errors in his edition of "Abulfeda," from "his being five
+years encumbered with lawsuits, and diverted from his studies." When at
+length he returned to them, he expresses his surprise "at the pains he had
+formerly undergone," but of which he now felt himself "unwilling, he knew
+not how, of again undergoing." GOLDONI, when at the bar, abandoned his
+comic talent for several years; and having resumed it, his first comedy
+totally failed: "My head," says he, "was occupied with my professional
+employment; I was uneasy in mind and in bad humour." A lawsuit, a
+bankruptcy, a domestic feud, or an indulgence in criminal or in foolish
+pursuits, have chilled the fervour of imagination, scattered into
+fragments many a noble design, and paralysed the finest genius. The
+distractions of GUIDO'S studies from his passion for gaming, and of
+PARMEGIANO'S for alchemy, have been traced in their works, which are often
+hurried over and unequal. It is curious to observe, that CUMBERLAND
+attributes the excellence of his comedy, _The West Indian_, to the
+peculiarly happy situation in which he found himself at the time of its
+composition, free from the incessant avocations which had crossed him in
+the writing of _The Brothers._ "I was master of my time, my mind was free,
+and I was happy in the society of the dearest friends I had on earth. The
+calls of office, the cavillings of angry rivals, and the gibings of
+newspaper critics, could not reach me on the banks of the Shannon, where
+all within-doors was love and affection. In no other period of my life
+have the same happy circumstances combined to cheer me in any of my
+literary labours."
+
+The best years of MENGS' life were embittered by his father, a poor
+artist, and who, with poorer feelings, converted his home into a
+prison-house, forced his son into the slavery of stipulated task-work,
+while bread and water were the only fruits of the fine arts. In this
+domestic persecution, the son contracted those morose and saturnine
+habits which in after-life marked the character of the ungenial MENGS.
+ALONSO CANO, a celebrated Spanish painter, would have carried his art to
+perfection, had not the unceasing persecution of the Inquisitors entirely
+deprived him of that tranquillity so necessary to the very existence of
+art. OVID, in exile on the barren shores of Tomos, deserted by his
+genius, in his copious _Tristia_ loses much of the luxuriance of his
+fancy.
+
+We have a remarkable evidence of domestic unhappiness annihilating the
+very faculty of genius itself, in the case of Dr. BROOK TAYLOR, the
+celebrated author of the "Linear Perspective." This great mathematician in
+early life distinguished himself as an inventor in science, and the most
+sanguine hopes of his future discoveries were raised both at home and
+abroad. Two unexpected events in domestic life extinguished his inventive
+faculties. After the loss of two wives, whom he regarded with no common
+affection, he became unfitted for profound studies; he carried his own
+personal despair into his favourite objects of pursuit, and abandoned
+them. The inventor of the most original work suffered the last fifteen
+years of his life to drop away, without hope, and without exertion; nor is
+this a solitary instance, where a man of genius, deprived of the idolised
+partner of his existence, has no longer been able to find an object in his
+studies, and where even fame itself has ceased to interest. The reason
+which ROUSSEAU alleges for the cynical spleen which so frequently breathes
+forth in his works, shows how the domestic character of the man of genius
+leaves itself in his productions. After describing the infelicity of his
+domestic affairs, occasioned by the mother of Theresa, and Theresa
+herself, both women of the lowest class and the worst dispositions, he
+adds, on this wretched marriage, "These unexpected disagreeable events, in
+a state of my own choice, plunged me into literature, to give a new
+direction and diversion to my mind; and in all my first works I scattered
+that bilious humour which had occasioned this very occupation." Our
+author's character in his works was the very opposite to the one in which
+he appeared to these low people. Feeling his degradation among them, for
+they treated his simplicity as utter silliness, his personal timidity
+assumed a tone of boldness and originality in his writings, while a strong
+personal sense of shame heightened his causticity, and he delighted to
+contemn that urbanity in which he had never shared, and which he knew not
+how to practise. His miserable subservience to these people was the real
+cause of his oppressed spirit calling out for some undefined freedom in
+society; and thus the real Rousseau, with all his disordered feelings,
+only appeared in his writings. The secrets of his heart were confided to
+his pen.
+
+"The painting-room must be like Eden before the Fall; no joyless
+turbulent passions must enter there"--exclaims the enthusiast RICHARDSON.
+The home of the literary character should be the abode of repose and of
+silence. There must he look for the feasts of study, in progressive and
+alternate labours; a taste "which," says GIBBON, "I would not exchange
+for the treasures of India." ROUSSEAU had always a work going on, for
+rainy days and spare hours, such as his "Dictionary of Music:" a variety
+of works never tired; it was the single one which exhausted. METASTASIO
+looks with delight on his variety, which resembled the fruits in the
+garden of Armida--
+
+ E mentre spunta l'un, l'altro mature.
+ While one matures, the other buds and blows.
+
+Nor is it always fame, or any lower motive, which may induce the literary
+character to hold an unwearied pen. Another equally powerful exists, which
+must remain inexplicable to him who knows not to escape from the
+listlessness of life--it is the passion for literary occupation. He whose
+eye can only measure the space occupied by the voluminous labours of the
+elder Pliny, of a Mazzuchelli, a Muratori, a Montfaucon, and a Gough, all
+men who laboured from the love of labour, and can see nothing in that
+space but the industry which filled it, is like him who only views a city
+at a distance--the streets and the edifices, and all the life and
+population within, he can never know. These literary characters projected
+their works as so many schemes to escape from uninteresting pursuits; and,
+in these folios, how many evils of life did they bury, while their
+happiness expanded with their volume! Aulus Gellius desired to live no
+longer than he was able to retain the faculty of writing and observing.
+The literary character must grow as impassioned with his subject as
+AElian-with his "History of Animals;" "wealth and honour I might have
+obtained at the courts of princes; but I preferred the delight of
+multiplying my knowledge. I am aware that the avaricious and the ambitious
+will accuse me of folly; but I have always found most pleasure in
+observing the nature of animals, studying their character, and writing
+their history."
+
+Even with those who have acquired their celebrity, the love of literary
+labour is not diminished--a circumstance recorded by the younger Pliny of
+Livy. In a preface to one of his lost books, that historian had said that
+he had obtained sufficient glory by his former writings on the Roman
+history, and might now repose in silence; but his mind was so restless and
+so abhorrent of indolence, that it only felt its existence in literary
+exertion. In a similar situation the feeling was fully experienced by
+HUME. Our philosopher completed his history neither for money nor for
+fame, having then more than a sufficiency of both; but chiefly to indulge
+a habit as a resource against indolence.[A] These are the minds which are
+without hope if they are without occupation.
+
+[Footnote A: This appears in one of his interesting letters first
+published in the _Literary Gazette_, Oct. 20, 1821.--[It is addressed to
+Adam Smith, dated July 28, 1759, and he says, "I signed an agreement with
+Mr. Millar, where I mention that I proposed to write the History of
+England from the beginning till the accession of Henry VII.,; and he
+engages to give me 1400_l_. for the copy. This is the first previous
+agreement ever I made with a bookseller. I shall execute the work at
+leisure, without fatiguing myself by such ardent application as I have
+hitherto employed. It is chiefly as a resource against idleness that I
+shall undertake the work, for as to money I have enough: and as to
+reputation what I have wrote already will be sufficient, if it be good; if
+not, it is not likely I shall now write better."]]
+
+Amidst the repose and silence of study, delightful to the literary
+character, are the soothing interruptions of the voices of those whom he
+loves, recalling him from his abstractions into social existence. These
+re-animate his languor, and moments of inspiration are caught in the
+emotions of affection, when a father or a friend, a wife, a daughter, or a
+sister, become the participators of his own tastes, the companions of his
+studies, and identify their happiness with his fame. A beautiful incident
+in the domestic life of literature is one which Morellet has revealed of
+MARMONTEL. In presenting his collected works to his wife, she discovered
+that the author had dedicated his volumes to herself; but the dedication
+was not made painful to her modesty, for it was not a public one. Nor was
+it so concise as to be mistaken for a compliment. The theme was copious,
+for the heart overflowed in the pages consecrated to her domestic virtues;
+and MARMONTEL left it as a record, that their children might learn the
+gratitude of their father, and know the character of their mother, when
+the writer should be no more. Many readers were perhaps surprised to find
+in NECKER's _Comte rendu au Roi_, a political and financial work, a great
+and lovely character of domestic excellence in his wife. This was more
+obtrusive than Marmontel's private dedication; yet it was not the less
+sincere. If NECKER failed in the cautious reserve of private feelings, who
+will censure? Nothing seems misplaced which the heart dictates.
+
+If HORACE were dear to his friends, he declares they owed him to his
+father:--
+
+ --purus et insons
+ (Ut me collaudem) si vivo et carus amicis,
+ Causa fuit Pater his.
+
+ If pure and innocent, if dear (forgive
+ These little praises) to my friends I live,
+ My father was the cause.
+
+This intelligent father, an obscure tax-gatherer, discovered the
+propensity of Horace's mind; for he removed the boy of genius from a rural
+seclusion to the metropolis, anxiously attending on him to his various
+masters. GROTIUS, like Horace, celebrated in verse his gratitude to his
+excellent father, who had formed him not only to be a man of learning, but
+a great character. VITRUVIUS pours forth a grateful prayer to the memory
+of his parents, who had instilled into his soul a love for literary and
+philosophical subjects; and it is an amiable trait in PLUTARCH to have
+introduced his father in the Symposiacs, as an elegant critic and
+moralist, and his brother Lamprias, whose sweetness of disposition,
+inclining to cheerful raillery, the Sage of Cheronaea has immortalised.
+The father of GIBBON urged him to literary distinction, and the dedication
+of the "Essay on Literature" to that father, connected with his subsequent
+labour, shows the force of the excitement. The father of POPE lived long
+enough to witness his son's celebrity.
+
+ Tears such as tender fathers shed,
+ Warm from my eyes descend,
+ For joy, to think when I am dead,
+ My son shall have mankind his Friend.[A]
+
+
+The son of BUFFON one day surprised his father by the sight of a column,
+which he had raised to the memory of his father's eloquent genius. "It
+will do you honour," observed the Gallic sage.[B] And when that son in the
+revolution was led to the guillotine, he ascended in silence, so impressed
+with his father's fame, that he only told the people, "I am the son of
+Buffon!"
+
+[Footnote A: These lines have been happily applied by Mr. BOWLES to the
+father of POPE.--The poet's domestic affections were as permanent as they
+were strong.]
+
+[Footnote B: It still exists in the gardens of the old chateau at
+Montbard. It is a pillar of marble bearing this inscription:--"Excelsae
+turris humilia columna, Parenti suo filius Buffon. 1785."--ED.]
+
+Fathers absorbed in their occupations can but rarely attract their
+offspring. The first durable impressions of our moral existence come from
+the mother. The first prudential wisdom to which Genius listens falls from
+her lips, and only her caresses can create the moments of tenderness. The
+earnest discernment of a mother's love survives in the imagination of
+manhood. The mother of Sir WILLIAM JONES, having formed a plan for the
+education of her son, withdrew from great connexions that she might live
+only for that son. Her great principle of education, was to excite by
+curiosity; the result could not fail to be knowledge. "Read, and you will
+know," she constantly replied to her filial pupil. And we have his own
+acknowledgment, that to this maxim, which produced the habit of study, he
+was indebted for his future attainments. KANT, the German metaphysician,
+was always fond of declaring that he owed to the ascendancy of his
+mother's character the severe inflexibility of his moral principles. The
+mother of BURNS kindled his genius by reciting the old Scottish ballads,
+while to his father he attributed his less pleasing cast of character.
+Bishop WATSON traced to the affectionate influence of his mother, the
+religious feelings which he confesses he inherited from her. The mother of
+EDGEWORTH, confined through life to her apartment, was the only person who
+studied his constitutional volatility. When he hastened to her death-bed,
+the last imperfect accents of that beloved voice reminded him of the past
+and warned him of the future, and he declares that voice "had a happy
+influence on his habits,"--as happy, at least, as his own volatile nature
+would allow. "To the manner in which my mother formed me at an early age,"
+said Napoleon, "I principally owe my subsequent elevation. My opinion is,
+that the future good or bad conduct of a child entirely depends upon the
+mother."
+
+There is this remarkable in the strong affections of the mother in the
+formation of the literary character, that, without even partaking of, or
+sympathising with the pleasures the child is fond of, the mother will
+often cherish those first decided tastes merely from the delight of
+promoting the happiness of her son; so that that genius, which some would
+produce on a preconceived system, or implant by stratagem, or enforce by
+application, with her may be only the watchful labour of love.[A] One of
+our most eminent antiquaries has often assured me that his great passion,
+and I may say his genius, for his curious knowledge and his vast
+researches, he attributes to maternal affection. When his early taste for
+these studies was thwarted by the very different one of his father, the
+mother silently supplied her son with the sort of treasures he languished
+for, blessing the knowledge, which indeed she could not share with him,
+but which she beheld imparting happiness to her youthful antiquary.
+
+[Footnote A: Kotzebue has noted the delicate attention of his mother in
+not only fostering his genius, but in watching its too rapid development.
+He says:--"If at any time my imagination was overheated, my mother always
+contrived to select something for my evening reading which might moderate
+this ardour, and make a gentler impression on my too irritable fancy."--
+ED.]
+
+There is, what may be called, FAMILY GENIUS. In the home of a man of
+genius is diffused an electrical atmosphere, and his own pre-eminence
+strikes out talents in all. "The active pursuits of my father," says the
+daughter of EDGEWORTH, "spread an animation through the house by
+connecting children with all that was going on, and allowing them to join
+in thought and conversation; sympathy and emulation excited mental
+exertion in the most agreeable manner." EVELYN, in his beautiful retreat
+at Saye's Court, had inspired his family with that variety of taste which
+he himself was spreading throughout the nation. His son translated Rapin's
+"Gardens," which poem the father proudly preserved in his "Sylva;" his
+lady, ever busied in his study, excelled in the arts her husband loved,
+and designed the frontispiece to his "Lucretius:" she was the cultivator
+of their celebrated garden, which served as "an example" of his great work
+on "forest trees." Cowley, who has commemorated Evelyn's love of books and
+gardens, has delightfully applied them to his lady, in whom, says the
+bard, Evelyn meets both pleasures:--
+
+ The fairest garden in her looks,
+ And in her mind the wisest books.
+
+The house of HALLER resembled a temple consecrated to science and the
+arts, and the votaries were his own family. The universal acquirements of
+Haller were possessed in some degree by every one under his roof; and
+their studious delight in transcribing manuscripts, in consulting authors,
+in botanising, drawing and colouring the plants under his eye, formed
+occupations which made the daughters happy and the sons eminent.[A] The
+painter STELLA inspired his family to copy his fanciful inventions, and
+the playful graver of Claudine Stella, his niece, animated his "Sports of
+Children." I have seen a print of COYPEL in his _studio_, and by his side
+his little daughter, who is intensely watching the progress of her
+father's pencil. The artist has represented himself in the act of
+suspending his labour to look on his child. At that moment, his thoughts
+were divided between two objects of his love. The character and the works
+of the late ELIZABETH HAMILTON were formed entirely by her brother.
+Admiring the man she loved, she imitated what she admired; and while the
+brother was arduously completing the version of the Persian Hedaya, the
+sister, who had associated with his morning tasks and his evening
+conversations, was recalling all the ideas, and pourtraying her fraternal
+master in her "Hindoo Rajah."
+
+[Footnote A: Haller's death (A.D. 1777) was as remarkable for its calm
+philosophy, as his life for its happiness. He was a professional surgeon,
+and continued to the last an attentive and rational observer of the
+symptoms of the disease which was bringing him to the grave. He
+transmitted to the University of Gottingen a scientific analysis of his
+case; and died feeling his own pulse.--ED.]
+
+Nor are there wanting instances where this FAMILY GENIUS has been carried
+down through successive generations: the volume of the father has been
+continued by a son, or a relative. The history of the family of the
+ZWINGERS is a combination of studies and inherited tastes. Theodore
+published, in 1697, a folio herbal, of which his son Frederic gave an
+enlarged edition in 1744; and the family was honoured by their name having
+been given to a genus of plants dedicated to their memory, and known in
+botany by the name of the _Zwingera_. In history and in literature, the
+family name was equally eminent; the same Theodore continued a great work,
+"The Theatre of Human Life," which had been begun by his father-in-law,
+and which for the third time was enlarged by another son. Among the
+historians of Italy, it is delightful to contemplate this family genius
+transmitting itself with unsullied probity among the three VILLANIS, and
+the MALASPINIS, and the two PORTAS. The history of the learned family of
+the STEPHENS presents a dynasty of literature; and to distinguish the
+numerous members, they have been designated as Henry I. and Henry II.,--as
+Robert I., the II., and the III.[A] Our country may exult in having
+possessed many literary families--the WARTONS, the father and two sons:
+the BURNEYS, more in number; and the nephews of Milton, whose humble torch
+at least was lighted at the altar of the great bard.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: For an account of them and their works, see "Curiosities of
+Literature," vol, i. p. 76.]
+
+[Footnote B: The Phillips.]
+
+No event in literary history is more impressive than the fate of
+QUINTILIAN; it was in the midst of his elaborate work, which was composed
+to form the literary character of a son, that he experienced the most
+terrible affliction in the domestic life of genius--the successive deaths
+of his wife and his only child. It was a moral earthquake with a single
+survivor amidst the ruins. An awful burst of parental and literary
+affliction breaks forth in Quintilian's lamentation,--"My wealth, and my
+writings, the fruits of a long and painful life, must now be reserved only
+for strangers; all I possess is for aliens, and no longer mine!" We feel
+the united agony of the husband, the father, and the man of genius!
+
+Deprived of these social consolations, we see JOHNSON call about him those
+whose calamities exiled them from society, and his roof lodges the blind,
+the lame, and the poor; for the heart must possess something it can call
+its own, to be kind to.
+
+In domestic life, the Abbe DE ST. PIERRE enlarged its moral vocabulary, by
+fixing in his language two significant words. One served to explain the
+virtue most familiar to him--_bienfaisance_; and that irritable vanity
+which magnifies its ephemeral fame, the sage reduced to a mortifying
+diminutive--_la gloriole!_
+
+It has often excited surprise that men of genius are not more reverenced
+than other men in their domestic circle. The disparity between the public
+and the private esteem of the same man is often striking. In privacy we
+discover that the comic genius is not always cheerful, that the sage is
+sometimes ridiculous, and the poet seldom delightful. The golden hour of
+invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius
+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 infirmities.
+
+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 immediate 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
+philosophers, from whom the nation had expected much, had badly
+administered the affairs of the state; for "knowing 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 of human nature; but,
+like the great geographer, may be apt to be lost in the wood which any one
+in the neighbourhood 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 MONTESQUIEU.
+The story told of a man of learning is probably 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 interrupted student. BACON sat at one end of
+his table wrapt in many a reverie, while at the other the creatures about
+him were trafficking with 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 Montbard, at the end
+of his garden,[A] 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
+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! 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 the last day; and whose unhappy life
+is attributed to this unnatural neglect:[B]--a lamentable domestic
+catastrophe, 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 have warmer
+sympathies. While the literary character burns with the ambition of
+raising a great literary name, he is too often forbidden to taste of this
+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."
+
+[Footnote A: For some account of this place, see the chapter on "Literary
+Residences" in vol. iii. p. 395, of "Curiosities of Literature."]
+
+[Footnote B: 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.]
+
+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
+diminutive as his person, ridiculed his philosophic relative, and turned
+to advantage his philosophic disposition. The daughter of ADDISON was
+educated with a perfect contempt of authors, and blushed to bear a name
+more illustrious than that of all the Warwicks, on her alliance 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, having enriched our national 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
+learned, 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 documents 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 tenderness, and
+genius.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Lettres inedites de Madame de Sevigne, pp. 201 and 203.]
+
+Some have been deemed disagreeable companions, because they felt the
+weariness of dulness, or the impertinence 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 attracted, are not acted on by its
+occult property.
+
+
+
+
+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 sometimes 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 comparison. 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
+annihilates 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 character has so
+closely interwoven and identified itself 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 admits of no such appraisement. In a country where "The
+Wealth of Nations" has been fixed as the first principle of political
+existence, 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 MONTFAUCON, a CALMET, a
+FLOREZ, and the still unfinished volumes of the BENEDICTINES. Often has
+the literary character, amidst the busied delights of study, sighed "to
+bid a farewell sweet" to the turbulence of society. It was not discontent,
+nor any 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 illustrious BOYLE. He
+proposed to form "A college where 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."[A] This abandonment 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.
+
+[Footnote A: This romantic literary retreat is one of those delightful
+reveries which the elegant taste of EVELYN abounded with. It may be found
+at full length in the fifth volume of Boyle's Works, not in the second, as
+the Biog. Brit. says. His 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 advantage to the economic
+part," &c.]
+
+A parallel circumstance occurred to the Abbe COTIN, the victim of a rhyme
+of the satirical Boileau. Studious, 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; his rents were not paid, and his
+creditors increased. Dragged 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 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 life of genius, is
+one in which the cares of property never intrude, and the want of wealth
+is never perceived. This is not indigence; that state which, however
+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--
+
+ Malesuada Fames, et turpis Egestas
+ Terribiles visu formae.
+
+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
+BARRRY, 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
+Liffey; but let us not forget that BARRY, in the maturity of life,
+confidently began a labour of years,[A] 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, 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
+accounts showed how he had subsisted on a few pence a-day, and
+
+ Enjoy'd, spare feast! a radish and an egg.
+
+[Footnote A: His series of pictures for the walls of the meeting-room of
+the Society of Arts in the Adelphi.--ED.]
+
+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, ANQUETIL DE PERRON, is a recent example of the literary
+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 same state of unrepining poverty. Mr. Hobhouse has
+given us this self-portrait of the poet:--
+
+ Me, non nato a percotere
+ Le dure illustri porte,
+ Nudo accorra, ma libero
+ Il 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. Perigrinating on foot with a stylus, a
+magnifying-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 Flors. Not that LINNAEUS was
+insensible to his situation, for he gave his name to a little flower in
+Lapland--the _Linnaea 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 overlooked." The want of
+fortune, however, did not deprive 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
+kingdoms 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 solitude such men are not separated from their fame; that is ever
+proceeding, ever raising a secret, but constant, triumph in their
+minds.[A]
+
+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 de
+Scavans_ he once attempted, but found himself quite inadequate to "the
+profession."[B] 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 AUDISON
+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!
+
+[Footnote A: Spagnoletto, while sign-painting at Rome, attracted by his
+ability the notice of a cardinal, who ultimately gave him a home in his
+palace; but the artist, feeling that his poverty was necessary to his
+industry and independence, fled to Naples, and recommenced a life of
+labour.--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: Twice he repeated this resolution. See his Works, vol. xxxi,
+p. 283; vol. xxxii. p. 90.]
+
+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 literature, by Osborn, Cave, and Miller, as when, in the
+honest triumph of Genius, he repelled a tardy adulation 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"[A]--the GUTHRIES, the RALPHS, and the AMHURSTS[B].
+"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.
+
+[Footnote 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."]
+
+[Footnote B: For some account of these men, see "Calamities of Authors."]
+
+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 _mollia 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 subjects, which choice is itself a
+sort of invention. A task-worker ceases to think his own thoughts. The
+stipulated price and time are 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 luxurious, another fever besides the thirst of glory
+torments him. Such insatiable desires create many fears, and a mind in
+fear is a mind in slavery. In one of SHAKSPEARE'S sonnets he pathetically
+laments this compulsion 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,--
+
+ 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 what 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
+waterbrooks; in the other, it pursues its miserable way, panting and
+jaded, with the dogs of hunger and necessity behind."[A] We trace the fate
+of all task-work in the history of POUSSIN, when called on to reside at
+the French court. Labouring without intermission, 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 bitterness, "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.
+
+[Footnote A: _Quarterly Review_, vol. viii. p. 538.]
+
+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,
+requiring 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;[A] 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 certain
+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 booksellers" as the standard of public
+opinion: "the measure of their liberality," he says, "is the least
+ambiguous 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 "patronage of booksellers" is
+frequently injurious to the great interests of literature.
+
+[Footnote A: The agreement made with Simmons, the publisher, was 5_l_.
+down, and 5_l_. more when 1500 copies were sold, the same sum to be paid
+for the second and third editions, each of the same number of copies.
+Milton only lived during the publication of two editions, and his widow
+parted with all her right in the work to the same bookseller for eight
+pounds. Her autograph receipt was in the possession of the late Dawson
+Turner.--ED.]
+
+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 produce hasty
+manufactures. A precious work on a recondite 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 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 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 eleemosynary 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.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: It was the late Sir WALTER SCOTT--if I could assign the
+_date_ of this conversation, it would throw some light on what might be
+then passing in his own mind.]
+
+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" to which I have already referred, he says, that
+"Before the invention of the art of printing, the only employment 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 preservation 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 character, of its independence, its
+influence, and its glory.
+
+I have projected a plan for the alleviation of the state of these 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 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 expatriated 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 nonconformists 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. 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 booksellers, 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.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+Matrimony has often been considered as a condition not well suited to the
+domestic life of genius, accompanied as it must be by many embarrassments
+for the head and the heart. 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 consumed 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
+interruptions 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 married, told Sir Joshua that he was
+preparing to pursue 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, maintaining 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
+interrupted 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 necessarily institute a new order of
+celibacy. The sentence 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 precept," 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 deprivations have usually been the
+concealed cause of the querulous melancholy of the literary character.
+
+Such was the real occasion of SHENSTONE'S unhappiness. 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 that he first sketched
+his "Pastoral Ballad." SHENSTONE 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 plaintive love songs and elegies flowed from
+no fictitious source. "It is long since," said he, "I have considered
+myself as _undone_. The world will not perhaps consider me in that light
+entirely till I have married my maid."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: The melancholy tale of Shenstone's life is narrated in the
+third volume "Curiosities of Literature,"--ED.]
+
+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 my 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 which 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 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 "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 aching 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 the eve my lonely breast
+ _Seeks in vain for perfect rest,
+ Languishes for true content._
+
+If ever a man of letters lived in a state of energy and excitement which
+might raise him above the atmosphere of social love, it was assuredly the
+enthusiast, THOMAS HOLLIS, who, solely devoted to literature and to
+republicanism, 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 trodden 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 remainder 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 disorders_, 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;" 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 demonstrate 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 innocent papers. The wife of Bishop COOPER, while her husband was
+employed on his Lexicon, one day consigned the volume of many years to the
+flames, and obliged that scholar to begin a second siege of Troy in a
+second Lexicon. The wife of WHITELOCKE often destroyed 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 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
+disposition. 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 compelled 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 artefici del mundo; che oltre al suo valore
+pittorico avrebbe piu d'ogni altri maritato di viver sempre per l'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 embarrassments 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.[A] ROUSSEAU has honestly
+confessed his error. He had united himself 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 felt 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.
+
+[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," for anecdotes of "Literary
+Wives."]
+
+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 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 amplifications; 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 NEWTON. He 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 advantage,
+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 enthusiasm which has varied with the genius of
+different ages. It is the opinion of an elegant metaphysician, that the
+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 accommodate their minds to new situations. Politics, war,
+and learning, are equally objects of attainment to their delightful
+susceptibility. Love has the fancied transparency 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, transcribing 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 were opened to the sex, they acquired academic
+glory. The wives 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 taste 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
+_books_, 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 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 Hollers, the wife of Klopstock, in her
+German-English, describes to Richardson, 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 regarding 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 descended to us, touched
+by the domestic pencil of genius, in the susceptible CALPHUENIA, 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 gradually 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
+considerable influence over his compositions: "Often," said he, "when I
+cannot please myself, and am impatient at the disappointment, Madame de
+Buffon reanimates my 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, the person who had most
+contributed to develope them was his wife. She is unknown to the public;
+but the history of the mind of such a woman is discovered in the "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 his
+house in _la librairie_.[A] 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 of this
+business of life into the more elevated pursuits of her 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.
+
+[Footnote A: Gesner's father was a bookseller of Zurich; descended from a
+family of men learned in the exact sciences, he was apprenticed to a
+bookseller at Berlin, and afterwards entered into his father's business.
+The best edition of his "Idylls" is that published by himself, in two
+volumes, 4to, illustrated by his own engravings.--ED.]
+
+To know this incomparable woman we must hear her. "Consider your father's
+precepts as oracles of wisdom; they are 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 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, who has a great object in view, and whose country is the whole
+world, this disposition seems to be likely to produce 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
+reflecting on the immense labour and continued efforts which such
+masterpieces must have required, that I regained my courage and my
+ardour," she observes, "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
+imagination 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 confidence, 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
+sentimentality 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, I thought, 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 I am not much addicted to scenes of a sentimental turn; but to-day,
+while I considered your works, I could not 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 GESNERS! Will it now be a
+question whether matrimony be incompatible with the cultivation of the
+arts? A wife who reanimates the drooping genius of her husband, 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?
+
+
+
+
+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 excursive 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 in the same pursuits, but directed by an
+unequal experience, 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 FRESNOY, 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
+inseparables." The talents of the friends were different, but their
+studios were the same. Their days melted away together in drawing from the
+ancient statues and the basso-relievos, in studying in the galleries of
+paintings, or among the villas which embellish the environs of Rome. One
+roof sheltered them, and one table supplied their 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 sentiment which limited
+the views of "the Inseparables," for with them it was a perpetual source
+of mutual usefulness. 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 unsuccessful 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 succeeded in giving him a freer command and a more
+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
+passage from the Iliad or Odyssey, or the AEneid, 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 Arts Graphica;_[A] a poem, which Mason has made
+readable by his versification, and Reynolds even interesting by his
+invaluable commentary.
+
+[Footnote A: La Vie de Pierre Mignard, par L'Abbe de Monville, the work of
+an amateur.]
+
+In the poem COWLET 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'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 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 Laeli." "What the illustrious Scipio was to Laelius was
+the all-knowing and all-accomplished BURKE to REYNOLDS;" and what the
+elegant Laelius was to his master Panaetius, 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[A].
+
+[Footnote A: Reynolds's hospitality was unbounded to all literary men, and
+his evenings were devoted to their society. It was at his house they
+compared notes; and the President of the Royal Academy obtained that
+information which gave him a full knowledge of the outward world, which
+his ceaseless occupation could not else have allowed.--ED.]
+
+Count AZARA mourns with equal tenderness and force over the memory of the
+artist and the writer Mengs. "The most tender friendship 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 useless; and I would rather accomplish his wishes, in
+making known the author and his works."
+
+I am infinitely delighted by a circumstance communicated to me by one who
+had visited GLEIM, the German poet, who seems to have been a creature made
+up altogether 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 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 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 friendship can never be the lot of men of the world; for the source
+of these lies in the interior affections and the intellectual feelings.
+FONTENELLE describes with characteristic delicacy the conversations of
+such literary friends: "Our days passed like moments; thanks to those
+pleasures, which, however, are not included 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 peculiarity; the true
+philosophical spirit has learned to bear that shock of contrary opinions
+which minds less meditative are unequal to encounter. Men of genius live
+in the unrestrained communication of their ideas, and confide even their
+caprices with a freedom which sometimes startles ordinary observers. We
+see literary men, 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 reprimands nor exhortation,
+has often occurred in the intercourse 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 Valchiusa 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
+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 commands silence, but my
+indignation speaks. How has it happened that Silvanus (under this name he
+conceals Petrarch) has forgotten his dignity, the many conversations we
+had together on the state of Italy, his hatred of the archbishop
+(Visconti), 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 _Il 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 Visconti 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 have 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 in this
+opinion; for if stirred up by the most just indignation 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 bear 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 protector Visconti, yet
+received the ardent reproaches of his friend without anger, though not
+without maintaining 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 independence; but, in respect to
+servitude, he did not know whom it was most displeasing to serve, a tyrant
+like Visconti, or with Boccaccio, a people of tyrants[A].
+
+[Footnote A: These interesting letters are preserved in Count Baldelli's
+"Life of Boccaccio," p. 115.]
+
+The unity of feeling is displayed in such memorable associates as BEAUMONT
+and FLETCHER; whose labours 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 Montaigne's affection for
+Charron, that he requested him by his will to bear the arms of the
+Montaignes; and Charrot 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 simplicity 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 cryptical arts of writing, and projected many curious
+inventions which astonished his age, and which we have carried to
+perfection. This extraordinary man saw his fame somewhat diminishing by a
+rumour that his brother John Vincent 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 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 affections 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[A]. 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 Varignon, 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 Varignon with a
+portion of his small income, accompanied 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 "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 composition, he published a defence
+of his poetical and philosophical 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.
+
+[Footnote A: This event is thus told by Southey: "The news of Churchill's
+death was somewhat abruptly announced to Lloyd as he sat at dinner; he was
+seized with a sudden sickness, and saying, 'I shall follow poor Charles,'
+took to his bed, from which he never rose again; dying, if ever man died,
+of a broken heart. The tragedy did not end here: Churchill's favourite
+sister, who is said to have possessed much of her brother's sense, and
+spirit, and genius, and to have been betrothed to Lloyd, attended him
+during his illness, and, sinking under the double loss, soon followed her
+brother and her lover to the grave."--ED.]
+
+The statesman Fouquet, deserted by all others, witnessed LA FONTAINE
+hastening every literary man to his prison-gate. Many have inscribed their
+works to their disgraced patrons, 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 lingering 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 LAETUS, so called from his natural good-humour, was
+the personal friend of HERMOLATTS BARBABUS, whose saturnine and melancholy
+disposition 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'oeuvre_ 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[A]. No men could be more
+opposite in personal character than the careless, gay, and hasty STEELE,
+and the cautious, serious, and the elegant ADDISON; yet no literary
+friendship was more fortunate than their union.
+
+[Footnote A: For a full account of their literary career see the first
+article in "Quarrels of Authors."]
+
+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 approbation of his illustrious
+friend LOCKE, the philosopher's 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 recal the past!" What tenderness in the reproach!
+What self-accusation in its modesty!
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+Are the personal dispositions of an author discoverable 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 composes 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 intrigue, 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. FORTIGUERRA, the author of
+the Ricciardetto, abounds with loose and licentious descriptions, and yet
+neither his manners nor his personal character were stained by the
+offending freedom of his inventions. SMOLLETT'S character is immaculate;
+yet he has described two scenes which offend even in the license of
+imagination. COWLEY, who boasts with such gaiety of the versatility of his
+passion among so many mistresses, wanted even the confidence to address
+one. Thus, licentious writers may be very chaste persons. The imagination
+may be a volcano while the heart is an Alp of ice.
+
+Turn to the moralist--there we find Seneca, a 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 inveigher
+against the spoilers of provinces attained to a remote government, he
+pillaged like Verres. That "DEMOSTHENES was more capable of recommending
+than of imitating the virtues of our ancestors," is the observation of
+Plutarch. LUCIAN, when young, declaimed 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 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[A]. 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 practised,
+uniting the lion's head with the fox's tail--and thus himself realising
+the political monster of Machiavel!
+
+[Footnote A: See what is said on this subject in the article on Sterne in
+the "Literary Miscellanies," of the present volume.]
+
+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
+preferment 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 perfectly 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 himself," exclaimed the melancholy
+man, in despair. BURTON, 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 at last was 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.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: It is reported of him that his only mode of alleviating his
+melancholy was by walking from his college at Oxford to the bridge, to
+listen to the rough jokes of the bargemen.]
+
+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?
+ROCHEFOUCAULD, in private life, was a conspicuous example 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 disinterested 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 of faction.
+
+When Valincour 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 the slave of love. RACINE never wrote a 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
+epigrammatic 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 I 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 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, describing the pleasures which
+result from the influence of good-humour; and somewhat remarkably says,
+"Without good-humour learning and bravery can be only formidable, 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
+astonished 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 leaped 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;"[A] while Sir GEORGE
+MACKENZIE, who had been continually in the bustle of business, framed a
+eulogium on solitude. We see in MACHIAVEL'S code of tyranny, of depravity,
+and of criminal violence, a horrid picture of human nature; but this
+retired philosopher was a friend to the freedom of his country; he
+participated in none of the crimes he had recorded, but drew up these
+systemized 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.
+
+[Footnote A: Since this was written the correspondence of EVELYN has
+appeared, by which we find that he apologised to Cowley for having
+published 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, requesting that
+Cowley would not suppose its principles formed his private opinions. Thus
+LEIBNITZ, we are told, laughed at the fanciful system revealed in his
+_Theodicee_, 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.]
+
+Thus authors and artists may yield no certain indication of their personal
+characters in their works. Inconstant 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 the stage. MILTON has been
+censured by CLARKE for the impiety of Satan; and an enemy of SHAKSPEARE
+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 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. CREBILLON, who exulted, on his entrance into
+the French Academy, that he had never tinged his pen with the gall of
+satire, delighted 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
+l'ame et les naifs jugemens de mes auteurs. Il faut bien juger leur
+suffisance, mais non pas leurs moeurs, 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 objections to prove that MONTAIGNE
+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 independent 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
+bag_; 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
+suffering, 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 performed in his
+chamber, and, in rising to embrace it, his hands dropped and failed him;
+thus, as Professor 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 there not
+writers who, with all the vehemence of genius, by adopting one principle
+can make all things shrink into the pigmy form 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.[A] The influence of their studies over
+men of genius is limited. Out of the ideal world, man is 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 simplicity 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 contrast 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.
+
+[Footnote A: 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 pouvais me dissimuler que je n'etais pas une
+persoune courageuse; j'ai de la hardiesse dans _l'imagination,_ mais de la
+timidite dans la _caractere_."]
+
+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 imagination 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, whose heart was
+not so susceptible in ordinary occurrences, while he was gradually
+creating incident after incident and touching successive 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
+contemplated, 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--"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!
+
+
+
+
+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
+general 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 literature--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 himself 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 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 sublimity. Their expansive library
+presents an indestructible history of the genius of every people, through
+all their eras--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 curiosity 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! These volumes--images of our mind
+and passions!--as he traces them from Herodotus to Gibbon, from Homer to
+Shakspeare--those portfolios which gather up, the inventions of genius,
+and that selected cabinet of medals which holds so many 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 requires, 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,[A] 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 unhappily described by the
+Hollanders as _lief-hebbers_, lovers or fanciers, and their collection as
+_lief-hebbery_, things of their love. The Dutch call everything for which
+they are impassioned _lief-hebbery_; but their feeling 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
+languages of genius; but something parallel is required to correct
+that indiscriminate notion which most persons associate with that of
+_collectors_.
+
+[Footnote A: The contiguity of the CHAMBER to the LIBRARY is not the
+solitary fancy of an individual, but marks the class. Early in life, when
+in France and Holland, I met with several of these _amateurs_, who had
+bounded 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 sleeping
+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 curiosities, 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 intercourse 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.]
+
+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 relinquished 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 opulence 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
+sincere, 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 whom the world
+ Calls idle!
+
+De Sacy, one of the Port-Royalists, was fond of repeating this lively
+remark of a man of wit--"That all 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 interrupted 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 atmosphere of taste about him
+which will be dissolved, and harmonious ideas which will be chased away,
+as it happens 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 libraries. 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
+collections. "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 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 collection,
+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
+_lief-hebber_ having silently listened to the imperial agent, seemed
+astonished that such things 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 diamonds, afforded but a mean, an
+unequal, and a barbarous 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 concentrated
+feelings which cannot be indulged with security, or even without ridicule
+in general society. Like the Lucullus of Plutarch, he would not only live
+among 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 situations;
+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![A] 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.
+
+[Footnote A: Sir Thomas Bodley, in 1602, first brought the old libraries
+at Oxford into order for the benefit of students, and added thereto his
+own noble collection. That of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford (died 1724),
+was purchased by the country, and is now in the British Museum; and also
+are the other collections named above. Sir Robert Cotton died 1631; his
+collection is remarkable for its historic documents and state-papers. Sir
+Hans Sloane's collections may be said to be the foundation of the British
+Museum, and were purchased by Government for 20,000_l_., after his death,
+in 1749. Of Cracherode and Townley some notice will be found on p. 2 of
+the present volume. Sir Joseph Banks and his sister made large bequests to
+the same national establishment.--ED.]
+
+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 described by one who has 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 the imagination, by leading it over an unbounded range of the
+noblest scenes in the overawing company of departed wisdom and genius."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: "Quarterly Review," No. xxxiii. p. 145.]
+
+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 contracted 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 temporary passions
+--those mighty beginnings, of which he knows the miserable terminations.
+
+Antiquity presents the character of a perfect man of letters in ATTICUS,
+who retreated from a political to a literary life. Had his letters
+accompanied those of Cicero, they would have illustrated the ideal
+character 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. "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 blameable, induced you to adopt
+an honourable leisure; _honestum otium_."[A] These motives appear in the
+interesting memoirs of this man of letters; a contempt 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.
+
+[Footnote A: "Ad Atticum," Lib. i. Ep. 17.]
+
+The result of this literary life was the strong affections 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 ATTICUS. 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 residing at Venice, among other peculiar honours
+received from the senate, was there distinguished by the affectionate
+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 stigmatised 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 principles in
+the conduct of the Roman. He engaged himself 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 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 addressing
+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 the biographer with the very thoughts, so
+closely united in the same pursuits, and so perpetual an observer of the
+remarkable man whom he has immortalised, that when employed on this
+elaborate resemblance of his friend, he was only painting himself with all
+the identifying strokes of self-love[A].
+
+[Footnote A: "I suppose," writes EVELYN, that most agreeable enthusiast of
+literature, to a travelling friend, "that you carry the life of that
+incomparable 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
+Gassendus."]
+
+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, deciphering obscure inscriptions, and explaining
+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 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
+friendships! 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.
+Considering the studious as forming but one great family wherever they
+were, for PEIRESC the national repositories of knowledge in Europe formed
+but one collection for the world. This man of letters had possessed
+himself 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
+antiquities 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 universal 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 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 importations 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.[A] 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, 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, connected both Americas, and had touched the newly-discovered
+extremities of the universe, when this intrepid mind closed in a premature
+death.
+
+[Footnote A: On this subject see "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p.
+151; and for some further account of Peiresc and his labours, vol. iii. p.
+409, of the same work.--ED.]
+
+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 endured 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 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, "content," 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
+collections. They either were not endowed with that faculty of genius
+which strikes out aggregate views, or were destitute of the talent of
+composition which embellishes 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 hesitate; 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 therefore 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. The
+delightful instruction which these men are constantly 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 Scotland," was long
+irresolute in his designs, and still unpractised 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 MAGLIABECHI, 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.
+
+"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
+communication 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 enjoyments, and usually
+its powers--a happiness which accompanies 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 designs. 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 genius is still creating. ANCORA IMPARO!--"Even
+yet I am learning!" was the concise inscription on an ingenious 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 delighted with the discovery of this circumstance in the lives
+of painters. "As I 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 possessor. 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 materially 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 deprived 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, consists in the
+mass of our ideas, to which every age will now add, by means unknown to
+preceding generations. 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. Pull 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, constitute 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 MOTHE LE VAYER'S Treatises is striking: "I
+should but ill return the favours 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 condemned;" and the old man proceeds
+with his "Observations 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 VARBO, in opening his curious treatise _de Re Rustica_,
+which the sage lived to finish, and which, after nearly 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 Chalkhill, "the friend of Spenser."
+BODMER, beyond eighty, was occupied on Homer, and WIELAND on Cicero's
+Letters.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," on "The progress of old age
+in new studies."]
+
+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, in a
+class of reading to which he had never been accustomed, 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
+inquiries; 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
+reperusing, with the enthusiasm of a student, the tragic poets of ancient
+Greece, and Sophocles and Euripides lay open on 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 receiving from Lucian, inspiring at the moment a
+humorous self-dialogue with Charon. "Happily," said this philosopher, "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 delight_,
+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."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: There is an interesting chapter on Favourite Authors in
+"Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii., to which the reader may be referred
+for other examples.--ED.]
+
+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 grey 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
+philosophical legacy for his children. It was a view of the history and
+progress of the human mind--of its principles, 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 developed. 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 hundred 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 literature, has
+thrown something delightful over this latest season of life, in his _de
+Senectute_. To have written on old age, in old age, is to have obtained a
+triumph over Time.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: "Spurinna, or the Comforts of Old Age," by the late Sir
+Thomas Bernard, was written a year or two before he died.]
+
+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 the old bees, have been found dying in
+their honeycombs. Let them preserve but the flame alive on the altar, and
+at the last momenta they may be found in the act of sacrifice! The
+venerable BEDE, the instructor of his generation, and the historian for so
+many successive 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 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 remarkable
+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 again, and again it
+dropped: deprived of the sense of touch--his hand without motion--the earl
+perceived himself struck by palsy--and the life of the noble exile closed
+amidst the warmth of a literary work unfinished!
+
+
+
+
+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 perfection 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 occupations 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 animals, 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."
+
+Such was the limited conception which the ancients formed of genius. They
+confined it to particular objects or departments in art. But there is a
+tendency among men of genius to ascribe a 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
+accomplish 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 promises of universal power than
+LEIBNITZ. Science, imagination, history, criticism, fertilized the richest
+of human soils; yet LEIBNITZ, with immense powers and perpetual knowledge,
+dissipated them in the multiplicity 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 distinguished as a
+monument of his genius." As a universalist, VOLTAIRE remains unparalleled
+in ancient or in modern times. This voluminous idol of our neighbours
+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 invention 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 province, but no one but himself has possessed them
+all. Voltaire discovered a new art, that of creating a supplement to the
+genius which had preceded him; and without 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 renders 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 defined 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
+philosopher. 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 vainglory of universality? Let us dare to call this a vainglory;
+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 solitary force stamps the
+authentic work of genius. To execute equally well on a variety of subjects
+may raise a suspicion of the nature of the executive power. Should it he
+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 contrary 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 remarkable 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, VOLTAIRE in comedy, and JOHNSON 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 deficient 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 inherent
+in themselves--what is individual--and not by 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 numerous odes are not
+of a higher order than those of other ode-writers. Had POPE only composed
+odes and tragedies, 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 particular artist for a particular object. Would you ornament
+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 arabesques 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 of genius
+_excel_ only in one department of their art, and that whatever they do
+with the utmost original perfection, 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+Literature an avenue to glory.--An intellectual nobility not chimerical,
+but created by public opinion.--Literary honours of various nations.--
+Local associations with the memory of the man of genius.
+
+
+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
+posterity; 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 VOITURE, another descendant of a _marchand de
+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 sending a knife for a
+new-year's gift, "informing his friend, 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 requested 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
+Massillon, 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 AEsop, 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 has created a
+new aristocracy of its own, where they already begin to be jealous of
+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 vanquisher 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 University 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 circumstance, that by these instruments he had
+strengthened the works he had invented, when his genius poured forth the
+waters through our metropolis, thereby distinguishing 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 millions 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 mathematician, who had a calculation for his
+epitaph.
+
+We who were reproached for a coldness in our national character, have
+caught the inspiration and enthusiasm for the works and the celebrity of
+genius; the symptoms indeed were long dubious. REYNOLDS wished 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 "Sandwich"
+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; _AEschylus_ Potter, _Athenian_ Stuart, and _Anacreon_ Moore.
+BUTLER, in his own day, was more generally known by the single 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 a name instantly recognised which might
+otherwise 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 nobility, 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 condescend 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 unbending
+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 candour, 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 people 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 mortifications."_ Montesquieu
+subjoins a reflection sufficiently humiliating for the mere nobleman: "The
+great, inwardly 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." 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 develope his real feelings
+respecting himself and the literary men of his age.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: "Calamities of Authors." 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 proclaim 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, criticism, and wit of
+the most original and brilliant composition." This was published several
+years before the recent collection of his letters.]
+
+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?[A] "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 stairs-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 indisposed his holiness towards him, and
+more than once the great artist was suffered to linger in attendance in
+the antechamber. One day the indignant man of genius exclaimed, "Tell his
+holiness, if he wants me, he must look for me elsewhere." He flew back to
+his beloved Florence, to proceed with that celebrated cartoon 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 foot of the Father of the Church, turning
+aside his troubled countenance in silence. An intermeddling bishop offered
+himself as a mediator, apologising for our artist by observing, "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.
+
+[Footnote A: Johnson had originally submitted the plan of his
+"Dictionary" to Lord Chesterfield, but received no mark of interest or
+sympathy during its weary progress; when the moment of publication
+approached, his lordship, perhaps in the hope of earning a dedication,
+published in _The World_ two letters commending Johnson and his labours.
+It was this notice that produced Johnson's celebrated letter, in which he
+asks,--"Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
+struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers
+him with help? The notice you have been pleased to take of my labours, had
+it been early had been kind, but it has been delayed till I am indifferent
+and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am
+known, and do not want it."--ED.]
+
+"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 statesman; for when the
+Academy was once not received with royal honours, he complained to the
+French monarch, observing, that when "a man of letters was 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 "The Elector of Hanover
+united under his dominion an electorate, the three kingdoms of Great
+Britain, and LEIBNITZ and NEWTON."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: This greatness of intellect that glorifies a court, however
+small, is well instanced in that at Weimar, where the Duke Frederic
+surrounded himself with the first men in Germany. It was the chosen
+residence and burial-place of Herder; the birth-place of Kotzebue. Here
+also Wieland resided for many years; and in the vaults of the ducal chapel
+the ashes of Schiller repose by those of Goethe, who for more than half a
+century assisted in the councils, and adorned the court of Weimar.--Ed.]
+
+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 expressed 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 insensible 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 hastened 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 to receive, and many a crowd has followed
+his footsteps! 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 English
+parliament, was accommodated with a seat. SPINOSA, when he gained an
+humble livelihood by grinding 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 march 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:[A] everything 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 TIRABOSCHI 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 borders of the Linnet, in the
+public walk of Zurich, the monument of GESNER, erected by the votes of his
+fellow-citizens attests their sensibility; and a solemn funeral honoured
+the remains of KLOPSTOCK, led by the senate of Hamburgh, with fifty
+thousand votaries, so penetrated by one universal sentiment, that this
+multitude preserved a mournful silence, and the interference 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 ERASMUS, 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 XIV. protected 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 dramatists; in their Institute
+their illustrious authors; in their public edifices, congenial men of
+genius.[B] 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.
+
+[Footnote A: Lope de Vega.]
+
+[Footnote B: 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. [We have recent evidence of a
+more noble acknowledgment of our great men. The statue of Dr. Jenner is
+placed in Trafalgar Square; and Grantham has now a noble work to
+commemorate its great townsman, Sir Isaac Newton.]]
+
+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 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 Europe. 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 composing 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 townspeople had risen 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 coronation at Rome.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: 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, than it could give pleasure that the
+rest of Arezzo rose against his _right_ (for _right_ he had); the
+depreciation of the 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."]
+
+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 inscription 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 apartment wrote." Two hundred and eighty
+years after the death of the divine poet it was purchased by the
+_podesta_, with the money of the _commune_, that "the public veneration
+may be maintained."[A] "Foreigners," 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 VOLTAIRE inhabited, and
+at Ferney his study, are both preserved inviolate. In the study of
+MONTESQUIEU at La Brede, near Bordeaux, the proprietor 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 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
+_chateau_, 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.
+
+[Footnote A: A public subscription secured the house in which Shakspeare
+was born at Stratford-on-Avon. Durer's house, at Nuremberg, is still
+religiously preserved, and its features are unaltered. The house in which
+Michael Angelo resided at Florence is also carefully guarded, and the
+rooms are still in the condition in which they were left by the great
+master.--Ed.]
+
+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 Shakspeare. The
+very apartment of a man of genius, the chair he studied in, the table he
+wrote on, are contemplated with curiosity; the spot is full of local
+impressions. 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 discovered 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 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 FENELON.[A] 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--.
+
+[Footnote A: The printing office of Plantyn, at Antwerp, was guarded in a
+similar manner during the great revolution that separated Holland and
+Belgium, when a troop of soldiers were stationed in its courtyard. See
+"Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 77, _note_.--ED.]
+
+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.
+RABEIAIS, 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 instances
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+Influence of Authors on society, and of society on Authors.--National
+tastes a source of literary prejudices.--True Genius always the organ of
+its nation.--Master-writers preserve the distinct national character.
+--Genius the organ of the state of the age.--Causes of its suppression in
+a people.--Often invented, but neglected.--The natural gradations of
+genius.--Men of Genius produce their usefulness in privacy.--The public
+mind is now the creation of the public writer.--Politicians affect to deny
+this principle.--Authors stand between the governors and the governed.--A
+view of the solitary Author in his study.--They create an epoch in
+history.--Influence of popular Authors.--The immortality of thought.--The
+Family of Genius illustrated by their genealogy.
+
+
+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 distinguish us from a
+people of barbarians. It was long considered that our genius partook
+of the density and variableness of our climate, and that we were
+incapacitated even by situation from the enjoyments of those beautiful
+arts which have 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 philosophy, 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 enclosed 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 universe, 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 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
+originate 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 literature 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 trying them by
+conventional principles and arbitrary regulations, 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 literature 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 imagination 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 mankind indeed have the same
+common source, but they must come to us through the medium and by the
+modifications of society. Love is a 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, Shakspeare, 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 constitute their excellences. Nor does this perpetual contest
+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 understandings of the people it addresses. Hence those
+opposite characteristics, which are usually ascribed to the master-writers
+themselves, originate with the country, and not with the writer. LOPE DE
+VEGA, and CALDEBON, 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 character to the Spaniards, having adapted their genius to their
+own declamatory and vivacious countrymen. PETRARCH 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 precede the man of genius, who often becomes only the
+vehicle of public feeling. MACHIAVEL has been reproached for propagating a
+political system subversive of all human honour and happiness; but was it
+Machiavel who formed his age, or the age which created Machiavel? Living
+among the petty principalities of Italy, where stratagem and assassination
+were the practices of those wretched courts, what did that calumniated
+genius more than lift the veil from a cabinet of bandtiti? 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 indecent 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 scepticism, and for the
+unsettled notions he drew out on his motley page, which has been
+attributed to his incapacity of forming decisive opinions. "Que scais-je?"
+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 controversy
+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 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 political 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," were
+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.[A] To produce the "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 introduction of
+school-divinity into poetry. In a polemical age the poet, as well as the
+sovereign, reflected the reigning tastes.
+
+[Footnote A: Sismondi relates that the bed of the river Arno, at Florence,
+was transformed into a representation of the Gulf of Hell, in the year
+1304; and that all the variety of suffering that monkish imagination had
+invented was apparently inflicted on real persons, whose shrieks and
+groans gave fearful reality to the appalling scene.--ED.]
+
+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 continental 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 Winkelmann 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 teen outrageously calumniated. 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 unfortunately only obtained Holbein. A later
+sovereign, 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 notions, they might have struck at the
+true cause of the deficiency in our national genius. The jealousy of
+puritanic fanaticism had persecuted these arts from the first rise of the
+Reformation in this country. It had not only banished them from our
+churches and altar-pieces, but the fury of the people, and the "wisdom" of
+parliament, 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 confute
+the Continental calumniators, 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 realized, 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 profoundly meditated on the Jews
+rejecting Jesus. Thus 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
+government 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 displaying 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 architecture, however, is but
+a fragment of a grander composition, by which, had not the civil wars
+intervened, the fame of Britain would have balanced the glory of Greece,
+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 boldness 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, GUIBEBT
+died of "vexation of spirit;" and the last words on the death-bed of this
+man of genius were, "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 may we deduce the natural gradations of genius. Many men of
+genius must arise before a particular 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 CAEDAN 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 groundwork of HARTLEY'S theory
+of vibrations. The learning 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 Arabian 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 inspiration. 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
+usefulness in privacy; but it may not be of immediate 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 discoveries, 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
+aspiration 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
+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 persecutions, 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 includes 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 GROTICS'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 science and our
+legislation. When LOCKE and MONTESQUIEU 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 VITRUVIUS, 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
+conception. "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 fireside! 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 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 recals of man to
+the sympathies of his nature, which proves the influence 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 convoys 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 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 commercial 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 extravagances, 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 Punishments," and at length abolished torture; while the 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 fundamental principles of such works, after
+having long entered into our earliest instruction, become unquestionable
+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 incorporated 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 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 importunes--"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 falsehoods 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 contemporaries, 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--you
+see him now changed; and the restlessness of his soul is thrown into his
+very gestures--could you listen to the vaticinator! 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 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
+themselves 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 corporation 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:--"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, philosopher,
+geographer, historian, and antiquary, PETRARCH 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 discussions"
+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
+talent; and though his own fame may 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 publication 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
+advantages, without remembering or knowing its benefactors. ROLLIN is only
+a compiler of history, and to the antiquary 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 NEWTONS, 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 fugitive 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
+deliciously penetrated through all my pores: I have retained 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 application, 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
+introducing 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 toilet, or the fine moralist for active as
+well as contemplative life--in all 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 instigation and by the sole direction of
+this work_." It was an author in his studious retreat who, casting a
+prophetic 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 constructed, and they can tell you that it was with the oaks which
+the genius of EVELYN planted.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: 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.]
+
+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 silkworms. 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 Agricultural 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 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 IMMORTALITY 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 the circulation of the blood appears to
+have been obscurely conjectured by SERVETUS, who wanted experimental
+facts to support his hypothesis: VESALIUS had an imperfect perception
+of the right motion of the blood: CAESALPINUS admits a circulation
+without comprehending 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 accidental illustration. The
+beautiful theory of vision by BERKELEY, 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 consequences, 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
+SACKVILLE the idea of his 'Mirror for Magistrates'." The "Mirror for
+Magistrates" again gave hints to SPENSER in 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
+"Idle and Industrious Apprentice," 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 chronology, for to its
+votaries everything it has done is PRESENT--the earliest attempt stands
+connected with the most recent. This continuity of ideas characterizes 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? Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton! this is a
+single line of descent!
+
+ARISTOTLE, HOBBES, and LOCKE, DESCARTES, and NEWTON, approximate more than
+we imagine. The 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 VAYER, 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 Vayer 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. VARRE 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 researches 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."[A] Our 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!
+
+[Footnote A: Turner's "History of England," vol. ii. p. 432.]
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY MISCELLANIES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+MISCELLANISTS.
+
+
+Miscellanists are the most popular writers among every people; for
+it is they who form a communication between the learned and the unlearned,
+and, as it were, throw a bridge between those two great divisions of the
+public. Literary Miscellanies are classed among philological studies. The
+studies of philology formerly consisted rather of the labours of arid
+grammarians and conjectural critics, than of that more elegant philosophy
+which has, within our own time, been introduced into literature,
+and which, by its graces and investigation, augment the beauties of
+original genius. This delightful province has been termed in Germany the
+_AEsthetic_, from a Greek term signifying sentiment or feeling. AEsthetic
+critics fathom the depths, or run with the current of an author's
+thoughts, and the sympathies of such a critic offer a supplement to the
+genius of the original writer. Longinus and Addison are AEsthetic critics.
+The critics of the adverse school always look for a precedent, and if none
+is found, woe to the originality of a great writer!
+
+Very elaborate criticisms have been formed by eminent writers, in which
+great learning and acute logic have only betrayed the absence of the
+AEsthetic faculty. Warburton called Addison an empty superficial writer,
+destitute himself of an atom of Addison's taste for the beautiful; and
+Johnson is a flagrant instance that great powers of reasoning are more
+fatal to the works of imagination than had ever been suspected.
+
+By one of these learned critics was Montaigne, the venerable father of
+modern Miscellanies, called "a bold ignorant fellow." To thinking readers,
+this critical summary will appear mysterious; for Montaigne had imbibed
+the spirit of all the moral writers of antiquity; and although he has made
+a capricious complaint of a defective memory, we cannot but wish the
+complaint had been more real; for we discover in his works such a
+gathering of knowledge that it seems at times to stifle his own energies.
+Montaigne was censured by Scaliger, as Addison was censured by Warburton;
+because both, like Socrates, smiled at that mere erudition which consists
+of knowing the thoughts of others and having no thoughts of our own. To
+weigh syllables, and to arrange dates, to adjust texts, and to heap
+annotations, has generally proved the absence of the higher faculties.
+When a more adventurous spirit of this herd attempts some novel discovery,
+often men of taste behold, with indignation, the perversions of their
+understanding; and a Bentley in his Milton, or a Warburton on a Virgil,
+had either a singular imbecility concealed under the arrogance of the
+scholar, or they did not believe what they told the public; the one in his
+extraordinary invention of an interpolating editor, and the other in his
+more extraordinary explanation of the Eleusinian mysteries. But what was
+still worse, the froth of the head became venom, when it reached the
+heart.
+
+Montaigne has also been censured for an apparent vanity, in making himself
+the idol of his lucubrations. If he had not done this, he had not
+performed the promise he makes at the commencement of his preface. An
+engaging tenderness prevails in these _naive_ expressions which shall not
+be injured by a version. "Je l'ay voue a la commodite particuliere de mes
+parens et amis; a ce que m'ayans perdu (ce qu'ils out a faire bientost)
+ils y puissent retrouver quelques traicts de mes humeurs, et que par ce
+moyen ils nourrissent plus entiere et plus vifue la conoissance qu'ils out
+eu de moi."
+
+Those authors who appear sometimes to forget they are writers, and
+remember they are men, will be our favourites. He who writes from the
+heart, will write to the heart; every one is enabled to decide on his
+merits, and they will not be referred to learned heads, or a distant day.
+"Why," says Boileau, "are my verses read by all? it is only because they
+speak truths, and that I am convinced of the truths I write."
+
+Why have some of our fine writers interested more than others, who
+have not displayed inferior talents? Why is Addison still the first
+of our essayists? he has sometimes been excelled in criticisms more
+philosophical, in topics more interesting, and in diction more coloured.
+But there is a personal charm in the character he has assumed in his
+periodical Miscellanies, which is felt with such a gentle force, that
+we scarce advert to it. He has painted forth his little humours, his
+individual feelings, and eternised himself to his readers. Johnson and
+Hawkesworth we receive with respect, and we dismiss with awe; we come from
+their writings as from public lectures, and from Addison's as from private
+conversations. Montaigne preferred those of the ancients, who appear to
+write under a conviction of what they said; the eloquent Cicero declaims
+but coldly on liberty, while in the impetuous Brutus may be perceived a
+man who is resolved to purchase it with his life. We know little of
+Plutarch; yet a spirit of honesty and persuasion in his works expresses a
+philosophical character capable of imitating, as well as admiring, the
+virtues he records.
+
+Sterne perhaps derives a portion of his celebrity from the same influence;
+he interests us in his minutest motions, for he tells us all he feels.
+Richardson was sensible of the power with which these minute strokes of
+description enter the heart, and which are so many fastenings to which the
+imagination clings. He says, "If I give speeches and conversations, I
+ought to give them justly; for the humours and characters of persons
+cannot be known, unless I repeat _what_ they say, and their _manner_ of
+saying." I confess I am infinitely pleased when Sir William Temple
+acquaints us with the size of his orange-trees, and with the flavour of
+his peaches and grapes, confessed by Frenchmen to equal those of France;
+with his having had the honour to naturalise in this country four kinds of
+grapes, with his liberal distribution of them, because "he ever thought
+all things of this kind the commoner they are the better." In a word, with
+his passionate attachment to his garden, where he desired his heart to be
+buried, of his desire to escape from great employments, and having passed
+five years without going to town, where, by the way, "he had a large house
+always ready to receive him." Dryden has interspersed many of these little
+particulars in his prosaic compositions, and I think that his character
+and dispositions may be more correctly acquired by uniting these scattered
+notices, than by any biographical account which can now be given of this
+man of genius.
+
+From this agreeable mode of writing, a species of compositions may be
+discriminated, which seems above all others to identify the reader with
+the writer; compositions which are often discovered in a fugitive state,
+but to which their authors were prompted by the fine impulses of genius,
+derived from the peculiarity of their situation. Dictated by the heart, or
+polished with the fondness of delight, these productions are impressed by
+the seductive eloquence of genius, or attach us by the sensibility of
+taste. The object thus selected is no task imposed on the mind of the
+writer for the mere ambition of literature, but is a voluntary effusion,
+warm with all the sensations of a pathetic writer. In a word, they
+are the compositions of genius, on a subject in which it is most deeply
+interested; which it revolves on all its sides, which it paints in
+all its tints, and which it finishes with the same ardour it began. Among
+such works may be placed the exiled Bolingbroke's "Reflections upon
+Exile;" the retired Petrarch and Zimmerman's Essays on "Solitude;" the
+imprisoned Boethius's "Consolations of Philosophy;" the oppressed Pierius
+Valerianus's Catalogue of "Literary Calamities;" the deformed Hay's Essay
+on "Deformity;" the projecting De Foe's "Essays on Projects;" the liberal
+Shenstone's Poem on "Economy."
+
+We may respect the profound genius of voluminous writers; they are a kind
+of painters who occupy great room, and fill up, as a satirist expresses
+it, "an acre of canvas." But we love to dwell on those more delicate
+pieces,--a group of Cupids; a Venus emerging from the waves; a Psyche or
+an Aglaia, which embellish the cabinet of the man of taste.
+
+It should, indeed, be the characteristic of good Miscellanies, to be
+multifarious and concise. Usbek, the Persian of Montesquieu, is one of the
+profoundest philosophers, his letters are, however, but concise pages.
+Rochefoucault and La Bruyere are not superficial observers of human
+nature, although they have only written sentences. Of Tacitus it has been
+finely remarked by Montesquieu, that "he abridged everything because he
+saw everything." Montaigne approves of Plutarch and Seneca, because their
+loose papers were suited to his dispositions, and where knowledge is
+acquired without a tedious study. "It is," said he, "no great attempt to
+take one in hand, and I give over at pleasure, for they have no sequel or
+connexion." La Fontaine agreeably applauds short compositions:
+
+ Les longs ouvrages me font peur;
+ Loin d'epuiser une matiere,
+ On n'en doit prendre que la fleur;
+
+and Old Francis Osborne has a coarse and ludicrous image in favour of such
+opuscula; he says, "Huge volumes, like the ox roasted whole at Bartholomew
+fair, may proclaim plenty of labour and invention, but afford less of what
+is delicate, savoury, and well concocted, than _smaller pieces_." To quote
+so light a genius as the enchanting La Fontaine, and so solid a mind as
+the sensible Osborne, is taking in all the climates of the human mind; it
+is touching at the equator, and pushing on to the pole.
+
+Montaigne's works have been called by a cardinal "The Breviary of Idlers."
+It is therefore the book of man; for all men are idlers; we have hours
+which we pass with lamentation, and which we know are always returning. At
+those moments miscellanists are conformable to all our humours. We dart
+along their airy and concise page; and their lively anecdote or their
+profound observation are so many interstitial pleasures in our listless
+hours.
+
+The ancients were great admirers of miscellanies; Aulus Gellius has
+preserved a copious list of titles of such works. These titles are so
+numerous, and include such gay and pleasing descriptions, that we may
+infer by their number that they were greatly admired by the public, and by
+their titles that they prove the great delight their authors experienced
+in their composition. Among the titles are "a basket of flowers;" "an
+embroidered mantle;" and "a variegated meadow." Such a miscellanist as was
+the admirable Erasmus deserves the happy description which Plutarch with
+an elegant enthusiasm bestows on Menander: he calls him the delight of
+philosophers fatigued with study; that they have recourse to his works as
+to a meadow enamelled with flowers, where the sense is delighted by a
+purer air; and very elegantly adds, that Menander has a salt peculiar to
+himself, drawn from the same waters that gave birth to Venus.
+
+The Troubadours, Conteurs, and Jongleurs, practised what is yet called in
+the southern parts of France, _Le guay Saber,_ or the gay science. I
+consider these as the Miscellanists of their day; they had their grave
+moralities, their tragical histories, and their sportive tales; their
+verse and their prose. The village was in motion at their approach; the
+castle was opened to the ambulatory poets, and the feudal hypochondriac
+listened to their solemn instruction and their airy fancy. I would
+call miscellaneous composition LE GUAY SABER, and I would have every
+miscellaneous writer as solemn and as gay, as various and as pleasing, as
+these lively artists of versatility.
+
+Nature herself is most delightful in her miscellaneous scenes. When I hold
+a volume of miscellanies, and run over with avidity the titles of its
+contents, my mind is enchanted, as if it were placed among the landscapes
+of Valais, which Rousseau has described with such picturesque beauty. I
+fancy myself seated in a cottage amid those mountains, those valleys,
+those rocks, encircled by the enchantments of optical illusion. I look,
+and behold at once the united seasons--"All climates in one place, all
+seasons in one instant." I gaze at once on a hundred rainbows, and trace
+the romantic figures of the shifting clouds. I seem to be in a temple
+dedicated to the service of the Goddess VARIETY.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+PREFACES.
+
+
+I declare myself infinitely delighted by a preface. Is it exquisitely
+written? no literary morsel is more delicious. Is the author inveterately
+dull? it is a kind of preparatory information, which may be very useful.
+It argues a deficiency in taste to turn over an elaborate preface unread;
+for it is the attar of the author's roses; every drop distilled at an
+immense cost. It is the reason of the reasoning, and the folly of the
+foolish.
+
+I do not wish, however, to conceal that several writers, as well as
+readers, have spoken very disrespectfully of this species of literature.
+That fine writer Montesquieu, in closing the preface to his "Persian
+Letters," says, "I do not praise my 'Persians;' because it would be a very
+tedious thing, put in a place already very tedious of itself; I mean a
+preface." Spence, in the preface to his "Polymetis," informs us, that
+"there is not any sort of writing which he sits down to with so much
+unwillingness as that of prefaces; and as he believes most people are not
+much fonder of reading them than he is of writing them, he shall get over
+this as fast as he can." Pelisson warmly protested against prefatory
+composition; but when he published the works of Sarrasin, was wise enough
+to compose a very pleasing one. He, indeed, endeavoured to justify himself
+for acting against his own opinions, by this ingenious excuse, that, like
+funeral honours, it is proper to show the utmost regard for them when
+given to others, but to be inattentive to them for ourselves.
+
+Notwithstanding all this evidence, I have some good reasons for admiring
+prefaces; and barren as the investigation may appear, some literary
+amusement can be gathered.
+
+In the first place, I observe that a prefacer is generally a most
+accomplished liar. Is an author to be introduced to the public? the
+preface is as genuine a panegyric, and nearly as long a one, as that of
+Pliny's on the Emperor Trajan. Such a preface is ringing an alarum bell
+for an author. If we look closer into the characters of these masters of
+ceremony, who thus sport with and defy the judgment of their reader, and
+who, by their extravagant panegyric, do considerable injury to the cause
+of taste, we discover that some accidental occurrence has occasioned this
+vehement affection for the author, and which, like that of another kind of
+love, makes one commit so many extravagances.
+
+Prefaces are indeed rarely sincere. It is justly observed by Shenstone, in
+his prefatory Essay to the "Elegies," that "discourses prefixed to poetry
+inculcate such tenets as may exhibit the performance to the greatest
+advantage. The fabric is first raised, and the measures by which we
+are to judge of it are afterwards adjusted." This observation might be
+exemplified by more instances than some readers might choose to read. It
+will be sufficient to observe with what art both Pope and Fontenelle have
+drawn up their Essays on the nature of Pastoral Poetry, that the rules
+they wished to establish might be adapted to their own pastorals. Has
+accident made some ingenious student apply himself to a subordinate branch
+of literature, or to some science which is not highly esteemed--look in
+the preface for its sublime panegyric. Collectors of coins, dresses, and
+butterflies, have astonished the world with eulogiums which would raise
+their particular studies into the first ranks of philosophy.
+
+It would appear that there is no lie to which a prefacer is not tempted. I
+pass over the commodious prefaces of Dryden, which were ever adapted to
+the poem and not to poetry, to the author and not to literature.
+
+The boldest preface-liar was Aldus Manutius, who, having printed an
+edition of Aristophanes, first published in the preface that Saint
+Chrysostom was accustomed to place this comic poet under his pillow, that
+he might always have his works at hand. As, in that age, a saint was
+supposed to possess every human talent, good taste not excepted,
+Aristophanes thus recommended became a general favourite. The anecdote
+lasted for nearly two centuries; and what was of greater consequence to
+Aldus, quickened the sale of his Aristophanes. This ingenious invention of
+the prefacer of Aristophanes at length was detected by Menage.
+
+The insincerity of prefaces arises whenever an author would disguise his
+solicitude for his work, by appearing negligent, and even undesirous of
+its success. A writer will rarely conclude such a preface without
+betraying himself. I think that even Dr. Johnson forgot his sound
+dialectic in the admirable Preface to his Dictionary. In one part he says,
+"having laboured this work with so much application, I cannot but have
+some degree of parental fondness." But in his conclusion he tells us, "I
+dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from
+censure or from praise." I deny the doctor's "frigidity." This polished
+period exhibits an affected stoicism, which no writer ever felt for the
+anxious labour of a great portion of life, addressed not merely to a class
+of readers, but to literary Europe.
+
+But if prefaces are rarely sincere or just, they are, notwithstanding,
+literary opuscula in which the author is materially concerned. A work
+with a poor preface, like a person who comes with an indifferent
+recommendation, must display uncommon merit to master our prejudices, and
+to please us, as it were, in spite of ourselves. Works ornamented by a
+finished preface, such as Johnson not infrequently presented to his
+friends or his booksellers, inspire us with awe; we observe a veteran
+guard placed in the porch, and we are induced to conclude from this
+appearance that some person of eminence resides in the place itself.
+
+The public are treated with contempt when an author professes to publish
+his puerilities. This Warburton did, in his pompous edition of Shakspeare.
+In the preface he informed the public, that his notes "were among his
+_younger amusements,_ when he turned over these _sort of writers._" This
+ungracious compliment to Shakspeare and the public, merited that perfect
+scourging which our haughty commentator received from the sarcastic
+"Canons of Criticism."[A] Scudery was a writer of some genius, and great
+variety. His prefaces are remarkable for their gasconades. In his epic
+poem of Alaric, he says, "I have such a facility in writing verses, and
+also in my invention, that a poem of double its length would have cost me
+little trouble. Although it contains only eleven thousand lines, I believe
+that longer epics do not exhibit more embellishments than mine." And to
+conclude with one more student of this class, Amelot de la Houssaie, in
+the preface to his translation of "The Prince" of Machiavel, instructs us,
+that "he considers his copy as superior to the original, because it is
+everywhere intelligible, and Machiavel is frequently obscure." I have seen
+in the play-bills of strollers, a very pompous description of the
+triumphant entry of Alexander into Babylon; had they said nothing about
+the triumph, it might have passed without exciting ridicule; and one might
+not so maliciously have perceived how ill the four candle-snuffers crawled
+as elephants, and the triumphal car discovered its want of a lid. But
+having pre-excited attention, we had full leisure to sharpen our eye. To
+these imprudent authors and actors we may apply a Spanish proverb, which
+has the peculiar quaintness of that people, _Aviendo pregonado vino,
+venden vinagre:_ "Having cried up their wine, they sell us vinegar."
+
+[Footnote A: See the essay on Warburton and his disputes in "Quarrels of
+Authors,"--ED.]
+
+A ridiculous humility in a preface is not less despicable. Many idle
+apologies were formerly in vogue for publication, and formed a literary
+cant, of which now the meanest writers perceive the futility. A literary
+anecdote of the Romans has been preserved, which is sufficiently curious.
+One Albinus, in the preface to his Roman History, intercedes for pardon
+for his numerous blunders of phraseology; observing that they were the
+more excusable, as he had composed his history in the Greek language, with
+which he was not so familiar as his maternal tongue. Cato severely rallies
+him on this; and justly observes, that our Albinus had merited the pardon
+he solicits, if a decree of the senate had compelled him thus to have
+composed it, and he could not have obtained a dispensation. The avowal of
+our ignorance of the language we employ is like that excuse which some
+writers make for composing on topics in which they are little conversant.
+A reader's heart is not so easily mollified; and it is a melancholy truth
+for literary men that the pleasure of abusing an author is generally
+superior to that of admiring him. One appears to display more critical
+acumen than the other, by showing that though we do not choose to take the
+trouble of writing, we have infinitely more genius than the author. These
+suppliant prefacers are described by Boileau.
+
+ Un auteur a genoux dans une humble preface
+ Au lecteur qu'il ennuie a beau demander grace;
+ Il ne gagnera rien sur ce juge irrite,
+ Qui lui fait son proces de pleine autorite.
+
+ Low in a humble preface authors kneel;
+ In vain, the wearied reader's heart is steel.
+ Callous, that irritated judge with awe,
+ Inflicts the penalties and arms the law.
+
+The most entertaining prefaces in our language are those of Dryden; and
+though it is ill-naturedly said, by Swift, that they were merely formed
+
+ To raise the volume's price a shilling,
+
+yet these were the earliest commencements of English criticism, and the
+first attempt to restrain the capriciousness of readers, and to form a
+national taste. Dryden has had the candour to acquaint us with his secret
+of prefatory composition; for in that one to his Tales he says, "the
+nature of preface-writing is rambling; never wholly out of the way, nor in
+it. This I have learnt from the practice of honest Montaigne." There is no
+great risk in establishing this observation as an axiom in literature; for
+should a prefacer loiter, it is never difficult to get rid of lame
+persons, by escaping from them; and the reader may make a preface as
+concise as he chooses.
+
+It is possible for an author to paint himself in amiable colours, in this
+useful page, without incurring the contempt of egotism. After a writer has
+rendered himself conspicuous by his industry or his genius, his admirers
+are not displeased to hear something relative to him from himself. Hayley,
+in the preface to his poems, has conveyed an amiable feature in his
+personal character, by giving the cause of his devotion to literature as
+the only mode by which he could render himself of some utility to his
+country. There is a modesty in the prefaces of Pope, even when this great
+poet collected his immortal works; and in several other writers of the
+most elevated genius, in a Hume and a Robertson, which becomes their happy
+successors to imitate, and inferior writers to contemplate with awe.
+
+There is in prefaces a due respect to be shown to the public
+and to ourselves. He that has no sense of self-dignity, will
+not inspire any reverence in others; and the ebriety of vanity
+will he sobered by the alacrity we all feel in disturbing the
+dreams of self-love. If we dare not attempt the rambling
+prefaces of a Dryden, we may still entertain the reader, and
+soothe him into good-humour, for our own interest. This,
+perhaps, will be best obtained by making the preface (like the
+symphony to an opera) to contain something analogous to the
+work itself, to attune the mind into a harmony of tone.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i., for an article on
+Prefaces.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+STYLE.
+
+
+Every period of literature has its peculiar style, derived from some
+author of reputation; and the history of a language, as an object of
+taste, might be traced through a collection of ample quotations from the
+most celebrated authors of each period.
+
+To Johnson may be attributed the establishment of our present refinement,
+and it is with truth he observes of his "Rambler," "That he had laboured
+to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from
+colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations, and
+that he has added to the elegance of its construction and to the harmony
+of its cadence." In this description of his own refinement in style and
+grammatical accuracy, Johnson probably alluded to the happy carelessness
+of Addison, whose charm of natural ease long afterwards he discovered. But
+great inelegance of diction disgraced our language even so late as in
+1736, when the "Inquiry into the Life of Homer" was published. That
+author was certainly desirous of all the graces of composition, and his
+volume by its singular sculptures evinces his inordinate affection for his
+work. This fanciful writer had a taste for polished writing, yet he
+abounds in expressions which now would be considered as impure in literary
+composition. Such vulgarisms are common--the Greeks _fell to their old
+trade_ of one tribe expelling another--the scene is always at Athens, and
+all the _pother_ is some little jilting story--the haughty Roman _snuffed_
+at the suppleness. If such diction had not been usual with good writers at
+that period, I should not have quoted Blackwall. Middleton, in his "Life
+of Cicero," though a man of classical taste, and an historian of a
+classical era, could not preserve himself from colloquial inelegances; the
+greatest characters are levelled by the poverty of his style. Warburton,
+and his imitator Hurd, and other living critics of that school, are loaded
+with familiar idioms, which at present would debase even the style of
+conversation.
+
+Such was the influence of the elaborate novelty of Johnson, that every
+writer in every class servilely copied the Latinised style, ludicrously
+mimicking the contortions and re-echoing the sonorous nothings of our
+great lexicographer; the novelist of domestic life, or the agriculturist
+in a treatise on turnips, alike aimed at the polysyllabic force, and the
+cadenced period. Such was the condition of English style for more than
+twenty years.
+
+Some argue in favour of a natural style, and reiterate the opinion of many
+great critics that proper ideas will be accompanied by proper words;
+but though supported by the first authorities, they are not perhaps
+sufficiently precise in their definition. Writers may think justly, and
+yet write without any effect; while a splendid style may cover a vacuity
+of thought. Does not this evident fact prove that style and thinking have
+not that inseparable connexion which many great writers have pronounced?
+Milton imagined that beautiful thoughts produce beautiful expression. He
+says,
+
+ Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move
+ Harmonious numbers.
+
+Writing is justly called an art; and Rousseau says, it is not an art
+easily acquired. Thinking may be the foundation of style, but it is
+not the superstructure; it is the marble of the edifice, but not its
+architecture. The art of presenting our thoughts to another, is often
+a process of considerable time and labour; and the delicate task of
+correction, in the development of ideas, is reserved only for writers of
+fine taste. There are several modes of presenting an idea; vulgar readers
+are only susceptible of the strong and palpable stroke: but there are many
+shades of sentiment, which to seize on and to paint is the pride and the
+labour of a skilful writer. A beautiful simplicity itself is a species of
+refinement, and no writer more solicitously corrected his works than Hume,
+who excels in this mode of composition. The philosopher highly approves of
+Addison's definition of fine writing, who says, that it consists of
+sentiments which are natural, without being obvious. This is a definition
+of thought rather than of composition. Shenstone has hit the truth; for
+fine writing he defines to be generally the effect of spontaneous thoughts
+and a laboured style. Addison was not insensible to these charms, and he
+felt the seductive art of Cicero when he said, that "there is as much
+difference in apprehending a thought clothed in Cicero's language and that
+of a common author, as in seeing an object by the light of a taper, or by
+the light of the sun."
+
+Mannerists in style, however great their powers, rather excite the
+admiration than the affection of a man of taste; because their habitual
+art dissipates that illusion of sincerity, which we love to believe is the
+impulse which places the pen in the hand of an author. Two eminent
+literary mannerists are Cicero and Johnson. We know these great men
+considered their eloquence as a deceptive art; of any subject, it had been
+indifferent to them which side to adopt; and in reading their elaborate
+works, our ear is more frequently gratified by the ambitious magnificence
+of their diction, than our heart penetrated by the pathetic enthusiasm of
+their sentiments. Writers who are not mannerists, but who seize the
+appropriate tone of their subject, appear to feel a conviction of what
+they attempt to persuade their reader. It is observable, that it is
+impossible to imitate with uniform felicity the noble simplicity of a
+pathetic writer; while the peculiarities of a mannerist are so far from
+being difficult, that they are displayed with nice exactness by middling
+writers, who, although their own natural manner had nothing interesting,
+have attracted notice by such imitations. We may apply to some monotonous
+mannerists these verses of Boileau:
+
+ Voulez-vous du public meriter les amours?
+ Sans cesse en ecrivant variez vos discours.
+ On lit peu ces auteurs nes pour nous ennuier,
+ Qui toujours sur un ton semblent psalmodier.
+
+ Would you the public's envied favours gain?
+ Ceaseless, in writing, variegate the strain;
+ The heavy author, who the fancy calms,
+ Seems in one tone to chant his nasal psalms.
+
+Every style is excellent, if it be proper; and that style is most proper
+which can best convey the intentions of the author to his reader. And,
+after all, it is STYLE alone by which posterity will judge of a great
+work, for an author can have nothing truly his own but his style; facts,
+scientific discoveries, and every kind of information, may be seized by
+all, but an author's diction cannot be taken from him. Hence very learned
+writers have been neglected, while their learning has not been lost to the
+world, by having been given by writers with more amenity. It is therefore
+the duty of an author to learn to write as well as to learn to think; and
+this art can only be obtained by the habitual study of his sensations, and
+an intimate acquaintance with the intellectual faculties. These are the
+true prompters of those felicitous expressions which give a tone congruous
+to the subject, and which invest our thoughts with all the illusion, the
+beauty, and motion of lively perception.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+GOLDSMITH AND JOHNSON.
+
+
+We should not censure artists and writers for their attachment to
+their favourite excellence. Who but an artist can value the ceaseless
+inquietudes of arduous perfection; can trace the remote possibilities
+combined in a close union; the happy arrangement and the novel variation?
+He not only is affected by the performance like the man of taste, but is
+influenced by a peculiar sensation; for while he contemplates the apparent
+beauties, he traces in his own mind those invisible processes by which the
+final beauty was accomplished. Hence arises that species of comparative
+criticism which one great author usually makes of his own manner with that
+of another great writer, and which so often causes him to be stigmatised
+with the most unreasonable vanity.
+
+The character of GOLDSMITH, so underrated in his own day, exemplifies this
+principle in the literary character. That pleasing writer, without any
+perversion of intellect or inflation of vanity, might have contrasted his
+powers with those of JOHNSON, and might, according to his own ideas, have
+considered himself as not inferior to his more celebrated and learned
+rival.
+
+Goldsmith might have preferred the felicity of his own genius, which like
+a native stream flowed from a natural source, to the elaborate powers of
+Johnson, which in some respects may be compared to those artificial waters
+which throw their sparkling currents in the air, to fall into marble
+basins. He might have considered that he had embellished philosophy with
+poetical elegance; and have preferred the paintings of his descriptions,
+to the terse versification and the pointed sentences of Johnson. He might
+have been more pleased with the faithful representations of English
+manners in his "Vicar of Wakefield," than with the borrowed grandeur and
+the exotic fancy of the Oriental Rasselas. He might have believed, what
+many excellent critics have believed, that in this age comedy requires
+more genius than tragedy; and with his audience he might have infinitely
+more esteemed his own original humour, than Johnson's rhetorical
+declamation. He might have thought, that with inferior literature he
+displayed superior genius, and with less profundity more gaiety. He
+might have considered that the facility and vivacity of his pleasing
+compositions were preferable to that art, that habitual pomp, and that
+ostentatious eloquence, which prevail in the operose labours of Johnson.
+No one might be more sensible than himself, that he, according to the
+happy expression of Johnson (when his rival was in his grave), "tetigit et
+ornavit." Goldsmith, therefore, without any singular vanity, might have
+concluded, from his own reasonings, that he was not an inferior writer to
+Johnson: all this not having been considered, he has come down to
+posterity as the vainest and the most jealous of writers; he whose
+dispositions were the most inoffensive, whose benevolence was the most
+extensive, and whose amiableness of heart has been concealed by its
+artlessness, and passed over in the sarcasms and sneers of a more eloquent
+rival, and his submissive partisans.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+SELF-CHARACTERS.
+
+
+There are two species of minor biography which may be discriminated;
+detailing our own life and portraying our own character. The writing our
+own life has been practised with various success; it is a delicate
+operation, a stroke too much may destroy the effect of the whole. If once
+we detect an author deceiving or deceived, it is a livid spot which
+infects the entire body. To publish one's own life has sometimes been a
+poor artifice to bring obscurity into notice; it is the ebriety of vanity,
+and the delirium of egotism. When a great man leaves some memorial of his
+days, the grave consecrates the motive. There are certain things which
+relate to ourselves, which no one can know so well; a great genius obliges
+posterity when he records them. But they must be composed with calmness,
+with simplicity, and with sincerity; the biographic sketch of Hume,
+written by himself, is a model of Attic simplicity. The Life of Lord
+Herbert is a biographical curiosity. The Memoirs of Sir William Jones, of
+Priestley, and of Gibbon, offer us the daily life of the student; and
+those of Colley Cibber are a fine picture of the self-painter. We have
+some other pieces of self-biography, precious to the philosopher.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: One of the most interesting is that of Grifford, appended to
+his translation of Juvenal; it is a most remarkable record of the
+struggles of its author in early life, told with candour and simplicity.--
+ED.]
+
+The other species of minor biography, that of portraying our own
+character, could only have been invented by the most refined and the
+vainest nation. The French long cherished this darling egotism; and have a
+collection of these self-portraits in two bulky volumes. The brilliant
+Flechier, and the refined St. Evremond, have framed and glazed their
+portraits. Every writer then considered his character as necessary as his
+preface. The fashion seems to have passed over to our country; Farquhar
+has drawn his character in a letter to a lady; and others of our writers
+have given us their own miniatures.
+
+There was, as a book in my possession will testify, a certain verse-maker
+of the name of Cantenac, who, in 1662, published in the city of Paris a
+volume, containing some thousands of verses, which were, as his countrymen
+express it, _de sa facon,_ after his own way. He fell so suddenly into the
+darkest and deepest pit of oblivion, that not a trace of his memory would
+have remained, had he not condescended to give ample information of every
+particular relative to himself. He has acquainted us with his size, and
+tells us, "that it is rare to see a man smaller than himself. I have that
+in common with all dwarfs, that if my head only were seen, I should be
+thought a large man." This atom in creation then describes his oval and
+full face; his fiery and eloquent eyes: his vermil lips; his robust
+constitution, and his effervescent passions. He appears to have been a
+most petulant, honest, and diminutive being.
+
+The description of his intellect is the object of our curiosity. "I am as
+ambitious as any person can be; but I would not sacrifice my honour to
+my ambition. I am so sensible to contempt, that I bear a mortal and
+implacable hatred against those who contemn me, and I know I could never
+reconcile myself with them; but I spare no attentions for those I love; I
+would give them my fortune and my life. I sometimes lie; but generally in
+affairs of gallantry, where I voluntarily confirm falsehoods by oaths,
+without reflection, for swearing with me is a habit. I am told that my
+mind is brilliant, and that I have a certain manner in turning a thought
+which is quite my own. I am agreeable in conversation, though I confess I
+am often troublesome; for I maintain paradoxes to display my genius, which
+savour too much of scholastic subterfuges. I speak too often and too long;
+and as I have some reading, and a copious memory, I am fond of showing
+whatever I know. My judgment is not so solid as my wit is lively. I am
+often melancholy and unhappy; and this sombrous disposition proceeds from
+my numerous disappointments in life. My verse is preferred to my prose;
+and it has been of some use to me in pleasing the fair sex; poetry is most
+adapted to persuade women; but otherwise it has been of no service to me,
+and has, I fear, rendered me unfit for many advantageous occupations, in
+which I might have drudged. The esteem of the fair has, however, charmed
+away my complaints. This good fortune has been obtained by me, at the cost
+of many cares, and an unsubdued patience; for I am one of those who, in
+affairs of love, will suffer an entire year, to taste the pleasures of one
+day."
+
+This character of Cantenac has some local features; for an English poet
+would hardly console himself with so much gaiety. The Frenchman's
+attachment to the ladies seems to be equivalent to the advantageous
+occupations he had lost. But as the miseries of a literary man, without
+conspicuous talents, are always the same at Paris as in London, there are
+some parts of this character of Cantenac which appear to describe them
+with truth. Cantenac was a man of honour; as warm in his resentment as his
+gratitude; but deluded by literary vanity, he became a writer in prose and
+verse, and while he saw the prospects of life closing on him, probably
+considered that the age was unjust. A melancholy example for certain
+volatile and fervent spirits, who, by becoming authors, either submit
+their felicity to the caprices of others, or annihilate the obscure
+comforts of life, and, like him, having "been told that their mind is
+brilliant, and that they have a certain manner in turning a thought,"
+become writers, and complain that they are "often melancholy, owing to
+their numerous disappointments." Happy, however, if the obscure, yet too
+sensible writer, can suffer an entire year, for the enjoyment of a single
+day! But for this, a man must have been born in France.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ON READING.
+
+
+Writing is justly denominated an art; I think that reading claims the same
+distinction. To adorn ideas with elegance is an act of the mind superior
+to that of receiving them; but to receive them with a happy discrimination
+is the effect of a practised taste.
+
+Yet it will be found that taste alone is not sufficient to obtain the
+proper end of reading. Two persons of equal taste rise from the perusal of
+the same book with very different notions: the one will have the ideas of
+the author at command, and find a new train of sentiment awakened; while
+the other quits his author in a pleasing distraction, but of the pleasures
+of reading nothing remains but tumultuous sensations.
+
+To account for these different effects, we must have recourse to a logical
+distinction, which appears to reveal one of the great mysteries in the
+art of reading. Logicians distinguish between perceptions and ideas.
+Perception is that faculty of the mind which notices the simple impression
+of objects: but when these objects exist in the mind, and are there
+treasured and arranged as materials for reflection, then they are called
+ideas. A perception is like a transient sunbeam, which just shows the
+object, but leaves neither light nor warmth; while an idea is like the
+fervid beam of noon, which throws a settled and powerful light.
+
+Many ingenious readers complain that their memory is defective, and their
+studies unfruitful. This defect arises from their indulging the facile
+pleasures of perceptions, in preference to the laborious habit of forming
+them into ideas. Perceptions require only the sensibility of taste, and
+their pleasures are continuous, easy, and exquisite. Ideas are an art of
+combination, and an exertion of the reasoning powers. Ideas are therefore
+labours; and for those who will not labour, it is unjust to complain, if
+they come from the harvest with scarcely a sheaf in their hands.
+
+There are secrets in the art of reading which tend to facilitate its
+purposes, by assisting the memory, and augmenting intellectual opulence.
+Some our own ingenuity must form, and perhaps every student has peculiar
+habits of study, as, in sort-hand, almost every writer has a system of his
+own.
+
+It is an observation of the elder Pliny (who, having been a voluminous
+compiler, must have had great experience in the art of reading), that
+there was no book so bad but which contained something good. To read every
+book would, however, be fatal to the interest of most readers; but it is
+not always necessary, in the pursuits of learning, to read every book
+entire. Of many books it is sufficient to seize the plan, and to examine
+some of their portions. Of the little supplement at the close of a volume,
+few readers conceive the utility; but some of the most eminent writers in
+Europe have been great adepts in the art of index reading. I, for my part,
+venerate the inventor of indexes; and I know not to whom to yield the
+preference, either to Hippocrates, who was the first great anatomiser of
+the human body, or to that unknown labourer in literature, who first laid
+open the nerves and arteries of a book. Watts advises the perusal of the
+prefaces and the index of a book, as they both give light on its contents.
+
+The ravenous appetite of Johnson for reading is expressed in a strong
+metaphor by Mrs. Knowles, who said, "he knows how to read better than any
+one; he gets at the substance of a book directly: he tears out the heart
+of it." Gibbon has a new idea in the "Art of Reading;" he says "we ought
+not to attend to the order of our books so much as of our thoughts. The
+perusal of a particular work gives birth perhaps to ideas unconnected with
+the subject it treats; I pursue these ideas, and quit my proposed plan of
+reading." Thus in the midst of Homer he read Longinus; a chapter of
+Longinus led to an epistle of Pliny; and having finished Longinus, he
+followed the train of his ideas of the sublime and beautiful in the
+"Enquiry" of Burke, and concluded by comparing the ancient with the modern
+Longinus.
+
+There are some mechanical aids in reading which may prove of great
+utility, and form a kind of rejuvenescence of our early studies. Montaigne
+placed at the end of a book which he intended not to reperuse, the time he
+had read it, with a concise decision on its merits; "that," says he, "it
+may thus represent to me the air and general idea I had conceived of the
+author, in reading the work." We have several of these annotations. Of
+Young the poet it is noticed, that whenever he came to a striking passage
+he folded the leaf; and that at his death, books have been found in his
+library which had long resisted the power of closing: a mode more easy
+than useful; for after a length of time they must be again read to know
+why they were folded. This difficulty is obviated by those who note in a
+blank leaf the pages to be referred to, with a word of criticism. Nor let
+us consider these minute directions as unworthy the most enlarged minds:
+by these petty exertions, at the most distant periods, may learning obtain
+its authorities, and fancy combine its ideas. Seneca, in sending some
+volumes to his friend Lucilius, accompanies them with notes of particular
+passages, "that," he observes, "you who only aim at the useful may be
+spared the trouble of examining them entire." I have seen books noted by
+Voltaire with a word of censure or approbation on the page itself, which
+was his usual practice; and these volumes are precious to every man of
+taste. Formey complained that the books he lent Voltaire were returned
+always disfigured by his remarks; but he was a writer of the old
+school.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: The account of Oldys and his manuscripts, in the third volume
+of the "Curiosities of Literature," will furnish abundant proof of the
+value of such _disfigurations_ when the work of certain hands.--ED.]
+
+A professional student should divide his readings into a _uniform_ reading
+which is useful, and into a _diversified_ reading which is pleasant. Guy
+Patin, an eminent physician and man of letters, had a just notion of this
+manner. He says, "I daily read Hippocrates, Galen, Fernel, and other
+illustrious masters of my profession; this I call my profitable readings.
+I frequently read Ovid, Juvenal, Horace, Seneca, Tacitus, and others, and
+these are my recreations." We must observe these distinctions; for it
+frequently happens that a lawyer or a physician, with great industry and
+love of study, by giving too much into his diversified readings, may
+utterly neglect what should be his uniform studies.
+
+A reader is too often a prisoner attached to the triumphal car of an
+author of great celebrity; and when he ventures not to judge for himself,
+conceives, while he is reading the indifferent works of great authors,
+that the languor which he experiences arises from his own defective taste.
+But the best writers, when they are voluminous, have a great deal of
+mediocrity.
+
+On the other side, readers must not imagine that all the pleasures of
+composition depend on the author, for there is something which a reader
+himself must bring to the book that the book may please. There is a
+literary appetite, which the author can no more impart than the most
+skilful cook can give an appetency to the guests. When Cardinal Richelieu
+said to Godeau, that he did not understand his verses, the honest poet
+replied that it was not his fault. The temporary tone of the mind may be
+unfavourable to taste a work properly, and we have had many erroneous
+criticisms from great men, which may often be attributed to this
+circumstance. The mind communicates its infirm dispositions to the book,
+and an author has not only his own defects to account for, but also those
+of his reader. There is something in composition like the game of
+shuttlecock, where if the reader do not quickly rebound the feathered cock
+to the author, the game is destroyed, and the whole spirit of the work
+falls extinct.
+
+A frequent impediment in reading is a disinclination in the mind to settle
+on the subject; agitated by incongruous and dissimilar ideas, it is with
+pain that we admit those of the author. But on applying ourselves with a
+gentle violence to the perusal of an interesting work, the mind soon
+assimilates to the subject; the ancient rabbins advised their young
+students to apply themselves to their readings, whether they felt an
+inclination or not, because, as they proceeded, they would find their
+disposition restored and their curiosity awakened.
+
+Readers may be classed into an infinite number of divisions; but an author
+is a solitary being, who, for the same reason he pleases one, must
+consequently displease another. To have too exalted a genius is more
+prejudicial to his celebrity than to have a moderate one; for we shall
+find that the most popular works are not the most profound, but such as
+instruct those who require instruction, and charm those who are not too
+learned to taste their novelty. Lucilius, the satirist, said, that he did
+not write for Persius, for Scipio, and for Rutilius, persons eminent for
+their science, but for the Tarentines, the Consentines, and the Sicilians.
+Montaigne has complained that he found his readers too learned, or too
+ignorant, and that he could only please a middle class, who have just
+learning enough to comprehend him. Congreve says, "there is in true beauty
+something which vulgar souls cannot admire." Balzac complains bitterly of
+readers,--"A period," he cries, "shall have cost us the labour of a day;
+we shall have distilled into an essay the essence of our mind; it may be a
+finished piece of art; and they think they are indulgent when they
+pronounce it to contain some pretty things, and that the style is not
+bad!" There is something in exquisite composition which ordinary readers
+can never understand.
+
+Authors are vain, but readers are capricious. Some will only read old
+books, as if there were no valuable truths to be discovered in modern
+publications; while others will only read new books, as if some valuable
+truths are not among the old. Some will not read a book, because they are
+acquainted with the author; by which the reader may be more injured than
+the author: others not only read the book, but would also read the man; by
+which the most ingenious author may be injured by the most impertinent
+reader.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ON HABITUATING OURSELVES TO AN INDIVIDUAL PURSUIT.
+
+
+Two things in human life are at continual variance, and without escaping
+from the one we must be separated from the other; and these are _ennui_
+and _pleasure_. Ennui is an afflicting sensation, if we may thus express
+it, from a want of sensation; and pleasure is greater pleasure according
+to the quantity of sensation. That sensation is received in proportion to
+the capacity of our organs; and that practice, or, as it has been
+sometimes called, "educated feeling," enlarges this capacity, is evident
+in such familiar instances as those of the blind, who have a finer tact,
+and the jeweller, who has a finer sight, than other men who are not so
+deeply interested in refining their vision and their touch. Intense
+attention is, therefore, a certain means of deriving more numerous
+pleasures from its object.
+
+Hence it is that the poet, long employed on a poem, has received a
+quantity of pleasure which no reader can ever feel. In the progress of any
+particular pursuit, there are a hundred fugitive sensations which are too
+intellectual to be embodied into language. Every artist knows that between
+the thought that first gave rise to his design, and each one which appears
+in it, there are innumerable intermediate evanescences of sensation which
+no man felt but himself. These pleasures are in number according to the
+intenseness of his faculties and the quantity of his labour.
+
+It is so in any particular pursuit, from the manufacturing of pins to the
+construction of philosophical systems. Every individual can exert that
+quantity of mind necessary to his wants and adapted to his situation; the
+quality of pleasure is nothing in the present question: for I think that
+we are mistaken concerning the gradations of human felicity. It does at
+first appear, that an astronomer rapt in abstraction, while he gazes on a
+star, must feel a more exquisite delight than a farmer who is conducting
+his team; or a poet experience a higher gratification in modulating verses
+than a trader in arranging sums. But the happiness of the ploughman and
+the trader may be as satisfactory as that of the astronomer and the poet.
+Our mind can only he conversant with those sensations which surround us,
+and possessing the skill of managing them, we can form an artificial
+felicity; it is certain that what the soul does not feel, no more affects
+it than what the eye does not see. It is thus that the trader, habituated
+to humble pursuits, can never be unhappy because he is not the general of
+an army; for this idea of felicity he has never received. The philosopher
+who gives his entire years to the elevated pursuits of mind, is never
+unhappy because he is not in possession of an Indian opulence, for the
+idea of accumulating this exotic splendour has never entered the range of
+his combinations. Nature, an impartial mother, renders felicity as perfect
+in the school-boy who scourges his top, as in the astronomer who regulates
+his star. The thing contained can only be equal to the container; a full
+glass is as full as a full bottle; and a human soul may be as much
+satisfied in the lowest of human beings as in the highest.
+
+In the progress of an individual pursuit, what philosophers call the
+associating or suggesting idea is ever busied, and in its beautiful
+effects genius is most deeply concerned; for besides those trains of
+thought the great artist falls into during his actual composition, a
+distinct habit accompanies real genius through life in the activity of his
+associating idea, when not at his work; it is at all times pressing and
+conducting his spontaneous thoughts, and every object which suggests them,
+however apparently trivial or unconnected towards itself, making what it
+wills its own, while instinctively it seems inattentive to whatever has no
+tendency to its own purposes.
+
+Many peculiar advantages attend the cultivation of one master passion or
+occupation. In superior minds it is a sovereign that exiles others,
+and in inferior minds it enfeebles pernicious propensities. It may render
+us useful to our fellow-citizens, and it imparts the most perfect
+independence to ourselves. It is observed by a great mathematician, that a
+geometrician would not be unhappy in a desert.
+
+This unity of design, with a centripetal force, draws all the rays of our
+existence; and often, when accident has turned the mind firmly to one
+object, it has been discovered that its occupation is another name for
+happiness; for it is a mean of escaping from incongruous sensations. It
+secures us from the dark vacuity of soul, as well as from the whirlwind of
+ideas; reason itself is a passion, but a passion full of serenity.
+
+It is, however, observable of those who have devoted themselves to an
+individual object, that its importance is incredibly enlarged to their
+sensations. Intense attention magnifies like a microscope; but it is
+possible to apologise for their apparent extravagance from the
+consideration, that they really observe combinations not perceived by
+others of inferior application. That this passion has been carried to a
+curious violence of affection, literary history affords numerous
+instances. In reading Dr. Burney's "Musical Travels," it would seem that
+music was the prime object of human life; Richardson, the painter, in his
+treatise on his beloved art, closes all by affirming, that "_Raphael_ is
+not only _equal_, but _superior_ to a _Virgil_, or a _Livy_, or a
+_Thucydides_, or a _Homer_!" and that painting can reform our manners,
+increase our opulence, honour, and power. Denina, in his "Revolutions of
+Literature," tells us that to excel in historical composition requires
+more ability than is exercised by the excelling masters of any other art;
+because it requires not only the same erudition, genius, imagination, and
+taste, necessary for a poet, a painter, or a philosopher, but the
+historian must also have some peculiar qualifications; this served as a
+prelude to his own history.[A] Helvetius, an enthusiast in the fine arts
+and polite literature, has composed a poem on Happiness; and imagines that
+it consists in an exclusive love of the cultivation of letters and the
+arts. All this shows that the more intensely we attach ourselves to an
+individual object, the more numerous and the more perfect are our
+sensations; if we yield to the distracting variety of opposite pursuits
+with an equal passion, our soul is placed amid a continual shock of ideas,
+and happiness is lost by mistakes.
+
+[Footnote A: One of the most amusing modern instances occurs in the
+Preface to the late Peter Buchan's annotated edition of "Ancient Ballads
+and Songs of the North of Scotland" (2 vols. 8vo, Edin. 1828), in which he
+declares--"no one has yet conceived, nor has it entered the mind of man,
+what patience, perseverance, and general knowledge are necessary for an
+editor of a Collection of Ancient Ballads."--ED.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ON NOVELTY IN LITERATURE.
+
+
+"All is said," exclaims the lively La Bruyere; but at the same moment, by
+his own admirable Reflections, confutes the dreary system he would
+establish. An opinion of the exhausted state of literature has been a
+popular prejudice of remote existence; and an unhappy idea of a wise
+ancient, who, even in his day, lamented that "of books there is no end,"
+has been transcribed in many books. He who has critically examined any
+branch of literature has discovered how little of original invention is to
+be found even in the most excellent works. To add a little to his
+predecessors satisfies the ambition of the first geniuses. The popular
+notion of literary novelty is an idea more fanciful than exact. Many are
+yet to learn that our admired originals are not such as they mistake them
+to be; that the plans of the most original performances have been
+borrowed; and that the thoughts of the most admired compositions are not
+wonderful discoveries, but only truths, which the ingenuity of the author,
+by arranging the intermediate and accessary ideas, has unfolded from that
+confused sentiment, which those experience who are not accustomed to think
+with depth, or to discriminate with accuracy. This Novelty in Literature
+is, as Pope defines it,
+
+ What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd.
+
+Novelty, in its rigid acceptation, will not be found in any judicious
+production.
+
+Voltaire looked on everything as imitation. He observes that the most
+original writers borrowed one from another, and says that the instruction
+we gather from books is like fire--we fetch it from our neighbours, kindle
+it at home, and communicate it to others, till it becomes the property of
+all. He traces some of the finest compositions to the fountainhead; and
+the reader smiles when he perceives that they have travelled in regular
+succession through China, India, Arabia, and Greece, to France and to
+England.
+
+To the obscurity of time are the ancients indebted for that originality in
+which they are imagined to excel, but we know how frequently they accuse
+each other; and to have borrowed copiously from preceding writers was not
+considered criminal by such illustrious authors as Plato and Cicero. The
+AEneid of Virgil displays little invention in the incidents, for it unites
+the plan of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_.
+
+Our own early writers have not more originality than modern genius may
+aspire to reach. To imitate and to rival the Italians and the French
+formed their devotion. Chaucer, Gower, and Gawin Douglas, were all
+spirited imitators, and frequently only masterly translators. Spenser, the
+father of so many poets, is himself the child of the Ausonian Muse. Milton
+is incessantly borrowing from the poetry of his day. In the beautiful
+Masque of Comus he preserved all the circumstances of the work he
+imitated. Tasso opened for him the Tartarean Gulf; the sublime description
+of the bridge may be found in Sadi, who borrowed it from the Turkish
+theology; the paradise of fools is a wild flower, transplanted from the
+wilderness of Ariosto. The rich poetry of Gray is a wonderful tissue,
+woven on the frames, and composed with the gold threads, of others. To
+Cervantes we owe Butler; and the united abilities of three great wits, in
+their _Martinus Scriblerus_, could find no other mode of conveying
+their powers but by imitating at once Don Quixote and Monsieur Oufle.
+Pope, like Boileau, had all the ancients and moderns in his pay; the
+contributions he levied were not the pillages of a bandit, but the taxes
+of a monarch. Swift is much indebted for the plans of his two very
+original performances: he owes the "Travels of Gulliver" to the "Voyages
+of Cyrano de Bergerac to the Sun and Moon;" a writer, who, without the
+acuteness of Swift, has wilder flashes of fancy; Joseph Warton has
+observed many of Swift's strokes in Bishop Godwin's "Man in the Moon,"
+who, in his turn, must have borrowed his work from Cyrano. "The Tale of a
+Tub" is an imitation of such various originals, that they are too numerous
+here to mention. Wotton observed, justly, that in many places the author's
+wit is not his own. Dr. Ferriar's "Essay on the Imitations of Sterne"
+might be considerably augmented. Such are the writers, however, who
+imitate, but remain inimitable!
+
+Montaigne, with honest naivete, compares his writings to a thread that
+binds the flowers of others; and that, by incessantly pouring the waters
+of a few good old authors into his sieve, some drops fall upon his paper.
+The good old man elsewhere acquaints us with a certain stratagem of his
+own invention, consisting of his inserting whole sentences from the
+ancients, without acknowledgment, that the critics might blunder, by
+giving _nazardes_ to Seneca and Plutarch, while they imagined they tweaked
+his nose. Petrarch, who is not the inventor of that tender poetry of which
+he is the model, and Boccaccio, called the father of Italian novelists,
+have alike profited by a studious perusal of writers, who are now only
+read by those who have more curiosity than taste. Boiardo has imitated
+Pulci, and Ariosto, Boiardo. The madness of Orlando Furioso, though it
+wears, by its extravagance, a very original air, is only imitated from Sir
+Launcelot in the old romance of "Morte Arthur," with which, Warton
+observes, it agrees in every leading circumstance; and what is the
+Cardenio of Cervantes but the Orlando of Ariosto? Tasso has imitated the
+_Iliad_, and enriched his poem with episodes from the _AEneid_. It is
+curious to observe that even Dante, wild and original as he appears, when
+he meets Virgil in the Inferno, warmly expresses his gratitude for the
+many fine passages for which he was indebted to his works, and on which he
+says he had "long meditated." Moliere and La Fontaine are considered to
+possess as much originality as any of the French writers; yet the learned
+Menage calls Moliere "un grand et habile picoreur;" and Boileau tells us
+that La Fontaine borrowed his style and matter from Marot and Rabelais,
+and took his subjects from Boccaccio, Poggius, and Ariosto. Nor was the
+eccentric Rabelais the inventor of most of his burlesque narratives; and
+he is a very close imitator of Folengo, the inventor of the macaronic
+poetry, and not a little indebted to the old _Facezie_ of the Italians.
+Indeed Marot, Villon, as well as those we have noticed, profited by the
+authors anterior to the age of Francis I. La Bruyere incorporates whole
+passages of Publius Syrus in his work, as the translator of the latter
+abundantly shows. To the "Turkish Spy" was Montesquieu beholden for his
+"Persian Letters," and a numerous crowd are indebted to Montesquieu.
+Corneille made a liberal use of Spanish literature; and the pure waters of
+Racine flowed from the fountains of Sophocles and Euripides.
+
+This vein of imitation runs through the productions of our greatest
+authors. Vigneul de Marville compares some of the first writers to bankers
+who are rich with the assembled fortunes of individuals, and would be
+often ruined were they too hardly drawn on.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+VERS DE SOCIETE
+
+
+Pliny, in an epistle to Tuscus, advises him to intermix among his severer
+studies the softening charms of poetry; and notices a species of poetical
+composition which merits critical animadversion. I shall quote Pliny in
+the language of his elegant translator. He says, "These pieces commonly go
+under the title of poetical amusements; but these amusements have
+sometimes gained as much reputation to their authors as works of a more
+serious nature. It is surprising how much the mind is entertained and
+enlivened by these little poetical compositions, as they turn upon
+subjects of gallantry, satire, tenderness, politeness, and everything, in
+short, that concerns life, and the affairs of the world."
+
+This species of poetry has been carried to its utmost perfection by the
+French. It has been discriminated by them, from the mass of poetry,
+under the apt title of "_Poesies legeres,"_ and sometimes it has been
+significantly called "_Vers de Societe_." The French writers have formed a
+body of this fugitive poetry which no European nation can rival; and to
+which both the language and genius appear to be greatly favourable.
+
+The "_Poesies legeres_" are not merely compositions of a light and gay
+turn, but are equally employed as a vehicle for tender and pathetic
+sentiment. They are never long, for they are consecrated to the amusement
+of society. The author appears to have composed them for his pleasure, not
+for his glory; and he charms his readers, because he seems careless of
+their approbation.
+
+Every delicacy of sentiment must find its delicacy of expression, and
+every tenderness of thought must be softened by the tenderest tones.
+Nothing trite or trivial must enfeeble and chill the imagination; nor must
+the ear be denied its gratification by a rough or careless verse. In these
+works nothing is pardoned; a word may disturb, a line may destroy the
+charm.
+
+The passions of the poet may form the subjects of his verse. It is in
+these writings he delineates himself; he reflects his tastes, his
+desires, his humours, his amours, and even his defects. In other poems the
+poet disappears under the feigned character he assumes; here alone he
+speaks, here he acts. He makes a confidant of the reader, interests him in
+his hopes and his sorrows; we admire the poet, and conclude with esteeming
+the man. The poem is the complaint of a lover, or a compliment to a
+patron, a vow of friendship, or a hymn of gratitude.
+
+These poems have often, with great success, displayed pictures of manners;
+for here the poet colours the objects with all the hues of social life.
+Reflection must not be amplified, for these are pieces devoted to
+the fancy; a scene may be painted throughout the poem; a sentiment
+must be conveyed in a verse. In the "Grongar Hill" of Dyer we discover
+some strokes which may serve to exemplify this criticism. The poet,
+contemplating the distant landscape, observes--
+
+ A step methinks may pass the stream,
+ So little distant dangers seem;
+ So we mistake the future's face,
+ Eyed through Hope's deluding glass.
+
+It must not be supposed that, because these poems are concise, they
+are of easy production; a poet's genius may not be diminutive because
+his pieces are so; nor must we call them, as a fine sonnet has been
+called, a difficult trifle. A circle may be very small, yet it may be as
+mathematically beautiful and perfect as a larger one. To such compositions
+we may apply the observation of an ancient critic, that though a little
+thing gives perfection, yet perfection is not a little thing.
+
+The poet must be alike polished by an intercourse with the world as with
+the studies of taste; one to whom labour is negligence, refinement a
+science, and art a nature.
+
+Genius will not always be sufficient to impart that grace of amenity. Many
+of the French nobility, who cultivated poetry, have therefore oftener
+excelled in these poetical amusements than more professed poets. France
+once delighted in the amiable and ennobled names of Nivernois, Boufflers,
+and St. Aignan; they have not been considered as unworthy rivals of
+Chaulieu and Bernard, of Voltaire and Gresset.
+
+All the minor odes of Horace, and the entire Anacreon, are compositions of
+this kind; effusions of the heart, and pictures of the imagination, which
+were produced in the convivial, the amatory, and the pensive hour. Our
+nation has not always been successful in these performances; they have not
+been kindred to its genius. With Charles II. something of a gayer and more
+airy taste was communicated to our poetry, but it was desultory and
+incorrect. Waller, both by his habits and his genius, was well adapted to
+excel in this lighter poetry; and he has often attained the perfection
+which the state of the language then permitted. Prior has a variety of
+sallies; but his humour is sometimes gross, and his versification is
+sometimes embarrassed. He knew the value of these charming pieces, and
+he had drunk of this Burgundy in the vineyard itself. He has some
+translations, and some plagiarisms; but some of his verses to Chloe are
+eminently airy and pleasing. A diligent selection from our fugitive poetry
+might perhaps present us with many of these minor poems; but the "_Vers de
+Societe_" form a species of poetical composition which may still be
+employed with great success.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE GENIUS OF MOLIERE.
+
+
+The genius of comedy not only changes with the age, but appears different
+among different people. Manners and customs not only vary among European
+nations, but are alike mutable from one age to another, even in the same
+people. These vicissitudes are often fatal to comic writers; our old
+school of comedy has been swept off the stage: and our present uniformity
+of manners has deprived our modern writers of those rich sources of
+invention when persons living more isolated, society was less monotonous;
+and Jonson and Shadwell gave us what they called "_the humours_,"--that
+is, the individual or particular characteristics of men.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Aubrey has noted this habit of our two greatest dramatists,
+when speaking of Shakspeare he says--"The humour of the constable in _A
+Midsummer Night's Dream_, he happened to take at Grendon in Bucks; which
+is the roade from London to Stratford; and there was living that constable
+in 1642, when I first came to Oxon. Ben Jonson and he did gather humours
+of men dayly, wherever they came." Shadwell, whose best plays were
+produced in the reign of Charles II., was a professed imitator of the
+style of Jonson; and so closely described the manners of his day that he
+was frequently accused of direct personalities, and obliged to alter one
+of his plays, _The Humorists_, to avoid an outcry raised against him. Sir
+Walter Scott has recorded, in the Preface to his "Fortunes of Nigel," the
+obligation he was under to Shadwell's comedy, _The Squire of Alsatia_, for
+the vivid description it enabled him to give of the lawless denizens of
+the old Sanctuary of Whitefriars.--ED.]
+
+But however tastes and modes of thinking may be inconstant, and customs
+and manners alter, at bottom the groundwork is Nature's, in every
+production of comic genius. A creative genius, guided by an unerring
+instinct, though he draws after the contemporary models of society, will
+retain his pre-eminence beyond his own age and his own nation; what was
+temporary and local disappears, but what appertains to universal nature
+endures. The scholar dwells on the grotesque pleasantries of the sarcastic
+Aristophanes, though the Athenian manners, and his exotic personages, have
+long vanished.
+
+MOLIERE was a creator in the _art of comedy_; and although his personages
+were the contemporaries of Louis the Fourteenth, and his manners, in the
+critical acceptation of the term, local and temporary, yet his admirable
+genius opened that secret path of Nature, which is so rarely found among
+the great names of the most literary nations. CERVANTES remains single in
+Spain; in England SHAKSPEARE is a consecrated name; and centuries may pass
+away before the French people shall witness another MOLIERE.
+
+The history of this comic poet is the tale of powerful genius creating
+itself amidst the most adverse elements. We have the progress of that
+self-education which struck out an untried path of its own, from the time
+Moliere had not yet acquired his art to the glorious days when he gave his
+country a Plautus in his farce, a Terence in his composition, and a
+Menander in his moral truths. But the difficulties overcome, and the
+disappointments incurred, his modesty and his confidence, and, what was
+not less extraordinary, his own domestic life in perpetual conflict with
+his character, open a more strange career, in some respects, than has
+happened to most others of the high order of his genius.
+
+It was long the fate of Moliere to experience that restless importunity of
+genius which feeds on itself, till it discovers the pabulum it seeks.
+Moliere not only suffered that tormenting impulse, but it was accompanied
+by the unhappiness of a mistaken direction. And this has been the lot of
+some who for many years have thus been lost to themselves and to the
+public.
+
+A man born among the obscure class of the people, thrown among the
+itinerant companies of actors--for France had not yet a theatre--occupied
+to his last hours by too devoted a management of his own dramatic corps;
+himself, too, an original actor in the characters by himself created; with
+no better models of composition than the Italian farces _all' improvista_,
+and whose fantastic gaiety he, to the last, loved too well; becomes the
+personal favourite of the most magnificent monarch, and the intimate of
+the most refined circles. Thoughtful observer of these new scenes and new
+personages, he sports with the affected _precieuses_ and the flattering
+_marquises_ as with the _naive_ ridiculousness of the _bourgeois,_ and the
+wild pride and egotism of the _parvenus_; and with more profound designs
+and a hardier hand unmasks the impostures of false _pretenders_ in all
+professions. His scenes, such was their verity, seem but the reflections
+of his reminiscences. His fertile facility when touching on transient
+follies; his wide comprehension, and his moralising vein, in his more
+elevated comedy, display, in this painter of man, the poet and the
+philosopher, and, above all, the great moral satirist. Moliere has shown
+that the most successful reformer of the manners of a people is a great
+comic poet.
+
+The youth _Pocquelin_--this was his family name--was designed by the
+_tapissier_, his father, to be the heir of the hereditary honours of an
+ancient standing, which had maintained the Pocquelins through four
+or five generations by the articles of a furnishing upholsterer. His
+grandfather was a haunter of the small theatres of that day, and
+the boy often accompanied this venerable critic of the family to his
+favourite recreations. The actors were usually more excellent than their
+pieces; some had carried the mimetic art to the perfection of eloquent
+gesticulation. In these loose scenes of inartificial and burlesque pieces
+was the genius of Moliere cradled and nursed. The changeful scenes of the
+_Theatre de Bourgogne_ deeply busied the boy's imagination, to the great
+detriment of the _tapisserie_ of all the Pocquelins.
+
+The father groaned, the grandfather clapped, the boy remonstrated till, at
+fourteen years of age, he was consigned, as "un mauvais sujet" (so his
+father qualified him), to a college of the Jesuits at Paris, where the
+author of the "Tartuffe" passed five years, studying--for the bar!
+
+Philosophy and logic were waters which he deeply drank; and sprinklings of
+his college studies often pointed the satire of his more finished
+comedies. To ridicule false learning and false taste one must be intimate
+with the true.
+
+On his return to the metropolis the old humour broke out at the
+representation of the inimitable Scaramouch of the Italian theatre. The
+irresistible passion drove him from his law studies, and cast young
+Pocquelin among a company of amateur actors, whose fame soon enabled them
+not to play gratuitously. Pocquelin was the manager and the modeller, for
+under his studious eye this company were induced to imitate Nature with
+the simplicity the poet himself wrote.
+
+The prejudices of the day, both civil and religious, had made these
+private theatres--no great national theatre yet existing--the resource
+only of the idler, the dissipated, and even of the unfortunate in society.
+The youthful adventurer affectionately offered a free admission to the
+dear Pocquelins. They rejected their _entrees_ with horror, and sent their
+genealogical tree, drawn afresh, to shame the truant who had wantoned into
+the luxuriance of genius. To save the honour of the parental upholsterers
+Pocquelin concealed himself under the immortal name of Moliere.
+
+The future creator of French comedy had now passed his thirtieth year, and
+as yet his reputation was confined to his own dramatic corps--a pilgrim in
+the caravan of ambulatory comedy. He had provided several temporary
+novelties. Boileau regretted the loss of one, _Le Docteur Amoureux;_ and
+in others we detect the abortive conceptions of some of his future pieces.
+The severe judgment of Moliere suffered his skeletons to perish; but, when
+he had discovered the art of comic writing, with equal discernment he
+resuscitated them.
+
+Not only had Moliere not yet discovered the true bent of his genius, but,
+still more unfortunate, he had as greatly mistaken it as when he proposed
+turning _avocat_, for he imagined that his most suitable character was
+tragic. He wrote a tragedy, and he acted in a tragedy; the tragedy he
+composed was condemned at Bordeaux; the mortified poet flew to Grenoble;
+still the unlucky tragedy haunted his fancy; he looked on it with paternal
+eyes, in which there were tears. Long after, when Racine, a youth, offered
+him a very unactable tragedy,[A] Moliere presented him with his own:
+--"Take this, for I am convinced that the subject is highly tragic,
+notwithstanding my failure." The great dramatic poet of France opened his
+career by recomposing the condemned tragedy of the comic wit in _La
+Thebaide._ In the illusion that he was a great tragic actor, deceived by
+his own susceptibility, though his voice denied the tones of passion, he
+acted in one of Corneille's tragedies, and quite allayed the alarm of a
+rival company on the announcement. It was not, however, so when the
+author-actor vivified one of his own native personages; then, inimitably
+comic, every new representation seemed to be a new creation.
+
+[Footnote A: The tragedy written by Racine was called _Theagene et
+Chariclee_, and founded on the tale by Heliodorus. It was the first
+attempt of its author, and submitted by him to Moliere, while director of
+the Theatre of the Palais Royal; the latter had no favourable impression
+of its success if produced, but suggested _La Thebaide_ as a subject for
+his genius, and advanced the young poet 100 louis while engaged on his
+work, which was successfully produced in 1664.--ED.]
+
+It is a remarkable feature, though not perhaps a singular one, in the
+character of this great comic writer, that he was one of the most serious
+of men, and even of a melancholic temperament. One of his lampooners wrote
+a satirical comedy on the comic poet, where he figures as "Moliere
+hypochondre." Boileau, who knew him intimately, happily characterised
+Moliere as _le Contemplateur_. This deep pensiveness is revealed in his
+physiognomy.
+
+The genius of Moliere, long undiscovered by himself, in its first attempts
+in a higher walk did not move alone; it was crutched by imitation, and it
+often deigned to plough with another's heifer. He copied whole scenes from
+Italian comedies and plots from Italian novelists: his sole merit was
+their improvement. The great comic satirist, who hereafter was to people
+the stage with a dramatic crowd who were to live on to posterity, had not
+yet struck at that secret vein of originality--the fairy treasure which
+one day was to cast out such a prodigality of invention. His two first
+comedies, _L'Etourdi_ and _Le Depit Amoureux_, which he had only ventured
+to bring out in a provincial theatre, were grafted on Italian and Spanish
+comedy. Nothing more original offered to his imagination than the Roman,
+the Italian, and the Spanish drama; the cunning adroit slave of Terence;
+the tricking, bustling _Gracioso_ of modern Spain; old fathers, the dupes
+of some scapegrace, or of their own senile follies, with lovers sighing at
+cross-purposes. The germ of his future powers may, indeed, be discovered
+in these two comedies, for insensibly to himself he had fallen into some
+scenes of natural simplicity. In _L'Etourdi,_ Mascarille, "le roi des
+serviteurs," which Moliere himself admirably personated, is one of those
+defunct characters of the Italian comedy no longer existing in society;
+yet, like our Touchstone, but infinitely richer, this new ideal personage
+still delights by the fertility of his expedients and his perpetual and
+vigorous gaiety. In _Le Depit Amoureux_ is the exquisite scene of the
+quarrel and reconciliation of the lovers. In this fine scene, though
+perhaps but an amplification of the well-known ode of Horace, _Donec
+gratus eram tibi_, Moliere consulted his own feelings, and betrayed his
+future genius.
+
+It was after an interval of three or four years that the provincial
+celebrity of these comedies obtained a representation at Paris; their
+success was decisive. This was an evidence of public favour which did
+not accompany Moliere's more finished productions, which were so far
+unfortunate that they were more intelligible to the few; in fact, the
+first comedies of Moliere were not written above the popular taste; the
+spirit of true comedy, in a profound knowledge of the heart of man, and in
+the delicate discriminations of individual character, was yet unknown.
+Moliere was satisfied to excel his predecessors, but he had not yet
+learned his art.
+
+The rising poet was now earnestly sought after; a more extended circle of
+society now engaged his contemplative habits. He looked around on living
+scenes no longer through the dim spectacles of the old comedy, and he
+projected a new species, which was no longer to depend on its conventional
+grotesque personages and its forced incidents; he aspired to please a more
+critical audience by making his dialogue the conversation of society, and
+his characters its portraits.
+
+Introduced to the literary coterie of the Hotel de Rambouillet, a new view
+opened on the favoured poet. To occupy a seat in this envied circle was a
+distinction in society. The professed object of this reunion of nobility
+and literary persons, at the hotel of the Marchioness of Rambouillet, was
+to give a higher tone to all France, by the cultivation of the language,
+the intellectual refinement of their compositions, and last, but not
+least, to inculcate the extremest delicacy of manners. The recent civil
+dissensions had often violated the urbanity of the court, and a grossness
+prevailed in conversation which offended the scrupulous. This critical
+circle was composed of both sexes. They were to be the arbiters of taste,
+the legislators of criticism, and, what was less tolerable, the models of
+genius. No work was to be stamped into currency which bore not the
+mint-mark of the hotel.
+
+In the annals of fashion and literature no coterie has presented a more
+instructive and amusing exhibition of the abuses of learning, and the
+aberrations of ill-regulated imaginations, than the Hotel de Rambouillet,
+by its ingenious absurdities. Their excellent design to refine the
+language, the manners, and even morality itself, branched out into every
+species of false refinement; their science ran into trivial pedantries,
+their style into a fantastic jargon, and their spiritualising delicacy
+into the very puritanism of prudery. Their frivolous distinction between
+the mind and the heart, which could not always be made to go together,
+often perplexed them as much as their own jargon, which was not always
+intelligible, even to the initiated. The French Academy is said to have
+originated in the first meetings of the Hotel de Rambouillet; and it is
+probable that some sense and taste, in its earliest days, may have visited
+this society, for we do not begin such refined follies without some show
+of reason.
+
+The local genius of the hotel was feminine, though the most glorious men
+of the literature of France were among its votaries. The great magnet was
+the famed Mademoiselle Scudery, whose voluminous romances were their code;
+and it is supposed these tomes preserve some of their lengthened
+_conversaziones_. In the novel system of gallantry of this great inventor
+of amorous and metaphysical "twaddle," the ladies were to be approached as
+beings nothing short of celestial paragons; they were addressed in a
+language not to be found in any dictionary but their own, and their habits
+were more fantastic than their language: a sort of domestic chivalry
+formed their etiquette. Their baptismal names were to them profane, and
+their assumed ones were drawn from the folio romances--those Bibles of
+love. At length all ended in a sort of Freemasonry of gallantry, which had
+its graduated orders, and whoever was not admitted into the mysteries was
+not permitted to prolong his existence--that is, his residence among
+them. The apprenticeship of the craft was to be served under certain
+_Introducers to Ruelles_.
+
+Their card of invitation was either a rondeau or an enigma, which served
+as a subject to open conversation. The lady received her visitors reposing
+on that throne of beauty, a bed placed in an alcove; the toilet was
+magnificently arranged. The space between the bed and the wall was called
+the _Ruelle_[A], the diminutive of _la Rue_; and in this narrow street, or
+"Fop's alley," walked the favoured. But the chevalier who was graced by
+the honorary title of _l'Alcoviste,_ was at once master of the household
+and master of the ceremonies. His character is pointedly defined by St.
+Evremond, as "a lover whom the _Precieuse_ is to love without enjoyment,
+and to enjoy in good earnest her husband with aversion." The scene offered
+no indecency to such delicate minds, and much less the impassioned style
+which passed between _les cheres_, as they called themselves. Whatever
+offered an idea, of what their jargon denominated _charnelle_, was treason
+and exile. Years passed ere the hand of the elected maiden was kissed by
+its martyr. The celebrated Julia d'Angennes was beloved by the Duke de
+Montausier, but fourteen years elapsed ere she would yield a "yes." When
+the faithful Julia was no longer blooming, the Alcoviste duke gratefully
+took up the remains of her beauty.
+
+[Footnote A: In a portion of the ancient Louvre, still preserved amid the
+changes to which it has been subjected, is the old wainscoted bedroom of
+the great Henry IV., with the carved recess, and the _ruelle_, as
+described above: it is a most interesting fragment of regal domestic
+life.--ED.]
+
+Their more curious project was the reform of the style of conversation, to
+purify its grossness, and invent novel terms for familiar objects. Menage
+drew up a "Petition of the Dictionaries," which, by their severity of
+taste, had nearly become superannuated. They succeeded better with the
+_marchandes des modes_ and the jewellers, furnishing a vocabulary
+excessively _precieuse_, by which people bought their old wares with new
+names. At length they were so successful in their neology, that with great
+difficulty they understood one another. It is, however, worth observation,
+that the orthography invented by the _precieuses_--who, for their
+convenience, rejected all the redundant letters in words--was adopted, and
+is now used; and their pride of exclusiveness in society introduced the
+singular term _s'encanailler,_ to describe a person who haunted low
+company, while their morbid purity had ever on their lips the word
+_obscenite_, terms which Moliere ridicules, but whose expressiveness has
+preserved them in the language.
+
+Ridiculous as some of these extravagances now appear to us, they had been
+so closely interwoven with the elegance of the higher ranks, and so
+intimately associated with genius and literature, that the veil of fashion
+consecrated almost the mystical society, since we find among its admirers
+the most illustrious names of France.
+
+Into this elevated and artificial circle of society our youthful and
+unsophisticated poet was now thrown, with a mind not vitiated by any
+prepossessions of false taste, studious of nature and alive to the
+ridiculous. But how was the comic genius to strike at the follies of his
+illustrious friends--to strike, but not to wound? A provincial poet and
+actor to enter hostilely into the sacred precincts of these Exclusives?
+Tormented by his genius Moliere produced _Les Precieuses Ridicules_, but
+admirably parried, in his preface, any application to them, by averring
+that it was aimed at their imitators--their spurious mimics in the
+country. The _Precieuses Ridicules_ was acted in the presence of the
+assembled Hotel de Rambouillet with immense applause. A central voice from
+the pit, anticipating the host of enemies and the fame of the reformer of
+comedy, exclaimed, "Take courage, Moliere, this is true comedy." The
+learned Menage was the only member of the society who had the good sense
+to detect the drift; he perceived the snake in the grass. "We must now,"
+said this sensible pedant (in a remote allusion to the fate of idolatry
+and the introduction of Christianity) to the poetical pedant, Chapelain,
+"follow the counsel which St. Remi gave to Clovis--we must burn all that
+we adored, and adore what we have burned." The success of the comedy was
+universal; the company doubled their prices; the country gentry flocked to
+witness the marvellous novelty, which far exposed that false taste, that
+romance-impertinence, and that sickly affectation which had long disturbed
+the quiet of families. Cervantes had not struck more adroitly at Spanish
+rodomontade.
+
+At this universal reception of the _Precieuses Ridicules_, Moliere, it is
+said, exclaimed--"I need no longer study Plautus and Terence, nor poach in
+the fragments of Menander; I have only to study the world." It may be
+doubtful whether the great comic satirist at that moment caught the sudden
+revelation of his genius, as he did subsequently in his _Tartuffe_, his
+_Misanthrope_, his _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, and others. The _Precieuses
+Ridicules_ was the germ of his more elaborate _Femmes Savantes_, which was
+not produced till after an interval of twelve years.
+
+Moliere returned to his old favourite _canevas_, or plots of Italian
+farces and novels, and Spanish comedies, which, being always at hand,
+furnished comedies of intrigue. _L'Ecole des Maris_ is an inimitable model
+of this class.
+
+But comedies which derive their chief interest from the ingenious
+mechanism of their plots, however poignant the delight of the artifice
+of the _denouement_, are somewhat like an epigram, once known, the
+brilliant point is blunted by repetition. This is not the fate of those
+representations of men's actions, passions, and manners, in the more
+enlarged sphere of human nature, where an eternal interest is excited, and
+will charm on the tenth repetition.
+
+No! Moliere had not yet discovered his true genius; he was not yet
+emancipated from his old seductions. A rival company was reputed to have
+the better actors for tragedy, and Moliere resolved to compose an heroic
+drama on the passion of jealousy--a favourite one on which he was
+incessantly ruminating. _Don Garcie de Navarre, ou Le Prince Jaloux_, the
+hero personated by himself, terminated by the hisses of the audience.
+
+The fall of the _Prince Jaloux_ was nearly fatal to the tender reputation
+of the poet and the actor. The world became critical: the marquises,
+and the precieuses, and recently the bourgeois, who were sore from
+_Sganarelle, ou Le Cocu Imaginaire_, were up in arms; and the rival
+theatre maliciously raised the halloo, flattering themselves that the
+comic genius of their dreaded rival would be extinguished by the ludicrous
+convulsed hiccough to which Moliere was liable in his tragic tones, but
+which he adroitly managed in his comic parts.
+
+But the genius of Moliere was not to be daunted by cabals, nor even
+injured by his own imprudence. _Le Prince Jaloux_ was condemned in
+February, 1661, and the same year produced _L'Ecole des Maris_ and _Les
+Facheux_. The happy genius of the poet opened on his Zoiluses a series of
+dramatic triumphs.
+
+Foreign critics--Tiraboschi and Schlegel--have depreciated the Frenchman's
+invention, by insinuating that were all that Moliere borrowed taken from
+him, little would remain of his own. But they were not aware of his
+dramatic creation, even when he appropriated the slight inventions of
+others; they have not distinguished the eras of the genius of Moliere, and
+the distinct classes of his comedies. Moliere had the art of amalgamating
+many distinct inventions of others into a single inimitable whole.
+Whatever might be the herbs and the reptiles thrown into the mystical
+caldron, the incantation of genius proved to be truly magical.
+
+Facility and fecundity may produce inequality, but, when a man of genius
+works, they are imbued with a raciness which the anxious diligence of
+inferior minds can never yield. Shakspeare, probably, poured forth many
+scenes in this spirit. The multiplicity of the pieces of Moliere, their
+different merits, and their distinct classes--all written within the space
+of twenty years--display, if any poet ever did, this wonder-working
+faculty. The truth is, that few of his comedies are finished works; he
+never satisfied himself, even in his most applauded productions. Necessity
+bound him to furnish novelties for his theatre; he rarely printed any
+work. _Les Facheux_, an admirable series of scenes, in three acts, and in
+verse, was "planned, written, rehearsed, and represented in a single
+fortnight." Many of his dramatic effusions were precipitated on the stage;
+the humorous scenes of _Monsieur de Pourceaugnac_ were thrown out to
+enliven a royal fete.
+
+This versatility and felicity of composition made everything with Moliere
+a subject for comedy. He invented two novelties, such as the stage had
+never before witnessed. Instead of a grave defence from the malice of his
+critics, and the flying gossip of the court circle, Moliere found out the
+art of congregating the public to _The Quarrels of Authors_. He dramatised
+his critics. In a comedy without a plot, and in scenes which seemed rather
+spoken than written, and with characters more real than personated, he
+displayed his genius by collecting whatever had been alleged to depreciate
+it; and _La Critique de L'Ecole des Femmes_ is still a delightful
+production. This singular drama resembles the sketch-book of an artist,
+the _croquis_ of portraits--the loose hints of thoughts, many of which we
+discover were more fully delineated in his subsequent pieces. With the
+same rapid conception he laid hold of his embarrassments to furnish
+dramatic novelties as expeditiously as the king required. Louis XIV. was
+himself no indifferent critic, and more than once suggested an incident or
+a character to his favourite poet. In _L'Impromptu de Versailles_, Moliere
+appears in his own person, and in the midst of his whole company, with all
+the irritable impatience of a manager who had no piece ready. Amidst this
+green-room bustle Moliere is advising, reprimanding, and imploring, his
+"ladies and gentlemen." The characters in this piece are, in fact, the
+actors themselves, who appear under their own names; and Moliere himself
+reveals many fine touches of his own poetical character, as well as his
+managerial. The personal pleasantries on his own performers, and the hints
+for plots, and the sketches of character which the poet incidentally
+throws out, form a perfect dramatic novelty. Some of these he himself
+subsequently adopted, and others have been followed up by some dramatists
+without rivalling Moliere. The _Figaro_ of Beaumarchais is a descendant of
+the _Mascarille_ of Moliere; but the glory of rivalling Moliere was
+reserved for our own stage. Sheridan's _Critic, or a Tragedy Rehearsed,_
+is a congenial dramatic satire with these two pieces of Moliere.
+
+The genius of Moliere had now stepped out of the restricted limits of the
+old comedy; he now looked on the moving world with other eyes, and he
+pursued the ridiculous in society. These fresher studies were going on at
+all hours, and every object was contemplated with a view to comedy. His
+most vital characters have been traced to living originals, and some of
+his most ludicrous scenes had occurred in reality before they delighted
+the audience. Monsieur Jourdain had expressed his astonishment, "qu'il
+faisait de la prose," in the Count de Soissons, one of the uneducated
+noblemen devoted to the chase. The memorable scene between Trissotin and
+Vadius, their mutual compliments terminating in their mutual contempt, had
+been rehearsed by their respective authors--the Abbe Cottin and Menage.
+The stultified booby of Limoges, _Monsieur de Pourceaugnac_, and the
+mystified millionaire, _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, were copied after life,
+as was _Sganarelle_, in _Le Medecin malgre lui_. The portraits in that
+gallery of dramatic paintings, _Le Misanthrope_, have names inscribed
+under them; and the immortal _Tartuffe_ was a certain bishop of Autun. No
+dramatist has conceived with greater variety the female character; the
+women of Moliere have a distinctness of feature, and are touched with a
+freshness of feeling. Moliere studied nature, and his comic humour is
+never checked by that unnatural wit where the poet, the more he discovers
+himself, the farther he removes himself from the personage of his
+creation. The quickening spell which hangs over the dramas of Moliere is
+this close attention to nature, wherein he greatly resembles our
+Shakspeare, for all springs from its source. His unobtrusive genius never
+occurs to us in following up his characters, and a whole scene leaves on
+our mind a complete but imperceptible effect.
+
+The style of Moliere has often been censured by the fastidiousness of his
+native critics, as _bas_ and _du style familier_. This does not offend the
+foreigner, who is often struck by its simplicity and vigour. Moliere
+preferred the most popular and naive expressions, as well as the most
+natural incidents, to a degree which startled the morbid delicacy of
+fashion and fashionable critics. He had frequent occasions to resist their
+petty remonstrances; and whenever Moliere introduced an incident, or made
+an allusion of which he knew the truth, and which with him had a settled
+meaning, this master of human life trusted to his instinct and his art.
+
+This pure and simple taste, ever rare at Paris, was the happy portion of
+the genius of this Frenchman. Hence he delighted to try his farcical
+pieces, for we cannot imagine that they were his more elevated comedies,
+on his old maid-servant. This maid, probably, had a keen relish for comic
+humour, for once when Moliere read to her the comedy of another writer as
+his own, she soon detected the trick, declaring that it could not be her
+master's. Hence, too, our poet invited even children to be present on such
+rehearsals, and at certain points would watch their emotions. Hence, too,
+in his character of manager, he taught his actors to study nature. An
+actress, apt to speak freely, told him, "You torment us all; but you
+never speak to my husband." This man, originally a candle-snuffer, was a
+perfect child of nature, and acted the Thomas Diaforius, in _Le Malade
+Imaginaire_. Moliere replied, "I should be sorry to say a word to him; I
+should spoil his acting. Nature has provided him with better lessons to
+perform his parts than any which I could give him." We may imagine
+Shakspeare thus addressing his company, had the poet been also the
+manager.
+
+A remarkable incident in the history of the genius of Moliere is the
+frequent recurrence of the poet to the passion of jealousy. The "jaundice
+in the lover's eye," he has painted with every tint of his imagination.
+"The green-eyed monster" takes all shapes, and is placed in every position.
+Solemn, or gay, or satirical, he sometimes appears in agony, but often
+scorns to make its "trifles light as air," only ridiculous as a source of
+consolation. Was _Le Contemplateur_ comic in his melancholy, or melancholy
+in his comic humour?
+
+The truth is, that the poet himself had to pass through those painful
+stages which he has dramatised. The domestic life of Moliere was itself
+very dramatic; it afforded Goldoni a comedy of five acts, to reveal the
+secrets of the family circle of Moliere; and l'Abbate Chiari, an Italian
+novelist and playwright, has taken for a comic subject, _Moliere, the
+Jealous Husband_.
+
+The French, in their "petite morale" on conjugal fidelity, appear so
+tolerant as to leave little sympathy for the real sufferer. Why should
+they else have treated domestic jealousy as a foible for ridicule, rather
+than a subject for deep passion? Their tragic drama exhibits no Othello,
+nor their comedy a Kitely, or a _Suspicious Husband_. Moliere, while his
+own heart was the victim, conformed to the national taste, by often
+placing the object on its comic side. Domestic jealousy is a passion which
+admits of a great diversity of subjects, from the tragic or the pathetic,
+to the absurd and the ludicrous. We have them all in Moliere. Moliere
+often was himself "Le Cocu Imaginaire;" he had been in the position of the
+guardian in _L'Ecole des Maris_. Like Arnolphe in _L'Ecole des Femmes_, he
+had taken on himself to rear a young wife who played the same part, though
+with less innocence; and like the _Misanthrope_, where the scene between
+Alceste and Celimene is "une des plus fortes qui existant au theatre," he
+was deeply entangled in the wily cruelties of scornful coquetry, and we
+know that at times he suffered in "the hell of lovers" the torments of his
+own _Jealous Prince_.
+
+When this poet cast his fate with a troop of comedians, as the manager,
+and whom he never would abandon, when at the height of his fortune, could
+he avoid accustoming himself to the relaxed habits of that gay and
+sorrowful race, who, "of imagination all compact," too often partake of
+the passions they inspire in the scene? The first actress, Madame Bejard,
+boasted that, with the exception of the poet, she had never dispensed her
+personal favours but to the aristocracy. The constancy of Moliere was
+interrupted by another actress, Du Parc; beautiful but insensible, she
+only tormented the poet, and furnished him with some severe lessons for
+the coquetry of his Celimene, in _Le Misanthrope_. The facility of the
+transition of the tender passion had more closely united the susceptible
+poet to Mademoiselle de Brie. But Madame Bejard, not content to be the
+chief actress, and to hold her partnership in "the properties," to retain
+her ancient authority over the poet, introduced, suddenly, a blushing
+daughter, some say a younger sister, who had hitherto resided at Avignon,
+and who she declared was the offspring of the count of Modena, by a secret
+marriage. Armande Bejard soon attracted the paternal attentions of the
+poet. She became the secret idol of his retired moments, while he fondly
+thought that he could mould a young mind, in its innocence, to his own
+sympathies. The mother and the daughter never agreed. Armande sought his
+protection; and one day rushing into his study, declared that she would
+marry her friend. The elder Bejard freely consented to avenge herself on
+De Brie. De Brie was indulgent, though "the little creature," she
+observed, was to be yoked to one old enough to be her father. Under the
+same roof were now heard the voices of the three females, and Moliere
+meditating scenes of feminine jealousies.
+
+Moliere was fascinated by his youthful wife; her lighter follies charmed:
+two years riveted the connubial chains. Moliere was a husband who was
+always a lover. The actor on the stage was the very man he personated.
+Mademoiselle Moliere, as she was called by the public, was the Lucile in
+_Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_. With what fervour the poet feels her neglect!
+with what eagerness he defends her from the animadversions of the friend
+who would have dissolved the spell!
+
+The poet was doomed to endure more poignant sorrows than slights.
+Mademoiselle had the art of persuading Moliere that he was only his own
+"cocu imaginaire;" but these domestic embarrassments multiplied.
+Mademoiselle, reckless of the distinguished name she bore, while she
+gratified her personal vanity by a lavish expenditure, practised that
+artful coquetry which attracted a crowd of loungers. Moliere found no
+repose in his own house, and retreated to a country-house, where, however,
+his restless jealousy often drove him back to scenes which he trembled to
+witness. At length came the last argument of outraged matrimony--he
+threatened confinement. To prevent a public rupture, Moliere consented to
+live under the same roof, and only to meet at the theatre. Weak only in
+love, however divided from his wife, Moliere remained her perpetual lover.
+He said, in confidence, "I am born with every disposition to tenderness.
+When I married, she was too young to betray any evil inclinations. My
+studies were devoted to her, but I soon discovered her indifference. I
+ascribed it to her temper; her foolish passion for Count Guiche made too
+much noise to leave me even this apparent tranquillity. I resolved to live
+with her as an honourable man, whose reputation does not depend on the bad
+conduct of his wife. My kindness has not changed her, but my compassion
+has increased. Those who have not experienced these delicate emotions have
+never truly loved. In her absence her image is before me; in her presence,
+I am deprived of all reflection; I have no longer eyes for her defects; I
+only view her amiable. Is not this the last extreme of folly? And are you
+not surprised that I, reasoning as I do, am only sensible of the weakness
+which I cannot throw off?"
+
+Few men of genius have left in their writings deeper impressions of their
+personal feelings than Moliere. With strong passions in a feeble frame, he
+had duped his imagination that, like another Pygmalion, he would create a
+woman by his own art. In silence and agony he tasted the bitter fruits of
+the disordered habits of the life of a comedian, a manager, and a poet.
+His income was splendid; but he himself was a stranger to dissipation. He
+was a domestic man, of a pensive and even melancholy temperament. Silent
+and reserved, unless in conversation with that more intimate circle whose
+literature aided his genius, or whose friendship consoled for his domestic
+disturbances, his habits were minutely methodical; the strictest order was
+observed throughout his establishment; the hours of dinner, of writing, of
+amusement, were allotted, and the slightest derangement in his own
+apartment excited a morbid irritability which would interrupt his studies
+for whole days.
+
+Who, without this tale of Moliere, could conjecture, that one skilled in
+the workings of our nature would have ventured on the perilous experiment
+of equalizing sixteen years against forty--weighing roses against grey
+locks--to convert a wayward coquette, through her capricious womanhood,
+into an attached wife? Yet, although Mademoiselle could cherish no
+personal love for the intellectual being, and hastened to change the
+immortal name she bore for a more terrestrial man, she seems to have been
+impressed by a perfect conviction of his creative genius. When the
+Archbishop of Paris, in the pride of prelacy, refused the rites of
+sepulture to the corpse of Moliere THE ACTOR, it was her voice which
+reminded the world of Moliere THE POET, exclaiming--"Have they denied a
+grave to the man to whom Greece would have raised an altar!"
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE SENSIBILITY OF RACINE.
+
+
+The "Memoirs of the poet Racine," composed by his son, who was himself no
+contemptible poet, may be classed among those precious pieces of biography
+so delightful to the philosopher who studies human nature, and the
+literary man whose curiosity is interested in the history of his republic.
+Such, works are rare, and rank in merit next to autobiographies. Such
+biographical sketches, like Boswell's of Johnson, contain what we often
+regret is wanting in the more regular life of a professed biographer.
+These desultory memoirs interest by their warmth, their more personal
+acquaintance with the hero, and abound with those minuter strokes which
+give so much life to the individual character.
+
+The prominent feature in the character of Racine was an excessive
+tenderness of feeling; his profound sensibility even to its infirmity, the
+tears which would cover his face, and the agony in his heart, were perhaps
+national. But if this sensibility produced at times the softest emotions,
+if it made him the poet of lovers, and even the poet of imagination, it
+also rendered him too feelingly alive to criticism, it embittered his
+days with too keen a perception of the domestic miseries which all men
+must alike undergo.
+
+During a dramatic performance at St. Cyr, the youthful representative of
+Esther suddenly forgot her part; the agitated poet exclaimed, "Oh,
+mademoiselle, you are ruining my piece!" Terrified at this reprimand, the
+young actress wept; the poet flew to her, wiped away her tears, and with
+contagious sympathy shed tears himself. "I do not hesitate," says Louis
+Racine, "to relate such minute circumstances, because this facility of
+shedding tears shows the goodness of the heart, according to the
+observation of the ancients--
+
+ [Greek:] "agathohi d aridakryes andres."
+
+This morbid state of feeling made his whole literary life uneasy; unjust
+criticism affected him as much as the most poignant, and there was nothing
+he dreaded more than that his son should become a writer of tragedies. "I
+will not dissimulate," he says, addressing his son, "that in the heat of
+composition we are not sometimes pleased with ourselves; but you may
+believe me, when the day after we look over our work, we are astonished
+not to find that excellence we admired in the evening; and when we reflect
+that even what we find good ought to be still better, and how distant we
+are still from perfection, we are discouraged and dissatisfied. Besides
+all this, although the approbation I have received has been very
+flattering, the least adverse criticism, even miserable as it might be,
+has always occasioned me more vexation than all the praise I received
+could give me pleasure." And, again, he endeavours to impress on him that
+the favour he received from the world he owed not to his verses. "Do not
+imagine that they are my verses that attract all these kindnesses.
+Corneille composes verses a hundred times finer than mine, but no one
+regards him. His verses are only applauded from the mouths of the actors.
+I do not tire men of the world by reciting my works; I never allude to
+them; I endeavour to amuse them with matters which please them. My talent
+in their company is, not to make them feel that I have any genius, but to
+show them that they possess some themselves. When you observe the duke
+pass several hours with me, you would be surprised, were you present, that
+he frequently quits me without my having uttered three words; but
+gradually I put him in a humour of chatting, and he leaves me more
+satisfied with himself than with me." When Rochefoucault said that Boileau
+and Racine had only one kind of genius, and could only talk about their
+own poetry, it is evident that the observation should not have extended to
+Racine, however it might to Boileau. It was Racine's excessive sensibility
+which made him the finest dramatic reciter. The celebrated actress,
+Mademoiselle Champmesle,[A] the heroine of his tragedies, had no genius
+whatever for the stage, but she had beauty, voice, and memory. Racine
+taught her first to comprehend the verses she was going to recite, showed
+her the appropriate gesture, and gave her the variable tones, which he
+even sometimes noted down. His pupil, faithful to her lessons, though a
+mere actress of art, on the stage seemed inspired by passion; and as she,
+thus formed and fashioned, naturally only played thus effectively in the
+dramas of her preceptor, it was supposed that love for the poet inspired
+the actress.
+
+[Footnote A: Racine first met this actress at the Marquis de Sevigne's
+_petit soupers_; so much lamented by his more famous mother in one of her
+admirable letters, who speaks of "the Racines and the Despreaux's" who
+assisted his prodigality. In one of Madame de Sevigne's letters, dated in
+1672, she somewhat rashly declares, "Racine now writes his dramas, not for
+posterity, but for Mademoiselle Champmesle:" she had then forsaken the
+marquis for the poet, who wrote _Roxane_ in _Bajazet_ expressly for her.
+--ED.]
+
+When Racine read aloud he diffused his own enthusiasm once with Boileau
+and Nicole, amid a literary circle, they talked of Sophocles, whom Racine
+greatly admired, but from whom he had never dared to borrow a tragic
+subject. Taking up a Greek Sophocles, and translating the OEdipus, the
+French poet became so deeply imbued with the Greek tragedian, that his
+auditors caught all the emotions of terror and pity. "I have seen," says
+one of those auditors, "our best pieces represented by our best actors,
+but never anything approached the agitation which then came over us; and
+to this distant day I have never lost the recollection of Racine, with the
+volume in his hand, full of emotion, and we all breathlessly pressing
+around him."
+
+It was the poet's sensibility that urged him to make the most
+extraordinary sacrifice that ever poet made; he wished to get rid entirely
+of that poetical fame to which he owed everything, and which was at once
+his pleasure, his pride, and his property. His education had been a
+religious one, in the Port-Royal;[A] but when Nicole, one of that
+illustrious fraternity, with undistinguishing fanaticism, had once
+asserted that all dramatic writers were public poisoners of souls, Racine,
+in the pride and strength of his genius, had eloquently repelled the
+denouncement. But now, having yet only half run his unrivalled course, he
+turned aside, relinquished its glory, repented of his success, and
+resolved to write no more tragedies.[B] He determined to enter into the
+austere order of the Chartreux; but his confessor, more rational than his
+penitent, assured him that a character so feeling as his own, and so long
+accustomed to the world, could not endure that terrible solitude. He
+advised him to marry a woman of a serious turn, and that little domestic
+occupations would withdraw him from the passion he seemed most to dread,
+that of writing verses.
+
+[Footnote A: For an account of this very celebrated religious foundation,
+its fortunes and misfortunes, see the "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i.
+p. 94.--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: Racine ultimately conceived an aversion for his dramatic
+offspring, and could never be induced to edit a proper edition of his
+works, or even give a few lessons in declamation to a juvenile princess,
+who selected his _Andromaque_ for the subject, perhaps out of compliment
+to the poet, whose first visit became in consequence his last.--ED.]
+
+The marriage of Racine was an act of penance--neither love nor interest
+had any share in the union. His wife was a good sort of woman, but perhaps
+the most insensible of her sex; and the properest person in the world to
+mortify the passion of literary glory, and the momentary exultation of
+literary vanity.[A] It is scarcely credible, but most certainly true,
+since her own son relates the fact, that the wife of Racine had neither
+seen acted, nor ever read, nor desired to read, the tragedies which had
+rendered her husband so celebrated throughout Europe; she had only learned
+some of their titles in conversation. She was as insensible to fortune as
+to fame. One day, when Racine returned from Versailles, with the princely
+gift from Louis XIV. of a purse of 1000 louis, he hastened to embrace his
+wife, and to show her the treasure. But she was full of trouble, for one
+of the children for two days had not studied. "We will talk of this
+another time," exclaimed the poet; "at present let us be happy." But she
+insisted he ought instantly to reprimand this child, and continued her
+complaints; while Boileau in astonishment paced to and fro, perhaps
+thinking of his Satire on Women, and exclaiming, "What insensibility! Is
+it possible that a purse of 1000 louis is not worth a thought!" This
+stoical apathy did not arise in Madame Racine from the grandeur, but the
+littleness, of her mind. Her prayer-books and her children were the sole
+objects that interested this good woman. Racine's sensibility was not
+mitigated by his marriage; domestic sorrows weighed heavily on his
+spirits: when the illness of his children agitated him, he sometimes
+exclaimed, "Why did I expose myself to all this? Why was I persuaded not
+to be a Chartreux?"--His letters to his children are those of a father and
+a friend; kind exhortations, or pathetic reprimands; he enters into the
+most domestic detail, while he does not conceal from them the mediocrity
+of their fortune. "Had you known him in his family," said Louis Racine,
+"you would be more alive to his poetical character, you would then know
+why his verses are always so full of sentiment. He was never more pleased
+than when, permitted to be absent from the court, he could come among us
+to pass a few days. Even in the presence of strangers he dared to be
+a father, and used to join us in our sports. I well remember our
+processions, in which my sisters were the clergy, I the rector, and the
+author of 'Athaliah,' chanting with us, carried the cross."
+
+[Footnote A: The lady he chose was one Catherine de Romanet, whose family
+was of great respectability but of small fortune. She is not described as
+possessing any marked personal attractions.--ED.]
+
+At length this infirm sensibility abridged his days. He was naturally of a
+melancholic temperament, apt to dwell on objects which occasion pain,
+rather than on those which exhilarate. Louis Racine observes that his
+character resembled Cicero's description of himself, more inclined to
+dread unfortunate events, than to hope for happy ones; _semper magis ad_
+_versos rerum exitus metuens quam sperans secundos_. In the last incident
+of his life his extreme sensibility led him to imagine as present a
+misfortune which might never have occurred.
+
+Madame de Maintenon, one day in conversation with the poet, alluded to the
+misery of the people. Racine observed it was the usual consequence of long
+wars: the subject was animating, and he entered into it with all that
+enthusiasm peculiar to himself. Madame de Maintenon was charmed with his
+eloquent effusion, and requested him to give her his observations in
+writing, assuring him they should not go out of her hand. She was reading
+his memoir when the king entered her apartment; he took it up, and, after
+having looked over a few pages, he inquired with great quickness who was
+the author. She replied it was a secret; but the king was peremptory, and
+the author was named. The king asked with great dissatisfaction, "Is it
+because he writes the most perfect verses, that he thinks that he is able
+to become a statesman?"
+
+Madame de Maintenon told the poet all that had passed, and declined to
+receive his visits for the present. Racine was shortly after attacked with
+violent fever. In the languor of recovery he addressed Madame de Maintenon
+to petition to have his pension freed from some new tax; and he added an
+apology for his presumption in suggesting the cause of the miseries of the
+people, with an humiliation that betrays the alarms that existed in his
+mind. The letter is too long to transcribe, but it is a singular instance
+how genius can degrade itself when it has placed all its felicity on the
+varying smiles of those we call the great. Well might his friend Boileau,
+who had nothing of his sensibility nor imagination, exclaim, with his good
+sense, of the court:--
+
+ Quel sejour etranger, et pour vous et pour moi!
+
+Racine afterwards saw Madame de Maintenon walking in the gardens of
+Versailles; she drew aside into a retired allee to meet him; she exhorted
+him to exert his patience and fortitude, and told him that all would end
+well. "No, madam," he replied, "never!" "Do you then doubt," she said,
+"either my heart, or my influence?" He replied, "I acknowledge your
+influence, and know your goodness to me; but I have an aunt who loves me
+in quite a different manner. That pious woman every day implores God to
+bestow on me disgrace, humiliation, and occasions for penitence, and she
+has more influence than you." As he said these words, the sound of a
+carriage was heard; "The king is coming!" said Madame de Maintenon; "hide
+yourself!"
+
+To this last point of misery and degradation was this great genius
+reduced. Shortly after he died, and was buried at the feet of his master
+in the chapel of the studious and religious society of Port-Royal.
+
+The sacred dramas of _Esther_ and _Athaliah_ were among the latter
+productions of Racine. The fate of _Athaliah_, his masterpiece, was
+remarkable. The public imagined that it was a piece written only for
+children, as it was performed by the young scholars of St. Cyr, and
+received it so coldly that Racine was astonished and disgusted.[A]
+He earnestly requested Boileau's opinion, who maintained it was his
+capital work. "I understand these things," said he, "and the public _y
+reviendra_." The prediction was a true one, but it was accomplished too
+late, long after the death of the author; it was never appreciated till it
+was publicly performed.
+
+[Footnote A: They were written at the request of Madame de Maintenon, for
+the pupils of her favourite establishment at St. Cyr; she was anxious that
+they should be perfect in declamation, and she tried them with the poet's
+_Andromaque_, but they recited it with so much passion and feeling that
+they alarmed their patroness, who told Racine "it was so well done that
+she would be careful they should never act that drama again," and urged
+him to write plays on sacred subjects expressly for their use. He had not
+written a play for upwards of ten years; he now composed his _Esther_,
+making that character a flattering reflection of Maintenon's career.--ED.]
+
+Boileau and Racine derived little or no profit from the booksellers.
+Boileau particularly, though fond of money, was so delicate on this point
+that he gave all his works away. It was this that made him so bold in
+railing at those authors _qui mettent leur Apollon aux gages d'un
+libraire_, and he declared that he had only inserted these verses,
+
+ Je sai qu'un noble esprit peut sans honte et sans crime
+ Tirer de son travail un tribut legitime,
+
+to console Racine, who had received some profits from the printing of his
+tragedies. Those profits were, however, inconsiderable; the truth is, the
+king remunerated the poets.
+
+Racine's first royal mark of favour was an order signed by Colbert for six
+hundred livres, _to give him the means of continuing his studies of the
+belles-lettres_. He received, by an account found among his papers, above
+forty thousand livres from the cassette of the king, by the hand of the
+first valet-de-chambre. Besides these gifts, Racine had a pension of four
+thousand livres as historiographer, and another pension as a man of
+letters.
+
+Which is the more honourable? to crouch for a salary brought by the hand
+of the first valet-de-chambre, or to exult in the tribute offered by the
+public to an author?
+
+ * * * * *
+
+OF STERNE.
+
+
+Cervantes is immortal--Rabelais and STERNE have passed away to the
+curious.
+
+These fraternal geniuses alike chose their subjects from their own times.
+Cervantes, with the innocent design of correcting a temporary folly of his
+countrymen, so that the very success of the design might have proved fatal
+to the work itself; for when he had cut off the heads of the Hydra, an
+extinct monster might cease to interest the readers of other times, and
+other manners. But Cervantes, with judgment equal to his invention, and
+with a cast of genius made for all times, delighted his contemporaries and
+charms his posterity. He looked to the world and collected other follies
+than the Spanish ones, and to another age than the administration of the
+duke of Lerma; with more genuine pleasantry than any writer from the days
+of Lucian, not a solitary spot has soiled the purity of his page; while
+there is scarcely a subject in human, nature for which we might not find
+some apposite illustration. His style, pure as his thoughts, is, however,
+a magic which ceases to work in all translations, and Cervantes is not
+Cervantes in English or in French; yet still he retains his popularity
+among all the nations of Europe; which is more than we can say even of our
+Shakspeare!
+
+Rabelais and Sterne were not perhaps inferior in genius, and they were
+read with as much avidity and delight as the Spaniard. "Le docte Rabelais"
+had the learning which the Englishman wanted; while unhappily Sterne
+undertook to satirise false erudition, which requires the knowledge of the
+true. Though the _Papemanes_, on whom Rabelais has exhausted his grotesque
+humour and his caustic satire, have not yet walked off the stage, we pay a
+heavy price in the grossness of his ribaldry and his tiresome balderdash
+for odd stories and flashes of witty humour. Rabelais hardly finds readers
+even in France, with the exception of a few literary antiquaries. The day
+has passed when a gay dissolute abbe could obtain a rich abbey by getting
+Rabelais by heart, for the perpetual improvement of his patron--and
+Rabelais is now little more than a Rabelais by tradition.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: The clergy were not so unfavourable to Rabelais as might
+have been expected. He was through life protected by the Cardinal
+Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, who employed him in various important
+negotiations; and it is recorded of him that he refused a scholar
+admittance to his table because he had not read his works. This
+familiarity with his grotesque romance was also shared by Cardinal Duprat,
+who is said to have always carried a copy of it with him, as if it was his
+breviary. The anecdote of the priest who obtained promotion from a
+knowledge of his works is given in the "Curiosities of Literature," vol.
+ii. p. 10.--ED.]
+
+In my youth the world doted on Sterne! Martin Sherlock ranks him among
+"the luminaries of the century." Forty years ago, young men in their most
+facetious humours never failed to find the archetypes of society in the
+Shandy family--every good-natured soul was uncle Toby, every humorist was
+old Shandy, every child of Nature was Corporal Trim! It may now be doubted
+whether Sterne's natural dispositions were the humorous or the pathetic:
+the pathetic has survived!
+
+There is nothing of a more ambiguous nature than strong humour, and Sterne
+found it to be so; and latterly, in despair, he asserted that "the taste
+for humour is the gift of heaven!" I have frequently observed how humour,
+like the taste for olives, is even repugnant to some palates, and have
+witnessed the epicure of humour lose it all by discovering how some have
+utterly rejected his favourite relish! Even men of wit may not taste
+humour! The celebrated Dr. Cheyne, who was not himself deficient in
+originality of thinking with great learning and knowledge, once entrusted
+to a friend a remarkable literary confession. Dr. Cheyne assured him that
+"he could not read 'Don Quixote' with any pleasure, nor had any taste for
+'Hudibras' or 'Gulliver;' and that what we call _wit_ and _humour_ in
+these authors he considered as false ornaments, and never to be found in
+those compositions of the ancients which we most admire and esteem."[A]
+Cheyne seems to have held Aristophanes and Lucian monstrously cheap! The
+ancients, indeed, appear not to have possessed that comic quality that
+we understand as _humour_, nor can I discover a word which exactly
+corresponds with our term _humour_ in any language, ancient or modern.
+Cervantes excels in that sly satire which hides itself under the cloak of
+gravity, but this is not the sort of humour which so beautifully plays
+about the delicacy of Addison's page; and both are distinct from the
+broader and stronger humour of Sterne.
+
+[Footnote A: This friend, it now appears, was Dr. King, of Oxford, whose
+anecdotes have recently been published. This curious fact is given in a
+strange hodge-podge, entitled "The Dreamer;" a remarkable instance where a
+writer of learning often conceives that to be humour, which to others is
+not even intelligible!]
+
+The result of Dr. Cheyne's honest confession was experienced by Sterne,
+for while more than half of the three kingdoms were convulsed with
+laughter at his humour, the other part were obdurately dull to it. Take,
+for instance, two very opposite effects produced by "Tristram Shandy" on a
+man of strong original humour himself, and a wit who had more delicacy and
+sarcasm than force and originality. The Rev. Philip Skelton declared that
+"after reading 'Tristram Shandy,' he could not for two or three days
+attend seriously to his devotion, it filled him with so many ludicrous
+ideas." But Horace Walpole, who found his "Sentimental Journey" very
+pleasing, declares that of "his tiresome 'Tristram Shandy,' he could never
+get through three volumes."
+
+The literary life of Sterne was a short one: it was a blaze of existence,
+and it turned his head. With his personal life we are only acquainted by
+tradition. Was the great sentimentalist himself unfeeling, dissolute,
+and utterly depraved? Some anecdotes which one of his companions[A]
+communicated to me, confirm Garrick's account preserved in Dr. Bumey's
+collections, that "He was more dissolute in his conduct than his writings,
+and generally drove every female away by his ribaldry. He degenerated in
+London like an ill-transplanted shrub; the incense of the great spoiled
+his head, and their ragouts his stomach. He grew sickly and proud
+--an invalid in body and mind." Warburtou declared that "he was an
+irrecoverable scoundrel." Authenticated facts are, however, wanting for a
+judicious summary of the real character of the founder of sentimental
+writing. An impenetrable mystery hangs over his family conduct; he has
+thrown many sweet domestic touches in his own memoirs and letters
+addressed to his daughter: but it would seem that he was often parted from
+his family. After he had earnestly solicited the return of his wife from
+France, though she did return, he was suffered to die in utter neglect.
+
+[Footnote A: Caleb Whitefoord, the wit once famed for his invention of
+cross-readings, which, appeared under the name of "Papirius Cursor."]
+
+His sermons have been observed to be characterised by an air of levity; he
+attempted this unusual manner. It was probably a caprice which induced him
+to introduce one of his sermons in "Tristram Shandy;" it was fixing a
+diamond in black velvet, and the contrast set off the brilliancy. But he
+seems then to have had no design of publishing his "Sermons." One day, in
+low spirits, complaining to Caleb Whitefoord of the state of his finances,
+Caleb asked him, "if he had no sermons like the one in 'Tristram Shandy?'"
+But Sterne had no notion that "sermons" were saleable, for two preceding
+ones had passed unnoticed. "If you could hit on a striking title, take my
+word for it that they would go down." The next day Sterne made his
+appearance in raptures. "I have it!" he cried: "Dramatic Sermons by
+Torick." With great difficulty he was persuaded to drop this allusion to
+the church and the playhouse![A]
+
+[Footnote A: He published these two volumes of discourses under the title
+of "Yorick's Sermons," because, as he stated in his preface, it would
+"best serve the booksellers' purpose, as Yorick's name is possibly of the
+two the more known;" but, fearing the censure of the world, he added a
+second title-page with his own name, "to ease the minds of those who see a
+jest, and the danger which lurks under it, where no jest is meant." All
+this did not free Sterne from much severe criticism.--ED.]
+
+We are told in the short addition to his own memoirs, that "he submitted
+to fate on the 18th day of March, 1768, at his lodgings in Bond-street."
+But it does not appear to have been noticed that Sterne died with
+neither friend nor relation by his side! a hired nurse was the sole
+companion of the man whose wit found admirers in every street, but
+whose heart, it would seem, could not draw one to his death-bed. We
+cannot say whether Sterne, who had long been dying, had resolved to
+practise his own principle,--when he made the philosopher Shandy, who had
+a fine saying for everything, deliver his opinion on death--that "there is
+no terror, brother Toby, in its looks, but what it borrows from groan? and
+convulsions--and the blowing of noses, and the wiping away of tears with
+the bottoms of curtains in a dying man's room. Strip it of these, what is
+it?" I find the moment of his death described in a singular book, the
+"Life of a Foot-man." I give it with all its particulars. "In the month of
+January, 1768, we set off for London. We stopped for some time at Almack's
+house in Pall-Mall. My master afterwards took Sir James Gray's house in
+Clifford-street, who was going ambassador to Spain. He now began
+house-keeping, hired a French cook, a house-maid, and kitchen-maid, and
+kept a great deal of the best company. About this time, Mr Sterne, the
+celebrated author, was taken ill at the silk-bag shop in Old Bond-street.
+He was sometimes called 'Tristram Shandy,' and sometimes 'Yorick;' a very
+great favourite of the gentlemen's. One day my master had company to
+dinner who were speaking about him: the Duke of Roxburgh, the Earl of
+March, the Earl of Ossory, the Duke of Grafton, Mr. Garrick, Mr. Hume,
+and Mr. James. 'John,' said my master, 'go and inquire how Mr. Sterne is
+to-day.' I went, returned, and said,--I went to Mr. Sterne's lodging; the
+mistress opened the door; I inquired how he did. She told me to go up to
+the nurse; I went into the room, and he was just a-dying. I waited ten
+minutes; but in five he said, 'Now it is come!' He put up his hand as if
+to stop a blow, and died in a minute. The gentlemen were all very sorry,
+and lamented him very much[A]."
+
+[Footnote A: "Travels in various parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, during
+a series of thirty years and upwards, by John Macdonald, a cadet of the
+family of Kippoch, in Invernesshire, who after the ruin of his family, in
+1765, was thrown, when a child, on the wide world, &c. Printed for the
+author, 1790."--He served a number of noblemen and gentlemen in the humble
+station of a footman. There is such an air of truth and sincerity
+throughout the work that I entertain no doubt of its genuineness.]
+
+Such is the simple narrative of the death of this wit[A]! Some letters and
+papers of Sterne are now before me which reveal a piece of secret history
+of our sentimentalist. The letters are addressed to a young lady of the
+name of De Fourmantel, whose ancestors were the Berangers de Fourmantel,
+who during the persecution of the French Protestants by Louis XIV.
+emigrated to this country: they were entitled to extensive possessions in
+St. Domingo, but were excluded by their Protestantism. The elder sister
+became a Catholic, and obtained the estates; the younger adopted the name
+of Beranger, and was a governess to the Countess of Bristol. The paper
+states that Catherine de Fourmantel formed an attachment to Sterne, and
+that it was the expectation of their friends that they would be united;
+but that on a visit Sterne became acquainted with a lady, whom he married,
+in the space of one month, after having paid his addresses to Miss de
+Fourmantel for five years. The consequence was, the total derangement of
+intellect of this young lady. She was confined in a private madhouse.
+Sterne twice saw her there; and from observation on her state drew the
+"Maria" whom he has so pathetically described. The elder sister, at the
+instigation of the father of the communicator of these letters, came to
+England, and took charge of the unhappy Maria, who died at Paris. "For
+many years," says the writer of this statement, "my mother had the
+_handkerchief_ Sterne alludes to." The anxious wish of Sterne was to have
+his letters returned to him. In this he failed; and such as they are,
+without date, either of time or place, they are now before me.
+
+[Footnote A: Sterne was buried in the ground belonging to the parish of
+St. George's, Hanover Square, situated in the Bayswater Road. His funeral
+was "attended only by two gentlemen in a mourning coach, no bell tolling;"
+and his grave has been described as "distinguished by a plain headstone,
+set up with an unsuitable inscription, by a tippling fraternity of
+Freemasons." In 1761, long before his death, was published a satire on the
+tendencies of his writings, mixed with a good deal of personal censure, in
+a pamphlet entitled "A Funeral Discourse, occasioned by the much lamented
+death of Mr. Yorick, preached before a very mixed society of Jemmies,
+Jessamies, Methodists, and Christians, at a nocturnal meeting in Petticoat
+Lane; by Christopher Flagellan, A.M." As one of the minor "Curiosities of
+Literature" this tract is worth noting; its author, in a preface, says
+that "it has been _maliciously_, or rather _stupidly_, reported that the
+late Mr. Sterne, alias Yorick, is not dead; but that, on the contrary, he
+is writing a fifth and sixth, and has carried his plan as far as a
+fiftieth and sixtieth volume of the book called 'The Life and Opinions of
+Tristram Shandy;' but they are rather to be attributed to his ghastly
+ghost, which is said to walk the purlieus of Covent Garden and Drury
+Lane."--ED.]
+
+The billets-doux are unquestionably authentic, but the statement is
+inaccurate. I doubt whether the narrative be correct in stating that
+Sterne married after an acquaintance of one month; for he tells us in his
+Memoirs that he courted his wife for two years; he, however, married in
+1741. The "Sermon of Elijah," which he presents to Miss de Fourmantel in
+one of these letters, was not published till 1747. Her disordered mind
+could not therefore have been occasioned by the _sudden_ marriage of
+Sterne. A sentimental intercourse evidently existed between them. He
+perhaps sought in her sympathy, consolation for his domestic infelicity;
+he communicates to her the minutest events of his early fame; and these
+letters, which certainly seem very like love-letters, present a picture of
+his life in town in the full flower of his fame eager with hope and
+flushed with success.
+
+
+LETTER I.
+
+"My dear Kitty,--I beg you will accept of the inclosed sermon, which I do
+not make you a present of merely because it was wrote by myself, but
+because there is a beautiful character in it of a tender and compassionate
+mind in the picture given of Elijah. Read it, my dear Kitty, and believe
+me when I assure you that I see something of the same kind and gentle
+disposition in your heart which I have painted in the prophet's, which has
+attached me so much to you and your interests, that I shall live and die
+
+"Your affectionate and faithful servant,
+
+"Laurence Sterne.
+
+"P.S.--If possible, I will see you this afternoon before I go to Mr.
+Fothergil's. Adieu, dear friend,--I had the pleasure to drink your health
+last night."
+
+
+LETTER II.
+
+"My dear Kitty,--If this billet catches you in bed, you are a lazy, sleepy
+little slut, and I am a giddy, foolish, unthinking fellow, for keeping you
+so late up--but this Sabbath is a day of rest, at the same time that it is
+a day of sorrow; for I shall not see my dear creature to-day, unless you
+meet me at Taylor's half an hour after twelve; but in this do as you like.
+I have ordered Matthew to turn thief, and steal you a quart of honey; what
+is honey to the sweetness of thee, who art sweeter than all the flowers it
+comes from! I love you to distraction, Kitty, and will love you on so to
+eternity--so adieu, and believe, what time will only prove me, that I am,
+
+"Yours."
+
+
+LETTER III.
+
+"My dear Kitty,--I have sent you a pot of sweetmeats and a pot of honey
+--neither of them half so sweet as yourself--but don't be vain upon this,
+or presume to grow sour upon this character of sweetness I give you; for
+if you do I shall send you a pot of pickles (by way of contraries) to
+sweeten you up, and bring you to yourself again--whatever changes happen
+to you, believe me that I am unalterably yours, and according to your
+motto, such a one, my dear Kitty,
+
+ "Qui ne changera pas qu'en mourant.
+
+"L.S."
+
+
+He came up to town in 1760, to publish the two first volumes of 'Shandy,'
+of which the first edition had appeared at York the preceding year.
+
+
+LETTER IV.
+
+"_London, May 8._
+
+"My dear Kitty,--I have arrived here safe and sound--except for the hole
+in my heart which you have made, like a dear enchanting slut as you are.
+--I shall take lodgings this morning in Piccadilly or the Haymarket, and
+before I send this letter will let you know where to direct a letter to
+me, which letter I shall wait for by the return of the post with great
+impatience.
+
+"I have the greatest honours paid me, and most civilities shown me that
+were ever known from the great; and am engaged already to ten noblemen and
+men of fashion to dine. Mr. Garrick pays me all and more honour than I
+could look for: I dined with him to-day, and he has prompted numbers of
+great people to carry me to dine with them--he has given me an order for
+the liberty of his boxes, and of every part of his house, for the whole
+season; and indeed leaves nothing undone that can do me either service or
+credit. He has undertaken the whole management of the booksellers, and
+will procure me a great price--but more of this in my next.
+
+"And now, my dear girl, let me assure you of the truest friendship for you
+that ever man bore towards a woman--wherever I am, my heart is warm
+towards you, and ever shall be, till it is cold for ever. I thank you for
+the kind proof you gave me of your desire to make my heart easy in
+ordering yourself to be denied to you know who--while I am so miserable to
+be separated from my dear, dear Kitty, it would have stabbed my soul to
+have thought such a fellow could have the liberty of coming near you.--I
+therefore take this proof of your love and good principles most kindly--
+and have as much faith and dependence upon you in it, as if I was at your
+elbow--would to God I was at this moment--for I am sitting solitary and
+alone in my bedchamber (ten o'clock at night after the play), and would
+give a guinea for a squeeze of your hand. I send my soul perpetually out
+to see what you are a-doing--wish I could convey my body with it--adieu,
+dear and kind girl. Ever your kind friend and affectionate admirer.
+
+"I go to the oratorio this night. My service to your mamma."
+
+
+LETTER V.
+
+"My dear Kitty,--Though I have but a moment's time to spare, I would not
+omit writing you an account of my good fortune; my Lord Fauconberg has
+this day given me a hundred and sixty pounds a year, which I hold with all
+my preferment; so that all or the most part of my sorrows and tears are
+going to be wiped away.--I have but one obstacle to my happiness now left
+--and what that is you know as well as I.[A]
+
+"I long most impatiently to see my dear Kitty. I had a purse of guineas
+given me yesterday by a bishop--all will do well in time.
+
+"From morning to night my lodgings, which by the bye are the genteelest in
+town,[B] are full of the greatest company.--I dined these two days with
+two ladies of the bedchamber--then with Lord Buckingham, Lord Edgcumb,
+Lord Winchelsea, Lord Littleton, a bishop, &c. &c.
+
+"I assure you, my dear Kitty, that Tristram is the fashion.--Pray to God I
+may see my dearest girl soon and well.--Adieu.
+
+"Your affectionate friend,
+
+"L. STERNE."
+
+[Footnote A: Can this allude to the death of his wife?--that very year he
+tells his daughter he had taken a house at York, "for your mother and
+yourself."]
+
+[Footnote B: They were the second house from St. Alban's Street, Pall
+Mall.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+HUME, ROBERTSON, AND BIRCH.
+
+
+The rarest of literary characters is such an historian as Gibbon; but
+we know the price which he paid for his acquisitions--unbroken and
+undeviating studies. Wilkes, a mere wit, could only discover the drudgery
+of compilation in the profound philosopher and painter of men and of
+nations. A speculative turn of mind, delighting in generalising principles
+and aggregate views, is usually deficient in that closer knowledge,
+without which every step we take is on the fairy-ground of conjecture and
+theory, very apt to shift its unsubstantial scenes. The researchers are
+like the inhabitants of a city who live among its ancient edifices, and
+are in the market-places and the streets: but the theorists, occupied by
+perspective views, with a more artist-like pencil may impose on us a
+general resemblance of things; but often shall we find in those shadowy
+outlines how the real objects are nearly, if not wholly lost--for much is
+given which is fanciful, and much omitted which is true.
+
+Of our two popular historians, Hume and Robertson, alike in character but
+different in genius, it is much to be lamented that neither came to their
+tasks with the previous studies of half a life; and their speculative or
+theoretical histories are of so much the less value whenever they are
+deficient in that closer research which can be obtained only in one way;
+not the most agreeable to those literary adventurers, for such they are,
+however high they rank in the class of genius, who grasp at early
+celebrity, and depend more on themselves than on their researches.
+
+In some curious letters to the literary antiquary Dr. Birch, Eobertson
+acknowledges "my chief object is to _adorn_, as far as I am capable of
+adorning, the history of a period which deserves to be better known," He
+probably took his lesson from Voltaire, the reigning author of that day,
+and a great favourite with Robertson. Voltaire indeed tells us, that no
+writers, but those who have composed tragedies, can throw any interest
+into a history; that we must know to paint and excite the passions; and
+that a history, like a dramatic piece, must have situation, intrigue, and
+catastrophe; an observation which, however true, at least shows that there
+can be but a moderate quantity of truth in such agreeable narratives.
+Robertson's notion of _adorning_ history was the pleasing labour of
+genius--it was to amplify into vastness, to colour into beauty, and
+to arrange the objects of his meditation with a secret artifice of
+disposition. Such an historian is a sculptor, who, though he display a
+correct semblance of nature, is not less solicitous to display the
+miracles of his art, and enlarges his figures to a colossal dimension.
+Such is theoretical history.
+
+The theoretical historian communicates his own character to his history;
+and if, like Robertson, he be profound and politic, he detects the secret
+motives of his actors, unravels the webs of cabinet councils, explains
+projects that were unknown, and details stratagems which never took place.
+When we admire the fertile conceptions of the Queen Regent, of Elizabeth,
+and of Bothwell, we are often defrauding Robertson of whatever admiration
+may be due to such deep policy.
+
+When Hume received from Dr. Birch Forbes's Manuscripts and Murdin's
+State-papers, in great haste he writes to his brother historian:--"What I
+wrote you with regard to Mary, &c., was from the printed histories and
+papers. But I am now sorry to tell you that by Murdin's State-papers, the
+matter is put beyond all question. I got these papers during the holidays
+by Dr. Birch's means; and as soon as I read them _I ran to Millar_, and
+desired him very earnestly to stop the publication of your history till I
+should write to you, and give you an opportunity of correcting a mistake
+so important; but he absolutely refused compliance. He said that your book
+was now finished; that the whole narrative of Mary's trial must be wrote
+over again; that it was uncertain whether the new narrative could be
+brought within the same compass with the old: that this change would
+require the cancelling a great many sheets; that there were scattered
+_passages through the volumes founded on your theory._" What an interview
+was this of Andrew Millar and David Hume! truly the bibliopole shone to
+greater advantage than the _two theoretical historians_! And so the world
+had, and eagerly received, what this critical bookseller declared
+"required the new printing (that is, the new writing) of a great part of
+the edition!"
+
+When this successful history of Scotland invited Robertson to pursue this
+newly-discovered province of philosophical or theoretical history, he was
+long irresolute in his designs, and so unpractised in those researches he
+was desirous of attempting, that his admirers would have lost his popular
+productions, had not a fortunate introduction to Dr. Birch, whose life had
+been spent in historical pursuits, enabled the Scottish historian to open
+many a clasped book, and to drink of many a sealed fountain. Robertson was
+long undecided whether to write the history of Greece, of Leo X., that of
+William III. and Queen Anne, or that of Charles V., and perhaps many other
+subjects.
+
+We have a curious letter of Lord Orford's, detailing the purport of a
+visit Robertson paid to him to inquire after materials for the reigns of
+William and Anne; he seemed to have little other knowledge than what he
+had taken upon trust. "I painted to him," says Lord Orford, "the
+difficulties and the want of materials--but the booksellers will out-argue
+me." Both the historian and "the booksellers" had resolved on another
+history: and Robertson looked upon it as a task which he wished to have
+set to him, and not a glorious toil long matured in his mind. But how did
+he come prepared to the very dissimilar subjects he proposed? When he
+resolved to write the history of Charles V., he confesses to Dr. Birch: "I
+never had _access to any copious libraries_, and do not pretend to _any
+extensive knowledge of authors_; but I have made a list of such as I
+thought most essential to the subject, and have put them down _as I found
+them mentioned in any book I happened to read_. Your erudition and
+knowledge of hooks is infinitely superior to mine, and I doubt not but you
+will be able to make such additions to my catalogue as may be of great use
+to me. I know very well, and to my sorrow, _how servilely historians copy
+from one another_, and how little is to be learned from reading many
+books; but at the same time, when one writes upon any particular period,
+it is both necessary and decent for him to consult every book relating to
+it upon which he can lay his hands." This avowal proves that Robertson
+knew little of the history of Charles V. till he began the task; and he
+further confesses that "he had no knowledge of the Spanish or German,"
+which, for the history of a Spanish monarch and a German emperor, was
+somewhat ominous of the nature of the projected history.
+
+Yet Robertson, though he once thus acknowledged, as we see, that he "never
+had access to any copious libraries, and did not _pretend to any extensive
+knowledge of authors_," seems to have acquired from his friend, Dr. Birch,
+who was a genuine researcher in manuscripts as well as printed books, a
+taste even for bibliographical ostentation, as appears by that pompous and
+voluminous list of authors prefixed to his "History of America;" the most
+objectionable of his histories, being a perpetual apology for the Spanish
+Government, adapted to the meridian of the court of Madrid, rather than to
+the cause of humanity, of truth, and of philosophy. I understand, from
+good authority, that it would not be difficult to prove that our historian
+had barely examined them, and probably had never turned over half of that
+deceptive catalogue. Birch thought so, and was probably a little disturbed
+at the overwhelming success of our eloquent and penetrating historian,
+while his own historical labours, the most authentic materials of history,
+but not history itself, hardly repaid the printer. Birch's publications
+are either originals, that is, letters or state-papers; or they are
+narratives drawn from originals, for he never wrote but from manuscripts.
+They are the true _materia historica_.
+
+Birch, however, must have enjoyed many a secret triumph over our popular
+historians, who had introduced their beautiful philosophical history into
+our literature; the dilemma in which they sometimes found themselves must
+have amused him. He has thrown out an oblique stroke at Bobertson's "pomp
+of style, and fine eloquence," "which too often tend to disguise the real
+state of the facts."[A] When he received from Robertson the present of his
+"Charles V.," after the just tribute of his praise, he adds some regret
+that the historian had not been so fortunate as to have seen Burghley's
+State-papers, "published since Christmas," and a manuscript trial of Mary,
+Queen of Scots, in Lord Boyston's possession. Alas! such is the fate of
+_speculative history_; a Christmas may come, and overturn the elaborate
+castle in the air. Can we forbear a smile when we hear Robertson, who had
+projected a history of British America, of which we possess two chapters,
+when the rebellion and revolution broke out, congratulate himself that he
+had not made any further progress? "It is lucky that my American History
+was not finished before this event; how many plausible theories that I
+should have been entitled to form are contradicted by what has now
+happened!" A fair confession!
+
+[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 387.]
+
+Let it not be for one moment imagined that this article is designed to
+depreciate the genius of Hume and Robertson, who are the noblest of our
+modern authors, and exhibit a perfect idea of the literary character.
+
+Forty-four years ago, I transcribed from their originals the
+correspondence of the historian with the literary antiquary. For the
+satisfaction of the reader, I here preserve these literary relics.
+
+
+_Letters between Dr. Birch and Dr. W. Robertson, relative to
+the Histories of Scotland and of Charles V._
+
+
+"TO DR. BIRCH.
+
+"_Gladsmuir, 19 Sept. 1757._
+
+"Reverent Sir,--Though I have not the good fortune to be known to you
+personally, I am so happy as to be no stranger to your writings, to which
+I have been indebted for much useful instruction. And as I have heard from
+my friends, Sir David Dalrymple and Mr. Davidson, that your disposition to
+oblige was equal to your knowledge, I now presume to write to you and to
+ask your assistance without any apology.
+
+"I have been engaged for some time in writing the history of Scotland from
+the death of James V. to the accession of James VI. to the throne of
+England. My chief object is to adorn (as far as I am capable of adorning)
+the history of a period which, on account of the greatness of the events,
+and their close connection with the transactions in England, deserves to
+be better known. But as elegance of composition, even where a writer can
+attain that, is but a trivial merit without historical truth and accuracy,
+and as the prejudices and rage of factions, both religious and political,
+have rendered almost every fact, in the period which I have chosen, a
+matter of doubt or of controversy, I have therefore taken all the pains in
+my power to examine the evidence on both sides with exactness. You know
+how copious the _materia, historian_ in this period is. Besides all the
+common historians and printed collections of papers, I have consulted
+several manuscripts which are to be found in this country. I am persuaded
+that there are still many manuscripts worth my seeing to be met with in
+England, and for that reason I propose to pass some time in London this
+winter. I am impatient, however, to know what discoveries of this kind I
+may expect, and what are the treasures before me, and with regard to this
+I beg leave to consult you.
+
+"I was afraid for some time that Dr. Forbes's Collections had been
+lost upon his death, but I am glad to find by your 'Memoirs' that
+they are in the possession of Mr. Yorke. I see likewise that the 'Depeches
+de Beaumont' are in the hands of the same gentleman. But I have no
+opportunity of consulting your 'Memoirs' at present, and I cannot remember
+whether the 'Depeches de Fenelon' be still preserved or not. I see that
+Carte has made a great use of them in a very busy period from 1563 to
+1576. I know the strength of Carte's prejudices so well, that I dare say
+many things may be found there that he could not see, or would not
+publish. May I beg the favour of you to let me know whether Fenelon's
+papers be yet extant and accessible, and to give me some general idea of
+what Dr. Forbes's Collections contain with regard to Scotland, and whether
+the papers they consist of are different from those published by Haynes,
+Anderson, &c. I am far from desiring that you should enter into any detail
+that would be troublesome to you, but some short hint of the nature of
+these Collections would be extremely satisfying to my curiosity, and I
+shall esteem it a great obligation laid upon me.
+
+"I have brought my work almost to a conclusion. If you would be so good as
+to suggest anything that you thought useful for me to know or to examine
+into, I shall receive your directions with great respect and gratitude.
+
+"I am, with sincere esteem,
+
+"Rev'd Sir, Y'r m. ob. & m. h. S'r,
+
+"Wm. ROBERTSON."
+
+
+TO DR. BIRCH.
+
+"_Edinburgh, 1 Jan. 1759._
+
+"Dear Sir,--If I had not considered a letter of mere compliment as an
+impertinent interruption to one who is so busy as you commonly are, I
+would long before this have made my acknowledgments to you for the
+civilities which you was so good as to show me while I was in London. I
+had not only a proof of your obliging disposition, but I reaped the good
+effects of it.
+
+"The papers to which I got access by your means, especially those from
+Lord Royston, have rendered my work more perfect than it could have
+otherwise been. My history is now ready for publication, and I have
+desired Mr. Millar to send you a large paper copy of it in my name, which
+I beg you may accept as a testimony of my regard and of my gratitude. He
+will likewise transmit to you another copy, which I must entreat you to
+present to my Lord Royston, with such acknowledgments of his favours
+toward me as are proper for me to make. I have printed a short appendix of
+original papers. You will observe that there are several inaccuracies in
+the press work. Mr. Millar grew impatient to have the book published, so
+that it was impossible to send down the proofs to me. I hope, however, the
+papers will be abundantly intelligible. I published them only to confirm
+my own system, about particular facts, not to obtain the character of an
+antiquarian. If, upon perusing the book, you discover any inaccuracies,
+either with regard to style or facts, whether of great or of small
+importance, I will esteem it a very great favour if you'll be so good as
+to communicate them to me. I shall likewise be indebted to you, if you'll
+let me know what reception the book meets with among the literati of your
+acquaintance. I hope you will be particularly pleased with the critical
+dissertation at the end, which is the production of a co-partnership
+between me and your friend Mr. Davidson. Both Sir D. Dalrymple and he
+offer compliments to you. If Dean Tucker be in town this winter, I beg you
+will offer my compliments to him.
+
+"I am, w. great regard, Dr. Sir,
+
+"Y'r m. obed't. & rust. o. ser't.,
+
+"WILLIAM ROBERTSON.
+
+"My address is, one of the ministers of Ed."
+
+
+TO DR. BIRCH.
+
+"_Edinburgh, 13 Dec. 1759._
+
+"Dear Sir,--I beg leave once more to have recourse to your good nature and
+to your love of literature, and to presume upon putting you to a piece of
+trouble. After considering several subjects for another history, I have at
+last fixed upon the reign of Charles V., which contains the first
+establishment of the present political system of Europe. I have begun to
+labour seriously upon my task. One of the first things requisite was to
+form a catalogue of books which must be consulted. As I never had access
+to very copious libraries, I do not pretend to any extensive knowledge of
+authors, but I have made a list of such as I thought most essential to the
+subject, and have put them down just in the order which they occurred to
+me, or as I found them mentioned in any book I happened to read. I beg you
+would be so good as to look it over, and as your erudition and knowledge
+of books is infinitely superior to mine, I doubt not but you'll be able to
+make such additions to my catalogue as may be of great use to me. I know
+very well, and to my sorrow, how servilely historians copy from one
+another, and how little is to be learned from reading many books, but at
+the same time when one writes upon any particular period, it is both
+necessary and decent for him to consult every book relating to it, upon
+which he can lay his hands. I am sufficiently master of French and
+Italian; but have no knowledge of the Spanish or German tongues. I flatter
+myself that I shall not suffer much by this, as the two former languages,
+together with the Latin, will supply me with books in abundance. Mr.
+Walpole informed me some time ago, that in the catalogue of Harleian MSS.
+in the British Museum, there is a volume of papers relating to Charles V.,
+it is No. 295. I do not expect much from it, but it would be extremely
+obliging if you would take the trouble of looking into it and of informing
+me in general what it contains. In the catalogue I have inclosed, this
+mark x is prefixed to all the books which I can get in this country; if
+you yourself, or any friend with whom you can use freedom, have any of the
+other books in my list, and will be so good as to send them to Mr. Millar,
+he will forward them to me, and I shall receive them with great gratitude
+and return them with much punctuality. I beg leave to offer compliments to
+all our common friends, and particularly to Dean Tucker, if he be in town
+this season. I wish it were in my power to confer any return for all the
+trouble you have taken in my behalf--"
+
+
+FROM DR. BIRCH TO THE REV. DR. ROBERTSON, AT EDINBURGH.
+
+"_London, 3 Jany. 1760._
+
+"Dear Sir,--Your letter of the 13 Dec'r. was particularly agreeable to me,
+as it acquainted me with your resolution to resume your historic pen, and
+to undertake a subject which, from its importance and extent, and your
+manner of treating it, will be highly acceptable to the public.
+
+"I have perused your list of books to be consulted on this occasion; and
+after transcribing it have delivered it to Mr. Millar; and shall now make
+some additions to it.
+
+"The new 'Histoire d'Allemagne' by Father Barre, chancellor of the
+University of Paris, published a few years ago in several volumes in 4^to.,
+is a work of very good credit, and to be perused by you; as is likewise
+the second edition of 'Abrege chronologique de l'Histoire & du Droit
+public d'Allemagne,' just printed at Paris, and formed upon the plan of
+President Henault's 'Nouvel Abrege chronologique de l'Histoire de France,'
+in which the reigns of Francis I. and Henry II. will be proper to be seen
+by you.
+
+"The 'Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire du Cardinal Granvelle,' by Father
+Rosper Levesque, a Benedictin monk, which were printed at Paris in two
+vol's. 12^o. in 1753, contain some particulars relating to Charles V. But
+this performance is much less curious than it might have been, considering
+that the author had the advantage of a vast collection, above an hundred
+volumes of the Cardinal's original papers, at Besancon. Among these are
+the papers of his eminence's father, who was chancellor and minister to
+the Emperor Charles V.
+
+"Bishop Burnet, in the 'Summary of Affairs before the Restoration,'
+prefixed to his 'History of his Own Time,' mentions a life of Frederick
+Elector Palatine, who first reformed the Palatinate, as curiously written
+by Hubert Thomas Leodius. This book, though a very rare one, is in my
+study and shall be sent to you. You will find in it many facts relating to
+your Emperor. The manuscript was luckily saved when the library of
+Heydelberg was plundered and conveyed to the Vatican after the taking of
+that city in 1622, and it was printed in 1624, at Francfort, in 4^to.
+The writer had been secretary and councillor to the elector.
+
+"Another book which I shall transmit to you is a valuable collection of
+state papers, made by Mons'r. Rivier, and printed at Blois, in 1665, in
+two vols. f^o. They relate to the reigns of Francis I., Henry II., and
+Francis II. of France. The indexes will direct you to such passages as
+concern the Emperor.
+
+"As Mons'r. Amelot de la Houssaic, who was extremely conversant in modern
+history, has, in the 1st. tome of his 'Memoires Historiques Politiques et
+Litteraires,' from p. 156 to 193, treated of Charles V., I shall add that
+book to my parcel.
+
+"Varillas's 'Life of Henry II. of France' should be looked into, though
+that historian has not at present much reputation for exactness and
+veracity.
+
+"Dr. Fiddes, in his 'Life of Cardinal Wolsey,' has frequent occasion to
+introduce the Emperor, his contemporary, of which Bayle in his Dictionary
+gives us an express article and not a short one, for it consists of eight
+of his pages.
+
+"Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth's preceptor, when he was secretary to S'r.
+Richard Morysin amb. from K. Edward VI. to the imperial court, wrote to a
+friend of his 'a report and discourse of the affairs and state of Germany
+and the Emperor Charles's court.' This was printed in the reign of Queen
+Elizabeth; but the copies of that edition are now very rare. However this
+will be soon made public, being reprinted in an edition of all the
+author's English works now in the press.
+
+"The 'Epitres des Princes,' translated from the Italian by Belleforest,
+will probably supply you with some few things to your purpose.
+
+"Vol. 295 among the Harleian MSS. contains little remarkable except some
+letters from Henry VIII's amb'r. in Spain, in 1518, of which, you may see
+an abstract in the printed catalogue.
+
+"In Dr. Hayne's 'Collection of State Papers in the Hatfield History,' p.
+56, is a long letter of the lord of the council of Henry VIII., in 1546,
+to his amb'r. with the Emperor."
+
+
+TO DR. BIRCH.
+
+_Extract from a letter of Dr. Robertson, dated College of Edinburgh, Oct.
+8, 1765._
+
+" . . . I have met with many interruptions in carrying on my 'Charles V.,'
+partly from bad health, and partly from the avocations arising from
+performing the duties of my office. But I am now within sight of land. The
+historical part of the work is finished, and I am busy with a preliminary
+book, in which I propose to give a view of the progress in the state of
+society, laws, manners, and arts, from the irruption of the barbarous
+nations to the beginning of the sixteenth century. This is a laborious
+undertaking; but I flatter myself that I shall be able to finish it in a
+few months. I have kept the books you was so good as to send me, and shall
+return them carefully as soon as my work is done."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+OF VOLUMINOUS WORKS INCOMPLETE BY THE DEATHS OF THE AUTHORS.
+
+
+In those "Dances of Death" where every profession is shown as taken by
+surprise in the midst of their unfinished tasks, where the cook is viewed
+in flight, oversetting his caldron of soup, and the physician, while
+inspecting his patient's urinal, is himself touched by the grim visitor,
+one more instance of poor mortality may be added in the writers of works
+designed to be pursued through a long series of volumes. The French have
+an appropriate designation for such works, which they call "_ouvrages de
+longue haleine_," and it has often happened that the _haleine_ has closed
+before the work.
+
+Works of literary history have been particularly subject to this
+mortifying check on intellectual enterprise, and human life has not
+yielded a sufficient portion for the communication of extensive
+acquirement! After years of reading and writing, the literary historian,
+who in his innumerable researches is critical as well as erudite, has
+still to arbitrate between conflicting opinions; to resolve on the
+doubtful, to clear up the obscure, and to grasp at remote researches:--but
+he dies, and leaves his favourite volumes little more than a project!
+
+Feelingly the antiquary Hearne laments this general forgetfulness of the
+nature of all human concerns in the mind of the antiquary, who is so
+busied with other times and so interested for other persons than those
+about him. "It is the business of a good antiquary, as of a good man, to
+have mortality always before him."
+
+A few illustrious scholars have indeed escaped the fate reserved for most
+of their brothers. A long life, and the art of multiplying that life not
+only by an early attachment to study, but by that order and arrangement
+which shortens our researches, have sufficed for a MURATORI. With such a
+student time was a great capital, which he knew to put out at compound
+interest; and this Varro of the Italians, who performed an infinite number
+of things in the circumscribed period of ordinary life, appears not to
+have felt any dread of leaving his voluminous labours unfinished, but
+rather of wanting one to begin. This literary Alexander thought he might
+want a world to conquer! Muratori was never perfectly happy unless
+employed in two large works at the same time, and so much dreaded the
+state of literary inaction, that he was incessantly importuning his
+friends to suggest to him objects worthy of his future composition. The
+flame kindled in his youth burned clear in his old age; and it was in his
+senility that he produced the twelve quartos of his _Annali d'Italia_
+as an addition to his twenty-nine folios of his _Rerum Italicarum
+Scriptores_, and the six folios of the _Antiquitates Medii AEvi_! Yet
+these vast edifices of history are not all which this illustrious Italian
+has raised for his fatherland. Gibbon in his Miscellaneous Works has drawn
+an admirable character of Muratori.
+
+But such a fortunate result has rarely accompanied the labours of the
+literary worthies of this order. TIRABOSCHI indeed lived to complete his
+great national history of Italian literature; but, unhappily for us,
+WARTON, after feeling his way through the darker ages of our poetry, and
+just conducting us to a brighter region, in planning the map of the
+country of which he had only a Pisgah view, expires amid his volumes! Our
+poetical antiquary led us to the opening gates of the paradise of our
+poetry, when, alas! they closed on him and on us! The most precious
+portion of Warton's history is but the fragment of a fragment.
+
+Life passes away in collecting materials--the marble lies in blocks--and
+sometimes a colonnade is erected, or even one whole side of a palace
+indicates the design of the architect. Count MAZZUCHELLI, early in
+life, formed a noble but too mighty a project, in which, however, he
+considerably advanced. This was an historical and critical account of the
+memoirs and the writings of Italian authors; he even commenced the
+publication in alphabetical order, but the six invaluable folios we
+possess only contain the authors the initial letters of whose names are A
+and B! This great literary historian had finished for the press other
+volumes, which the torpor of his descendants has suffered to lie in a
+dormant state. Rich in acquisition, and judicious in his decisions, the
+days of the patriotic Mazzuchelli were freely given to the most curious
+and elegant researches in his national literature; his correspondence is
+said to consist of forty volumes; with eight of literary memoirs, besides
+the lives of his literary contemporaries;--but Europe has been defrauded
+of the hidden treasures.
+
+The history of BAILLET'S "Jugemens des Scavans sur les Principaux Ouvrages
+des Auteurs," or Decisions of the Learned on the Learned, is a remarkable
+instance how little the calculations of writers of research serve to
+ascertain the period of their projected labour. Baillet passed his life in
+the midst of the great library of the literary family of the Lamoignons,
+and as an act of gratitude arranged a classified catalogue in thirty-two
+folio volumes; it indicated not only what any author had professedly
+composed on any subject, but also marked those passages relative to the
+subject which other writers had touched on. By means of this catalogue,
+the philosophical patron of Baillet at a single glance discovered the
+great results of human knowledge on any object of his inquiries. This
+catalogue, of equal novelty and curiosity, the learned came to study, and
+often transcribed its precious notices. Amid this world of books, the
+skill and labour of Baillet prompted him to collect the critical opinions
+of the learned, and from the experience he had acquired in the progress of
+his colossal catalogue, as a preliminary, sketched one of the most
+magnificent plans of literary history. This instructive project has been
+preserved by Monnoye in his edition. It consists of six large divisions,
+with innumerable subdivisions. It is a map of the human mind, and presents
+a view of the magnitude and variety of literature, which few can conceive.
+The project was too vast for an individual; it now occupies seven quartos,
+yet it advanced no farther than the critics, translators, and poets,
+forming little more than the first, and a commencement of the second great
+division; to more important classes the laborious projector never reached!
+
+Another literary history is the "Bibliotheque Francoise" of GOUJET, left
+unfinished by his death. He had designed a classified history of French
+literature; but of its numerous classes he has only concluded that of the
+translators, and not finished the second he had commenced, of the poets.
+He lost himself in the obscure times of French Literature, and consumed
+sixteen years on his eighteen volumes!
+
+A great enterprise of the BENEDICTINES, the "Histoire Litteraire de la
+France," now consists of twelve large quartos, which even its successive
+writers have only been able to carry down to the close of the twelfth
+century![A]
+
+[Footnote A: This work has been since resumed.]
+
+DAVID CLEMENT, a bookseller and a book-lover, designed the most extensive
+bibliography which had ever appeared; this history of books is not a
+barren nomenclature, the particulars and dissertations are sometimes
+curious: but the diligent life of the author only allowed him to proceed
+as far as the letter H! The alphabetical order which some writers have
+adopted has often proved a sad memento of human life! The last edition of
+our own "Biographia Britannica," feeble, imperfect, and inadequate as the
+writers were to the task the booksellers had chosen them to execute,
+remains still a monument which every literary Englishman may blush to see
+so hopelessly interrupted.
+
+When LE GRAND D'AUSSY, whose "Fabliaux" are so well known, adopted,
+in the warmth of antiquarian imagination, the plan suggested by the
+Marquis de Paulmy, first sketched in the _Melanges tires d'une grande
+Bibliotheque_, of a picture of the domestic life of the French people from
+their earliest periods, the subject broke upon him like a vision; it had
+novelty, amusement, and curiosity: "_le sujet m'en parut neuf, riche et
+piquant_." He revelled amid the scenes of their architecture, the interior
+decorations of their houses, their changeable dress, their games, and
+recreations; in a word, on all the parts which were most adapted to amuse
+the fancy. But when he came to compose the more detailed work, the fairy
+scene faded in the length, the repetition, and the never-ending labour and
+weariness; and the three volumes which we now possess, instead of sports,
+dresses, and architecture, exhibit only a very curious, but not always a
+very amusing, account of the food of the French nation.
+
+No one has more fully poured out his vexation of spirit--he may excite a
+smile in those who have never experienced this toil of books and
+manuscripts--but he claims the sympathy of those who would discharge their
+public duties so faithfully to the public. I shall preserve a striking
+picture of these thousand task-works, coloured by the literary pangs of
+the voluminous author, who is doomed never to finish his curious work:--
+
+"Endowed with a courage at all proofs, with health which, till then, was
+unaltered, and which excess of labour has greatly changed, I devoted
+myself to write the lives of the learned of the sixteenth century.
+Renouncing all kinds of pleasure, working ten to twelve hours a-day,
+extracting, ceaselessly copying; after this sad life I now wished to draw
+breath, turn over what I had amassed, and arrange it. I found myself
+possessed of many thousands of _bulletins_, of which the longest did not
+exceed many lines. At the sight of this frightful chaos, from which I was
+to form a regular history, I must confess that I shuddered; I felt myself
+for some time in a _stupor and depression of spirits_; and now actually
+that I have finished this work, _I cannot endure the recollection of that
+moment of alarm without a feeling of involuntary terror._ What a business
+is this, good God, of a compiler! In truth, it is too much condemned; it
+merits some regard. At length I regained courage; I returned to my
+researches: I have completed my plan, though every day I was forced to
+_add_, to _correct_, to _change my facts as well as my ideas_; SIX times
+has my hand _re-copied my work_; and, however fatiguing this may be, it
+certainly is not that portion of my task which has cost me most."
+
+The history of the "Bibliotheca Britannica" of the late Dr. Watt may serve
+as a mortifying example of the length of labour and the brevity of life.
+To this gigantic work the patient zeal of the writer had devoted twenty
+years; he had just arrived at the point of publication, when death folded
+down his last page; the son who, during the last four years, had toiled
+under the direction of his father, was chosen to occupy his place. The
+work was in the progress of publication, when the son also died; and
+strangers now reap the fruits of their combined labours.
+
+One cannot forbear applying to this subject of voluminous designs, which
+must be left unfinished, the forcible reflection of Johnson on the
+planting of trees: "There is a frightful interval between the seed and
+timber. He that calculates the growth of trees has the unwelcome
+remembrance of the shortness of life driven hard upon him. He knows that
+he is doing what will never benefit himself; and, when he rejoices to see
+the stem arise, is disposed to repine that another shall cut it down."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+OF DOMESTIC NOVELTIES AT FIRST CONDEMNED.
+
+
+It is amusing enough to discover that things, now considered among the
+most useful and even agreeable acquisitions of domestic life, on their
+first introduction ran great risks of being rejected, by the ridicule or
+the invective which they encountered. The repulsive effect produced on
+mankind by the mere strangeness of a thing, which at length we find
+established among our indispensable conveniences, or by a practice which
+has now become one of our habits, must be ascribed sometimes to a proud
+perversity in our nature; sometimes to the crossing of our interests, and
+to that repugnance to alter what is known for that which has not been
+sanctioned by our experience. This feeling has, however, within the latter
+half century considerably abated; but it proves, as in higher matters,
+that some philosophical reflection is required to determine on the
+usefulness, or the practical ability, of every object which comes in the
+shape of novelty or innovation. Could we conceive that man had never
+discovered the practice of washing his hands, but cleansed them as animals
+do their paws, he would for certain have ridiculed and protested against
+the inventor of soap, and as tardily, as in other matters, have adopted
+the invention. A reader, unaccustomed to minute researches, might be
+surprised, had he laid before him the history of some of the most familiar
+domestic articles which, in their origin, incurred the ridicule of the
+wits, and had to pass through no short ordeal of time in the strenuous
+opposition of the zealots against domestic novelties. The subject requires
+no grave investigation; we will, therefore, only notice a few of universal
+use. They will sufficiently demonstrate that, however obstinately man
+moves in "the march of intellect," he must be overtaken by that greatest
+of innovators--Time itself; and that, by his eager adoption of what he had
+once rejected, and by the universal use of what he once deemed unuseful,
+he will forget, or smile at the difficulties of a former generation, who
+were baffled in their attempts to do what we all are now doing.
+
+Forks are an Italian invention; and in England were so perfect a novelty
+in the days of Queen Bess, that Fynes Moryson, in his curious "Itinerary,"
+relating a bargain with the patrone of a vessel which was to convey him
+from Venice to Constantinople, stipulated to be fed at his table, and to
+have "his glass or cup to drink in peculiar to himself, with his knife,
+spoon, _fork."_ This thing was so strange that he found it necessary to
+describe it.[A] It is an instrument "to hold the meat while he cuts it;
+for they hold it ill-manners that one should touch the meat with his
+hands."[B] At the close of the sixteenth century were our ancestors eating
+as the Turkish _noblesse_ at present do, with only the free use of their
+fingers, steadying their meat and conveying it to their mouths by their
+mere manual dexterity. They were, indeed, most indelicate in their habits,
+scattering on the table-cloth all their bones and parings. To purify their
+tables, the servant bore a long wooden "voiding-knife," by which he
+scraped the fragments from the table into a basket, called "a voider."
+Beaumont and Fletcher describe the thing,
+
+ They sweep the table with a wooden dagger.
+
+[Footnote A: Modern research has shown that forks were not so entirely
+unknown as was imagined when the above was written. In vol. xxvii. of the
+"Archaeologia," published by the Society of Antiquaries, is an engraving
+of a fork and spoon of the Anglo-Saxon era; they were found with fragments
+of ornaments in silver and brass, all of which had been deposited in a
+box, of which there were some decayed remains; together with about seventy
+pennies of sovereigns from Coenwolf, King of Mercia (A.D. 796), to
+Ethelstan (A.D. 878, 890). The inventories of royal and noble persons in
+the middle ages often name forks. They were made of precious materials,
+and sometimes adorned with jewels like those named in the inventory of the
+Duke of Normandy, in 1363, "une cuiller d'or et une fourchette, et aux
+deux fonts deux saphirs;" and in the inventory of Charles V. of France, in
+1380, "une cuillier et une fourchette d'or, ou il y a ij balays et X
+perles." Their use seems to have been a luxurious appendage to the
+dessert, to lift fruit, or take sops from wine. Thus Piers Gaveston, the
+celebrated favourite of Edward III., is described to have had three silver
+forks to eat pears with; and the Duchess of Orleans, in 1390, had one fork
+of gold to take sops from wine (a prendre la soupe ou vin). They appear to
+have been entirely restricted to this use, and never adopted as now, to
+lift meat at ordinary meals. They were carried about the person in
+decorated cases, and only used on certain occasions, and then only by the
+highest classes; hence their comparative rarity.--Ed.]
+
+[Footnote B: Moryson's "Itinerary," part i, p. 208.]
+
+Fabling Paganism had probably raised into a deity the little man who first
+taught us, as Ben Jonson describes its excellence--
+
+ --the laudable use of forks,
+ To the sparing of napkins.
+
+This personage is well-known to have been that odd compound, Coryat the
+traveller, the perpetual butt of the wits. He positively claims this
+immortality. "I myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion by this
+FORKED _cutting of meat,_ not only while I was in Italy, but also in
+Germany, and oftentimes in England since I came home." Here the use of
+forks was, however, long ridiculed; it was reprobated in Germany, where
+some uncleanly saints actually preached against the unnatural custom "as
+an insult on Providence, not to touch our meat with our fingers." It is a
+curious fact, that forks were long interdicted in the Congregation de St.
+Maur, and were only used after a protracted struggle between the old
+members, zealous for their traditions, and the young reformers, for their
+fingers.[A] The allusions to the use of the fork, which we find in all the
+dramatic writers through the reigns of James the First and Charles the
+First, show that it was still considered as a strange affectation and
+novelty. The fork does not appear to have been in general use before the
+Restoration! On the introduction of forks there appears to have been some
+difficulty in the manner they were to be held and used. In _The Fox_, Sir
+Politic Would-be, counselling Peregrine at Venice, observes--
+
+ --Then you must learn the use
+ And handling of your silver fork at meals.
+
+[Footnote A: I find this circumstance concerning forks mentioned in the
+"Dictionnaire de Trevoux."]
+
+Whatever this art may be, either we have yet to learn it, or there is more
+than one way in which it may be practised. D'Archenholtz, in his "Tableau
+de l'Angleterre" asserts that "an Englishman may be discovered anywhere,
+if he be observed at table, because he places his fork upon the left side
+of his plate; a Frenchman, by using the fork alone without the knife; and
+a German, by planting it perpendicularly into his plate; and a Russian, by
+using it as a toothpick."
+
+Toothpicks seem to have come in with forks, as younger brothers of the
+table, and seem to have been borrowed from the nice manners of the stately
+Venetians. This implement of cleanliness was, however, doomed to the same
+anathema as the fantastical ornament of "the complete Signor," the
+Italianated Englishman. How would the writers, who caught "the manners as
+they rise," have been astonished that now no decorous person would be
+unaccompanied by what Massinger in contempt calls
+
+ Thy case of toothpicks and thy silver fork!
+
+Umbrellas, in my youth, were not ordinary things; few but the macaroni's
+of the day, as the dandies were then called, would venture to display
+them. For a long while it was not usual for men to carry them without
+incurring the brand of effeminacy; and they were vulgarly considered as
+the characteristics of a person whom the mob then hugely disliked--namely,
+a mincing Frenchman. At first a single umbrella seems to have been kept at
+a coffee-house for some extraordinary occasion--lent as a coach or chair
+in a heavy shower--but not commonly carried by the walkers. The _Female
+Tatler_ advertises "the young gentleman belonging to the custom-house,
+who, in fear of rain, borrowed _the umbrella from Wilks' Coffee-house,_
+shall the next time be welcome to the maid's _pattens_." An umbrella
+carried by a man was obviously then considered an extreme effeminacy. As
+late as in 1778, one John Macdonald, a footman, who has written his own
+life, informs us, that when he carried "a fine silk umbrella, which he had
+brought from Spain, he could not with any comfort to himself use it; the
+people calling out 'Frenchman! why don't you get a coach?'" The fact was,
+that the hackney-coachmen and the chairmen, joining with the true _esprit
+de corps_, were clamorous against this portentous rival. This footman, in
+1778, gives us further Information:--"At this time there were no umbrellas
+worn in London, except in noblemen's and gentlemen's houses, where there
+was a large one hung in the hall to hold over a lady or a gentleman, if it
+rained, between the door and their carriage." His sister was compelled to
+quit his arm one day, from the abuse he drew down on himself by his
+umbrella. But he adds that "he persisted for three months, till they took
+no further notice of this novelty. Foreigners began to use theirs, and
+then the English. Now it is become a great trade in London."[A] The state
+of our population might now, in some degree, be ascertained by the number
+of umbrellas.
+
+[Footnote A: Umbrellas are, However, an invention of great antiquity, and
+may be seen in the sculptures of ancient Egypt and Assyria. They are also
+depicted on early Greek vases. But the most curious fact connected with
+their use in this country seems to be the knowledge our Saxon ancestors
+had of them; though the use, in accordance with the earliest custom,
+appears to have been as a shelter or mark of distinction for royalty. In
+Caedmon's "Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of Scripture," now in the British
+Museum (Harleian MS. No. 603), an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth
+century, is the drawing of a king, who has an umbrella held over his head
+by an attendant, in the same way as it is borne over modern eastern kings.
+The form is precisely similar to those now in use, though, as noted above,
+they were an entire novelty when re-introduced in the last century.--Ed.]
+
+Coaches, on their first invention, offered a fruitful source of
+declamation, as an inordinate luxury, particularly among the ascetics of
+monkish Spain. The Spanish biographer of Don John of Austria, describing
+that golden age, the good old times, when they only used "carts drawn by
+oxen, riding in this manner to court," notices that it was found
+necessary to prohibit coaches by a royal proclamation, "to such a height
+was this _infernal vice_ got, which has done so much injury to Castile."
+In this style nearly every domestic novelty has been attacked. The
+injury inflicted on Castile by the introduction of coaches could only
+have been felt by the purveyors of carts and oxen for a morning's ride.
+The same circumstances occurred in this country. When coaches began to be
+kept by the gentry, or were hired out, a powerful party found their
+"occupation gone!" Ladies would no longer ride on pillions behind their
+footmen, nor would take the air, where the air was purest, on the river.
+Judges and counsellors from their inns would no longer be conveyed by
+water to Westminster Hall, or jog on with all their gravity on a poor
+palfrey. Considerable bodies of men were thrown out of their habitual
+employments--the watermen, the hackneymen, and the saddlers. Families
+were now jolted, in a heavy wooden machine, into splendour and ruin. The
+disturbance and opposition these coaches created we should hardly now have
+known, had not Taylor, the Water-poet[A] and man, sent down to us an
+invective against coaches, in 1623, dedicated to all who are grieved with
+"the world running on wheels."
+
+[Footnote A: Taylor was originally a Thames waterman, hence the term
+"Water-poet" given him. His attack upon coaches was published with this
+quaint title, "The world runnes on wheeles, or, odds, betwixt carts and
+coaches." It is an unsparing satire.--Ed.]
+
+Taylor, a humorist and satirist, as well as waterman, conveys some
+information in this rare tract of the period when coaches began to be more
+generally used--"Within our memories our nobility and gentry could ride
+well-mounted, and sometimes walk on foot gallantly attended with fourscore
+brave fellows in blue coats, which was a glory to our nation far greater
+than forty of these leathern timbrels. Then the name of a _coach_ was
+heathen Greek. Who ever saw, but upon extraordinary occasions, Sir Philip
+Sidney and Sir Francis Drake ride in a coach? They made small use of
+coaches; there were but few in those times, and they were deadly foes to
+sloth and effeminacy. It is in the memory of many when in the whole
+kingdom there was not one! It is a doubtful question whether the devil
+brought _tobacco_ into England in _a coach_, for both appeared at the same
+time." It appears that families, for the sake of their exterior show,
+miserably contracted their domestic establishment; for Taylor, the
+Water-poet, complains that when they used formerly to keep from ten to a
+hundred proper serving-men, they now made the best shift, and for the sake
+of their coach and horses had only "a butterfly page, a trotting footman,
+and a stiff-drinking coachman, a cook, a clerk, a steward, and a butler,
+which hath forced an army of tall fellows to the gatehouses," or prisons.
+Of one of the evil effects of this new fashion of coach-riding this
+satirist of the town wittily observes, that, as soon as a man was
+knighted, his lady was lamed for ever, and could not on any account be
+seen but in a coach. As hitherto our females had been accustomed to robust
+exercise, on foot or on horseback, they were now forced to substitute a
+domestic artificial exercise in sawing billets, swinging, or rolling the
+great roller in the alleys of their garden. In the change of this new
+fashion they found out the inconvenience of a sedentary life passed in
+their coaches.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Stow, in his "Chronicles," has preserved the date of the
+first introduction of coaches into England, as well as the name of the
+first driver, and first English coachmaker. "In the year 1564 Guilliam
+Boonen, a Dutchman, became the queen's coachman, and was the first that
+brought the use of coaches into England. After a while divers great
+ladies, with as great jealousie of the queen's displeasure, made them
+coaches, and rid in them up and down the country, to the great admiration
+of all the beholders; but then, by little and little, they grew usual
+among the nobility and others of sorte, and within twenty years became a
+great trade of coachmaking;" and he also notes that in the year of their
+introduction to England "Walter Rippon made a _coche_ for the Earl of
+Rutland, which was the first _coche_ that was ever made in England."--ED.]
+
+Even at this early period of the introduction of coaches, they were not
+only costly in the ornaments--in velvets, damasks, taffetas, silver and
+gold lace, fringes of all sorts--but their greatest pains were in matching
+their coach-horses. "They must be all of a colour, longitude, latitude,
+cressitude, height, length, thickness, breadth (I muse they do not weigh
+them in a pair of balances); and when once matched with a great deal of
+care, if one of them chance to die, then is the coach maimed till a meet
+mate be found, whose corresponding may be as equivalent to the surviving
+palfrey, in all respects, as like as a broom to a besom, barm to yeast, or
+codlings to boiled apples." This is good natural humour. He proceeds
+--"They use more diligence in matching their coach-horses than in the
+marriage of their sons and daughters." A great fashion, in its novelty, is
+often extravagant; true elegance and utility are never at first combined;
+good sense and experience correct its caprices. They appear to have
+exhausted more cost and curiosity in their equipages, on their first
+introduction, than since they have become objects of ordinary use.
+Notwithstanding this humorous invective on the calamity of coaches, and
+that "housekeeping never decayed till coaches came into England; and that
+a ten-pound rent now was scarce twenty shillings then, till the witchcraft
+of the coach quickly mounted the price of all things." The Water-poet,
+were he now living, might have acknowledged that if, in the changes of
+time, some trades disappear, other trades rise up, and in an exchange of
+modes of industry the nation loses nothing. The hands which, like
+Taylor's, rowed boats, came to drive coaches. These complainers on all
+novelties, unawares always answer themselves. Our satirist affords us a
+most prosperous view of the condition of "this new trade of coachmakers,
+as the gainfullest about the town. They are apparelled in sattins and
+velvets, are masters of the parish, vestrymen, and fare like the Emperor
+Heliogabalus and Sardanapalus--seldom without their mackeroones,
+Parmisants (macaroni, with Parmesan cheese, I suppose), jellies and
+kickshaws, with baked swans, pastries hot or cold, red-deer pies, which
+they have from their debtors, worships in the country!" Such was the
+sudden luxurious state of our first great coachmakers! to the deadly
+mortification of all watermen, hackneymen, and other conveyancers of our
+loungers, thrown out of employ!
+
+Tobacco.--It was thought, at the time of its introduction, that the
+nation would be ruined by the use of tobacco. Like all novel tastes the
+newly-imported leaf maddened all ranks among us, "The money spent in smoke
+is unknown," said a writer of that day, lamenting over this "new trade of
+tobacco, in which he feared that there were more than seven thousand
+tobacco-houses." James the First, in his memorable "Counterblast to
+Tobacco," only echoed from the throne the popular cry; but the blast was
+too weak against the smoke, and vainly his paternal majesty attempted to
+terrify his liege children that "they were making a sooty kitchen in their
+inward parts, soiling and infecting them with an unctuous kind of soot, as
+hath been found in some great tobacco-eaters, that after their death were
+opened." The information was perhaps a pious fraud. This tract, which has
+incurred so much ridicule, was, in truth, a meritorious effort to allay
+the extravagance of the moment. But such popular excesses end themselves;
+and the royal author might have left the subject to the town-satirists of
+the day, who found the theme inexhaustible for ridicule or invective.
+
+Coal.--The established use of our ordinary fuel, coal, may be ascribed to
+the scarcity of wood in the environs of the metropolis. Its recommendation
+was its cheapness, however it destroys everything about us. It has formed
+an artificial atmosphere which envelopes the great capital, and it is
+acknowledged that a purer air has often proved fatal to him who, from
+early life, has only breathed in sulphur and smoke. Charles Fox once said
+to a friend, "I cannot live in the country; my constitution is not strong
+enough." Evelyn poured out a famous invective against "London Smoke."
+"Imagine," he cries, "a solid tentorium or canopy over London, what a mass
+of smoke would then stick to it! This fuliginous crust now comes down
+every night on the streets, on our houses, the waters, and is taken into
+our bodies. On the water it leaves a thin web or pellicle of dust dancing
+upon the surface of it, as those who bath in the Thames discern, and bring
+home on their bodies." Evelyn has detailed the gradual destruction it
+effects on every article of ornament and price; and "he heard in France,
+that those parts lying south-west of England, complain of being infected
+with smoke from our coasts, which injured their vines in flower." I have
+myself observed at Paris, that the books exposed to sale on stalls,
+however old they might be, retained their freshness, and were in no
+instance like our own, corroded and blackened, which our coal-smoke never
+fails to produce. There was a proclamation, so far back as Edward the
+First, forbidding the use of sea-coal in the suburbs, on a complaint of
+the nobility and gentry, that they could not go to London on account of
+the noisome smell and thick air. About 1550, Hollingshed foresaw the
+general use of sea-coal from the neglect of cultivating timber. Coal fires
+have now been in general use for three centuries. In the country they
+persevered in using wood and peat. Those who were accustomed to this
+sweeter smell declared that they always knew a Londoner, by the smell of
+his clothes, to have come from coal-fires. It must be acknowledged that
+our custom of using coal for our fuel has prevailed over good reasons why
+we ought not to have preferred it. But man accommodates himself even to an
+offensive thing whenever his interest predominates.
+
+Were we to carry on a speculation of this nature into graver topics,
+we should have a copious chapter to write of the opposition to new
+discoveries. Medical history supplies no unimportant number. On the
+improvements in anatomy by Malpighi and his followers, the senior
+professors of the university of Bononia were inflamed to such a pitch that
+they attempted to insert an additional clause in the solemn oath taken by
+the graduates, to the effect that they would not permit the principles and
+conclusions of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, which had been approved
+of so many ages, to be overturned by any person. In phlebotomy we have a
+curious instance. In Spain, to the sixteenth century, they maintained that
+when the pain was on the one side they ought to bleed on the other. A
+great physician insisted on a contrary practice; a civil war of opinion
+divided Spain; at length, they had recourse to courts of law; the
+novelists were condemned; they appealed to the emperor, Charles the Fifth;
+he was on the point of confirming the decree of the court, when the Duke
+of Savoy died of a pleurisy, having been legitimately bled. This puzzled
+the emperor, who did not venture on a decision.
+
+The introduction of antimony and the jesuits' bark also provoked
+legislative interference; decrees and ordinances were issued, and a civil
+war raged among the medical faculty, of which Guy Patin is the copious
+historian. Vesalius was incessantly persecuted by the public prejudices
+against dissection; Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood led
+to so protracted a controversy, that the great discovery was hardly
+admitted even in the latter days of the old man; Lady Wortley Montague's
+introduction of the practice of inoculation met the same obstinate
+resistance as, more recently, that of vaccination startled the people.
+Thus objects of the highest importance to mankind, on their first
+appearance, are slighted and contemned. Posterity smiles at the ineptitude
+of the preceding age, while it becomes familiar with those objects which
+that age has so eagerly rejected. Time is a tardy patron of true
+knowledge.
+
+A nobler theme is connected with the principle we have here but touched
+on--the gradual changes in public opinion--the utter annihilation of false
+notions, like those of witchcraft, astrology, spectres, and many other
+superstitions of no remote date, the hideous progeny of imposture got on
+ignorance, and audacity on fear. But one impostor reigns paramount, the
+plausible opposition to novel doctrines which may be subversive of some
+ancient ones; doctrines which probably shall one day be as generally
+established as at present they are utterly decried, and which the
+interests of corporate bodies oppose with all their cumbrous machinery;
+but artificial machinery becomes perplexed in its movements when worn out
+by the friction of ages.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+DOMESTICITY; OR, A DISSERTATION ON SERVANTS.
+
+
+The characteristics of servants have been usually known by the broad
+caricatures of the satirists of every age, and chiefly by the most
+popular--the writers of comedy. According to these exhibitions, we must
+infer that the vices of the menial are necessarily inherent to his
+condition, and consequently that this vast multitude in society remain
+ever in an irrecoverably ungovernable state. We discover only the cunning
+depredator of the household; the tip-toe spy, at all corners--all ear, all
+eye: the parasitical knave--the flatterer of the follies, and even the
+eager participator of the crimes, of his superior. The morality of
+servants has not been improved by the wonderful revelations of Swift's
+"Directions," where the irony is too refined, while it plainly inculcates
+the practice. This celebrated tract, designed for the instruction of the
+masters, is more frequently thumbed in the kitchen, as a manual for the
+profligate domestic. Servants have acknowledged that some of their base
+doings have been suggested to them by their renowned satirist.
+
+Bentham imagined, that were all the methods employed by thieves and rogues
+described and collected together, such a compilation of their artifices
+and villanies would serve to put us on our guard. The theorist of
+legislation seems often to forget the metaphysical state of man. With the
+vitiated mind, that latent sympathy of evil which might never have been
+called forth but by the occasion, has often evinced how too close an
+inspection of crime may grow into criminality itself. Hence it is, that
+when some monstrous and unusual crime has been revealed to the public, it
+rarely passes without a sad repetition. A link in the chain of the
+intellect is struck, and a crime is perpetrated which else had not
+occurred.
+
+Listen to the counsels which one of the livery gives a brother, more
+stupid but more innocent than himself. I take the passage from that
+extraordinary Spanish comedy, in twenty-five acts, the _Spanish Bawd_. It
+was no doubt designed to expose the arts and selfishness of the domestic,
+yet we should regret that the _Spanish Bawd_ was as generally read by
+servants as Swift's "Directions":--
+
+"Serve not your master with this foolish loyalty and ignorant honesty,
+thinking to find firmness on a false foundation, as most of these masters
+now-a-days are. Gain friends, which is a during and lasting commodity;
+live not on hopes, relying on the vain promises of masters. The masters
+love more themselves than their servants, nor do they amiss; and the like
+love ought servants to bear to themselves. Liberality was lost long ago--
+rewards are grown out of date. Every one is now for himself, and makes the
+best he can of his servant's service, serving his turn, and therefore they
+ought to do the same, for they are less in substance. Thy master is one
+who befools his servants, and wears them out to the very stumps, looking
+for much service at their hands. Thy master cannot be thy friend, such
+difference is there of estate and condition between you two."
+
+This passage, written two centuries ago, would find an echo of its
+sentiments in many a modern domestic. These notions are sacred traditions
+among the livery. We may trace them from Terence and Plautus, as well as
+Swift and Mandeville. Our latter great cynic has left a frightful picture
+of the state of the domestics, when it seems "they had experienced
+professors among them, who could instruct the graduates in iniquity seven
+hundred illiberal arts how to cheat, impose upon, and find out the blind
+side of their masters." The footmen, in Mandeville's day, had entered into
+a society together, and made laws to regulate their wages, and not to
+carry burdens above two or three pounds weight, and a common fund was
+provided to maintain any suit at law against any rebellious master. This
+seems to be a confederacy which is by no means dissolved.
+
+Lord Chesterfield advises his son not to allow his upper man to doff his
+livery, though this valet was to attend his person, when the toilet was a
+serious avocation requiring a more delicate hand and a nicer person than
+he who was to walk before his chair, or climb behind his coach. This
+searching genius of philosophy and _les petites moeurs_ solemnly warned
+that if ever this man were to cast off the badge of his order, he never
+would resume it. About this period the masters were menaced by a sort of
+servile war. The famous farce of _High Life below Stairs_ exposed with
+great happiness the impudence and the delinquencies of the parti-coloured
+clans. It roused them into the most barefaced opposition; and, as ever
+happens to the few who press unjust claims on the many, in the result
+worked the reform they so greatly dreaded.[A] One of the grievances in
+society was then an anomalous custom, for it was only practised in our
+country, of a guest being highly taxed in dining with a family whose
+establishment admitted of a numerous train. Watchful of the departure of
+the guest, this victim had to pass along a line of domestics, arranged in
+the hall, each man presenting the visitor with some separate article, of
+hat, gloves, coat and cane, claiming their "vails." It would not have been
+safe to refuse even those who, with nothing to present, still held out the
+hand, for their attentions to the diner-out.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: The farce was produced in 1759, when it was the custom to
+admit any servant in livery free to the upper gallery, as they were
+supposed to be in attendance on their masters. Their foibles and
+dishonesty being so completely hit off in the play incensed them greatly;
+and they created such an uproar that it was resolved to exclude them in
+future. In Edinburgh the opposition to the play produced still greater
+scenes of violence, and the lives of some of the performers were
+threatened. It at last became necessary for their masters to stop this
+outbreak on the part of their servants; and alter the whole system of the
+household economy which led to such results.--ED.]
+
+[Footnote B: These _vails_, supposed to be the free gratuity of the
+invited to the servants of the inviter, were ultimately so managed that
+persons paid servants by that mode only--levying a kind of black-mail on
+their friends, which ran through all society. "The wages are nothing,"
+says a noble lady's servant in one of Smollet's novels, "but the _vails_
+are enormous." The consequence was, that masters and mistresses had little
+control over them; they are said in some instances to have paid for their
+places, as some servants do at inns, where the situation was worth having,
+owing to the large parties given, and gaming, then so prevalent, being
+well-attended. It was ended by a mutual understanding all over the three
+kingdoms, after the riots which resulted from the production of the play
+noted above.--ED.]
+
+When a slave was deemed not a person, but a thing marketable and
+transferable, the single principle judged sufficient to regulate the
+mutual conduct of the master and the domestic was, to command and to obey.
+It seems still the sole stipulation exacted by the haughty from the
+menial. But this feudal principle, unalleviated by the just sympathies of
+domesticity, deprives authority of its grace, and service of its zeal. To
+be served well, we should be loved a little; the command of an excellent
+master is even grateful, for the good servant delights to be useful. The
+slave repines, and such is the domestic destitute of any personal
+attachment for his master. Whoever was mindful of the interests of him
+whose beneficence is only a sacrifice to his pomp? The master dresses and
+wages highly his pampered train; but this is the calculated cost of
+state-liveries, of men measured by a standard, for a Hercules in the hall,
+or an Adonis for the drawing-room; but at those times, when the domestic
+ceases to be an object in the public eye, he sinks into an object of
+sordid economy, or of merciless caprice. His personal feelings are
+recklessly neglected. He sleeps where there is neither light nor air; he
+is driven when he is already exhausted; he begins the work of midnight,
+and is confined for hours with men like himself, who fret, repine, and
+curse. They have their tales to compare together; their unhallowed secrets
+to disclose. The masters and the mistresses pass by them in review, and
+little deem they how oft the malignant glance or the malicious whisper
+follow their airy steps. To shorten such tedious hours, the servants
+familiarise themselves with every vicious indulgence, for even the
+occupation of such domestics is little more than a dissolute idleness. A
+cell in Newgate does not always contain more corruptors than a herd of
+servants congregated in our winter halls. It is to be lamented that the
+modes of fashionable life demand the most terrible sacrifices of the
+health, the happiness, and the morals of servants. Whoever perceives that
+he is held in no esteem stands degraded in his own thoughts. The heart of
+the simple throbs with this emotion; but it hardens the villain who would
+rejoice to avenge himself: it makes the artful only the more cunning; it
+extorts from the sullen a cold unwilling obedience, and it stings even the
+good-tempered into insolence.
+
+South, as great a wit as a preacher, has separated, by an awful interval,
+the superior and the domestic. "A servant dwells remote from all knowledge
+of his lord's purposes; he lives as a kind of foreigner under the same
+roof; a domestic, yet a foreigner too." This exhibits a picture of feudal
+manners. But the progress of society in modern Europe has since passed
+through a mighty evolution. In the visible change of habits, of feelings,
+of social life, the humble domestic has approximated to, and communicated
+more frequently even with "his lord." The domestic is now not always a
+stranger to "his lord's purposes," but often their faithful actor--their
+confidential counsellor--the mirror in which his lordship contemplates on
+his wishes personified.
+
+This reflection, indeed, would have violated the dignity of the noble
+friend of Swift, Lord Orrery. His lordship censures the laughter in
+"Rabelais' easy chair" for having directed such intense attention to
+affairs solely relating to servants. "Let him jest with dignity, and let
+him be ironical upon _useful_ subjects, leaving _poor slaves_ to eat their
+porridge, or drink their small beer, in such vessels as they shall think
+proper." This lordly criticism has drawn down the lightning of Sir Walter
+Scott:--"The noble lord's feelings of dignity deemed nothing worthy of
+attention that was unconnected with the highest orders of society." Such,
+in truth, was too long the vicious principle of those monopolists of
+personal distinction, the mere men of elevated rank.
+
+Metropolitan servants, trained in depravity, are incapacitated to
+comprehend how far the personal interests of servants are folded up with
+the interests of the house they inhabit. They are unconscious that they
+have any share in the welfare of the superior, save in the degree that the
+prosperity of the master contributes to the base and momentary purposes of
+the servant. But in small communities we perceive how the affections of
+the master and the domestic may take root. Look in an ancient retired
+family, whose servants often have been born under the roof they inhabit,
+and where the son is serving where the father still serves; and sometimes
+call the sacred spot of their cradle and their grave by the proud and
+endearing term of "our house." We discover this in whole countries where
+luxury has not removed the classes of society at too wide distances from
+each other, to deaden their sympathies. We behold this in agrestic
+Switzerland, among its villages and its pastures; in France, among its
+distant provinces; in Italy, in some of its decayed cities; and in
+Germany, where simple manners and strong affections mark the inhabitants
+of certain localities. Holland long preserved its primitive customs; and
+there the love of order promotes subordination, though its free
+institutions have softened the distinctions in the ranks of life, and
+there we find a remarkable evidence of domesticity. It is not unusual in
+Holland for servants to call their masters uncle, their mistresses
+aunt, and the children of the family their cousins. These domestics
+participating in the comforts of the family, become naturalized and
+domiciliated; and their extraordinary relatives are often adopted by the
+heart. An heroic effort of these domestics has been recorded; it occurred
+at the burning of the theatre at Amsterdam, where many rushed into the
+flames, and nobly perished in the attempt to save their endeared families.
+
+It is in limited communities that the domestic virtues are most intense;
+all concentrating themselves in their private circles, in such localities
+there is no public--no public which extorts so many sacrifices from the
+individual. Insular situations are usually remarkable for the warm
+attachment and devoted fidelity of the domestic, and the personal regard
+of families for their servants. This genuine domesticity is strikingly
+displayed in the island of Ragusa, on the coast of Dalmatia: for there
+they provide for the happiness of the humble friends of the house. Boys,
+at an early age, are received into families, educated in writing, reading,
+and arithmetic. Some only quit their abode, in which they were almost
+born, when tempted by the stirring spirit of maritime enterprise. They
+form a race of men who are much sought after for servants; and the term
+applied to them of "Men of the Gulf," is a sure recommendation of
+character for unlimited trust and unwearying zeal.
+
+The mode of providing for the future comforts of their maidens is a little
+incident in the history of benevolence, which we must regret is only
+practised in such limited communities. Malte-Brun, in his "Annales des
+Voyages," has painted a scene of this nature, which may read like some
+romance of real life. The girls, after a service of ten years, on one
+great holiday, an epoch in their lives, receive the ample reward of their
+good conduct. On that happy day the mistress and all the friends of the
+family prepare for the maiden a sort of dowry or marriage-portion. Every
+friend of the house sends some article; and the mistress notes down the
+gifts, that she may return the same on a similar occasion. The donations
+consist of silver, of gowns, of handkerchiefs, and other useful articles
+for a young woman. These tributes of friendship are placed beside a silver
+basin, which contains the annual wages of the servant; her relatives from
+the country come, accompanied by music, carrying baskets covered with
+ribbons and loaded with fruits, and other rural delicacies. They are
+received by the master himself, who invites them to the feast, where the
+company assemble, and particularly the ladies. All the presents are
+reviewed. The servant introduced kneels to receive the benediction of her
+mistress, whose grateful task is then to deliver a solemn enumeration of
+her good qualities, concluding by announcing to the maiden that, having
+been brought up in the house, if it be her choice to remain, from
+henceforward she shall be considered as one of the family. Tears of
+affection often fall during this beautiful scene of true domesticity,
+which terminates with a ball for the servants, and another for the
+superiors. The relatives of the maiden return homewards with their joyous
+musicians; and, if the maiden prefers her old domestic abode, she receives
+an increase of wages, and at a succeeding period of six years another
+jubilee provides her second good fortune. Let me tell one more story of
+the influence of this passion of domesticity in the servant;--its merit
+equals its novelty. In that inglorious attack on Buenos Ayres, where our
+brave soldiers were disgraced by a recreant general, the negroes, slaves
+as they were, joined the inhabitants to expel the invaders. On this signal
+occasion the city decreed a public expression of their gratitude to the
+negroes, in a sort of triumph, and at the same time awarded the freedom of
+eighty of their leaders. One of them, having shown his claims to the boon,
+declared, that to obtain his freedom had all his days formed the proud
+object of his wishes: his claim was indisputable; yet now, however, to the
+amazement of the judges, he refused his proffered freedom! The reason he
+alleged was a singular refinement of heartfelt sensibility:--"My kind
+mistress," said the negro, "once wealthy, has fallen into misfortunes in
+her infirm old age. I work to maintain her, and at intervals of leisure
+she leans on my arm to take the evening air. I will not be tempted to
+abandon her, and I renounce the hope of freedom that she may know she
+possesses a slave who never will quit her side."
+
+Although I have been travelling out of Europe to furnish some striking
+illustrations of the powerful emotion of domesticity, it is not that we
+are without instances in the private history of families among ourselves.
+I have known more than one where the servant has chosen to live without
+wages, rather than quit the master or the mistress in their decayed
+fortunes; and another where the servant cheerfully worked to support her
+old lady to her last day.
+
+Would we look on a very opposite mode of servitude, turn to the United
+States. No system of servitude was ever so preposterous. A crude notion of
+popular freedom in the equality of ranks abolished the very designation of
+"servant," substituting the fantastic term of "helps." If there be any
+meaning left in this barbarous neologism, their aid amounts to little;
+their engagements are made by the week, and they often quit their domicile
+without the slightest intimation.
+
+Let none, in the plenitude of pride and egotism, imagine that they exist
+independent of the virtues of their domestics. The good conduct of the
+servant stamps a character on the master. In the sphere of domestic life
+they must frequently come in contact with them. On this subordinate class,
+how much the happiness and even the welfare of the master may rest! The
+gentle offices of servitude began in his cradle, and await him at all
+seasons and in all spots, in pleasure or in peril. Feelingly observes Sir
+Walter Scott--"In a free country an individual's happiness is more
+immediately connected with the personal character of his valet, than with
+that of the monarch himself." Let the reflection not be deemed extravagant
+if I venture to add, that the habitual obedience of a devoted servant is a
+more immediate source of personal comfort than even the delightfulness of
+friendship and the tenderness of relatives--for these are but periodical;
+but the unbidden zeal of the domestic, intimate with our habits, and
+patient of our waywardness, labours for us at all hours. It is those feet
+which hasten to us in our solitude; it is those hands which silently
+administer to our wants. At what period of life are even the great exempt
+from the gentle offices of servitude?
+
+Faithful servants have never been commemorated by more heartfelt affection
+than by those whose pursuits require a perfect freedom from domestic
+cares. Persons of sedentary occupations, and undisturbed habits,
+abstracted from the daily business of life, must yield unlimited trust to
+the honesty, while they want the hourly attentions and all the cheerful
+zeal, of the thoughtful domestic. The mutual affections of the master and
+the servant have often been exalted into a companionship of feelings.
+
+When Madame de Genlis heard that POPE had raised a monument not only to
+his father and to his mother, but also to the faithful servant who had
+nursed his earliest years, she was so suddenly struck by the fact, that
+she declared that "This monument of gratitude is the more remarkable for
+its singularity, as I know of no other instance." Our churchyards would
+have afforded her a vast number of tomb-stones erected by grateful masters
+to faithful servants;[A] and a closer intimacy with the domestic privacy
+of many public characters might have displayed the same splendid examples.
+The one which appears to have so strongly affected her may be found on the
+east end of the outside of the parish church of Twickenham. The stone
+bears this inscription:--
+
+ To the memory of
+ MARY BEACH,
+ who died November 5, 1725, aged 78.
+ ALEXANDER POPE,
+ whom she nursed in his infancy,
+ and constantly attended for thirty-eight years,
+ Erected this stone
+ In gratitude to a faithful Servant.
+
+[Footnote A: Even our modern cemeteries perpetuate this feeling, and
+exhibit many grateful EPITAPHS ON SERVANTS.]
+
+The original portrait of SHENSTONE was the votive gift of a master to his
+servant, for, on its back, written by the poet's own hand, is the
+following dedication:--"This picture belongs to Mary Cutler, given her by
+her master, William Shenstone, January 1st, 1754, in acknowledgment of her
+native genius, her magnanimity, her tenderness, and her fidelity.--W.S."
+We might refer to many similar evidences of the domestic gratitude of such
+masters to old and attached servants. Some of these tributes may be
+familiar to most readers. The solemn author of the "Night Thoughts"
+inscribed an epitaph over the grave of his man-servant; the caustic
+GIFFORD poured forth an effusion to the memory of a female servant,
+fraught with a melancholy tenderness which his muse rarely indulged.
+
+The most pathetic, we had nearly said, and had said justly, the most
+sublime, development of this devotion of a master to his servant, is a
+letter addressed by that powerful genius MICHAEL ANGELO to his friend
+Vasari, on the death of Urbino, an old and beloved servant.[A] Published
+only in the voluminous collection of the letters of Painters, by Bottari,
+it seems to have escaped general notice. We venture to translate it in
+despair: for we feel that we must weaken its masculine yet tender
+eloquence.
+
+[Footnote A: It is delightful to note the warm affection displayed by the
+great sculptor toward his old servant on his death-bed. The man who would
+beard princes and the pope himself, when he felt it necessary to assert
+his independent character as an artist, and through life evinced a
+somewhat hard exterior, was soft as a child in affectionate attention to
+his dying domestic, anticipating all his wants by a personal attendance at
+his bedside. This was no light service on the part of Michael Angelo, who
+was himself at the time eighty-two years of age.--ED.]
+
+
+MICHAEL ANGELO TO VASARI.
+
+"My Dear George,--I can but write ill, yet shall not your letter remain
+without my saying something. You know how Urbino has died. Great was the
+grace of God when he bestowed on me this man, though now heavy be the
+grievance and infinite the grief. The grace was that when he lived he kept
+me living; and in dying he has taught me to die, not in sorrow and with
+regret, but with a fervent desire of death. Twenty and six years had he
+served me, and I found him a most rare and faithful man; and now that I
+had made him rich, and expected to lean on him as the staff and the repose
+of my old age, he is taken from me, and no other hope remains than that of
+seeing him again in Paradise. A sign of God was this happy death to him;
+yet, even more than this death, were his regrets increased to leave me in
+this world the wretch of many anxieties, since the better half of myself
+has departed with him, and nothing is left for me than this loneliness of
+life."
+
+Even the throne has not been too far removed from this sphere of humble
+humanity, for we discover in St. George's Chapel a mural monument erected
+by order of one of our late sovereigns as the memorial of a female servant
+of a favourite daughter. The inscription is a tribute of domestic
+affection in a royal bosom, where an attached servant became a cherished
+inmate.
+
+ King George III.
+ Caused to be interred near this place the body of
+ MARY GASCOIGNE,
+ Servant to the Princess Amelia;
+ and this stone
+ to be inscribed in testimony of his grateful sense
+ of the faithful services and attachment
+ of an amiable young woman to
+ his beloved Daughter.
+
+This deep emotion for the tender offices of servitude is not peculiar to
+the refinement of our manners, or to modern Europe; it is not the charity
+of Christianity alone which has hallowed this sensibility, and confessed
+this equality of affection, which the domestic may participate: monumental
+inscriptions, raised by grateful masters to the merits of their slaves,
+have been preserved in the great collections of Graevius and Gruter.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: There are several instances of Roman heads of houses who
+consecrate "to themselves and their servants" the sepulchres they erect in
+their own lifetime, as if in death they had no desire to be divided from
+those who had served them faithfully. An instance of affectionate regard
+to the memory of a deceased servant occurs in the collection at Nismes; it
+is an inscription by one Sextus Arius Varcis, to Hermes, "his best
+servant" (servo optimo). Fabretti has preserved an inscription which
+records the death of a child, T. Alfacius Scantianius, by one Alfacius
+Severus, his master, by which it appears he was the child of an old
+servant, who was honoured by bearing the prenomen of the master, and
+who is also styled in the epitaph "his sweetest freedman" (liberto
+dulcissimo).--ED.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+PRINTED LETTERS IN THE VERNACULAR IDIOM.
+
+
+Printed Letters, without any attention to the selection, is so great a
+literary evil, that it has excited my curiosity to detect the first modern
+who obtruded such formless things on public attention. I conjectured that,
+whoever he might be, he would be distinguished for his egotism and his
+knavery. My hypothetical criticism turned out to be correct. Nothing less
+than the audacity of the unblushing Pietro Aretino could have adventured
+on this project; he claims the honour, and the critics do not deny it, of
+being the first who published Italian letters. Aretino had the hardihood
+to dedicate one volume of his letters to the King of England, another to
+the Duke of Florence; a third to Hercules of Este, a relative of Pope
+Julius Third--evidently insinuating that his letters were worthy to be
+read by the royal and the noble.
+
+Among these letters there is one addressed to Mary, Queen of England, on
+her resuscitation of the ancient faith, which offers a very extraordinary
+catalogue of the ritual and ceremonies of the Romish church. It is
+indeed impossible to translate into Protestant English the multiplied
+nomenclature of offices which involve human life in never-ceasing service.
+As I know not where we can find so clear a perspective of this amazing
+contrivance to fetter with religious ceremonies the freedom of the human
+mind, I present the reader with an accurate translation of it:--
+
+ "_Pietro Aretino to the Queen of England._
+
+"The voices of Psalms, the sound of Canticles, the breath of Epistles, and
+the Spirit of Gospels, had need unloose the language of my words in
+congratulating your superhuman Majesty on having not only restored
+conscience to the minds and hearts of Englishmen and taken deceitful
+heresy away from them, but on bringing it to pass, when it was least hoped
+for, that charity and faith were again born and raised up in them; on
+which sudden conversion triumphs our sovereign Pontiff Julius, the
+College, and the whole of the clergy, so that it seems in Rome as if the
+shades of the old Caesars with visible effect showed it in their very
+statues; meanwhile the pure mind of his most blessed Holiness canonizes
+you, and marks you in the catalogue among the Catharines and Margarets,
+and dedicates you," &c.
+
+"The stupor of so stupendous a miracle is not the stupefaction of stupid
+wonder; and all proceeds from your being in the grace of God in every
+deed, whose incomprehensible goodness is pleased with seeing you, in
+holiness of life and innocence of heart, cause to be restored in those
+proud countries, solemnity to Easters, abstinence to Lents, sobriety to
+Fridays, parsimony to Saturdays, fulfilment to vows, fasts to vigils,
+observances to seasons, chrism to creatures, unction to the dying,
+festivals to saints, images to churches, masses to altars, lights to
+lamps, organs to quires, benedictions to olives, robings to sacristies,
+and decencies to baptisms; and that nothing may be wanting (thanks
+to your pious and most entire nature), possession has been regained to
+offices, of hours; to ceremonies, of incense; to reliques, of shrines; to
+the confessed, of absolutions; to priests, of habits; to preachers,
+of pulpits; to ecclesiastics, of pre-eminences; to scriptures, of
+interpreters; to hosts, of communions; to the poor, of alms; to the
+wretched, of hospitals; to virgins, of monasteries; to fathers, of
+convents; to the clergy, of orders; to the defunct, of obsequies; to
+tierces, noons, vespers, complins, ave-maries, and matins, the privileges
+of daily and nightly bells."
+
+The fortunate temerity of Aretino gave birth to subsequent publications by
+more skilful writers. Nicolo Franco closely followed, who had at first
+been the amanuensis of Aretino, then his rival, and concluded his literary
+adventures by being hanged at Rome; a circumstance which at the time must
+have occasioned regret that Franco had not, in this respect also, been an
+imitator of his original, a man equally feared, flattered, and despised.
+
+The greatest personages and the most esteemed writers of that age were
+perhaps pleased to have discovered a new and easy path to fame; and
+since it was ascertained that a man might become celebrated by writings
+never intended for the press, and which it was never imagined could
+confer fame on the writers, volumes succeeded volumes, and some authors
+are scarcely known to posterity but as letter-writers. We have the
+too-elaborate epistles of BEMBO, secretary to Leo X., and the more elegant
+correspondence of ANNIBAL CARO; a work which, though posthumous, and
+published by an affectionate nephew, and therefore too undiscerning a
+publisher, is a model of familiar letters.
+
+These collections, being found agreeable to the taste of their readers,
+novelty was courted by composing letters more expressly adapted to public
+curiosity. The subjects were now diversified by critical and political
+topics, till at length they descended to one more level with the
+faculties, and more grateful to the passions of the populace of readers
+--Love! Many grave personages had already, without being sensible
+of the ridiculous, languished through tedious odes and starch sonnets.
+DONI, a bold literary projector, who invented a literary review both of
+printed and manuscript works, with not inferior ingenuity, published his
+_love-letters;_ and with the felicity of an Italian diminutive, he fondly
+entitled them "Pistolette Amorose del Doni," 1552, 8vo. These Pistole were
+designed to be little epistles, or billets-doux, but Doni was one of those
+fertile authors who have too little time of their own to compose short
+works. Doni was too facetious to be sentimental, and his quill was not
+plucked from the wing of Love. He was followed by a graver pedant, who
+threw a heavy offering on the altar of the Graces; PARABOSCO, who in six
+books of "Lettere Amorose," 1565, 8vo. was too phlegmatic to sigh over his
+inkstand.
+
+Denina mentions LEWIS PASQUALIGO of Venice as an improver of these amatory
+epistles, by introducing a deeper interest and a more complicate
+narrative. Partial to the Italian literature, Denina considers this author
+as having given birth to those _novels_ in the form of _letters_, with
+which modern Europe has been inundated; and he refers the curious in
+literary researches, for the precursors of these _epistolary novels_, to
+the works of those Italian wits who flourished in the sixteenth century.
+
+"The Worlds" of DONI, and the numerous whimsical works of ORTENSIO LANDI,
+and the "Circe" of GELLI, of which we have more than one English
+translation, which, under their fantastic inventions, cover the most
+profound philosophical views, have been considered the precursors of the
+finer genius of "The Persian Letters," that fertile mother of a numerous
+progeny, of D'Argens and others.
+
+The Italians are justly proud of some valuable collections of letters,
+which seem peculiar to themselves, and which may be considered as the
+works of _artists_. They have a collection of "Lettere di Tredici Uomini
+Illustri," which appeared in 1571; another more curious, relating to
+princes--"Lettere de' Principi le quali o si scrivono da Principi a
+Principi, o ragionano di Principi;" Tenezia, 1581, in 3 vols. quarto.
+
+But a treasure of this kind, peculiarly interesting to the artist, has
+appeared in mere recent times, in seven quarto volumes, consisting of the
+original letters of the great painters, from the golden age of Leo X.,
+gradually collected by BOTTARI, who published them in separate volumes.
+They abound in the most interesting facts relative to the arts, and
+display the characteristic traits of their lively writers. Every artist
+will turn over with delight and curiosity these genuine effusions;
+chronicles of the days and the nights of their vivacious brothers.
+
+It is a little remarkable that he who claims to be the first satirist in
+the English language, claims also, more justly perhaps, the honour of
+being the first author who published familiar letters. In the dedication
+of his Epistles to Prince Henry, the son of James the First, Bishop HALL
+claims the honour of introducing "this new fashion of discourse by
+epistles, new to our language, usual to others; and as novelty is never
+without plea of use, more free, more familiar." Of these epistles, in six
+decades, many were written during his travels. We have a collection of
+Donne's letters abounding with his peculiar points, at least witty, if not
+natural.
+
+As we became a literary nation, familiar letters served as a vehicle for
+the fresh feelings of our first authors. Howell, whose Epistolae bears his
+name, takes a wider circumference in "Familiar Letters, domestic and
+foreign, historical, political, and philosophical, upon emergent
+occasions." The "emergent occasions" the lively writer found in his long
+confinement in the Fleet--that English Parnassus! Howell is a wit, who, in
+writing his own history, has written that of his times; he is one of the
+few whose genius, striking in the heat of the moment only current coin,
+produces finished medals for the cabinet. His letters are still published.
+The taste which had now arisen for collecting letters, induced Sir Tobie
+Mathews, in 1660, to form a volume, of which many, if not all, are genuine
+productions of their different writers.
+
+The dissipated elegance of Charles II. inspired freedom in letter-writing.
+The royal emigrant had caught the tone of Voiture. We have some few
+letters of the wits of this court, but that school of writers, having
+sinned in gross materialism, the reaction produced another of a more
+spiritual nature, in a romantic strain of the most refined sentiment.
+Volumes succeeded volumes from pastoral and heroic minds. Katherine
+Philips, in the masquerade-dress of "The Matchless Orinda," addressed Sir
+Charles Cottrel, her grave "Poliarchus;" while Mrs. Behn, in her loose
+dress, assuming the nymph-like form of "Astraea," pursued a gentleman,
+concealed in a domino, under the name of "Lycidas."
+
+Before our letters reached to nature and truth, they were strained by one
+more effort after novelty; a new species appeared, "From the Dead to the
+Living," by Mrs. Rowe: they obtained celebrity. She was the first who, to
+gratify the public taste, adventured beyond the Styx; the caprice of
+public favour has returned them to the place whence they came.
+
+The letters of Pope were unquestionably written for the public eye. Partly
+accident, and partly persevering ingenuity, extracted from the family
+chests the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who long remained the
+model of letter-writing. The letters of Hughes and Shenstone, of Gray,
+Cowper, Walpole, and others, self-painters, whose indelible colours have
+given an imperishable charm to these fragments of the human mind, may
+close our subject; printed familiar letters now enter into the history of
+our literature.
+
+
+
+
+ AN INQUIRY
+
+ INTO THE
+
+ LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF
+ JAMES THE FIRST;
+
+ INCLUDING A SKETCH OF HIS AGE.
+
+
+"The whole reign of James I. has been represented by a late celebrated pen
+(Burnet) to have been a continued course of mean practices; and others,
+who have professedly given an account of it, have filled their works with
+_libel_ and _invective_, instead of _history_. Both King James and his
+ministers have met with a treatment from posterity highly unworthy of
+them, and those who have so liberally bestowed their censures were
+entirely ignorant of the true springs and causes of the actions they have
+undertaken to represent."--SAWYER'S Preface to "Winwood's Memorials."
+
+"Il y auroit un excellent livre a faire sur les INJUSTICES, les OUBLIS, et
+les CALOMNIES HISTORIQUES."--MADAME DE GENLIS.
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The present inquiry originates in an affair of literary conscience. Many
+years ago I set off in the world with the popular notions of the character
+of James the First; but in the course of study, and with a more enlarged
+comprehension of the age, I was frequently struck by the contrast of his
+real with his apparent character; and I thought I had developed those
+hidden and involved causes which have so long influenced modern writers in
+ridiculing and vilifying this monarch.
+
+This historical trifle is, therefore, neither a hasty decision, nor a
+designed inquiry; the results gradually arose through successive periods
+of time, and, were it worth the while, the history of my thoughts, in my
+own publications, might be arranged in a sort of chronological
+conviction.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: I have described the progress of my opinions in "Curiosities
+of Literature," vol. i. p. 467, last edition.]
+
+It would be a cowardly silence to shrink from encountering all that
+popular prejudice and party feeling may oppose; this were incompatible
+with that constant search after truth which we may at least expect from
+the retired student.
+
+I had originally limited this inquiry to the _literary_ character of the
+monarch; but there was a secret connexion between that and his political
+conduct; and that again led me to examine the manners and temper of the
+times, with the effects which a peace of more than twenty years operated
+on the nation. I hope that the freshness of the materials, often drawn
+from contemporary writings which have never been published, may in some
+respect gratify curiosity. Of the _political_ character of James the First
+opposite tempers will form opposite opinions; the friends of peace and
+humanity will consider that the greatest happiness of the people is that
+of possessing a philosopher on the throne; let profounder inquirers
+hereafter discover why those princes are suspected of being but weak men,
+who are the true fathers of their people; let them too inform us, whether
+we are to ascribe to James the First, as well as to Marcus Antoninus, the
+disorders of their reign, or place them to the ingratitude and wantonness
+of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+ AN INQUIRY
+
+ INTO THE
+
+ LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF
+ JAMES THE FIRST;
+
+ INCLUDING A SKETCH OF HIS AGE.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+If sometimes the learned entertain false opinions and traditionary
+prejudices, as well as the people, they however preserve among themselves
+a paramount love of truth, and the means to remove errors, which have
+escaped their scrutiny. The occasion of such errors may be complicate,
+but, usually, it is the arts and passions of the few which find an
+indolent acquiescence among the many, and firm adherents among those who
+so eagerly consent to what they do not dislike to hear.
+
+A remarkable instance of this appears in the character of James the First,
+which lies buried under a heap of ridicule and obloquy; yet James the
+First was a literary monarch at one of the great eras of English
+literature, and his contemporaries were far from suspecting that his
+talents were inconsiderable, even among those who had their reasons not to
+like him. The degradation which his literary character has suffered has
+been inflicted by more recent hands; and it may startle the last echoer of
+Pope's "Pedant-reign" to hear that more wit and wisdom have been
+recorded of James the First than of any one of our sovereigns. An
+"Author-Sovereign," as Lord Shaftesbury, in his anomalous but emphatic
+style, terms this class of writers, is placed between a double eminence of
+honours, and must incur the double perils; he will receive no favour from
+his brothers, the _Faineants_, as a whole race of ciphers in succession on
+the throne of France were denominated, and who find it much more easy to
+despise than to acquire; while his other brothers, the republicans of
+literature, want a heart to admire the man who has resisted the perpetual
+seductions of a court-life for the silent labours of his closet. Yet if
+Alphonsus of Arragon be still a name endeared to us for his love of
+literature, and for that elegant testimony of his devotion to study
+expressed by the device on his banner of _an open book_, how much more
+ought we to be indulgent to the memory of a sovereign who has written one
+still worthy of being opened?
+
+We must separate the literary from the political character of this
+monarch, and the qualities of his mind and temper from the ungracious and
+neglected manners of his personal one. And if we do not take a more
+familiar view of the events, the parties, and the genius of the times, the
+views and conduct of James the First will still remain imperfectly
+comprehended. In the reign of a prince who was no military character, we
+must busy ourselves at home; the events he regulated may be numerous and
+even interesting, although not those which make so much noise and show in
+the popular page of history, and escape us in its general views. The want
+of this sort of knowledge has proved to be one great source of the false
+judgments passed on this monarch. Surely it is not philosophical to decide
+of another age by the changes and the feelings through which our own has
+passed. There is a chronology of human opinions which, not observing, an
+indiscreet philosopher may commit an anachronism in reasoning.
+
+When the Stuarts became the objects of popular indignation, a peculiar
+race of libels was eagerly dragged into light, assuming the imposing form
+of history; many of these state-libels did not even pass through the
+press, and may occasionally be discovered in their MS. state. Yet these
+publications cast no shade on the _talents_ of James the First. His
+literary attainments were yet undisputed; they were echoing in the ear of
+the writers, and many proofs of his sagacity were still lively in their
+recollections.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE FIRST MODERN ASSAILANTS OF THE CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST.
+
+
+Burnet, the ardent champion of a party so deeply concerned to oppose as
+well the persons as the principles of the Stuarts, levelled the father of
+the race; we read with delight pages which warm and hurry us on, mingling
+truths with rumours, and known with suggested events, with all the spirit
+of secret history. But the character of James I. was to pass through the
+lengthened inquisitorial tortures of the sullen sectarianism of Harris.[A]
+It was branded by the fierce, remorseless republican Catharine Macaulay,
+and flouted by the light, sparkling Whig, Horace Walpole.[B] A senseless
+cry of pedantry had been raised against him by the eloquent invective of
+Bolingbroke, from whom doubtless Pope echoed it in verse which has
+outlived his lordship's prose:--
+
+ Oh, cried the goddess, for some pedant reign!
+ Some gentle James to bless the land again;
+ To stick the doctor's chair into the throne,
+ Give law to words, or war with words alone,
+ Senates and courts with Greek and Latin rule,
+ And turn the council to a grammar-school!
+
+ _Dunciad_, book iv. ver. 175.
+
+[Footnote A: The historical works of Dr. William Harris have been recently
+republished in a collected form, and they may now be considered as
+entering into our historical stores.
+
+HARRIS is a curious researcher; but what appears more striking in his
+historical character, is the impartiality with which he quotes authorities
+which make against his own opinions and statements. Yet is Harris a writer
+likely to impose on many readers. He announces in his title-pages that his
+works are "after the manner of Mr. Bayle." This is but a literary
+imposition, for Harris is perhaps the meanest writer in our language both
+for style and philosophical thinking. The extraordinary impartiality he
+displays in his faithful quotations from writers on opposite sides is only
+the more likely to deceive us; for by that unalterable party feeling,
+which never forsakes him, the facts against him he studiously weakens by
+doubts, surmises, and suggestions; a character sinks to the level of his
+notions by a single stroke; and from the arguments adverse to his purpose,
+he wrests the most violent inferences. All party writers must submit to
+practise such mean and disingenuous arts if they affect to disguise
+themselves under a cover of impartiality. Bayle, intent on collecting
+facts, was indifferent to their results; but Harris is more intent on the
+deductions than the facts. The truth is, Harris wrote to please his
+patron, the republican Hollis, who supplied him with books, and every
+friendly aid. "It is possible for an ingenious man to be of a _party_
+without being _partial_" says Rushworth; an airy clench on the lips of a
+sober matter-of-fact man looks suspicions, and betrays the weak pang of a
+half-conscience.]
+
+[Footnote B: Horace Walpole's character of James I., in his "Royal
+Authors," is as remarkable as his character of Sir Philip Sidney; he might
+have written both without any acquaintance with the works he has so
+maliciously criticised. In his account of Sidney he had silently passed
+over the "Defence of Poetry;" and in his second edition he makes this
+insolent avowal, that "he had forgotten it; a proof that I at least did
+not think it sufficient foundation for so high a character as he
+acquired." Every reader of taste knows the falseness of the criticism, and
+how heartless the polished cynicism that could dare it. I repeat, what I
+have elsewhere said, that Horace Walpole had something in his composition
+more predominant than his wit, a cold, unfeeling disposition, which
+contemned all literary men, at the moment his heart secretly panted to
+partake of their fame.
+
+Nothing can be more imposing than his volatile and caustic criticisms on
+the works of James I.; yet it appears to me that he had never opened that
+folio volume he so poignantly ridicules. For he doubts whether these two
+pieces, "The Prince's Cabala" and "The Duty of a King in his Royal
+Office," were genuine productions of James I. The truth is, they are both
+nothing more than extracts printed with those separate titles, drawn from
+the King's "Basilicon Doron." He had probably neither read the extracts
+nor the original. Thus singularity of opinion, vivacity of ridicule, and
+polished epigrams in prose, were the means by which this noble writer
+startled the world by his paradoxes, and at length lived to be mortified
+at a reputation which he sported with and lost. I refer the reader to
+those extracts from his MS. letters which are in "Calamities of Authors,"
+where he has made his literary confessions, and performs his act of
+penance.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE PEDANTRY OF JAMES THE FIRST.
+
+
+Few of my readers, I suspect, but have long been persuaded that James I.
+was a mere college pedant, and that all his works, whatever they maybe,
+are monstrous pedantic labours. Yet this monarch of all things detested
+pedantry, either as it shows itself in the mere form of Greek and Latin,
+or in ostentatious book-learning, or in the affectation of words of remote
+signification: these are the only points of view in which I have been
+taught to consider the meaning of the term pedantry, which is very
+indefinite, and always a relative one.
+
+The age of James I. was a controversial age, of unsettled opinions and
+contested principles; an age, in which authority was considered as
+stronger than opinion; but the vigour of that age of genius was infused
+into their writings, and those citers, who thus perpetually crowded their
+margins, were profound and original thinkers. When the learning of a
+preceding age becomes less recondite, and those principles general which
+were at first peculiar, are the ungrateful heirs of all this knowledge to
+reproach the fathers of their literature with pedantry? Lord Bolingbroke
+has pointedly said of James I. that "his pedantry was too much even for
+the age in which he lived." His lordship knew little of that glorious age
+when the founders of our literature flourished. It had been over-clouded
+by the French court of Charles II., a race of unprincipled wits, and the
+revolution-court of William, heated by a new faction, too impatient to
+discuss those principles of government which they had established. It was
+easy to ridicule what they did not always understand, and very rarely met
+with. But men of far higher genius than this monarch, Selden, Usher, and
+Milton, must first be condemned before this odium of pedantry can attach
+itself to the plain and unostentatious writings of James I., who, it is
+remarkable, has not scattered in them those oratorical periods, and
+elaborate fancies, which he indulged in his speeches and proclamations.
+These loud accusers of the pedantry of James were little aware that the
+king has expressed himself with energy and distinctness on this very
+topic. His majesty cautions Prince Henry against the use of any "corrupt
+leide, as _book-language_, and _pen-and-inkhorn termes_, and, least of
+all, nignard and effeminate ones." One passage may be given entire as
+completely refuting a charge so general, yet so unfounded. "I would also
+advise you to write in _your own language_, for there is _nothing left to
+be said in Greek and Latine already_; and, ynewe (enough) of poore
+schollers would match you in these languages; and besides that it best
+becometh a _King_, to purifie and make famous _his owne tongue_;
+therein he may goe before all his subjects, as it setteth him well to doe
+in all honest and lawful things." No scholar of a pedantic taste could
+have dared so complete an emancipation from ancient, yet not obsolete
+prejudices, at a time when many of our own great authors yet imagined
+there was no fame for an Englishman unless he neglected his maternal
+language for the artificial labour of the idiom of ancient Rome. Bacon had
+even his own domestic Essays translated into Latin; and the king found a
+courtier-bishop to perform the same task for his majesty's writings. There
+was something prescient in this view of the national language, by the
+king, who contemplated in it those latent powers which had not yet burst
+into existence. It is evident that the line of Pope is false which
+describes the king as intending to rule "senates and courts" by "turning
+the council to a grammar-school."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+HIS POLEMICAL STUDIES.
+
+
+ This censure of the pedantry of James is also connected with those
+studies of polemical divinity, for which the king has incurred much
+ridicule from one party, who were not his contemporaries; and such
+vehement invective from another, who were; who, to their utter dismay,
+discovered their monarch descending into their theological gymnasium to
+encounter them with their own weapons.
+
+The affairs of religion and politics in the reign of James I., as in the
+preceding one of Elizabeth,[A] were identified together; nor yet have the
+same causes in Europe ceased to act, however changed or modified. The
+government of James was imperfectly established while his subjects were
+wrestling with two great factions to obtain the predominance. The
+Catholics were disputing his title to the crown, which they aimed to carry
+into the family of Spain, and had even fixed on Arabella Stuart, to marry
+her to a Prince of Parma; and the Puritans would have abolished even
+sovereignty itself; these parties indeed were not able to take the field,
+but all felt equally powerful with the pen. Hence an age of doctrines.
+When a religious body has grown into power, it changes itself into a
+political one; the chiefs are flattered by their strength and stimulated
+by their ambition; but a powerful body in the State cannot remain
+stationary, and a divided empire it disdains. Religious controversies have
+therefore been usually coverings to mask the political designs of the
+heads of parties.
+
+We smile at James the First threatening the States-general by the
+English Ambassador about Vorstius, a Dutch professor, who had espoused
+the doctrines of Arminius, and had also vented some metaphysical notions
+of his own respecting the occult nature of the Divinity. He was the head
+of the Remonstrants, who were at open war with the party called the
+Contra-Remonstrants. The ostensible subjects were religious doctrines, but
+the concealed one was a struggle between Pensionary Barnevelt, aided by
+the French interest, and the Prince of Orange, supported by the English;
+even to our own days the same opposite interests existed, and betrayed the
+Republic, although religious doctrines had ceased to be the pretext.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: I have more largely entered into the history of the party who
+attempted to subvert the government in the reign of Elizabeth, and who
+published their works under the assumed name of Martin Mar-prelate, than
+had hitherto been done. In our domestic annals that event and those
+personages are of some importance and curiosity; but were imperfectly
+known to the popular writers of our history.--See "Quarrels of Authors,"
+p. 296, _et seq_.]
+
+[Footnote B: Pensionary Barnevelt, in his seventy-second year, was at
+length brought to the block. Diodati, a divine of Geneva, made a miserable
+pun the occasion; he said that "the _Canons_ of the Synod of Dort had
+taken off the head of the advocate of Holland." This pun, says Brandt in
+his curious "History of the Reformation," is very injurious to the Synod,
+since it intimates that the Church loves blood. It never entered into the
+mind of these divines that Barnevelt fell, not by the Synod, but by the
+Orange and English party prevailing against the French. Lord Hardwicke, a
+statesman and a man of letters, deeply conversant with secret and public
+history, is a more able judge than the ecclesiastical historian or the
+Swiss divine, who could see nothing in the Synod of Dort but what appeared
+in it. It is in Lord Hardwicke's preface to Sir Dudley Carleton's
+"Letters" that his lordship has made this important discovery.]
+
+What was passing between the Dutch Prince and the Dutch Pensionary, was
+much like what was taking place between the King of England and his own
+subjects. James I. had to touch with a balancing hand the Catholics and
+the Nonconformists,[A]--to play them one against another; but there was a
+distinct end in their views. "James I.," says Barnet, "continued always
+writing and talking against Popery, but acting for it." The King and the
+bishops were probably more tolerant to monarchists and prelatists, than to
+republicans and presbyters. When James got nothing but gunpowder and
+Jesuits from Rome, he was willing enough to banish, or suppress, but the
+Catholic families were ancient and numerous; and the most determined
+spirits which ever subverted a government were Catholic.[B] Yet what could
+the King expect from the party of the Puritans, and their "conceited
+parity," as he called it, should he once throw himself into their hands,
+but the fate his son received from them?
+
+[Footnote A: James did all he could to weaken the Catholic party
+by dividing them in opinion. When Dr. Reynolds, the head of the
+Nonconformists, complained to the king of the printing and dispersing of
+Popish pamphlets, the king answered, that this was done by a warrant from
+the Court, to nourish the schism between the Seculars and Jesuits, which
+was of great service, "Doctor," added the king, "you are a better
+clergyman than statesman."--Neale's "History of the Puritans," vol. i. p.
+416, 4to.]
+
+[Footnote B: The character and demeanour of the celebrated Guy or Guido
+Fawkes, who appeared first before the council under the assumed name of
+Johnson, I find in a MS. letter of the times, which contains some
+characteristic touches not hitherto published. This letter is from Sir
+Edward Hoby to Sir Thomas Edmondes, our ambassador at the court of
+Brussels--dated 19th November, 1605. "One Johnson was found in the vault
+where the Gunpowder Plot was discovered. He was asked if he was sorry! He
+answered that he was only sorry it had not taken place. He was threatened
+that he should die a worse death than he that killed the Prince of Orange;
+he answered, that he could bear it as well. When Johnson was brought to
+the king's presence, the king asked him how he could conspire so hideous a
+treason against his children and so many innocent souls who had never
+offended him? He answered, that dangerous diseases required a desperate
+remedy; and he told some of the Scots that his intent was to have blown
+them back again into Scotland!"--Mordacious Guy Fawkes!]
+
+In the early stage of the Reformation, the Catholic still entered into the
+same church with the Reformed; this common union was broken by the
+impolitical impatience of the court of Rome, who, jealous of the
+tranquillity of Elizabeth, hoped to weaken her government by disunion;[A]
+but the Reformed were already separating among themselves by a new race,
+who, fancying that their religion was still too Catholic, were for
+reforming the Reformation. These had most extravagant fancies, and were
+for modelling the government according to each particular man's notion.
+Were we to bend to the foreign despotism of the Roman Tiara, or that of
+the republican rabble of the Presbytery of Geneva?
+
+[Footnote A: Sir Edward Coke, attorney-general, in the trial of Garnet the
+Jesuit, says, "There were no Recusants in England--all came to church
+howsoever Popishly inclined, till the Bull of Pius V. excommunicated and
+deposed Elizabeth. On this the Papists refused to join in the public
+service."--"State Trials," vol. i. p. 242.
+
+The Pope imagined, by false impressions he had received, that the Catholic
+party was strong enough to prevail against Elizabeth. Afterwards, when he
+found his error, a dispensation was granted by himself and his successor,
+that all Catholics might show outward obedience to Elizabeth till a
+happier opportunity. Such are Catholic politics and Catholic faith!]
+
+
+ * * * * *
+
+POLEMICAL STUDIES WERE POLITICAL.
+
+
+It was in these times that James I., a learned prince, applied to
+polemical studies; properly understood, these were in fact political
+ones. Lord Bolingbroke says, "He affected more learning than became
+a king, which he broached on every occasion in such a manner as would
+have misbecome a schoolmaster." Would the politician then require a
+half-learned king, or a king without any learning at all? Our eloquent
+sophist appears not to have recollected that polemical studies had long
+with us been considered as royal ones; and that from a slender volume of
+the sort our sovereigns still derive the regal distinction of "Defenders
+of the Faith." The pacific government of James I. required that the King
+himself should be a master of these controversies to be enabled to balance
+the conflicting parties; and none but a learned king could have exerted
+the industry or attained to the skill. In the famous conference at
+Hampton Court, which the King held with the heads of the Nonconformists,
+we see his majesty conversing sometimes with great learning and sense,
+but oftener more with the earnestness of a man, than some have imagined
+comported with the dignity of a crowned head. The truth is, James,
+like a true student, indulged, even to his dress, an utter carelessness
+of parade, and there was in his character a constitutional warmth
+of heart and a jocundity of temper which did not always adapt it to
+state-occasions; he threw out his feelings, and sometimes his jests.
+James, who had passed his youth in a royal bondage, felt that these
+Nonconformists, while they were debating small points, were reserving for
+hereafter their great ones; were cloaking their republicanism by their
+theology, and, like all other politicians, that their ostensible were not
+their real motives.[A] Harris and Neale, the organs of the Nonconformists,
+inveigh against James; even Hume, with the philosophy of the eighteenth
+century, has pronounced that the king was censurable "for entering
+zealously into these frivolous disputes of theology." Lord Bolingbroke
+declares that the king held this conference "in haste to show his parts."
+Thus a man of genius substitutes suggestion and assertion for accuracy of
+knowledge. In the present instance, it was an attempt of the Puritans to
+try the king on his arrival in England; they presented a petition for a
+conference, called "The Millenary Petition,"[B] from a thousand persons
+supposed to have signed it; the king would not refuse it; but so far from
+being "in haste to show his parts," that when he discovered their
+pretended grievances were so futile, "he complained that he had been
+troubled with such importunities, when some more private course might have
+been taken for their satisfaction."
+
+[Footnote A: In political history we usually find that the heads of a
+party are much wiser than the party themselves, so that, whatever they
+intend to acquire, their first demands are small; but the honest souls who
+are only stirred by their own innocent zeal, are sure to complain that
+their business is done negligently. Should the party at first succeed,
+then the bolder spirit, which they have disguised or suppressed through
+policy, is left to itself; it starts unbridled and at full gallop. All
+this occurred in the case of the Puritans. We find that some of the rigid
+Nonconformists did confess in a pamphlet, "The Christian's modest offer of
+the Silenced Ministers," 1606, that those who were appointed to speak for
+them at Hampton Court were _not of their nomination or judgment_; they
+insisted that these delegates should declare at once against the whole
+church establishment, &c., and model the government to each particular
+man's notions! But these delegates prudently refused to acquaint the king
+with the conflicting opinions of their constituents.--_Lansdowne MSS_.
+1056, 51.
+
+This confession of the Nonconformists is also acknowledged by their
+historian Neale, vol. ii. p. 419, 4to edit.]
+
+[Footnote B: The petition is given at length in Collier's "Eccles. Hist.,"
+vol. ii. p. 672. At this time also the Lay Catholics of England printed
+at Donay, "A Petition Apologetical," to James I. Their language is
+remarkable; they complained they were excluded "that supreme court of
+parliament first founded by and for Catholike men, was furnished with
+Catholike prelates, peeres, and personages; and so continued till the
+times of _Edward VI._ a _childe_, and Queen Elizabeth a _woman_."--Dodd's
+"Church History."]
+
+The narrative of this once celebrated conference, notwithstanding the
+absurdity of the topics, becomes in the hands of the entertaining Fuller a
+picturesque and dramatic composition, where the dialogue and the manners
+of the speakers are after the life.
+
+In the course of this conference we obtain a familiar intercourse with the
+king; we may admire the capacity of the monarch whose genius was versatile
+with the subjects; sliding from theme to theme with the ease which only
+mature studies could obtain; entering into the graver parts of these
+discussions; discovering a ready knowledge of biblical learning, which
+would sometimes throw itself out with his natural humour, in apt and
+familiar illustrations, throughout indulging his own personal feelings
+with an unparalleled _naivete_.
+
+The king opened the conference with dignity; he said "he was happier than
+his predecessors, who had to alter what they found established, but he
+only to confirm what was well settled." One of the party made a notable
+discovery, that the surplice was a kind of garment used by the priests of
+Isis. The king observed that he had no notion of this antiquity, since he
+had always heard from them that it was "a rag of popery." "Dr. Reynolds,"
+said the king, with an air of pleasantry, "they used to wear hose and
+shoes in times of popery; have you therefore a mind to go bare-foot?"
+Reynolds objected to the words used in matrimony, "with my body I thee
+worship." The king said the phrase was an usual English term, as a
+_gentleman of worship_, &c., and turning to the doctor, smiling, said,
+"Many a man speaks of Robin Hood, who never shot in his bow; if you had a
+good wife yourself, you would think all the honour and worship you could
+do to her were well bestowed." Reynolds was not satisfied on the 37th
+article, declaring that "the Bishop of Rome hath no authority in this
+land," and desired it should be added, "nor ought to have any." In
+Barlow's narrative we find that on this his majesty heartily laughed--a
+laugh easily caught up by the lords; but the king nevertheless
+condescended to reply sensibly to the weak objection.
+
+"What speak you of the pope's authority here? _Habemus jure quod habemus_;
+and therefore inasmuch as it is said he hath not, it is plain enough that
+he ought not to have." It was on this occasion that some "pleasant
+discourse passed," in which "a Puritan" was defined to be "a Protestant
+frightened out of his wits." The king is more particularly vivacious when
+he alludes to the occurrences of his own reign, or suspects the Puritans
+of republican notions. On one occasion, to cut the gordian-knot, the king
+royally decided--"I will not argue that point with you, but answer as
+kings in parliament, _Le Roy s'avisera"_
+
+When they hinted at a Scottish Presbytery the king was somewhat stirred,
+yet what is admirable in him (says Barlow) without a show of passion. The
+king had lived among the republican saints, and had been, as he said, "A
+king without state, without honour, without order, where beardless boys
+would brave us to our face; and, like the Saviour of the world, though he
+lived among them, he was not of them." On this occasion, although the king
+may not have "shown his passion," he broke out, however, with a _naive_
+effusion, remarkable for painting after the home-life a republican
+government. It must have struck Hume forcibly, for he has preserved part
+of it in the body of his history. Hume only consulted Fuller. I give the
+copious explosion from Barlow:--
+
+"If you aim at a Scottish Presbytery, it agreeth as well with monarchy as
+God and the devil. Then Jack, and Tom, and Will, and Dick, shall meet, and
+at their pleasure censure me and my council, and all our proceedings; then
+Will shall stand up and say, It must be thus; then Dick shall reply, Nay,
+marry, but we will have it thus. And therefore here I must once more
+reiterate my former speech, _Le Roy s'avisera._ Stay, I pray you, for one
+seven years before you demand that of me, and if then you find me pursy
+and fat, I may hearken to you; for let that government once be up, I am
+sure I shall be kept in breath; then shall we all of us have work enough:
+but, Dr. Reynolds, till you find that I grow lazy, let that alone."
+
+The king added,
+
+"I will tell you a tale:--Knox flattered the queen-regent of Scotland that
+she was supreme head of all the church, if she suppressed the popish
+prelates. But how long, trow ye, did this continue? Even so long, till, by
+her authority, the popish bishops were repressed, and he himself, and his
+adherents, were brought in and well settled. Then, lo! they began to make
+small account of her authority, and took the cause into their own hands."
+
+This was a pointed political tale, appropriately told in the person of a
+monarch.
+
+The king was never deficient in the force and quickness of his arguments.
+Even Neale, the great historian of the Puritans, complaining that
+Dean Barlow has cut off some of the king's speeches, is reluctantly
+compelled to tax himself with a high commendation of the monarch, who, he
+acknowledges, on one of the days of this conference, spoke against the
+corruptions of the church, and the practices of the prelates, insomuch
+that Dr. Andrews, then dean of the chapel, said that his majesty did that
+day wonderfully play the Puritan.[A] The king, indeed, was seriously
+inclined to an union of parties. More than once he silenced the angry
+tongue of Bancroft, and tempered the zeal of others; and even commended
+when he could Dr. Reynolds, the chief of the Puritans; the king consented
+to the only two important articles that side suggested; a new catechism
+adapted to the people--"Let the weak be informed and the wilful be
+punished," said the king; and that new translation of the Bible which
+forms our present version. "But," added the king, "it must be without
+marginal notes, for the Geneva Bible is the worst for them, full of
+seditious conceits; Asa is censured for _only deposing_ his mother for
+idolatry, and not _killing_ her." Thus early the dark spirit of Machiavel
+had lighted on that of the ruthless Calvin. The grievances of our first
+dissenters were futile--their innovations interminable; and we discover
+the king's notions, at the close of a proclamation issued after this
+conference: "Such is the desultory levity of some people, that they are
+always languishing after change and novelty, insomuch that were they
+humoured in their inconstancy, they would expose the public management,
+and make the administration ridiculous." Such is the vigorous style of
+James the First in his proclamations; and such is the political truth,
+which will not die away with the conference at Hampton Court.
+
+[Footnote A: The bishops of James I. were, as Fuller calls one of them,
+"potent courtiers," and too worldly-minded men. Bancroft was a man of
+vehement zeal, but of the most grasping avarice, as appears by an
+epigrammatic epitaph on his death in Arthur Wilson--
+
+ "Here lies his grace, in cold earth clad,
+ Who died with want of what he had."
+
+We find a characteristic trait of this Bishop of London in this
+conference. When Ellesmere, Lord Chancellor, observed that "livings rather
+want learned men, than learned men livings, many in the universities
+pining for want of places. I wish therefore some may have _single coats_
+(one living) before others have _doublets_ (pluralities), and this method
+I have observed in bestowing the king's benefices." Bancroft replied, "I
+commend your memorable _care_ that way; but a _doublet_ is necessary in
+cold weather." Thus an avaricious bishop could turn off, with a miserable
+jest, the open avowal of his love of pluralities. Another, Neile, Bishop
+of Lincoln, when any one preached who was remarkable for his piety,
+desirous of withdrawing the king's attention from truths he did not wish
+to have his majesty reminded of, would in the sermon-time entertain the
+king with a merry tale, which the king would laugh at, and tell those near
+him, that he could not hear the preacher for the old--bishop;
+prefixing an epithet explicit of the character of these merry tales.
+Kennet has preserved for us the "rank relation," as he calls it; not, he
+adds, but "we have had divers hammerings and conflicts within us to leave
+it out."--Kennet's "History of England," ii. 729.]
+
+These studies of polemical divinity, like those of the ancient
+scholastics, were not to be obtained without a robust intellectual
+exercise. James instructed his son Charles,[A] who excelled in them; and
+to those studies Whitelocke attributes that aptitude of Charles I. which
+made him so skilful a summer-up of arguments, and endowed him with so
+clear a perception in giving his decisions.
+
+
+[Footnote A: That the clergy were somewhat jealous of their sovereign's
+interference in these matters may be traced. When James charged the
+chaplains, who were to wait on the prince in Spain, to decline, as far as
+possible, religious disputes, he added, that "should any happen, my son is
+able to moderate in them." The king, observing one of the divines smile,
+grew warm, vehemently affirming, "I tell ye, Charles shall manage a point
+in controversy with the best studied divine of ye all." What the king
+said was afterwards confirmed on an extraordinary occasion, in the
+conference Charles I. held with Alexander Henderson, the old champion of
+the kirk. Deprived of books, which might furnish the sword and pistol of
+controversy, and without a chaplain to stand by him as a second, Charles
+I. fought the theological duel; and the old man, cast down, retired with
+such a sense of the learning and honour of the king, in maintaining the
+order of episcopacy in England, that his death, which soon followed, is
+attributed to the deep vexation of this discomfiture. The veteran, who had
+succeeded in subverting the hierarchy in Scotland, would not be apt to die
+of a fit of conversion; but vexation might be apoplectic in an old and
+sturdy disputant. The king's controversy was published; and nearly all the
+writers agree he carried the day. Yet some divines appear more jealous
+than grateful: Bishop Kennet, touched by the _esprit du corps_, honestly
+tells us, that "some thought the king had been better able to _protect_
+the Church, if he had not _disputed_ for it." This discovers all the
+ardour possible for the _establishment_, and we are to infer that an
+English sovereign is only to _fight_ for his churchmen. But there is a
+nobler office for a sovereign to perform in ecclesiastical history--to
+promote the learned and the excellent, and repress the dissolute and the
+intolerant.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE WORKS OF JAMES THE FIRST.
+
+
+We now turn to the writings of James the First. He composed a treatise on
+demoniacs and witches; those dramatic personages in courts of law. James
+and his council never suspected that those ancient foes to mankind
+could be dismissed by a simple _Nolle prosequi_. "A Commentary on the
+Revelations," which was a favourite speculation then, and on which greater
+geniuses have written since his day. "A Counterblast to Tobacco!" the
+title more ludicrous than the design.[A] His majesty terrified "the
+tobacconists," as the patriarchs of smoking-clubs were called, and who
+were selling their very lands and houses in an epidemical madness for "a
+stinking weed," by discovering that "they were making a sooty kitchen in
+their inward parts."[B] And the king gained a point with the great
+majority of his subjects, when he demonstrated to their satisfaction that
+the pope was antichrist. Ridiculous as these topics are to us, the works
+themselves were formed on what modern philosophers affect to term the
+principle of utility; a principle which, with them indeed, includes
+everything they approve of, and nothing they dislike.
+
+[Footnote A: Not long before James composed his treatise on "Daemonologie,"
+the learned Wierus had published an elaborate work on the subject.
+"_De praestigiis Daemonum et incantationibus et Veneficiis_," &c., 1568.
+He advanced one step in philosophy by discovering that many of the
+supposed cases of incantation originated in the imagination of these
+sorcerers--but he advanced no farther, for he acknowledges the real
+diabolical presence. The physician, who pretended to cure the disease, was
+himself irrecoverably infected. Yet even this single step of Wierus was
+strenuously resisted by the learned Bodin, who, in his amusing volume of
+"Demonomanie des Sorciers," 1593, refutes Wierus. These are the leading
+authors of the times; who were followed by a crowd. Thus James I. neither
+wanted authorities to quote nor great minds to sanction his "Daemonologie,"
+first published in 1597. To the honour of England, a single individual,
+Reginald Scot, with a genius far advanced beyond his age, denied the very
+existence of those witches and demons in the curious volume of his
+"Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584. His books were burned! and the author was
+himself not quite out of danger; and Voetius, says Bayle, complains that
+when the work was translated into Dutch, it raised up a number of
+libertines who laughed at all the operations and the apparitions of
+devils. Casaubon and Glanvil, who wrote so much later, treat Scot with
+profound contempt, assuring us his reasonings are childish, and his
+philosophy absurd! Such was the reward of a man of genius combating with
+popular prejudices! Even so late as 1687, these popular superstitions were
+confirmed by the narrations and the philosophy of Glanvil, Dr. More, &c.
+The subject enters into the "Commentaries on the Laws of England." An
+edict of Louis XIV, and a statute by George II, made an end of the whole
+_Diablerie_. Had James I. adopted the system of Reginald Scot, the king
+had probably been branded as an atheist king!]
+
+[Footnote B: Harris, with systematic ingenuity against James I., after
+abusing this tract as a wretched performance, though himself probably had
+written a meaner one--quotes the curious information the king gives of the
+enormous abuse to which the practice of smoking was carried, expressing
+his astonishment at it. Yet, that James may not escape bitter censure, he
+abuses the king for levying a heavy tax on it to prevent this ruinous
+consumption, and his silly policy in discouraging such a branch of our
+revenues, and an article so valuable to our plantations, &c. As if James
+I. could possibly incur censure for the discoveries of two centuries
+after, of the nature of this plant! James saw great families ruined by the
+epidemic madness, and sacrificed the revenues which his crown might derive
+from it, to assist its suppression. This was patriotism in the monarch.]
+
+It was a prompt honesty of intention to benefit his people, which seems to
+have been the urgent motive that induced this monarch to become an author,
+more than any literary ambition; for he writes on no prepared or permanent
+topic, and even published anonymously, and as he once wrote "post-haste,"
+what he composed or designed for practical and immediate use; and even in
+that admirable treatise on the duties of a sovereign, which he addressed
+to Prince Henry, a great portion is directed to the exigencies of the
+times, the parties, and the circumstances of his own court. Of the works
+now more particularly noticed, their interest has ceased with the
+melancholy follies which at length have passed away; although the
+philosophical inquirer will not choose to drop this chapter in the history
+of mankind. But one fact in favour of our royal author is testified by the
+honest Fuller and the cynical Osborne. On the king's arrival in England,
+having discovered the numerous impostures and illusions which he had often
+referred to as authorities, he grew suspicious of the whole system
+of "Daemonologie," and at length recanted it entirely. With the same
+conscientious zeal James had written the book, the king condemned it; and
+the sovereign separated himself from the author, in the cause of truth;
+but the clergy and the parliament persisted in making the imaginary crime
+felony by the statute, and it is only a recent act of parliament which has
+forbidden the appearance of the possessed and the spae-wife.
+
+But this apology for having written these treatises need not rest on this
+fact, however honourably it appeals to our candour. Let us place it on
+higher ground, and tell those who asperse this monarch for his credulity
+and intellectual weakness, that they themselves, had they lived in the
+reign of James I., had probably written on the same topics, and felt as
+uneasy at the rumour of a witch being a resident in their neighbourhood!
+
+ * * * * *
+
+POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS OF THE AGE.
+
+
+This and the succeeding age were the times of omens and meteors,
+prognostics and providences--of "day-fatality," or the superstition of
+fortunate and unfortunate days, and the combined powers of astrology and
+magic. It was only at the close of the century of James I. that Bayle
+wrote a treatise on comets, to prove that they had no influence in the
+cabinets of princes; this was, however, done with all the precaution
+imaginable. The greatest minds were then sinking under such popular
+superstitions: and whoever has read much of the private history of
+this age will have smiled at their ludicrous terrors and bewildered
+reasonings. The most ordinary events were attributed to an interposition
+of Providence. In the unpublished memoirs of that learned antiquary, Sir
+Symouds D'Ewes, such frequently occur. When a comet appeared, and D'Ewes,
+for exercise at college, had been ringing the great bell, and entangled
+himself in the rope, which had nearly strangled him, he resolves not to
+ring while the comet is in the heavens. When a fire happened at the Six
+Clerks' Office, of whom his father was one, he inquires into the most
+prominent sins of the six clerks: these were the love of the world, and
+doing business on Sundays: and it seems they thought so themselves; for
+after the fire the office-door was fast closed on the Sabbath. When the
+Thames had an unusual ebb and flow, it was observed, that it had never
+happened in their recollection, but just before the rising of the Earl of
+Essex in Elizabeth's reign,--and Sir Symonds became uneasy at the
+political aspect of affairs.
+
+All the historians of these times are very particular in marking the
+bearded beams of blazing stars; and the first public event that occurs is
+always connected with the radiant course. Arthur Wilson describes one
+which preceded the death of the simple queen of James I. It was generally
+imagined that "this great light in the heaven was sent as a flambeaux to
+her funeral;" but the historian discovers, while "this blaze was burning,
+the fire of war broke out in Bohemia." It was found difficult to decide
+between the two opinions; and Rushworth, who wrote long afterwards,
+carefully chronicles both.
+
+The truth is, the greatest geniuses of the age of James I. were as deeply
+concerned in these investigations as his Majesty. Had the great Verulam
+emancipated himself from all the dreams of his age? He speaks indeed
+cautiously of witchcraft, but does not deny its occult agency; and of
+astrology he is rather for the improvement than the rejection. The bold
+spirit of Rawleigh contended with the superstitions of the times; but how
+feeble is the contest where we fear to strike! Even Rawleigh is prodigal
+of his praise to James for the king's chapter on magic. The great mind of
+Rawleigh perceived how much men are formed and changed by _education;_
+but, were this principle admitted to its extent, the _stars_ would
+lose their influence! In pleading for the free agency of man, he would
+escape from the pernicious tendency of predestination, or the astral
+influence, which yet he allows. To extricate himself from the dilemma,
+he invents an analogical reasoning of a royal power of dispensing
+with the laws in extreme cases; so that, though he does not deny "the
+binding of the stars," he declares they are controllable by the will of
+the Creator. In this manner, fettered by prevalent opinions, he satisfies
+the superstitions of an astrological age, and the penetration of his own
+genius. At a much later period Dr Henry More, a writer of genius,
+confirmed the ghost and demon creed, by a number of facts, as marvellously
+pleasant as any his own poetical fancy could have invented. Other great
+authors have not less distinguished themselves. When has there appeared a
+single genius who at once could free himself of the traditional prejudices
+of his contemporaries--nay, of his own party? Genius, in its advancement
+beyond the intelligence of its own age, is but progressive; it is
+fancifully said to soar, but it only climbs. Yet the minds of some authors
+of this age are often discovered to be superior to their work; because the
+mind is impelled by its own inherent powers, but the work usually
+originates in the age. James I, once acutely observed, how "the author may
+be wise, but the work foolish."
+
+Thus minds of a higher rank than our royal author had not yet cleared
+themselves out of these clouds of popular prejudices. We now proceed to
+more decisive results of the superior capacity of this much ill-used
+monarch.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE HABITS OF JAMES THE FIRST THOSE OF A MAN OF LETTERS.
+
+
+The habits of life of this monarch were those of a man of letters. His
+first studies were soothed by none of their enticements. If James loved
+literature, it was for itself; for Buchanan did not tinge the rim of the
+vase with honey; and the bitterness was tasted not only in the draught,
+but also in the rod. In some princes, the harsh discipline James passed
+through has raised a strong aversion against literature. The Dauphin, for
+whose use was formed the well-known edition of the classics, looked on the
+volumes with no eye of love. To free himself of his tutor, Huet, he
+eagerly consented to an early marriage. "Now we shall see if Mr. Huet
+shall any more keep me to ancient geography!" exclaimed the Dauphin,
+rejoicing in the first act of despotism. This ingenuous sally, it is said,
+too deeply affected that learned man for many years afterwards. Huet's
+zealous gentleness (for how could Huet be too rigid?) wanted the art which
+Buchanan disdained to practise. But, in the case of the prince of
+Scotland, a constitutional timidity combining with an ardour for study,
+and therefore a veneration for his tutor, produced a more remarkable
+effect. Such was the terror which the remembrance of this illustrious but
+inexorable republican left on the imagination of his royal pupil, that
+even so late as when James was seated on the English throne, once the
+appearance of his frowning tutor in a dream greatly agitated the king,
+who in vain attempted to pacify him in this portentous vision. This
+extraordinary fact may be found in a manuscript letter of that day.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: The learned Mede wrote the present letter soon after another,
+which had not been acknowledged, to his friend Sir M. Stuteville; and the
+writer is uneasy lest the political secrets of the day might bring the
+parties into trouble. It seems he was desirous that letter should be read
+and then burnt.
+
+"_March 31, 1622._
+
+"I hope my letter miscarried not; if it did I am in a sweet pickle. I
+desired to hear from you of the receipt and extinction of it. Though there
+is no danger in my letters whilst report is so rife, yet when it is
+forgotten they will not be so safe; but your danger is as great as mine--
+
+"Mr. Downham was with we, now come from London. He told me that it was
+three years ago since those verses were delivered to the king in a dream,
+by his Master Buchanan, who seemed to _check him severely, as he used to
+do_; and his Majesty, in his dream, seemed desirous to pacify him, but he,
+_turning away with a frowning countenance_, would utter those verses,
+which his Majesty, perfectly remembering, repeated the next day, and many
+took notice of them. Now, by occasion of the late soreness in his arm, and
+the doubtfulness what it would prove; especially having, by mischance,
+fallen into the fire with that arm, the remembrance of the verses began to
+trouble him."
+
+It appears that these verses were of a threatening nature, since, in a
+melancholy fit, they were recalled to recollection after an interval of
+three years; the verses are lost to us, with the letter which contained
+them.]
+
+James, even by the confession of his bitter satirist, Francis Osborne,
+"dedicated rainy weather to his standish, and fair to his hounds." His
+life had the uniformity of a student's; but the regulated life of a
+learned monarch must have weighed down the gay and dissipated with the
+deadliest monotony. Hence one of these courtiers declared that, if he were
+to awake after a sleep of seven years' continuance, he would undertake to
+enumerate the whole of his Majesty's occupations, and every dish that had
+been placed on the table during the interval. But this courtier was not
+aware that the monotony which the king occasioned him was not so much in
+the king himself as in his own volatile spirit.
+
+The table of James I. was a trial of wits, says a more learned courtier,
+who often partook of these prolonged conversations: those genial and
+convivial conferences were the recreations of the king, and the means
+often of advancing those whose talents had then an opportunity of
+discovering themselves. A life so constant in its pursuits was to have
+been expected from the temper of him who, at the view of the Bodleian
+library, exclaimed, "Were I not a king, I would be an university man; and
+if it were so that I must be a prisoner, I would have no other prison than
+this library, and be _chained together_ with all these goodly authors."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: In this well-known exclamation of James I., a witty allusion
+has been probably overlooked. The king had in his mind the then prevalent
+custom of securing books by fastening them to the shelves by _chains_ long
+enough to reach to the reading-desks under them.]
+
+Study, indeed, became one of the businesses of life with our contemplative
+monarch; and so zealous was James to form his future successor, that he
+even seriously engaged in the education of both his sons. James I. offers
+the singular spectacle of a father who was at once a preceptor and a
+monarch: it was in this spirit the king composed his "Basilicon Doron; or,
+His Majesty's Instructions to his dearest Son Henry the Prince," a work of
+which something more than the intention is great; and he directed the
+studies of the unfortunate Charles. That both these princes were no common
+pupils may be fairly attributed to the king himself. Never did the
+character of a young prince shoot out with nobler promises than Henry; an
+enthusiast for literature and arms, that prince early showed a great and
+commanding spirit. Charles was a man of fine taste: he had talents and
+virtues, errors and misfortunes; but he was not without a spirit equal to
+the days of his trial.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+FACILITY AND COPIOUSNESS OF HIS COMPOSITION.
+
+
+The mind of James I. had at all times the fulness of a student's,
+delighting in the facility and copiousness of composition. The king wrote
+in one week one hundred folio pages of a monitory address to the European
+sovereigns; and, in as short a time, his apology, sent to the pope and
+cardinals. These he delivered to the bishops, merely as notes for their
+use; but they were declared to form of themselves a complete answer. "_Qua
+felicitate_ they were done, let others judge; but _Qua celeritate_, I can
+tell," says the courtly bishop who collected the king's works, and who is
+here quoted, not for the compliment he would infer, but for the fact he
+states. The week's labour of his majesty provoked from Cardinal Perron
+about one thousand pages in folio, and replies and rejoinders from the
+learned in Europe.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Mr. Lodge, in his "Illustrations of British History," praises
+and abuses James I. for the very same treatises. Mr. Lodge, dropping the
+sober character of the antiquary for the smarter one of the critic, tells
+us, "James had the good fortune to gain the two points he principally
+aimed at in the publication of these _dull treatises_--the reputation of
+an acute disputant, and the honour of having Cardinal Bellarmin for an
+antagonist." Did Mr. Lodge ever read these "dull treatises?" I declare I
+never have; but I believe these treatises are not dull, from the inference
+he draws from them: for how any writer can gain the reputation of "an
+acute disputant" by writing "dull treatises," Mr. Lodge only can explain.
+It is in this manner, and by unphilosophical critics, that the literary
+reputation of James has been flourished down by modern pens. It was sure
+game to attack James I.!]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+HIS ELOQUENCE.
+
+
+The eloquence of James is another feature in the literary character of
+this monarch. Amid the sycophancy of the court of a learned sovereign some
+truths will manifest themselves. Bishop Williams, in his funeral eulogy of
+James I., has praised with warmth the eloquence of the departed monarch,
+whom he intimately knew; and this was an acquisition of James's, so
+manifest to all, that the bishop made eloquence essential to the dignity
+of a monarch; observing, that "it was the want of it that made Moses, in a
+manner, refuse all government, though offered by God."[A] He would
+not have hazarded so peculiar an eulogium, had not the monarch been
+distinguished by that talent.
+
+[Footnote A: This funeral sermon, by laying such a stress on the
+_eloquence_ of James I., it is said, occasioned the disgrace of the
+zealous bishop; perhaps, also, by the arts of the new courtiers practising
+on the feelings of the young monarch. It appears that Charles betrayed
+frequent symptoms of impatience.
+
+This allusion to the _stammering_ of Moses was most unlucky; for Charles
+had this defect in his delivery, which he laboured all his life to
+correct. In the first speech from the throne, he alludes to it: "Now,
+because _I am unfit for much speaking_, I mean to bring up the fashion of
+my predecessors, to have my lord-keeper speak for me in most things." And
+he closed a speech to the Scottish parliament by saying, that "he does not
+offer to endear himself by words, _which, indeed is not my way_." This,
+however, proved to be one of those little circumstances which produce a
+more important result than is suspected. By this substitution of a
+lord-keeper instead of the sovereign, he failed in exciting the personal
+affections of his parliament. Even the most gracious speech from the lips
+of a lord-keeper is but formally delivered, and coldly received; and
+Charles had not yet learned that there are no deputies for our feelings.]
+
+Hume first observed of James I., that "the speaker of the House of Commons
+is usually an eminent man; yet the harangue of his Majesty will always be
+found much superior to that of the speaker in every parliament during this
+reign." His numerous proclamations are evidently wrought by his own hand,
+and display the pristine vigour of the state of our age of genius. That
+the state-papers were usually composed by himself, a passage in the Life
+of the Lord-keeper Williams testifies; and when Sir Edward Conway, who had
+been bred a soldier, and was even illiterate, became a viscount, and a
+royal secretary, by the appointment of Buckingham, the king, who in fact
+wanted no secretary, would often be merry over his imperfect scrawls in
+writing, and his hacking of sentences in reading, often breaking out in
+laughter, exclaiming, "Stenny has provided me with a secretary who can
+neither write nor read, and a groom of my bedchamber who cannot truss my
+points,"--this latter person having but one hand! It is evident, since
+Lord Conway, the most inefficient secretary ever king had--and I have
+myself seen his scrawls--remained many years in office, that James I.
+required no secretary, and transacted his affairs with his own mind and
+hand. These habits of business and of study prove that James indulged much
+less those of indolence, for which he is so gratuitously accused.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+HIS WIT.
+
+
+Amid all the ridicule and contempt in which the intellectual capacity of
+James I. is involved, this college-pedant, who is imagined to have given
+in to every species of false wit, and never to have reached beyond
+quibbles, puns, conceits, and quolibets,--was in truth a great wit; quick
+in retort, and happy in illustration; and often delivering opinions with a
+sententious force. More wit and wisdom from his lips have descended to us
+than from any other of our sovereigns. One of the malicious writers of his
+secret history, Sir Anthony Weldon, not only informs us that he was witty,
+but describes the manner: "He was very witty, and had as many witty jests
+as any man living: at which he would not smile himself, but deliver them
+in a grave and serious manner." Thus the king was not only witty, but a
+dextrous wit: nor is he one of those who are recorded as having only said
+one good thing in their lives; for his vein was not apt to dry.
+
+His conversations, like those of most literary men, he loved to prolong at
+table. We find them described by one who had partaken of them:
+
+"The reading of some books before him was very frequent, while he was at
+his repast; and otherwise he collected knowledge by variety of questions,
+which he carved out to the capacity of different persons. Methought his
+hunting humour was not off, while the learned stood about him at his
+board; he was ever in chase after some disputable doubts, which he would
+wind and turn about with the most stabbing objections that ever I heard;
+and was as pleasant and fellow-like, in all these discourses, as with his
+huntsman in the field. Those who were ripe and weighty in their answers
+were ever designed for some place of credit or profit."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Hacket's curious "Life of the Lord-keeper Williams," p. 38,
+Part 11.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+SPECIMENS OF HIS HUMOUR, AND OBSERVATIONS ON HUMAN LIFE.
+
+
+The relics of witticisms and observations on human life, on state affairs,
+in literature and history, are scattered among contemporary writers, and
+some are even traditional; I regret that I have not preserved many which
+occurred in the course of reading. It has happened, however, that a man of
+genius has preserved for posterity some memorials of the wit, the
+learning, and the sense of the monarch.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: In the Harl. MSS. 7582, Art. 3, one entitled "Crumms fallen
+from King James's Table; or his Table-Talk, taken by Sir Thomas Overbury.
+The original being in his own handwriting." This MS. has been, perhaps,
+imperfectly printed in "The Prince's Cabala, or Mysteries of State," 1715.
+This Collection of Sir Thomas Overbury was shortened by his unhappy fate,
+since he perished early in the reign.--Another Harl. MS. contains things
+"as they were at sundrie times spoken by James I." I have drawn others
+from the Harl. MSS. 6395. We have also printed, "Wittie Observations,
+gathered in King James's Ordinary Discourse," 1643; "King James his
+Apothegmes or Table-Talk as they were by him delivered occasionally, and
+by the publisher, his quondam servant, carefully received, by B.A. gent.
+4^to. in eight leaves, 1643." The collector was Ben'n. Agar, who had
+gathered them in his youth; "Witty Apothegmes, delivered at several times
+by King James, King Charles, the Marquis of Worcester," &c., 1658.
+
+The collection of Apothegms formed by Lord Bacon offers many instances of
+the king's wit and sense. See Lord Bacon's Apothegms new and old; they are
+numbered to 275 in the edition 1819. Basil Montague, in his edition, has
+separated what he distinguishes as the spurious ones.]
+
+In giving some loose specimens of the wit and capacity of a man, if they
+are too few, it may be imagined that they are so from their rarity;
+and if too many, the page swells into a mere collection. But truth is not
+over-nice to obtain her purpose, and even the common labours she inspires
+are associated with her pleasures.
+
+Early in life James I. had displayed the talent of apt allusion, and his
+classical wit on the Spaniards, that "He expected no other favour from
+them than the courtesy of Polyphemus to Ulysses--to be the last devoured,"
+delighted Elizabeth, and has even entered into our history. Arthur
+Wilson, at the close of his "Life of James I.," has preserved one of his
+apothegms, while he censures him for not making timely use of it! "Let
+that prince, who would beware of conspiracies, be rather jealous of such
+whom his extraordinary favours have advanced, than of those whom his
+displeasure have discontented. _These_ want means to execute their
+pleasures, but _those_ have means at pleasure to execute their desires."
+--Wilson himself ably develops this important state-observation, by
+adding, that "Ambition to rule is more vehement than malice to revenge." A
+pointed reflection, which rivals a maxim of Rochefoucault.
+
+The king observed that, "Very wise men and very fools do little harm; it
+is the mediocrity of wisdom that troubleth all the world."--He described,
+by a lively image, the differences which rise in argument: "Men, in
+arguing, are often carried by the force of words farther asunder than
+their question was at first; like two ships going out of the same haven,
+their landing is many times whole countries distant."
+
+One of the great national grievances, as it appeared both to the
+government and the people, in James's reign, was the perpetual growth of
+the metropolis; and the nation, like an hypochondriac, was ludicrously
+terrified that their head was too monstrous for their body, and drew
+all the moisture of life from the remoter parts. It is amusing to
+observe the endless and vain precautions employed to stop all new
+buildings, and to force persons out of town to reside at their country
+mansions. Proclamations warned and exhorted, but the very interference of
+prohibition rendered the crowded town more delightful. One of its
+attendant calamities was the prevalent one of that day, the plague; and
+one of those state libels, which were early suppressed, or never printed,
+entitled, "Balaam's Ass," has this passage: "In this deluge of new
+buildings, we shall be all poisoned with breathing in one another's faces;
+and your Majesty has most truly said, England will shortly be London, and
+London, England." It was the popular wish, that country gentlemen should
+reside more on their estates, and it was on this occasion the king made
+that admirable allusion, which has been in our days repeated in the House
+of Commons: "Gentlemen resident on their estates were like ships in port
+--their value and magnitude were felt and acknowledged; but, when at
+a distance, as their size seemed insignificant, so their worth and
+importance were not duly estimated." The king abounded with similar
+observations; for he drew from life more than even from books.
+
+James is reproached for being deficient in political sagacity;
+notwithstanding that he somewhat prided himself on what he denominated
+"king's-craft." This is the fate of a pacific and domestic prince!
+
+"A king," said James, "ought to be a preserver of his people, as well of
+their fortunes as lives, and not a destroyer of his subjects. Were I to
+make such a war as the King of France doth, with such tyranny on his own
+subjects--with Protestants on one side, and his soldiers drawn to
+slaughter on the other,--I would put myself in a monastery all my days
+after, and repent me that I had brought my subjects to such misery."
+
+That James was an adept in his "king's-craft," by which term he meant
+the science of politics, but which has been so often misinterpreted in an
+ill sense, even the confession of such a writer as Sir Anthony Weldon
+testifies; who acknowledges that "no prince living knew how to make use of
+men better than King James." He certainly foresaw the spirit of the
+Commons, and predicted to the prince and Buckingham, events which occurred
+after his death. When Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, whom James considered
+a useful servant, Buckingham sacrificed, as it would appear, to the
+clamours of a party, James said, "You are making a rod for your own back;"
+and when Prince Charles was encouraging the frequent petitions of
+the Commons, James told him, "You will live to have your bellyful of
+petitions." The following anecdote may serve to prove his political
+sagacity:--When the Emperor of Germany, instigated by the Pope and his own
+state-interests, projected a crusade against the Turks, he solicited from
+James the aid of three thousand Englishmen; the wise and pacific monarch,
+in return, advised the emperor's ambassador to apply to France and Spain,
+as being more nearly concerned in this project: but the ambassador very
+ingeniously argued, that, James being a more remote prince, would more
+effectually alarm the Turks, from a notion of a general armament of
+the Christian princes against them. James got rid of the importunate
+ambassador by observing, that "three thousand Englishmen would do no more
+hurt to the Turks than fleas to their skins: great attempts may do good by
+a destruction, but little ones only stir up anger to hurt themselves."
+
+His vein of familiar humour flowed at all times, and his facetiousness
+was sometimes indulged at the cost of his royalty. In those unhappy
+differences between him and his parliament, one day mounting his horse,
+which, though usually sober and quiet, began to bound and
+prance,--"Sirrah!" exclaimed the king, who seemed to fancy that his
+favourite prerogative was somewhat resisted on this occasion, "if you be
+not quiet, I'll send you to the five hundred kings in the lower house:
+they'll quickly tame you." When one of the Lumleys was pushing on his
+lineal ascent beyond the patience of the hearers, the king, to cut short
+the tedious descendant of the Lumleys, cried out, "Stop mon! thou needst
+no more: now I learn that Adam's surname was Lumley!" When Colonel Gray,
+a military adventurer of that day, just returned from Germany, seemed
+vain of his accoutrements, on which he had spent his all,--the king,
+staring at this buckled, belted, sworded, and pistolled, but ruined,
+martinet, observed, that "this town was so well fortified, that, were it
+victualled, it might be impregnable."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+EVIDENCES OF HIS SAGACITY IN THE DISCOVERY OF TRUTH.
+
+
+Possessing the talent of eloquence, the quickness of wit, and the
+diversified knowledge which produced his "Table-talk," we find also many
+evidences of his sagacity in the discovery of truth, with that patient
+zeal so honourable to a monarch. When the shipwrights, jealous of Pett,
+our great naval architect, formed a party against him, the king would
+judge with his own eyes. Having examined the materials depreciated by
+Pett's accusers, he declared that "the cross-grain was in the men, not in
+the timber." The king, on historical evidence, and by what he said
+in his own works, claims the honour of discovering the gunpowder plot, by
+the sagacity and reflection with which he solved the enigmatical and
+ungrammatical letter sent on that occasion. The train of his thoughts has
+even been preserved to us; and, although a loose passage, in a private
+letter of the Earl of Salisbury, contradicted by another passage in the
+same letter, would indicate that the earl was the man; yet even Mrs.
+Macaulay acknowledges the propriety of attributing the discovery to the
+king's sagacity. Several proofs of his zeal and reflection in the
+detection of imposture might be adduced; and the reader may, perhaps, be
+amused at these.
+
+There existed a conspiracy against the Countess of Exeter by Lady Lake,
+and her daughter, Lady Ross. They had contrived to forge a letter in the
+Countess's name, in which she confessed all the heavy crimes they accused
+her of, which were incest, witchcraft, &c.;[A] and, to confirm its
+authenticity, as the king was curious respecting the place, the time, and
+the occasion, when the letter was written, their maid swore it was at the
+countess's house at Wimbledon, and that she had written it at the window,
+near the upper end of the great chamber; and that she (the maid) was hid
+beneath the tapestry, where she heard the countess read over the letter
+after writing. The king appeared satisfied with this new testimony; but,
+unexpectedly, he visited the great chamber at Wimbledon, observed the
+distance of the window, placed himself behind the hangings, and made the
+lords in their turn: not one could distinctly hear the voice of a person
+placed at the window. The king further observed, that the tapestry was two
+feet short of the ground, and that any one standing behind it must
+inevitably be discovered. "Oaths cannot confound my sight," exclaimed the
+king. Having also effectuated other discoveries with a confession of one
+of the parties, and Sir Thomas Lake being a faithful servant of James, as
+he had been of Elizabeth, the king, who valued him, desired he would not
+stand the trial with his wife and daughter; but the old man pleaded that
+he was a husband and a father, and must fall with them. "It is a fall!"
+said the king: "your wife is the serpent; your daughter is Eve; and you,
+poor man, are Adam!"[B]
+
+[Footnote A: Camden's "Annals of James I., Kennet II., 652."]
+
+[Footnote B: The suit cost Sir Thomas Lake 30,000_l_.; the fines in the
+star-chamber were always heavy in all reigns. Harris refers to this cause
+as an evidence of the tyrannic conduct of James I., as if the king was
+always influenced by personal dislike; but he does not give the story.]
+
+The sullen Osborne reluctantly says, "I must confess he was the promptest
+man living in detecting an imposture." There was a singular impostor in
+his reign, of whom no one denies the king the merit of detecting the
+deception--so far was James I. from being credulous, as he is generally
+supposed to have been. Ridiculous as the affair may appear to us, it had
+perfectly succeeded with the learned fellows of New College, Oxford, and
+afterwards with heads as deep; and it required some exertion of the king's
+philosophical reasoning to pronounce on the deception.
+
+One Haddock, who was desirous of becoming a preacher, but had a stuttering
+and slowness of utterance, which he could not get rid of, took to
+the study of physic; but recollecting that, when at Winchester, his
+schoolfellows had told him that he spoke fluently in his sleep, he tried,
+affecting to be asleep, to form a discourse on physic. Finding that he
+succeeded, he continued the practice: he then tried divinity, and spoke a
+good sermon. Having prepared one for the purpose, he sat up in his bed and
+delivered it so loudly that it attracted attention in the next chamber. It
+was soon reported that Haddock preached in his sleep; and nothing was
+heard but inquiries after the _sleeping preacher_, who soon found it his
+interest to keep up the delusion. He was now considered as a man truly
+inspired; and he did not in his own mind rate his talents at less worth
+than the first vacant bishopric. He was brought to court, where the
+greatest personages anxiously sat up through the night by his bedside.
+They tried all the maliciousness of Puck to pinch and to stir him: he was
+without hearing or feeling; but they never departed without an orderly
+text and sermon; at the close of which, groaning and stretching himself,
+he pretended to awake, declaring he was unconscious of what had passed.
+"The king," says Wilson, no flatterer of James, "privately handled him so
+like a chirurgeon, that he found out the sore." The king was present at
+one of these sermons, and forbade them; and his reasonings, on this
+occasion, brought the sleeping preacher on his knees. The king observed,
+that things studied in the day-time may be dreamed of in the night, but
+always irregularly, without order; not, as these sermons were, good and
+learned: as particularly the one preached before his Majesty in his sleep
+--which he first treated physically, then theologically; "and I observed,"
+said the king, "that he always preaches best when he has the most crowded
+audience." "Were he allowed to proceed, all slander and treason might pass
+under colour of being asleep," added the king, who, notwithstanding his
+pretended inspiration, awoke the sleeping preacher for ever afterwards.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+BASILICON DORON.
+
+
+That treatise of James I., entitled "Basilicon Doron; or, His Majesty's
+Instructions to his dearest Son Henry the Prince," was composed by the
+king in Scotland, in the freshness of his studious days; a work, addressed
+to a prince by a monarch which, in some respects, could only have come
+from the hands of such a workman. The morality and the politics often
+retain their curiosity and their value. Our royal author has drawn his
+principles of government from the classical volumes of antiquity; for then
+politicians quoted Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. His waters had, indeed,
+flowed over those beds of ore;[A] but the growth and vigour of the work
+comes from the mind of the king himself: he writes for the Prince of
+Scotland, and about the Scottish people. On its first appearance Camden
+has recorded the strong sensation it excited: it was not only admired, but
+it entered into and won the hearts of men. Harris, forced to acknowledge,
+in his mean style and with his frigid temper, that "this book contains
+some tolerable things," omits not to hint that "it might not be his own:"
+but the claims of James I. are evident from the peculiarity of the style;
+the period at which it was composed; and by those particular passages
+stamped with all the individuality of the king himself. The style is
+remarkable for its profuse sprinkling of Scottish and French words, where
+the Doric plainness of the one, and the intelligent expression of the
+other, offer curious instances of the influence of manners over language;
+the diction of the royal author is a striking evidence of the intermixture
+of the two nations, and of a court which had marked its divided interests
+by its own chequered language.
+
+[Footnote A: James, early in life, was a fine scholar, and a lover of
+the ancient historians, as appears from an accidental expression of
+Buchanan's, in his dedication to James of his "Baptistes;" referring to
+Sallust, he adds, _apud_ TUUM _Salustium_.]
+
+This royal manual still interests a philosophical mind; like one of those
+antique and curious pictures we sometimes discover in a cabinet,--studied
+for the costume; yet where the touches of nature are true, although the
+colouring is brown and faded; but there is a force, and sometimes even a
+charm, in the ancient simplicity, to which even the delicacy of taste may
+return, not without pleasure. The king tells his son:--
+
+"Sith all people are naturally inclined to follow their prince's example,
+in your own person make your wordes and deedes to fight together; and let
+your own life be a law-book and a mirror to your people, that therein they
+may read the practice of their own lawes, and see by your image what life
+they should lead.
+
+"But vnto one faulte is all the common people of this kingdome subject, as
+well burgh as land; which is, to judge and speak rashly of their prince,
+setting the commonweale vpon foure props, as wee call it; euer wearying of
+the present estate, and desirous of nouelties." The remedy the king
+suggests, "besides the execution of laws that are to be vsed against
+vnreuerent speakers," is so to rule, as that "the subjects may not only
+live in suretie and wealth, but be stirred up to open their mouthes in
+your iust praise."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+JAMES THE FIRST'S IDEA OF A TYRANT AND A KING.
+
+
+The royal author distinguishes a king from a tyrant on their first
+entrance into the government:--
+
+"A tyrant will enter like a saint, till he find himself fast under foot,
+and then will suffer his unruly affections to burst forth." He advises the
+prince to act contrary to Nero, who, at first, "with his tender-hearted
+wish, _vellem nescire literas_," appeared to lament that he was to execute
+the laws. He, on the contrary, would have the prince early show "the
+severitie of justice, which will settle the country, and make them know
+that ye can strike: this would be but for a time. If otherwise ye kyth
+(show) your clemencie at the first the offences would soon come to such
+heapes, and the contempt of you grow so great, that when ye would fall to
+punish the number to be punished would exceed the innocent; and ye would,
+against your nature, be compelled then to wracke manie, whom the
+chastisement of few in the beginning might have preserved. In this my own
+dear-bought experience may serve you for a different lesson. For I
+confess, where I thought (by being gracious at the beginning) to gain all
+men's heart to a loving and willing obedience, I by the contrarie found
+the disorder of the countrie, and the loss of my thanks, to be all my
+reward."
+
+James, in the course of the work, often instructs the prince by his own
+errors and misfortunes; and certainly one of these was an excess of the
+kinder impulses in granting favours; there was nothing selfish in his
+happiness; James seemed to wish that every one around him should
+participate in the fulness of his own enjoyment. His hand was always open
+to scatter about him honours and wealth, and not always on unworthy
+favourites, but often on learned men whose talents he knew well to
+appreciate. There was a warmth in the king's temper which once he himself
+well described; he did not like those who pride themselves on their tepid
+dispositions. "I love not one that will never be angry, for as he that is
+without sorrow is without gladness, so he that is without anger is without
+love. Give me the heart of a man, and out of that all his actions shall be
+acceptable." The king thus addresses the prince:--
+
+_On the Choice of Servants and Associates_.
+
+"Be not moved with importunities; for the which cause, as also for
+augmenting your Maiestie, be not so facile of access-giving at all times,
+as I have been."--In his minority, the choice of his servants had been
+made by others, "recommending servants unto me, more for serving, in
+effect, their friends that put them in, than their maister that admitted
+them, and used them well, at the first rebellion raised against me. Chuse
+you your own servantes for your own vse, and not for the vse of others;
+and, since ye must be _communis parens_ to all your people, chuse
+indifferentlie out of all quarters; not respecting other men's appetites,
+but their own qualities. For as you must command all, so reason would ye
+should be served of all.--Be a daily watchman over your own servants, that
+they obey your laws precisely: for how can your laws be kept in the
+country, if they be broken at your eare!--Bee homelie or strange with
+them, as ye think their behaviour deserveth and their nature may bear
+ill.--Employ every man as ye think him qualified, but use not one in all
+things, lest he wax proud, and be envied by his fellows.--As for the other
+sort of your companie and servants, they ought to be of perfect age, see
+they be of a good fame; otherwise what can the people think but that ye
+have chosen a companion unto you according to your own humour, and so have
+preferred those men for the love of their vices and crimes, that ye knew
+them to be guiltie of. For the people, that see you not within, cannot
+judge of you but according to the outward appearance of your actions and
+company, which only is subject to their sight."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE REVOLUTIONISTS OF THAT AGE.
+
+
+James I. has painted, with vivid touches, the Anti-Monarchists,
+or revolutionists, of his time.
+
+He describes "their imagined democracie, where they fed themselves with
+the hope to become _tribuni plebi_; and so, in a popular government, by
+leading the people by the nose, to bear the sway of all the rule.--Every
+faction," he adds, "always joined them. I was ofttimes calumniated in
+their popular sermons, not for any evill or vice in me,[A] but because I
+was a king, which they thought the highest evill; and, because they were
+ashamed to professe this quarrel, they were busie to look narrowly in all
+my actions, pretending to distinguish the lawfulness of the office from
+the vice of the person; yet some of them would snapper out well grossly
+with the trewth of their intentions, informing the people that all kings
+and princes were naturally enemies to the liberties of the Church; whereby
+the ignorant were emboldened (as bayards),[B] to cry the learned and
+modest out of it: but their parity is the mother of confusion, and enemie
+to vnitie, which is the mother of order." And it is not without eloquence
+his Majesty describes these factious Anti-Monarchists, as "Men, whom no
+deserts can oblige, neither oaths nor promises bind; breathing nothing but
+sedition and calumnies, aspiring without measure, railing without reason,
+and making their own imaginations the square of their conscience. I
+protest, before the great God, and, since I am here as vpon my testament,
+it is no place for me to lie in, that ye shall never find with any
+Hie-land, or Border theeves, greater ingratitude, and more lies and vile
+perjuries: ye may keep them for trying your patience, as Socrates did an
+evill wife."
+
+[Footnote A: The conduct of James I. in Scotland has even extorted praise
+from one of his bitterest calumniators; for Mrs. Macaulay has said--"His
+conduct, when King of Scotland, was in many points unexceptionable."]
+
+[Footnote B: An old French word, expressing, "A man that gapes or gazes
+earnestly at a thing; a fly-catcher; a greedy and unmannerly beholder."--
+COTGRAVE.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+OF THE NOBILITY OF SCOTLAND.
+
+
+The king makes three great divisions of the Scottish people: the church,
+the nobility, and the burghers.
+
+Of the nobility, the king counsels the prince to check
+
+"A fectless arrogant conceit of their greatness and power, drinking in
+with their very nourish-milk. Teach your nobilitie to keep your lawes, as
+precisely as the meanest; fear not their orping, or being discontented, as
+long as ye rule well: for their pretended reformation of princes taketh
+never effect, but where evil government proceedeth. Acquaint yourself so
+with all the honest men of your barone and gentlemen, giving access so
+open and affable, to make their own suites to you themselves, and not to
+employ the great lordes, their intercessours; so shall ye bring to a
+measure their monstrous backes. And for their barbarous feides (feuds),
+put the laws to due execution made by mee there-anent; beginning ever
+rathest at him that yee love best, and is oblished vnto you, to make him
+an example to the rest. Make all your reformations to begin at your elbow,
+and so by degrees to the extremities of the land."
+
+He would not, however, that the prince should highly contemn the nobility:
+"Remember, howe that error brake the king, my grandfather's heart.
+Consider that vertue followeth oftest noble blood: the more frequently
+that your court can be garnished with them, as peers and fathers of your
+land, thinke it the more your honour."
+
+He impresses on the mind of the prince ever to embrace the quarrel of the
+poor and the sufferer, and to remember the honourable title given to his
+grandfather, in being called "The poor man's king."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+OF COLONISING.
+
+
+James I. had a project of improving the state of those that dwelt in
+the isles, "who are so utterly barbarous," by intermixing some of the
+semi-civilised Highlanders, and planting colonies among them of inland
+subjects.
+
+"I have already made laws against the over-lords, and the chief of their
+clannes, and it would be no difficultie to danton them; so rooting out, or
+transporting the barbarous and stubborn sort, and planting civilised in
+their rooms."
+
+This was as wise a scheme as any modern philosopher could have suggested,
+and, with the conduct he subsequently pursued in Ireland, may be referred
+to as splendid proofs of the kingly duties so zealously performed by this
+monarch.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+OF MERCHANTS.
+
+
+Of merchants, as this king understood the commercial character, he had no
+honourable notion.
+
+He says, "They think the whole commonwealth ordained for raising them up,
+and accounting it their lawful gain to enrich themselves upon the losses
+of the rest of the people."
+
+We are not to censure James I. for his principles of political economy,
+which then had not assumed the dignity of a science; his rude and simple
+ideas convey popular truths.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+REGULATIONS FOR THE PRINCE'S MANNERS AND HABITS.
+
+
+The last portion of the "Basilicon Doron" is devoted to domestic
+regulations for the prince, respecting his manners and habits; which the
+king calls "the indifferent actions of a man."
+
+"A king is set as one on a stage, whose smallest actions and gestures all
+the people gazinglie do behold; and, however just in the discharge of his
+office, yet, if his behaviour be light or dissolute, in indifferent
+actions, the people, who see but the outward part, conceive pre-occupied
+conceits of the king's inward intention, which, although with time, the
+trier of truth, will evanish by the evidence of the contrarie effect, yet
+_interim patitur justus_, and pre-judged conceits will, in the meantime,
+breed contempt, the mother of rebellion and disorder. Besides," the king
+adds, "the indifferent actions and behaviour of a man have a certain
+holding and dependence upon vertue or vice, according as they are used or
+ruled."
+
+The prince is not to keep regular hours,
+
+"That any time in the four and twentie hours may be alike to you; thereby
+your diet may be accommodated to your affairs, and not your affairs to
+your diet."
+
+The prince is to eat in public, "to shew that he loves not to haunt
+companie, which is one of the marks of a tyrant, and that he delights not
+to eat privatelie, ashamed of his gluttonie." As a curious instance of the
+manners of the times, the king advises the prince "to use mostly to eat of
+reasonablie-grosse and common-meats; not only for making your bodie strong
+for travel, as that ye may be the hartlier received by your meane subiects
+in their houses, when their cheere may suffice you, which otherwaies would
+be imputed to you for pride, and breed coldness and disdain in them."
+
+I have noticed his counsel against the pedantry or other affectations of
+style in speaking.
+
+He adds, "Let it be plaine, natural, comelie, cleane, short, and
+sententious."
+
+In his gestures "he is neither to look sillily, like a stupid pedant; nor
+unsettledly, with an uncouth morgue, like a new-come-over cavalier; not
+over sparing in your courtesies, for that will be imputed to incivilitie
+and arrogance; nor yet over prodigal in jowking or nodding at every step,
+for that forme of being popular becometh better aspiring Absaloms than
+lawful kings; forming ever your gesture according to your present action;
+looking gravely, and with a majestie, when ye sit upon judgment, or give
+audience to embassadors; homely, when ye are in private with your own
+servants; merrily, when ye are at any pastime, or merry discourse; and let
+your countenance smell of courage and magnanimity when at the warres. And
+remember (I say again) to be plaine and sensible in your language; for
+besides, it is the tongue's office to be the messenger of the mind; it may
+be thought a point of imbecilitie of spirit in a king to speak obscurely,
+much more untrewely, as if he stood in awe of any in uttering his
+thoughts."
+
+Should the prince incline to be an author, the king adds--
+
+"If your engine (genius) spur you to write any workes, either in prose or
+verse, I cannot but allow you to practise it; but take no longsome works
+in hande, for distracting you from your calling."
+
+He reminds the prince with dignity and truth,
+
+"Your writes (writings) will remain as the true picture of your minde, to
+all posterities; if yee would write worthelie, chuse subjects worthie of
+you." His critical conception of the nature of poetry is its best
+definition. "If ye write in verse, remember that it is not the principal
+part of a poem to rime right, and flow well with many prettie wordes; but
+the chief commendation of a poem is, that when the verse shall bee taken
+sundry in prose, it shall be found so ritch in quick inventions and
+poetick floures, and in fair and pertinent comparisons, as it shall retain
+the lustre of a poem although in prose."
+
+The king proceeds touching many curious points concerning the prince's
+bodily exercises and "house-pastimes." A genuine picture of the customs
+and manners of the age: our royal author had the eye of an observer, and
+the thoughtfulness of a sage.
+
+The king closes with the hope that the prince's "natural inclination will
+have a happie simpathie with these precepts; making the wise man's
+schoolmaister, which is the example of others, to be your teacher; and not
+that overlate repentance by your own experience, which is the
+schoolmaister of fools."
+
+Thus have I opened the book, and I believe, the heart of James I. The
+volume remains a perpetual witness to posterity of the intellectual
+capacity and the noble disposition of the royal author.
+
+But this monarch has been unfairly reproached both by the political and
+religious; as far as these aspersions connect themselves with his
+character, they enter into our inquiry.
+
+His speeches and his writings are perpetually quoted by democratic
+writers, with the furious zeal of those who are doing the work of a party;
+they never separate the character of James from his speculative principles
+of government; and, such is the odium they have raised against him, that
+this sovereign has received the execration, or the ridicule, even of those
+who do not belong to their party. James maintained certain abstract
+doctrines of the times, and had written on "The Prerogative Royal," and
+"The Trew Laws of Free Monarchies," as he had on witches and devils. All
+this verbal despotism is artfully converted into so many acts of despotism
+itself; and thus they contrive their dramatic exhibition of a blustering
+tyrant, in the person of a father of his people, who exercised his power
+without an atom of brutal despotism adhering to it.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE KING'S IDEA OF THE ROYAL PREROGATIVE.
+
+
+When James asserted that a king is above the laws, he did not understand
+this in the popular sense; nor was he the inventor or the reviver of
+similar doctrines. In all his mysterious flights on the nature of "The
+Prerogative Royal," James only maintained what Elizabeth and all the
+Tudors had, as jealously, but more energetically exercised.[A] Elizabeth
+left to her successor the royal prerogative strained to its highest pitch,
+with no means to support a throne which in the succeeding reign was found
+to be baseless. The king employed the style of absolute power, and, as
+Harris says, "entertained notions of his prerogative amazingly great, and
+bordering on impiety." It never occurred to his calumniators, who are
+always writing, without throwing themselves back into the age of their
+inquiries, that all the political reveries, the abstract notions, and the
+metaphysical fancies of James I. arose from his studious desire of being
+an English sovereign, according to the English constitution--for from
+thence he derived those very ideas.
+
+[Footnote A: In Sir Symund D'Ewes's "Journals of the Parliament," and in
+Townshend's "Historical Collections," we trace in some degree Elizabeth's
+arbitrary power concealed in her prerogative, which she always considered
+as the dissolving charm in the magical circle of our constitution. But I
+possess two letters of the French ambassador to Charles IX., written from
+our court in her reign; who, by means of his secret intercourse with those
+about her person, details a curious narrative of a royal interview granted
+to some deputies of the parliament, at that moment refractory, strongly
+depicting the exalted notions this great sovereign entertained of the
+prerogative, and which she asserted in stamping her foot.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE LAWYERS' IDEA OF THE ROYAL PREROGATIVE.
+
+
+The truth is, that lawyers, in their anxiety to define, or to defend the
+shadowy limits of the royal prerogative, had contrived some strange and
+clumsy fictions to describe its powers; their flatteries of the imaginary
+being, whom they called the sovereign, are more monstrous than all the
+harmless abstractions of James I.
+
+They describe an English sovereign as a mysterious being, invested with
+absolute perfection, and a fabulous immortality, whose person was
+inviolable by its sacredness. A king of England is not subject to death,
+since the sovereign is a corporation, expressed by the awful plural the
+OUR and the WE. His majesty is always of full age, though in infancy; and
+so unlike mortality, the king can do no wrong. Such his ubiquity, that he
+acts at the same moment in different places; and such the force of his
+testimony, that whatever the sovereign declares to have passed in his
+presence, becomes instantly a perpetual record; he serves for his own
+witness, by the simple subscription of _Teste me ipso_; and he is so
+absolute in power, beyond the laws, that he quashes them by his negative
+voice.[A] Such was the origin of the theoretical prerogative of an ideal
+sovereign which James I. had formed: it was a mere curious abstraction of
+the schools in the spirit of the age, which was perpetually referring to
+the mysteries of state and the secrets of empires, and not a principle he
+was practising to the detriment of the subject.
+
+[Footnote A: Such are the descriptions of the British sovereign, to be
+found in Cowell's curious book, entitled "The Interpreter." The reader may
+further trace the modern genius of Blackstone, with an awful reverence,
+dignifying the venerable nonsense--and the commentator on Blackstone
+sometimes labouring to explain the explanations of his master; so obscure,
+so abstract, and so delicate is the phantom which our ancient lawyers
+conjured up, and which the moderns cannot lay.]
+
+James I. while he held for his first principle that a sovereign is only
+accountable to God for the sins of his government, an harmless and even a
+noble principle in a religious prince, at various times acknowledged that
+"a king is ordained for procuring the prosperity of his people." In his
+speech, 1603, he says,
+
+"If you be rich I cannot be poor; if you be happy I cannot but be
+fortunate. My worldly felicity consists in your prosperity. And that I am
+a servant is most true, as I am a head and governour of all the people in
+my dominions. If we take the people as one body, then as the head is
+ordained for the body and not the body for the head, so must a righteous
+king know himself to be ordained for his people, and not his people for
+him."
+
+The truth is always concealed by those writers who are cloaking their
+antipathy against monarchy, in their declamations against the writings of
+James I. Authors, who are so often influenced by the opinions of their
+age, have the melancholy privilege of perpetuating them, and of being
+cited as authorities for those very opinions, however erroneous.
+
+At this time the true principles of popular liberty, hidden in the
+constitution, were yet obscure and contested; involved in contradiction,
+in assertion and recantation;[A] and they have been established as much by
+the blood as by the ink of our patriots. Some noble spirits in the Commons
+were then struggling to fix the vacillating principles of our government;
+but often their private passions were infused into their public feelings;
+James, who was apt to imagine that these individuals were instigated by a
+personal enmity in aiming at his mysterious prerogative, and at the same
+time found their rivals with equal weight opposing the novel opinions,
+retreated still farther into the depths and arcana of the constitution.
+Modern writers have viewed the political fancies of this monarch through
+optical instruments not invented in his days.
+
+[Footnote A: Cowell, equally learned and honest, involved himself in
+contradictory positions, and was alike prosecuted by the King and the
+Commons, on opposite principles. The overbearing Coke seems to have aimed
+at his life, which the lenity of James saved. His work is a testimony of
+the unsettled principles of liberty at that time; Cowell was compelled to
+appeal to one part of his book to save himself from the other.]
+
+When Sir Edward Coke declared that the king's royal prerogative being
+unlimited and undefined, "was a great overgrown monster;" and, on one
+occasion, when Coke said before the king, that "his Majesty was defended
+by the laws,"--James, in anger, told him he spoke foolishly, and he said
+he was not defended by the laws, but by God (alluding to his "divine
+right"); and sharply reprimanded him for having spoken irreverently of Sir
+Thomas Crompton, a civilian; asserting, that Crompton was as good a man as
+Coke. The fact is, there then existed a rivalry between the civil and the
+common lawyers. Coke declared that the common law of England was in
+imminent danger of being perverted; that law which he has enthusiastically
+described as the perfection of all sense and experience. Coke was
+strenuously opposed by Lord Bacon and by the civilians, and was at length
+committed to the Tower (according to a MS. letter of the day, for the
+cause is obscure in our history), "charged with speaking so in parliament
+as tended to stir up the subjects' hearts against their sovereign."[A] Yet
+in all this we must not regard James as the despot he is represented: he
+acted as Elizabeth would have acted, for the sacredness of his own person,
+and the integrity of the constitution. In the same manuscript letter I
+find that, when at Theobalds, the king, with his usual openness, was
+discoursing how he designed to govern; and as he would sometimes, like the
+wits of all nations and times, compress an argument into a play on
+words,--the king said, "I will govern according to the good of the
+_common-weal_, but not according to the _common-will!_"
+
+[Footnote A: The following anecdotes of Lord Chief Justice Coke have not
+been published. They are extracts from manuscript letters of the times: on
+that occasion, at first, the patriot did not conduct himself with the
+firmness of a great spirit.
+
+_Nov. 19, 1616._
+
+"The thunderbolt hath fallen on the Lord Coke, which hath overthrown him
+from the very roots. The supersedeas was carried to him by Sir George
+Coppin, who, at the presenting of it, received it with dejection and
+tears. _Tremor et successio non cadunt in fortem et constantem_. I send
+you a distich on the Lord Coke--
+
+ "Jus condere Cocus potuit, sed condere jure
+ Non potuit; potuit condere jura cocis."
+
+It happened that the name of Coke, or rather Cook, admitted of being
+punned on, both in Latin and in English: for he was lodged in the Tower,
+in a room that had once been a kitchen, and as soon as he arrived, one had
+written on the door, which he read at his entrance--
+
+ "This room has long wanted a Cook."
+
+"The Prince interceding lately for _Edward Coke_, his Majesty answered,
+'He knew no such man.' When the Prince interceded by the name of Mr. Coke,
+his Majesty still answered, 'He knew none of that name neither; but he
+knew there was one Captain Coke, the leader of the faction in
+parliament.'"
+
+In another letter, Coke appears with greater dignity. When Lord Arundel
+was sent by the king to Coke, a prisoner in the Tower, to inform him that
+his Majesty would allow him to consult with eight of the best learned in
+the law to advise him for his cause, Coke thanked the king, but he knew
+himself to be accounted to have as much skill in the law as any man in
+England, and therefore needed no such help, nor feared to be judged by the
+law. He knew his Majesty might easily find, in such a one as he, whereby
+to take away his head; but for this he feared not what could be said.
+
+"I have heard you affirm," said Lord Arundel, "that by law, he that should
+go about to withdraw the subjects' hearts from their king was a traitor."
+Sir Edward answered, "That he held him an arch-traitor."
+
+James I. said of Coke, "That he had so many shifts that, throw him where
+you would, he still fell upon his legs."
+
+This affair ended with putting Sir Edward Coke on his knees before the
+council-table, with an order to retire to a private life, to correct his
+book of Reports, and occasionally to consult the king himself. This
+part of Coke's history is fully opened in Mr. Alexander Chalmers's
+"Biographical Dictionary."]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE KING'S ELEVATED CONCEPTION OF THE KINGLY CHARACTER.
+
+
+But what were the real thoughts and feelings of this presumed despot
+concerning the duties of a sovereign? His Platonic conceptions inspired
+the most exalted feelings; but his gentle nature never led to one act of
+unfeeling despotism. His sceptre was wreathed with the roses of his fancy:
+the iron of arbitrary power only struck into the heart in the succeeding
+reign. James only menaced with an abstract notion; or, in anger, with his
+own hand would tear out a protestation from the journals of the Commons:
+and, when he considered a man as past forgiveness, he condemned him to a
+slight imprisonment; or removed him to a distant employment; or, if an
+author, like Coke and Cowell, sent him into retirement to correct his
+works.
+
+In a great court of judicature, when the interference of the royal
+authority was ardently solicited, the magnanimous monarch replied:--
+
+"Kings ruled by their laws, as God did by the laws of nature; and ought as
+rarely to put in use their supreme authority as God does his power of
+working miracles."
+
+Notwithstanding his abstract principles, his knowledge and reflection
+showed him that there is a crisis in monarchies and a period in empires;
+and in discriminating between a king and a tyrant, he tells the prince--
+
+"A tyranne's miserable and infamous life armeth in end his own subjects to
+become his burreaux; and although this rebellion be ever unlawful on their
+part, yet is the world so wearied of him, that his fall is little meaned
+(minded) by the rest of his subjects, and smiled at by his neighbours."
+
+And he desires that the prince, his son, should so perform his royal
+duties, that, "In case ye fall in the highway, yet it should be with the
+honourable report and just regret of all honest men." In the dedicatory
+sonnet to Prince Henry of the "Basilicon Doron," in verses not without
+elevation, James admonishes the prince to
+
+ Represse the proud, maintaining aye the right;
+ Walk always so, as ever in his sight,
+ Who guards the godly, plaguing the prophane.
+
+The poems of James I. are the versifications of a man of learning and
+meditation. Such an one could not fail of producing lines which reflect
+the mind of their author. I find in a MS. these couplets, which condense
+an impressive thought on a favourite subject:--
+
+ Crownes have their compasse, length of daies their date,
+ Triumphs their tombes, Felicitie her fate;
+ Of more than earth, can earth make none partaker;
+ But knowledge makes the king most like his Maker.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: "Harl. MSS.," 6824.]
+
+These are among the elevated conceptions the king had formed of the
+character of a sovereign, and the feeling was ever present in his mind.
+James has preserved an anecdote of Henry VIII., in commenting on it, which
+serves our purpose:--
+
+"It was strange," said James I., "to look into the life of Henry VIII.,
+how like an epicure he lived! Henry once asked, whether he might be saved?
+He was answered, 'That he had no cause to fear, having lived so mighty a
+king.' 'But, oh!' said he, 'I have lived too like a king.' He should
+rather have said, not like a king--for the office of a king is to do
+justice and equity; but he only served his sensuality, like a beast."
+
+Henry VII. was the favourite character of James I.; and it was to gratify
+the king that Lord Bacon wrote the life of this wise and prudent monarch.
+It is remarkable of James I., that he never mentioned the name of
+Elizabeth without some expressive epithet of reverence; such as, "The late
+queen of famous memory;" a circumstance not common among kings, who do not
+like to remind the world of the reputation of a great predecessor. But it
+suited the generous temper of that man to extol the greatness he admired,
+whose philosophic toleration was often known to have pardoned the libel on
+himself for the redeeming virtue of its epigram. In his forgiving temper,
+James I. would call such effusions "the superfluities of idle brains."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+"THE BOOK OF SPORTS."
+
+
+But while the mild government of this monarch has been covered with the
+political odium of arbitrary power, he has also incurred a religious one,
+from his design of rendering the Sabbath a day for the poor alike of
+devotion and enjoyment, hitherto practised in England, as it is still
+throughout Europe. Plays were performed on Sundays at court, in
+Elizabeth's reign; and yet "the Protestants of Elizabeth" was the
+usual expressive phrase to mark those who did most honour to the reformed.
+The king, returning from Scotland, found the people in Lancashire
+discontented, from the unusual deprivation of their popular recreations on
+Sundays and holidays, after the church service. "With our own ears we
+heard the general complaint of our people." The Catholic priests were
+busily insinuating among the lower orders that the reformed religion was a
+sullen deprivation of all mirth and social amusements, and thus "turning
+the people's hearts." But while they were denied what the king terms
+"lawful recreations,"[A] they had substituted more vicious ones: alehouses
+were more frequented--drunkenness more general--tale-mongery and sedition,
+the vices of sedentary idleness, prevailed--while a fanatical gloom was
+spreading over the country.
+
+[Footnote A: These are enumerated to consist of dancing, archery, leaping,
+vaulting, May-games, Whitsun-ales, Morris-dances, and the setting up of
+May-poles, and other manly sports.]
+
+The king, whose gaiety of temper instantly sympathised with the multitude,
+and perhaps alarmed at this new shape which puritanism was assuming,
+published what is called "The Book of Sports," and which soon obtained the
+contemptuous term of "The Dancing Book."
+
+On this subject our recent principles have governed our decisions:
+with our habits formed, and our notions finally adjusted, this singular
+state-paper has been reprobated by piety; whose zeal, however, is not
+sufficiently historical. It was one of the state maxims of this
+philosophic monarch, in his advice to his son,
+
+"To allure the common people to a common amitie among themselves; and that
+certain daies in the yeere should be appointed for delighting the people
+with public spectacles of all honest games and exercise of arms; making
+playes and lawful games in Maie, and good cheare at Christmas; as also for
+convening of neighbours, for entertaining friendship and heartliness, by
+honest feasting and merriness; so that the sabbothes be kept holie, and no
+unlawful pastime be used. This form of contenting the people's minds hath
+been used in all well-governed republics."
+
+James, therefore, was shocked at the sudden melancholy among the people.
+In Europe, even among the reformed themselves, the Sabbath, after
+church-service, was a festival-day; and the wise monarch, could discover
+no reason why, in his kingdom, it should prove a day of penance and
+self-denial: but when once this unlucky "Book of Sports" was thrown among
+the nation, they discovered, to their own astonishment, that everything
+concerning the nature of the Sabbath was uncertain.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE SABBATARIAN CONTROVERSY.
+
+
+And, because they knew nothing, they wrote much. The controversy was
+carried to an extremity in the succeeding reign. The proper hour of the
+Sabbath was not agreed on: Was it to commence on the Saturday-eve? Others
+thought that time, having a circular motion, the point we begin at was not
+important, provided the due portion be completed. Another declared, in his
+"Sunday no Sabbath," that it was merely an ecclesiastical day which may be
+changed at pleasure; as they were about doing it, in the Church of Geneva,
+to Thursday,--probably from their antipathy to the Catholic Sunday, as the
+early Christians had anciently changed it from the Jewish Saturday. This
+had taken place, had the Thursday voters not formed the minority. Another
+asserted, that Sunday was a working day, and that Saturday was the
+perpetual Sabbath.[A] Some deemed the very name of Sunday profaned the
+Christian mouth, as allusive to the Saxon idolatry of that day being
+dedicated to the Sun; and hence they sanctified it with the "Lord's-day."
+Others were strenuous advocates for closely copying the austerity of the
+Jewish Sabbath, in all the rigour of the Levitical law; forbidding meat to
+be dressed, houses swept, fires kindled, &c.,--the day of rest was to be a
+day of mortification. But this spread an alarm, that "the old rotten
+ceremonial law of the Jews, which had been buried in the grave of Jesus,"
+was about to be revived. And so prone is man to the reaction of opinion,
+that, from observing the Sabbath with a Judaic austerity, some were for
+rejecting "Lord's-days" altogether; asserting, they needed not any;
+because, in their elevated holiness, all days to them were Lord's-days.[B]
+A popular preacher at the Temple, who was disposed to keep alive a
+cheerful spirit among the people, yet desirous that the sacred day should
+not pass like any other, moderated between the parties. He declared it was
+to be observed with strictness only by "persons of quality."[C]
+
+[Footnote A: Collier's "Ecclesiastical History," vol. ii. p. 758.]
+
+[Footnote B: Fuller's "Church History," book xi. p. 149. One of the most
+curious books of this class is Heylin's "History of the Sabbath," a work
+abounding with uncommon researches; it was written in favour of Charles's
+declaration for reviving lawful sports on Sundays. Warton, in the _first_
+edition of Milton's "Juvenile Poems," observed in a note on the lady's
+speech, in Comus, verse 177, that "it is owing to the Puritans ever since
+Cromwell's time that _Sunday_ has been made in England a day of gravity
+and severity: and many a staunch observer of the rites of the Church of
+England little suspects that he is conforming to the _Calvinism_ of an
+_English Sunday_." It is probable this gave unjust offence to grave heads
+unfurnished with their own national history, for in the _second edition_
+Warton cancelled the note. Truth is thus violated. The Puritans, disgusted
+with the levities and excesses of the age of James and Charles, as is
+usual on these points, vehemently threw themselves into an opposite
+direction; but they perhaps advanced too far in converting the Sabbath-day
+into a sullen and gloomy reserve of pharisaical austerity. Adam Smith, and
+Paley, in his "Moral and Political Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 73, have taken
+more enlightened views on this subject.]
+
+[Footnote C: "Let servants," he says, "whose hands are ever working,
+whilst their eyes are waking; let such who all the foregoing week had
+their cheeks moistened with sweat, and their hands hardened with labour,
+let such have some recreations on the Lord's-day indulged to them; whilst
+_persons of quality_, who may be said to keep Sabbath all the week long--I
+mean, who rest from hard labour--are concerned in conscience to observe
+the Lord's-day with the greater abstinence from recreations."]
+
+One of the chief causes of the civil war is traced to the revival of
+this "Book of Sports." Thus it happened that from the circumstance of our
+good-tempered monarch discovering the populace in Lancashire discontented,
+being debarred from their rustic sports--and, exhorting them, out of his
+_bonhomie_ and "fatherly love, which he owed to them all" (as he said), to
+recover their cheerful habits--he was innocently involving the country in
+divinity, and in civil war. James I. would have started with horror at the
+"Book of Sports," could he have presciently contemplated the archbishop,
+and the sovereign who persisted to revive it, dragged to the block. What
+invisible threads suspend together the most remote events!
+
+The parliament's armies usually chose Sundays for their battles, that the
+profanation of the day might be expiated by a field-sacrifice, and that
+the Sabbath-breakers should receive a signal punishment. The opinions of
+the nature of the Sabbath were, even in the succeeding reign, so opposite
+and novel, that plays were performed before Charles on Sundays. James I.,
+who knew nothing of such opinions, has been unjustly aspersed by those who
+live in more settled times, when such matters have been more wisely
+established than ever they were discussed.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: It is remarkable of James I. that he never pressed for the
+performance of any of his proclamations; and his facile disposition made
+him more tolerant than appears in our history. At this very time, the
+conduct of a lord mayor of London has been preserved by Wilson, as a proof
+of the city magistrate's piety, and, it may be added, of his wisdom. It is
+here adduced as an evidence of the king's usual conduct:--
+
+The king's carriages, removing to Theobalds on the Sabbath, occasioned a
+great clatter and noise in the time of divine service. The lord-mayor
+commanded them to be stopped, and the officers of the carriages, returning
+to the king, made violent complaints. The king, in a rage, swore he
+thought there had been no more kings in England than himself; and sent a
+warrant to the lord-mayor to let them pass, which he obeyed, observing--
+"While it was in my power, I did my duty; but that being taken away by a
+higher power, it is my duty to obey." The good sense of the lord-mayor so
+highly gratified James, that the king complimented him, and thanked him
+for it. Of such gentleness was the arbitrary power of James composed!]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+MOTIVES OF THE KING'S AVERSION TO WAR.
+
+
+The king's aversion to war has been attributed to his pusillanimity--as if
+personal was the same thing as political courage, and as if a king placed
+himself in a field of battle by a proclamation for war. The idle tale that
+James trembled at the mere view of a naked sword, which is produced as an
+instance of the effects of sympathy over the infant in the womb from his
+mother's terror at the assassination of Rizzio, is probably not true, yet
+it serves the purpose of inconsiderate writers to indicate his excessive
+pusillanimity; but there is another idle tale of an opposite nature which
+is certainly true:--In passing from Berwick into his new kingdom, the
+king, with his own hand, "shot out of a cannon so fayre and with so great
+judgment" as convinced the cannoniers of the king's skill "in great
+artillery," as Stowe records. It is probable, after all, that James I.
+was not deficient in personal courage, although this is not of consequence
+in his literary and political character. Several instances are recorded
+of his intrepidity. But the absurd charge of his pusillanimity and
+his pedantry has been carried so far, as to suppose that it affected
+his character as a sovereign. The warm and hasty Burnet says at once of
+James I.:--"He was despised by all abroad as a pedant without true
+judgment, courage, or steadiness." This "pedant," however, had "the true
+judgment and steadiness" to obtain his favourite purpose, which was the
+preservation of a continued peace. If James I. was sometimes despised by
+foreign powers, it was because an insular king, who will not consume the
+blood and treasure of his people (and James had neither to spare), may be
+little regarded on the Continent; the Machiavels of foreign cabinets will
+look with contempt on the domestic blessings a British sovereign would
+scatter among his subjects; his presence with the foreigners is only felt
+in his armies; and they seek to allure him to fight their battles, and to
+involve him in their interests.
+
+James looked with a cold eye on the military adventurer: he said, "No man
+gains by war but he that hath not wherewith to live in peace." But there
+was also a secret motive, which made the king a lover of peace, and which
+he once thus confidentially opened:--
+
+"A king of England had no reason but to seek always to decline a war; for
+though the sword was indeed in his hand, the purse was in the people's.
+One could not go without the other. Suppose a supply were levied to begin
+the fray, what certainty could he have that he should not want sufficient
+to make an honourable end? If he called for subsidies, and did not obtain,
+he must retreat ingloriously. He must beg an alms, with such conditions as
+would break the heart of majesty, through capitulations that _some members
+would make, who desire to improve the reputation of their wisdom, by
+retrenching the dignity of the crown in popular declamations_, and thus he
+must buy the soldier's pay, or fear the danger of a mutiny."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Hacket's "Life of Lord-Keeper Williams," p. 80. The whole is
+distinguished by italics, as the king's own words.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+JAMES ACKNOWLEDGES HIS DEPENDENCE ON THE COMMONS. THEIR CONDUCT.
+
+
+Thus James I., perpetually accused of exercising arbitrary power,
+confesses a humiliating dependence on the Commons; and, on the whole, at a
+time when prerogative and privilege were alike indefinite and obscure, the
+king received from them hard and rigorous usage. A king of peace claimed
+the indulgence, if not the gratitude, of the people; and the sovereign who
+was zealous to correct the abuses of his government, was not distinguished
+by the Commons from him who insolently would perpetuate them.
+
+When the Commons were not in good humour with Elizabeth, or James, they
+contrived three methods of inactivity, running the time to waste--_nihil
+agendo_, or _aliud agendo_, or _male agendo_; doing nothing, doing
+something else, or doing evilly.[A] In one of these irksome moments,
+waiting for subsidies, Elizabeth anxiously inquired of the Speaker, "What
+had passed in the Lower House?" He replied, "If it please your Majesty--
+seven weeks." On one of those occasions, when the queen broke into a
+passion when they urged her to a settlement of the succession, one
+of the deputies of the Commons informed her Majesty, that "the Commons
+would never _speak_ about a subsidy, or any other matter whatever; and
+that hitherto nothing but the most trivial discussions had passed in
+parliament: which was, therefore, a great assembly rendered entirely
+useless,--and all were desirous of returning home."[B]
+
+[Footnote A: I find this description in a MS. letter of the times.]
+
+[Footnote B: From a MS. letter of the French ambassador, La Mothe Fenelon,
+to Charles IX., then at the court of London, in my possession.]
+
+But the more easy and open nature of James I. endured greater hardships:
+with the habit of studious men, the king had an utter carelessness of
+money and a generosity of temper, which Hacket, in his Life of the
+Lord-Keeper Williams, has described. "The king was wont to give like a
+king, and for the most part to keep one act of liberality warm with
+the covering of another." He seemed to have had no distinct notions of
+total amounts; he was once so shocked at the sight of the money he had
+granted away, lying in heaps on a table, that he instantly reduced it to
+half the sum. It appears that Parliament never granted even the ordinary
+supplies they had given to his predecessors; his chief revenue was drawn
+from the customs; yet his debts, of which I find an account in the
+Parliamentary History, after a reign of twenty-one years, did not amount
+to 200,000_l._[A] This monarch could not have been so wasteful of his
+revenues as it is presumed. James I. was always generous, and left
+scarcely any debts. He must have lived amidst many self-deprivations; nor
+was this difficult to practise for this king, for he was a philosopher,
+indifferent to the common and imaginary wants of the vulgar of royalty.
+Whenever he threw himself into the arms of his Parliament, they left him
+without a feeling of his distress. In one of his speeches he says--
+
+"In the last Parliament I laid open the true thoughts of my heart; but I
+may say, with our Saviour, 'I have piped to you, and you have not danced;
+I have mourned, and you have not lamented.' I have reigned eighteen years,
+in which time you have had peace, and I have received far less supply than
+hath been given to any king since the Conquest."
+
+[Footnote A: "Parliamentary History," vol. v. p. 147.]
+
+Thus James, denied the relief he claimed, was forced on wretched
+expedients, selling patents for monopolies, craving benevolences, or free
+gifts, and such expedients; the monopolies had been usual in Elizabeth's
+reign; yet all our historians agree, that his subjects were never
+grievously oppressed by such occasional levies; this was even the
+confession of the contemporaries of this monarch. They were every day
+becoming wealthier by those acts of peace they despised the monarch for
+maintaining. "The kingdom, since his reign began, was luxuriant in gold
+and silver, far above the scant of our fathers who lived before us," are
+the words of a contemporary.[A] All flourished about the king, except the
+king himself. James I. discovered how light and hollow was his boasted
+"prerogative-royal," which, by its power of dissolving the Parliament,
+could only keep silent those who had already refused their aid.
+
+[Footnote A: Hacket's "Life of Lord-Keeper Williams."]
+
+A wit of the day described the Parliaments of James by this ludicrous
+distich:
+
+ Many faults complained of, few things amended,
+ A subsidy granted, the Parliament ended.
+
+But this was rarely the fact. Sometimes they addressed James I. by what
+the king called a "stinging petition;" or, when the minister, passing over
+in silence the motion of the Commons, pressed for supplies, the heads of a
+party replied, that to grant them were to put an end to Parliament. But
+they practised expedients and contrivances, which comported as little with
+the dignity of an English senate, as with the majesty of the sovereign.
+
+At a late hour, when not a third part of the house remained, and those who
+required a fuller house, amid darkness and confusion, were neither seen
+nor heard, they made a protest,--of which the king approved as little of
+the ambiguous matter, as the surreptitious means; and it was then, that,
+with his own hand, he tore the leaf out of the journal.[A] In the sessions
+of 1614 the king was still more indignant at their proceedings. He and the
+Scotch had been vilified by their invectives; and they were menaced by two
+lawyers, with a "Sicilian vespers, or a Parisian matins." They aimed to
+reduce the king to beggary, by calling in question a third part of his
+revenue, contesting his prerogative in levying his customs. On this
+occasion I find that, publicly in the Banqueting-house at Whitehall, the
+king tore all their bills before their faces; and, as not a single act was
+passed, in the phrase of the day this was called an _addle_ Parliament.[B]
+Such unhappy proceedings indicated the fatal divisions of the succeeding
+reign. A meeting of a different complexion, once occurred in 1621, late in
+James's reign. The monopolies were then abolished. The king and the prince
+shed reciprocal tears in the house; and the prince wept when he brought an
+affectionate message of thanks from the Commons. The letter-writer says,
+"It is a day worthy to be kept holiday; some say it shall, but I believe
+them not." It never was; for even this parliament broke up with the cries
+of "some tribunitial orators," as James designated the pure and the impure
+democratic spirits. Smollett remarks in his margin, that the king
+endeavoured to _cajole_ the Commons. Had he known of the royal tears, he
+had still heightened the phrase. Hard fate of kings! Should ever their
+tears attest the warmth of honest feelings, they must be thrown out of the
+pale of humanity: for Francis Osborne, that cynical republican, declares,
+that "there are as few abominable princes as tolerable kings; because
+princes must court the public favour before they attain supreme power, and
+then change their nature!" Such is the egotism of republicanism!
+
+[Footnote A: "Rushworth," vol. i. p. 54.]
+
+[Footnote B: From a MS. of the times.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+SCANDALOUS CHRONICLES.
+
+
+The character of James I. has always been taken from certain scandalous
+chronicles, whose origin requires detection. It is this mud which has
+darkened and disturbed the clear stream of history. The reigns of
+Elizabeth and James teemed with libels in church and state from opposite
+parties: the idleness of the pacific court of James I. hatched a viperous
+brood of a less hardy, but perhaps of a more malignant nature, than the
+Martin Mar-prelates of the preceding reign. Those boldly at once wrote
+treason, and, in some respects, honestly dared the rope which could only
+silence Penry and his party; but these only reached to _scandalum
+magnatum_, and the puny wretches could only have crept into a pillory. In
+the times of the Commonwealth, when all things were agreeable which
+vilified our kings, these secret histories were dragged from their lurking
+holes. The writers are meagre Suetoniuses and Procopiuses; a set of
+self-elected spies in the court; gossipers, lounging in the same circle;
+eaves-droppers; pryers into corners; buzzers of reports; and punctual
+scribes of what the French (so skilful in the profession) technically term
+_les on dit_; that is, things that might never have happened, although
+they are recorded: registered for posterity in many a scandalous
+chronicle, they have been mistaken for histories; and include so many
+truths and falsehoods, that it becomes unsafe for the historian either to
+credit or to disbelieve them.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Most of these works were meanly printed, and were usually
+found in a state of filth and rags, and would have perished in their own
+merited neglect, had they not been recently splendidly reprinted by Sir
+Walter Scott. Thus the garbage has been cleanly laid on a fashionable
+epergne, and found quite to the taste of certain lovers of authentic
+history! Sir Anthony Weldon, clerk of the king's kitchen, in his "Court of
+King James" has been reproached for gaining much of his scandalous
+chronicle from the purlieus of the court. For this work and some similar
+ones, especially "The None-Such Charles," in which it would appear that he
+had procured materials from the State Paper Office, and for other zealous
+services to the Parliament, they voted him a grant of 500_l_. "The Five
+Years of King James," which passes under the name of Sir Fulk Greville,
+the dignified friend of the romantic Sir Philip Sidney, and is frequently
+referred to by grave writers, is certainly a Presbyterian's third day's
+hash--for there are parts copied from Arthur Wilson's "History of James
+I.," who was himself the pensioner of a disappointed courtier; yet this
+writer never attacks the personal character of the king, though charged
+with having scraped up many tales maliciously false. Osborne is a
+misanthropical politician, who cuts with the most corroding pen that ever
+rottened a man's name. James was very negligent in dress; graceful
+appearances did not come into his studies. Weldon tells us how the king
+was trussed on horseback, and fixed there like a pedlar's pack or a lump
+of inanimate matter; the truth is, the king had always an infirmity in his
+legs. Further, we are told that this ridiculous monarch allowed his hat to
+remain just as it chanced to be placed on his head. Osborne once saw this
+unlucky king "in a green hunting-dress, with a feather in his cap, and a
+horn, instead of a sword, by his side; how suitable to his age, calling,
+or person, I leave others to judge from his pictures:" and this he
+bitterly calls "leaving him dressed for posterity!" This is the style
+which passes for history with some readers. Hume observes that "hunting,"
+which was James's sole recreation, necessary for his health, as a
+sedentary scholar, "is the cheapest a king can indulge;" and, indeed, the
+empty coffers of this monarch afforded no other.
+
+These pseudo-histories are alluded to by Arthur Wilson as "monstrous
+satires against the king's own person, that haunted both court and
+country," when, in the wantonness of the times, "every little miscarriage,
+exuberantly branched, so that evil report did often perch on them." Fuller
+has designated these suspicious scribes as "a generation of the people
+who, like _moths_, have lurked under the carpets of the council-table, and
+even like _fleas_, have leaped into pillows of the prince's bed-chamber;
+and, to enhance the reputation of their knowledge, thence derived that of
+all things which were, or were not, ever done or thought of."--_Church
+History,_ book x. p. 87.]
+
+Such was the race generated in this court of peace and indolence! And
+Hacket, in his "Life of the Lord-Keeper Williams," without disguising the
+fact, tells us that the Lord-Keeper "spared not for cost to purchase the
+most certain intelligence, by his fee'd pensioners, of _every hour's
+occurrences at court_; and was wont to say that no man could be a
+statesman without a great deal of money."
+
+We catch many glimpses of these times in another branch of the same
+family. When news-books, as the first newspapers were called, did not yet
+exist to appease the hungering curiosity of the country, a voluminous
+correspondence was carried on between residents in the metropolis and
+their country friends: these letters chiefly remain in their MS. state.[A]
+Great men then employed a scribe who had a talent this way, and sometimes
+a confidential friend, to convey to them the secret history of the times;
+and, on the whole, they are composed by a better sort of writers; for, as
+they had no other design than to inform their friends of the true state
+of passing events, they were eager to correct, by subsequent accounts the
+lies of the day they sometimes sent down. They have preserved some
+fugitive events useful in historical researches, but their pens are
+garrulous; and it requires some experience to discover the character of
+the writers, to be enabled to adopt their opinions and their statements.
+Little things were, however, great matters to these diurnalists; much time
+was spent in learning of those at court, who had quarrelled, or were on
+the point; who were seen to have bit their lips, and looked downcast; who
+was budding, and whose full-blown flower was drooping: then we have the
+sudden reconcilement and the anticipated fallings out, with a deal of the
+_pourquoi_ of the _pourquoi_.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: Mr. Lodge's "Illustrations of British History" is an eminent
+and elegant work of the _minutiae historicae_; as are the more recent
+volumes of Sir Henry Ellis's valuable collections.]
+
+[Footnote B: Some specimens of this sort of correspondence of the idleness
+of the times may amuse. The learned Mede, to his friend Sir Martin
+Stuteville, chronicles a fracas:--"I am told of a great falling out
+between my Lord Treasurer and my Lord Digby, insomuch that they came to
+_pedlar's blood_, and _traitor's blood_. It was about some money which my
+Lord Digby should have had, which my Lord Treasurer thought too much for
+the charge of his employment, and said himself could go in as good a
+fashion for half the sum. But my Lord Digby replies that he could not
+_peddle_ so well as his lordship."
+
+A lively genius sports with a fanciful pen in conveying the same kind of
+intelligence, and so nice in the shades of curiosity, that he can describe
+a quarrel before it takes place.
+
+"You know the _primum mobile_ of our court (Buckingham), by whose motion
+all the other spheres must move, or else stand still: the bright sun of
+our firmament, at whose splendour or glooming all our marygolds of the
+court open or shut. There are in higher spheres as great as he, but none
+so glorious. But the king is in progress, and we are far from court. Now
+to hear certainties. It is told me that my Lord of Pembroke and my Lord of
+Rochester are so far out, as it is almost come to a quarrel; I know not
+how true this is, but Sir Thomas Overbury and my Lord of Pembroke have
+been long jarring, and therefore the other is likely."
+
+Among the numerous MS. letters of this kind, I have often observed the
+writer uneasy at the scandal he has seasoned his letter with, and
+concluding earnestly that his letter, after perusal, should be thrown to
+the flames. A wish which appears to have been rarely complied with; and
+this may serve as a hint to some to restrain their tattling pens, if they
+regard their own peace; for, on most occasions of this nature, the letters
+are rather preserved with peculiar care.]
+
+Such was this race of gossipers in the environs of a court, where, steeped
+in a supine lethargy of peace, corrupting or corrupted, every man stood
+for himself through a reckless scene of expedients and of compromises.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+A PICTURE OF THE AGE FROM A MS. OF THE TIME.
+
+
+A long reign of peace, which had produced wealth in that age, engendered
+the extremes of luxury and want. Money traders practised the art of
+decoying the gallant youths of the day into their nets, and transforming,
+in a certain time, the estates of the country gentlemen into skins of
+parchment,
+
+ The wax continuing hard, the acres melting.
+
+ MASSINGER.
+
+Projectors and monopolists who had obtained patents for licensing all the
+inns and alehouses--for being the sole vendors of manufactured articles,
+such as gold lace, tobacco-pipes, starch, soap, &c., were grinding and
+cheating the people to an extent which was not at first understood,
+although the practice had existed in the former reign. The gentry, whose
+family pride would vie with these _nouveaux riches_, exhausted themselves
+in rival profusion; all crowded to "upstart London," deserting their
+country mansions, which were now left to the care of "a poor alms-woman,
+or a bed-rid beadsman."
+
+In that day, this abandonment of the ancient country hospitality for the
+metropolis, and this breaking-up of old family establishments, crowded
+London with new and distinct races of idlers, or, as they would now be
+called, unproductive members of society. From a contemporary manuscript,
+one of those spirited remonstrances addressed to the king, which it was
+probably thought not prudent to publish, I shall draw some extracts, as a
+forcible picture of the manners of the age.[A] Masters of ancient
+families, to maintain a mere exterior of magnificence in dress and
+equipage in the metropolis, were really at the same time hiding themselves
+in penury: they thrust themselves into lodgings, and "five or six knights,
+or justices of peace," with all their retinue, became the inmates of a
+shopkeeper; yet these gentlemen had once "kept the rusty chimneys of two
+or three houses smoking, and had been the feeders of twenty or forty
+serving-men: a single page, with a guarded coat, served their turn now."
+
+[Footnote A: The MS. is entitled "Balaam's Ass, or a True Discoverie
+touching the Murmurs and Feared Discontents of the Times, directed to King
+James."--Lansdowne Collection, 209. The writer, throughout, speaks of the
+king with the highest respect.]
+
+"Every one strives to be a Diogenes in his house and an emperor in the
+streets; not caring if they sleep in a tub, so they may be hurried in a
+coach; giving that allowance to horses and mares that formerly maintained
+houses full of men; pinching many a belly to paint a few backs, and
+burying all the treasures of the kingdom into a few citizens' coffers.
+
+"There are now," the writer adds, "twenty thousand masterless men turned
+off, who know not this night where to lodge, where to eat to-morrow, and
+ready to undertake any desperate course."
+
+Yet there was still a more turbulent and dangerous race of idlers, in
+
+"A number of younger brothers, of ancient houses, who, nursed up in
+fulness, pampered in their minority, and left in charge to their elder
+brothers, who were to be fathers to them, followed them in despair to
+London, where these untimely-born youths are left so bare, that their
+whole life's allowance was consumed in one year."
+
+The same manuscript exhibits a full and spirited picture of manners in
+this long period of peace.
+
+"The gentry are like owls, all feathers and no flesh; all show, and no
+substance; all fashion, and no feeding; and fit for no service but masks
+and May-games. The citizens have dealt with them as it is said the
+Indians are dealt with; they have given them counterfeit brooches and
+bugle-bracelets for gold and silver;[A] pins and peacock feathers for
+lands and tenements; gilded coaches and outlandish hobby-horses for goodly
+castles and ancient mansions; their woods are turned into wardrobes, their
+leases into laces; and their goods and chattels into guarded coats and
+gaudy toys. Should your Majesty fly to them for relief, you would fare
+like those birds that peek at painted fruits; all outside." The writer
+then describes the affected penurious habits of the grave citizens, who
+were then preying on the country gentlemen:--"When those big swoln
+leeches, that have thus sucked them, wear rags, eat roots, speak like
+jugglers that have reeds in their mouths; look like spittle-men,
+especially when your Majesty hath occasion to use them; their fat lies in
+their hearts, their substance is buried in their bowels, and he that will
+have it must first take their lives. Their study is to get, and their
+chiefest care to conceal; and most from yourself, gracious sir; not a
+commodity comes from their hand, but you pay a noble in the pound for
+_booking_, which they call _forbearing_[B] They think it lost time if they
+double not their principal in two years. They have attractive powders to
+draw these flies into their claws; they will entice men with honey into
+their hives, and with wax entangle them;[C] they pack the cards, and their
+confederates, the lords, deal, by which means no other men have ever good
+game. They have in a few years laid up riches for many, and yet can never
+be content to say--_Soul, take thy rest, or hand receive no more; do no
+more wrong:_ but still they labour to join house to house, and land to
+land. What want they of being kings, but the name? Look into the shires
+and counties, where, with their purchased lordships and manors, one of
+their private letters has equal power with your Majesty's privy seal.[D]
+It is better to be one of their hinds, than your Majesty's gentleman
+usher; one of their grooms, than your guards. What care they, if it be
+called tribute or no, so long as it comes in termly: or whether their
+chamber be called Exchequer, or the dens of cheaters, so that the money be
+left there."
+
+[Footnote A: Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir James Mitchell had the monopolies
+of gold lace, which they sold in a counterfeit state; and not only cheated
+the people, but, by a mixture of copper, the ornaments made of it are said
+to have rotted the flesh. As soon as the grievance was shown to James, he
+expressed his abhorrence of the practice, and even declared that no person
+connected with the villanous fraud should escape punishment. The brother
+of his favourite, Buckingham, was known to be one, and with Sir Giles
+Overreach (as Massinger conceals the name of Mompesson), was compelled to
+fly the country. The style of James, in his speech, is indeed different
+from kings' speeches in parliament: he speaks as indignantly as any
+individual who was personally aggrieved: "Three patents at this time have
+been complained of, and thought great grievances; my purpose is to strike
+them all dead, and, that time may not be lost, I will have it done
+presently. Had these things been complained of to me, before the
+parliament, I could have done the office of a just king, and have punished
+them; peradventure more than now ye intend to do. No private person
+whatsoever, were he ever so dear unto me, shall be respected by me by many
+degrees as the public good; and I hope, my lords, that ye will do me that
+right to publish to my people this my heart purposes. Proceed judicially;
+spare none, where ye find just cause to punish: but remember that laws
+have not their eyes in their necks, but in their foreheads."--Rushworth,
+vol. i. p. 26.]
+
+[Footnote B: The credit which these knavish traders gave their customers,
+who could not conveniently pay their money down, was carried to an
+exorbitant charge; since, even in Elizabeth's reign, it was one of the
+popular grievances brought into Parliament--it is there called, "A bill
+against _Double Payments_ of Book Debts." One of the country members, who
+made a speech consisting entirely of proverbs, said, "Pay the reckoning
+overnight, and you shall not be troubled in the morning."]
+
+[Footnote C: In the life of a famous usurer of that day, who died worth
+400,000_l_., an amazing sum at that period, we find numberless expedients
+and contrivances of the money trader, practised on improvident landholders
+and careless heirs, to entangle them in his nets. He generally contrived
+to make the wood pay for the land, which he called "making the feathers
+pay for the goose." He never pressed hard for his loans, but fondly
+compared his bonds "to infants, which battle best by sleeping;" to battle,
+is to be nourished--a term still retained in the battle-book of the
+university. I have elsewhere preserved the character and habits of the
+money-dealer in the age of James I.--See "Curiosities of Literature," 11th
+Edit. p. 228.]
+
+[Footnote D: It is observed, in the same life, that his mortgages, and
+statutes, and his judgments were so numerous, that his papers would have
+made a good map of England. A view of the chamber of this usurer is
+preserved by Massinger, who can only be understood by the modern reader in
+Mr. Gifford's edition:--
+
+ Here lay
+ A manor, bound fast in a skin of parchment;
+ Here a sure deed of gift for a market-town,
+ If not redeem'd this day, which is not in
+ The unthrift's purse; there being scarce one shire
+ In Wales or England, where my monies are not
+ Lent out at usury, the certain hook
+ To draw in more.
+
+ MASSINGER'S _City Madam_.]
+
+This crushing usury seemed to them a real calamity; for although in the
+present extraordinary age of calculations and artificial wealth, we can
+suffer "a dunghill-breed of men," like Mompesson and his contemptible
+partner of this reign, to accumulate in a rapid period more than a ducal
+fortune, without any apparent injury to the public welfare, the result was
+different then; the legitimate and enlarged principles of commerce were
+not practised by our citizens in the first era of their prosperity; their
+absorbing avarice rapidly took in all the exhausting prodigality of the
+gentry, who were pushed back on the people to prey in their turn on them;
+those who found their own acres disappearing, became enclosers of commons;
+this is one of the grievances which Massinger notices, while the writer of
+the "Five Years of King James" tells us that these discontents between the
+gentry and the commonalty grew out into a petty rebellion; and it appears
+by Peyton that "divers of the people were hanged up."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ANECDOTES OF THE MANNERS OF THE AGE.
+
+
+The minute picture of the domestic manners of this age exhibits the
+results of those extremes of prodigality and avarice which struck
+observers in that contracted circle which then constituted society. The
+king's prodigal dispensations of honours and titles seem at first to have
+been political; for James was a foreigner, and designed to create a
+nobility, as likewise an inferior order, who might feel a personal
+attachment for the new monarch; but the facility by which titles were
+acquired, was one cause which occasioned so many to crowd to the
+metropolis to enjoy their airy honour by a substantial ruin; knighthood
+had become so common, that some of the most infamous and criminal
+characters of this age we find in that rank.[A] The young females, driven
+to necessity by the fashionable ostentation of their parents, were brought
+to the metropolis as to a market; "where," says a contemporary, "they
+obtained pensions, or sometimes marriages, by their beauty." When
+Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, passed to his house, the ladies were at
+their balconies on the watch, to make themselves known to him; and it
+appears that every one of those ladies had sold their favours at a dear
+rate. Among these are some, "who pretending to be _wits_, as they called
+them," says Arthur Wilson,[B] "or had handsome nieces or daughters, drew a
+great resort to their houses." And it appears that Gondomar, to prevent
+these conversaziones from too freely touching on Spanish politics,
+sweetened their silence by his presents.[C] The same grossness of manners
+was among the higher females of the age; when we see that grave statesman,
+Sir Dudley Carleton, narrating the adventures of a bridal night, and all
+"the petty sorceries," the romping of the "great ladies, who were made
+shorter by the skirts," we discover their coarse tastes; but when we find
+the king going to the bed of the bride in his nightgown, to give a
+reveille-matin, and remaining a good time in or upon the bed, "Choose
+which you will believe;" this bride was not more decent than the ladies
+who publicly, on their balconies, were soliciting the personal notice of
+Gondomar.
+
+[Footnote A: A statesman may read with advantage Sir Edward Walker on "The
+inconveniences that have attended the frequent promotions to Titles, since
+King James came to the crown." Sir Edward appears not to disapprove of
+these promotions during the first ten years of his reign, but "when
+alliance to a favourite, riches though gotten in a shop, persons of
+private estates, and of families whose fathers would have thought
+themselves highly honoured to have been but knights in Queen Elizabeth's
+time, were advanced, then the fruits began to appear. The greater
+nobility were undervalued; the ancient baronage saw inferior families
+take precedency over them; nobility lost its respect, and a parity in
+conversation was introduced which in English dispositions begot contempt;
+the king could not employ them all; some grew envious, some factious, some
+ingrateful, however obliged, by being once denied."--P. 302.]
+
+[Footnote B: One may conjecture, by this expression, that the term of
+"wits" was then introduced, in the sense we now use it.]
+
+[Footnote C: Wilson has preserved a characteristic trait of one of the
+lady wits. When Gondomar one day, in Drury-lane, was passing Lady Jacob's
+house, she, exposing herself for a salutation from him, he bowed, but in
+return she only opened her mouth, gaping on him. This was again repeated
+the following day, when he sent a gentleman to complain of her incivility.
+She replied, that he had purchased some favours of the ladies at a dear
+rate, and she had a mouth to be stopped as well as others.]
+
+This coarseness of manners, which still prevailed in the nation, as it had
+in the court of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, could not but influence the
+familiar style of their humour and conversation. James I., in the Edict on
+Duels, employs the expression of _our dearest bedfellow_ to designate the
+queen; and there was no indelicacy attached to this singular expression.
+Much of that silly and obscene correspondence of James with Buckingham,
+while it adds one more mortifying instance of "the follies of the wise,"
+must be attributed to this cause.[A] Are not most of the dramatic works of
+that day frequently unreadable from this circumstance? As an historian, it
+would be my duty to show how incredibly gross were the domestic language
+and the domestic familiarities of kings, queens, lords, and ladies, which
+were much like the lowest of our populace. We may felicitate ourselves on
+having escaped the grossness, without, however, extending too far these
+self-congratulations.
+
+[Footnote A: Our wonder and surmises have been often raised at the strange
+subscriptions of Buckingham to the king,--"Your dog," and James as
+ingenuously calling him "dog Steenie." But this was not peculiar to
+Buckingham; James also called the grave Cecil his "little beagle." The
+Earl of Worcester, writing to Cecil, who had succeeded in his search after
+one Bywater, the earl says, "If the _king's beagle_ can hunt by land as
+well as he hath done _by water_, we will leave capping of _Jowler_, and
+cap the _beagle_." The queen, writing to Buckingham to intercede with the
+king for Rawleigh's life, addresses Buckingham by "My kind Dog." James
+appears to have been always playing on some whimsical appellative by which
+he characterised his ministers and favourites, analogous to the notions of
+a huntsman. Many of our writers, among them Sir Walter Scott, have
+strangely misconceived these playful appellatives, unconscious of the
+origin of this familiar humour. The age was used to the coarseness. We did
+not then excel all Europe, as Addison set the model, in the delicacy of
+humour; indeed, even so late as Congreve's time, they were discussing its
+essential distinction from wit.]
+
+The men were dissolved in all the indolence of life and its wantonness;
+they prided themselves in traducing their own innocence rather than
+suffer a lady's name to pass unblemished.[B] The marriage-tie lost
+its sacredness amid these disorders of social life. The luxurious
+idlers of that day were polluted with infamous vices; and Drayton, in the
+"Moon-calf," has elaborately drawn full-length pictures of the lady and
+the gentleman of that day, which seem scarcely to have required the
+darkening tints of satire to be hideous--in one line the Muse describes
+"the most prodigious birth"--
+
+ He's too much woman and She's too much man.
+
+[Footnote B. The expression of one of these gallants, as preserved by
+Wilson, cannot be decently given, but is more expressive, p. 147.]
+
+The trades of foppery, in Spanish fashions, suddenly sprung up in this
+reign, and exhibited new names and new things. Now silk and gold-lace
+shops first adorned Cheapside, which the continuator of Stowe calls "the
+beauty of London;" the extraordinary rise in price of these fashionable
+articles forms a curious contrast with those of the preceding reign.
+Scarfs, in Elizabeth's time, of thirty shillings value, were now wrought
+up to as many pounds; and embroidered waistcoats, which in the queen's
+reign no workman knew how to make worth five pounds, were now so rich and
+curious as to be cheapened at forty. Stowe has recorded a revolution in
+shoe-buckles, portentously closing in shoe-roses, which were puffed knots
+of silk, or of precious embroidery, worn even by men of mean rank,
+at the cost of more than five pounds, who formerly had worn gilt copper
+shoe-buckles.
+
+In the new and ruinous excess of the use of tobacco, many consumed three
+or four hundred pounds a year. James, who perceived the inconveniences of
+this sudden luxury in the nation, tried to discountenance it, although the
+purpose went to diminish his own scanty revenue. Nor was this attack on
+the abuse of tobacco peculiar to his majesty, although he has been so
+ridiculed for it; a contemporary publication has well described the mania
+and its consequences: "The smoak of fashion hath quite blown away the
+smoak of hospitalitie, and turned the chimneys of their forefathers into
+the noses of their children."[A] The king also reprobated the finical
+embarrassments of the new fashions, and seldom wore new clothes. When they
+brought him a Spanish hat, he flung it away with scorn, swearing he never
+loved them nor their fashions; and when they put roses on his shoes, he
+swore too, "that they should not make him a ruffe-footed dove; a yard of
+penny ribbon would serve that turn."
+
+[Footnote A: The "Peace-Maker," 1618.]
+
+The sudden wealth which seems to have rushed into the nation in this
+reign of peace, appeared in massy plate and jewels, and in "prodigal
+marriage-portions, which were grown in fashion among the nobility and
+gentry, as if the skies had rained plenty." Such are the words of Hacket,
+in his "Memorial of the Lord-Keeper Williams." Enormous wealth was often
+accumulated. An usurer died worth 400,000_l_.; Sir Thomas Compton, a
+citizen, left, it is said, 800,000_l_., and his heir was so overcome with
+this sudden irruption of wealth, that he lost his senses; and Cranfield, a
+citizen, became the Earl of Middlesex.
+
+The continued peace, which produced this rage for dress, equipage, and
+magnificence, appeared in all forms of riot and excess; corruption bred
+corruption. The industry of the nation was not the commerce of the many,
+but the arts of money-traders, confined to the suckers of the state; and
+the unemployed and dissipated, who were every day increasing the
+population in the capital, were a daring petulant race, described by a
+contemporary as "persons of great expense, who, having run themselves into
+debt, were constrained to run into faction; and defend themselves from the
+danger of the law."[A] These appear to have enlisted under some show of
+privilege among the nobility; and the metropolis was often shaken by
+parties, calling themselves Roaring-boys, Bravadoes, Roysters, and
+Bonaventures.[B] Such were some of the turbulent children of peace, whose
+fiery spirits, could they have found their proper vent, had been soldiers
+of fortune, as they were younger brothers, distressed often by their own
+relatives; and wards ruined by their own guardians;[C] all these were
+clamorous for bold piracies on the Spaniards: a visionary island, and a
+secret mine, would often disturb the dreams of these unemployed youths,
+with whom it was no uncommon practice to take a purse on the road. Such
+felt that--
+
+ --in this plenty
+ And fat of peace, our young men ne'er were train'd
+ To martial discipline, and our ships unrigg'd
+ Rot in the harbour.
+
+ MASSINGER.
+
+[Footnote A: "Five Years of King James." Harl. Misc.]
+
+[Footnote B: A. Wilson's "Hist. of James I." p. 28.]
+
+[Footnote C: That ancient oppressive institution of the Court of Wards
+then existed; and Massinger, the great painter of our domestic manners in
+this reign, has made it the subject of one of his interesting dramas.]
+
+The idleness which rusts quiet minds effervesces in fiery spirits pent up
+together; and the loiterers in the environs of a court, surfeiting with
+peace, were quick at quarrel. It is remarkable, that in the pacific reign
+of James I. never was so much blood shed in brawls, nor duels so
+tremendously barbarous. Hume observed this circumstance, and attributes it
+to "the turn that the romantic chivalry, for which the nation was formerly
+so renowned, had lately taken." An inference probably drawn from the
+extraordinary duel between Sir Edward Sackville, afterwards Lord Dorset,
+and the Lord Bruce.[A] These two gallant youths had lived as brothers, yet
+could resolve not to part without destroying each other; the narrative so
+wonderfully composed by Sackville, still makes us shudder at each blow
+received and given. Books were published to instruct them by a system of
+quarrelling, "to teach young gentlemen when they are beforehand and when
+behindhand;" thus they incensed and incited those youths of hope and
+promise, whom Lord Bacon, in his charge on duelling, calls, in the
+language of the poet, _Aurorae filii,_ the sons of the morning,--who often
+were drowned in their own blood! But, on a nearer inspection, when we
+discover the personal malignity of these hasty quarrels, the coarseness of
+their manners, and the choice of weapons and places in their mode of
+butchering each other, we must confess that they rarely partake of the
+spirit of chivalry. One gentleman biting the ear of a Templar, or
+switching a poltroon lord; another sending a challenge to fight in a
+saw-pit; or to strip to their shirts, to mangle each other, were
+sanguinary duels, which could only have fermented in the disorders of the
+times, amid that wanton pampered indolence which made them so petulant and
+pugnacious. Against this evil his Majesty published a voluminous edict,
+which exhibits many proofs that it was the labour of his own hand, for the
+same dignity, the same eloquence, the same felicity of illustration,
+embellish the state-papers;[B] and to remedy it, James, who rarely
+consented to shed blood, condemned an irascible lord to suffer the
+ignominy of the gallows.
+
+[Footnote A: It may be found in the popular pages of the "Guardian;" there
+first printed from a MS. in the library of the Harleys.]
+
+[Footnote B: "A publication of his Majestie's edict and seuere censure
+against private combats and combatants, &c." 1613. It is a volume of about
+150 pages. As a specimen of the royal style, I transcribe two passages:--
+
+"The pride of humours, the libertie of times, the conniuencie of
+magistrates, together with a kind of prescription of impunity, hath bred
+ouer all this kingdome, not only an opinion among the weakest, but a
+constant beleefe among many that desire to be reputed among the wisest, of
+a certain freedome left to all men vpon earth by nature, as their
+_birth-right_ to defend their reputations with their swords, and to take
+reuenge of any wrong either offered or apprehended, in that measure which
+their owne inward passion or affection doth suggest, without any further
+proofe; so as the challenge be sent in a civil manner, though without
+leave demanded of the _sovereign_," &c.
+
+The king employs a bold and poetical metaphor to describe duelling--to
+turn this hawk into a singing-bird, clip its wings, and cage it. "By
+comparing forraine mischiefes with home-bred accidents, it will not be
+hard to judge into what region this bolde bird of audacious presumption,
+in dealing blowes so confidently, will mount, if it bee once let flie,
+from the breast wherein it lurkes. And therefore it behoveth justice both
+to keep her still in her own close cage, with care that she learn neuer
+any other dittie then _Est bene_; but withall, that for preuention of the
+worst that may fall out, wee clippe her wings, that they grow not too
+fast. For according to that of the proverb, _It is labour lost to lay nets
+before the eyes of winged fowles,"_ &c. p. 13.]
+
+But, while extortion and monopoly prevailed among the monied men, and a
+hollow magnificence among the gentry, bribery had tainted even the lords.
+All were hurrying on in a stream of venality, dissipation, and want;
+and the nation, amid the prosperity of the kingdom in a long reign of
+peace, was nourishing in its breast the secret seeds of discontent and
+turbulence.
+
+From the days of Elizabeth to those of the Charleses, Cabinet transmitted
+to Cabinet the caution to preserve the kingdom from the evils of an
+overgrown metropolis. A political hypochondriacism: they imagined
+the head was becoming too large for the body, drawing to itself all the
+moisture of life from the middle and the extremities. A statute against
+the erection of new buildings was passed by Elizabeth; and from James to
+his successors proclamations were continually issued to forbid any growth
+of the city. This singular prohibition may have originated in their
+dread of infection from the plague, but it certainly became the policy
+of a weak and timid government, who dreaded, in the enlargement of
+the metropolis, the consequent concourse of those they designated as
+"masterless men,"--sedition was as contagious as the plague among the
+many. But proclamations were not listened to nor read; houses were
+continually built, for they were in demand,--and the esquires, with their
+wives and daughters, hastened to gay or busy London, for a knighthood, a
+marriage, or a monopoly. The government at length were driven to the
+desperate "Order in Council" to pull down all new houses within ten miles
+of the metropolis--and further, to direct the Attorney-General to indict
+all those sojourners in town who had country houses, and mulct them in
+ruinous fines. The rural gentry were "to abide in their own counties, and
+by their housekeeping in those parts were to guide and relieve the meaner
+people _according to the ancient usage of the English nation_." The
+Attorney-General, like all great lawyers, looking through the spectacles
+of his books, was short-sighted to reach to the new causes and the new
+effects which were passing around. The wisest laws are but foolish when
+Time, though not the lawyers, has annulled them. The popular sympathy was,
+however, with the Attorney-General, for it was imagined that the country
+was utterly ruined and depopulated by the town.
+
+And so in the view it appeared, and so all the satirists chorused! for in
+the country the ancient hospitality was not kept up; the crowd of
+retainers had vanished, the rusty chimneys of the mansion-house hardly
+smoked through a Christmas week, while in London all was exorbitantly
+prosperous; masses of treasure were melted down into every object of
+magnificence. "And is not this wealth drawn from our acres?" was the
+outcry of the rural censor. Yet it was clear that the country in no way
+was impoverished, for the land rose in price; and if manors sometimes
+changed their lords, they suffered no depreciation. A sudden wealth was
+diffused in the nation; the arts of commerce were first advancing; the
+first great ship launched for an Indian voyage, was then named the
+"Trade's Increase." The town, with its multiplied demands, opened a
+perpetual market for the country. The money-traders were breeding their
+hoards as the graziers their flocks; and while the goldsmiths' shops
+blazed in Cheap, the agriculturists beheld double harvests cover the soil.
+The innumerable books on agriculture published during these twenty years
+of peace is an evidence of the improvement of the country--sustained by
+the growing capitals of the men in trade. In this progress of domestic
+conveniency to metropolitan luxury, there was a transition of manners; new
+objects and new interests, and new modes of life, yet in their incipient
+state.
+
+The evils of these luxuriant times were of quick growth; and, as fast as
+they sprung, the Father of his people encountered them by his
+proclamations, which, during long intervals of parliamentary recess, were
+to be enforced as laws: but they passed away as morning dreams over a
+happy, but a thoughtless and wanton people.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+JAMES THE FIRST DISCOVERS THE DISORDERS AND DISCONTENTS OF A PEACE OF MORE
+THAN TWENTY YEARS.
+
+
+The king was himself amazed at the disorders and discontents he at length
+discovered; and, in one of his later speeches, has expressed a mournful
+disappointment:
+
+"And now, I confess, that when I looked before upon the face of the
+government, _I thought, as every man would have done_, that the people
+were never so happy as in my time; but even, as at divers times I have
+looked upon many of my coppices, riding about them, and they appeared, on
+the outside, very thick and well-grown unto me, but, when I turned into
+the midst of them, I found them all bitten within, and full of plains and
+bare spots; like the apple or pear, fair and smooth without, but when you
+cleave it asunder, you find it rotten at heart. Even so this kingdom, the
+_external_ government being as good as ever it was, and I am sure as
+learned judges as ever it had, and I hope as honest administering justice
+within it; and for peace, both at home and abroad, more settled, and
+longer lasting, than ever any before; together with as great plenty as
+ever: so as it may be thought, every man might sit in safety under his own
+vine and fig-tree," &c. &c.[A]
+
+But while we see this king of peace surrounded by national grievances, and
+that "this fair coppice was very thick and well-grown," yet loud in
+murmurs, to what cause are we to attribute them? Shall we exclaim with
+Catharine Macaulay against "the despotism of James," and "the intoxication
+of his power?"--a monarch who did not even enforce the proclamations or
+edicts his wisdom dictated;[B] and, as Hume has observed, while vaunting
+his prerogative, had not a single regiment of guards to maintain it. Must
+we agree with Hume, and reproach the king with his indolence and lore of
+amusement--"particularly of hunting?"[C]
+
+[Footnote A: Rushworth, vol. i. p. 29; sub anno 1621.]
+
+[Footnote B: James I. said, "I will never offer to bring a new custom upon
+my people without the people's consent; like a good physician, tell them
+what is amiss, if they will not concur to amend it, yet I have discharged
+my part." Among the difficulties of this king was that of being a
+foreigner, and amidst the contending factions of that day the "British
+Solomon" seems to have been unjustly reproached for his Scottish
+partialities.]
+
+[Footnote C: La Boderie, the French Ambassador, complains of the king's
+frequent absences; but James did not wish too close an intercourse with
+one who was making a French party about Prince Henry, and whose sole
+object was to provoke a Spanish war: the king foiled the French intriguer;
+but has incurred his contempt for being "timid and irresolute." James's
+cautious neutrality was no merit in the Frenchman's eye.
+
+La Boderie resided at our court from 1606 to 1611, and his "Ambassades,"
+in 5 vols., are interesting in English history. The most satirical
+accounts of the domestic life of James, especially in his unguarded hours
+of boisterous merriment, are found in the correspondence of the French
+ambassadors. They studied to flavour their dish, made of spy and gossip,
+to the taste of their master. Henry IV. never forgave James for his
+adherence to Spain and peace, instead of France and warlike designs.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE KING'S PRIVATE LIFE IN HIS OCCASIONAL RETIREMENTS.
+
+
+The king's occasional retirements to Royston and Newmarket have even been
+surmised to have borne some analogy to the horrid Capraea of Tiberius; but
+a witness has accidentally detailed the king's uniform life in these
+occasional seclusions. James I. withdrew at times from public life, but
+not from public affairs; and hunting, to which he then gave alternate
+days, was the cheap amusement and requisite exercise of his sedentary
+habits: but the chase only occupied a few hours. A part of the day was
+spent by the king in his private studies; another at his dinners, where he
+had a reader, and was perpetually sending to Cambridge for books of
+reference: state affairs were transacted at night; for it was observed, at
+the time, that his secretaries sat up later at night, in those occasional
+retirements, than when they were at London.[A] I have noticed, that the
+state papers were composed by himself; that he wrote letters on important
+occasions without consulting any one; and that he derived little aid from
+his secretaries. James was probably never indolent; but the uniform life
+and sedentary habits of literary men usually incur this reproach from
+those real idlers who bustle in a life of nothingness. While no one loved
+more the still-life of peace than this studious monarch, whose habits
+formed an agreeable combination of the contemplative and the active life,
+study and business--no king more zealously tried to keep down the growing
+abuses of his government, by personally concerning himself in the
+protection of the subject.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: Hacket's Scrinia Reserata, Part I. p. 27.]
+
+[Footnote B: As evidences of this zeal for reform, I throw into this note
+some extracts from the MS. letters of contemporaries.--Of the king's
+interference between the judges of two courts about prohibitions, Sir
+Dudley Carleton gives this account:--"The king played the best part in
+collecting arguments on both sides, and concluded that he saw much
+endeavour to draw water to their several mills; and advised them to take
+moderate courses, whereby the good of the subject might be more respected
+than their particular jurisdictions. The king sat also at the Admiralty,
+to look himself into certain disorders of government there; he told the
+lawyers 'he would leave hunting of hares, and hunt them in their quirks
+and subtilities, with which the subject had been too long abused.'"--MS.
+Letter of Sir Dudley Carleton.
+
+In "Winwood's Memorials of State" there is a letter from Lord Northampton,
+who was present at one of these strict examinations of the king; and his
+language is warm with admiration: the letter being a private one, can
+hardly be suspected of court flattery. "His Majesty hath in person, with
+the greatest dexterity of wit and strength of argument that mine ears ever
+heard, compounded between the parties of the civil and ecclesiastical
+courts, who begin to comply, by the king's sweet temper, on points that
+were held to be incompatible."--Winwood's Mem. iii. p. 54.
+
+In his progresses through the country, if any complained of having
+received injury from any of the court, the king punished, or had
+satisfaction made to the wronged, immediately.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+DISCREPANCIES OF OPINION AMONG THE DECRIERS OF JAMES THE FIRST.
+
+
+Let us detect, among the modern decriers of the character of James I.,
+those contradictory opinions, which start out in the same page; for the
+conviction of truth flashed on the eyes of those who systematically
+vilified him, and must often have pained them; while it embarrassed and
+confused those, who, being of no party, yet had adopted the popular
+notions. Even Hume is at variance with himself; for he censures James for
+his indolence, "which prevented him making any progress in the practice of
+foreign politics, and diminished that regard which all the neighbouring
+nations had paid to England during the reign of his predecessor," p. 29.
+Yet this philosopher observes afterwards, on the military character of
+Prince Henry, at p. 63, that "had he lived, he had probably promoted _the
+glory; perhaps not the felicity, of his people_. The unhappy prepossession
+of men in favour of ambition, &c., engages them into such pursuits _as
+destroy their own peace, and that of the rest of mankind_." This is true
+philosophy, however politicians may comment, and however the military may
+command the state. Had Hume, with all the sweetness of his temper, been a
+philosopher on the throne, himself had probably incurred the censure he
+passed on James I. Another important contradiction in Hume deserves
+detection. The king, it seems, "boasted of his management of Ireland as
+his masterpiece." According to the accounts of Sir John Davies, whose
+political works are still read, and whom Hume quotes, James I. "in the
+space of nine years made greater advances towards the reformation of that
+kingdom than had been effected in more than four centuries;" on this
+Hume adds that the king's "_vanity_ in this particular was not without
+foundation." Thus in describing that wisest act of a sovereign, the
+art of humanising his ruder subjects by colonisation, so unfortunate is
+James, that even his most skilful apologist, influenced by popular
+prepossessions, employs a degrading epithet--and yet he, who had indulged
+a sarcasm on the _vanity_ of James, in closing his general view of his
+wise administration in Ireland, is carried away by his nobler feelings.
+--"Such were the arts," exclaims the historian, "by which James introduced
+humanity and justice among a people who had ever been buried in the most
+profound barbarism. Noble cares! much superior to the vain and criminal
+glory of conquests." Let us add, that had the genius of James the First
+been warlike, had he commanded a battle to be fought and a victory to be
+celebrated, popular historians, the panders of ambition, had adorned their
+pages with bloody trophies; but the peace the monarch cultivated; the
+wisdom which dictated the plan of civilisation; and the persevering arts
+which put it into practice--these are the still virtues which give no
+motion to the _spectacle_ of the historian, and are even forgotten in his
+pages.
+
+What were the painful feelings of Catharine Macaulay, in summing up the
+character of James the First. The king has even extorted from her a
+confession, that "his conduct in Scotland was unexceptionable," but
+"despicable in his Britannic government." To account for this seeming
+change in a man who, from his first to his last day, was always the same,
+required a more sober historian. She tells us also, he affected "a
+sententious wit;" but she adds, that it consisted "only of quaint and
+stale conceits." We need not take the word of Mrs. Macaulay, since we have
+so much of this "sententious wit" recorded, of which probably she knew
+little. Forced to confess that James's education had been "a more learned
+one than is usually bestowed on princes," we find how useless it is to
+educate princes at all; for this "more learned education" made this prince
+"more than commonly deficient in all the points he pretended to have any
+knowledge of." This incredible result gives no encouragement for a prince;
+having a Buchanan for his tutor. Smollett, having compiled the popular
+accusations of the "vanity, the prejudices, the littleness of soul," of
+this abused monarch, surprises one in the same page by discovering enough
+good qualities to make something more than a tolerable king. "His reign,
+though ignoble to himself, was happy to his people, who were enriched by
+commerce, felt no severe impositions, while they made considerable
+progress in their liberties." So that, on the whole, the nation appears
+not to have had all the reason they have so fully exercised in deriding
+and vilifying a sovereign, who had made them prosperous at the price of
+making himself contemptible! I shall notice another writer, of an amiable
+character, as an evidence of the influence of popular prejudice, and the
+effect of truth.
+
+When James went to Denmark to fetch his queen, he passed part of his time
+among the learned; but such was his habitual attention in studying the
+duties of the sovereign, that he closely attended the Danish courts of
+justice; and Daines Barrington, in his curious "Observations on the
+Statutes," mentions, that the king borrowed from the Danish code three
+statutes for the punishment of criminals. But so provocative of sarcasm is
+the ill-used name of this monarch, that our author could not but shrewdly
+observe, that James "spent more time in those courts than in attending
+upon his destined consort." Yet this is not true: the king was jovial
+there, and was as indulgent a husband as he was a father. Osborne even
+censures James for once giving marks of his uxoriousness![A] But while
+Daines Barrington degrades, by unmerited ridicule, the honourable
+employment of the "British Solomon," he becomes himself perplexed at the
+truth that flashes on his eyes. He expresses the most perfect admiration
+of James the First, whose statutes he declares "deserve much to be
+enforced; nor do I find any one which hath the least tendency to extend
+the prerogative, or abridge the liberties and rights of his subjects." He
+who came to scoff remained to pray. Thus a lawyer, in examining the laws
+of James the First, concludes by approaching nearer to the truth: the step
+was a bold one! He says, "_It is at present a sort of fashion_ to suppose
+that this king, because he was a pedant, had no real understanding, or
+merit." Had Daines Barrington been asked for proofs of the pedantry of
+James the First, he had been still more perplexed; but what can be more
+convincing than a lawyer, on a review of the character of James the First,
+being struck, as he tells us, by "his desire of being instructed in the
+English law, and holding frequent conferences for this purpose with the
+most eminent lawyers,--as Sir Edward Coke, and others!" Such was the
+monarch whose character was perpetually reproached for indolent habits,
+and for exercising arbitrary power! Even Mr. Brodie, the vehement
+adversary of the Stuarts, quotes and admires James's prescient decision on
+the character of Laud in that remarkable conversation with Buckingham and
+Prince Charles recorded by Hacket.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 334.]
+
+[Footnote B: Brodie's "History of British Empire," vol. ii. p. 244, 411.]
+
+But let us leave these moderns perpetuating traditional prejudices, and
+often to the fiftieth echo, still sounding with no voice of its own, to
+learn what the unprejudiced contemporaries of James I. thought of the
+cause of the disorders of their age. They were alike struck by the wisdom
+and the zeal of the monarch, and the prevalent discontents of this long
+reign of peace. At first, says the continuator of Stowe, all ranks but
+those "who were settled in piracy," as he designates the cormorants of
+war, and curiously enumerates their classes, "were right joyful of the
+peace; but, in a few years afterwards, all the benefits were generally
+forgotten, and the happiness of the general peace of the most part
+contemned." The honest annalist accounts for this unexpected result by the
+natural reflection--"Such is the world's corruption, and man's vile
+ingratitude."[A] My philosophy enables me to advance but little beyond. A
+learned contemporary, Sir Symond D'Ewes, in his manuscript diary, notices
+the death of the monarch, whom he calls "our learned and peaceable
+sovereign."--"It did not a little amaze me to see all men generally slight
+and disregard the loss of so mild and gentle a prince, which made me even
+to feel, that the ensuing times might yet render his loss more sensible,
+and his memory more dear unto posterity." Sir Symond censures the king for
+not engaging in the German war to support the Palsgrave, and maintain "the
+true church of God;" but deeper politicians have applauded the king for
+avoiding a war, in which he could not essentially have served the
+interests of the rash prince who had assumed the title of King of
+Bohemia.[B] "Yet," adds Sir Symond, "if we consider his virtues and his
+learning, his augmenting the liberties of the English, rather than his
+oppressing them by any unlimited or illegal taxes and corrosions, his
+death deserved more sorrow and condolement from his subjects than it
+found."[C]
+
+[Footnote A: Stowe's Annals, p. 845.]
+
+[Footnote B: See Sir Edward Walker's "Hist. Discourses," p. 321; and
+Barrington's "Observ. on the Statutes," who says, "For this he deserves
+the highest praise and commendation from a nation of islanders."]
+
+[Footnote C: Harl. MSS. 646.]
+
+Another contemporary author, Wilson, has not ill-traced the generations
+of this continued peace--"peace begot plenty, plenty begot ease and
+wantonness, and ease and wantonness begot poetry, and poetry swelled out
+into that bulk in this king's time which begot monstrous satyrs." Such
+were the laseivious times, which dissolving the ranks of society in a
+general corruption, created on one part the imaginary and unlimited wants
+of prosperity; and on the other produced the riotous children of
+indolence, and the turbulent adventurers of want. The rank luxuriance of
+this reign was a steaming hot-bed of peace, which proved to be the
+seed-plot of that revolution which was reserved for the unfortunate son.
+
+In the subsequent reign a poet seems to have taken a retrospective view of
+the age of peace of James I. contemplating on its results in his own
+disastrous times--
+
+ --States that never know
+ A change but in their growth, which a long peace
+ Hath brought unto perfection, are like steel,
+ Which being neglected will consume itself
+ With its own rust; so doth Security
+ Eat through the hearts of states, while they are sleeping
+ And lulled into false quiet.
+
+ NABB'S _Hannibal and Scipio_.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+SUMMARY OF HIS CHARACTER.
+
+
+Thus the continued peace of James I. had calamities of its own! Are we to
+attribute them to the king? It has been usual with us, in the solemn
+expiations of our history, to convert the sovereign into the scape-goat
+for the people; the historian, like the priest of the Hebrews, laying his
+hands on Azazel,[A] the curses of the multitude are heaped on that devoted
+head. And thus the historian conveniently solves all ambiguous events.
+
+[Footnote A: The Hebrew name, which Calmet translates _Bouc Emissaire_,
+and we _Scape Goat_, or rather _Escape Goat_.]
+
+The character of James I. is a moral phenomenon, a singularity of a
+complex nature. We see that we cannot trust to those modern writers who
+have passed their censures upon him, however just may be those very
+censures; for when we look narrowly into their representations, as surely
+we find, perhaps without an exception, that an invective never closes
+without some unexpected mitigating circumstance, or qualifying abatement.
+At the moment of inflicting the censure, some recollection in opposition
+to what is asserted passes in the mind, and to approximate to Truth, they
+offer a discrepancy, a self-contradiction. James must always be condemned
+on a system, while his apology is only allowed the benefit of a
+parenthesis.
+
+How it has happened that our luckless crowned philosopher has been the
+common mark at which so many quivers have been emptied, should be quite
+obvious when so many causes were operating against him. The shifting
+positions into which he was cast, and the ambiguity of his character, will
+unriddle the enigma of his life. Contrarieties cease to be contradictions
+when operated on by external causes.
+
+James was two persons in one, frequently opposed to each other. He was an
+antithesis in human nature--or even a solecism. We possess ample evidence
+of his shrewdness and of his simplicity; we find the lofty regal style
+mingled with his familiar bonhommie. Warm, hasty, and volatile, yet with
+the most patient zeal to disentangle involved deception; such gravity in
+sense, such levity in humour; such wariness and such indiscretion; such
+mystery and such openness--all these must have often thrown his Majesty
+into some awkward dilemmas. He was a man of abstract speculation in the
+theory of human affairs; too witty or too aphoristic, he never seemed at a
+loss to decide, but too careless, perhaps too infirm, ever to come to a
+decision, he leaned on others. He shrunk from the council-table; he had
+that distaste for the routine of business which studious sedentary men are
+too apt to indulge; and imagined that his health, which he said was the
+health of the kingdom, depended on the alternate days which he devoted to
+the chase; Royston and Theobalds were more delectable than a deputation
+from the Commons, or the Court at Whitehall.
+
+It has not always been arbitrary power which has forced the people into
+the dread circle of their fate, seditions, rebellions, and civil wars; nor
+always oppressive taxation which has given rise to public grievances. Such
+were not the crimes of James the First. Amid the full blessings of peace,
+we find how the people are prone to corrupt themselves, and how a
+philosopher on the throne, the father of his people, may live without
+exciting gratitude, and die without inspiring regret--unregarded,
+unremembered!
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+ABERNETHY'S opinion of enthusiasm, 145.
+
+ABSTRACTION of mind in great men, 133-136.
+
+ACTORS, traits of character in great, 137.
+
+ADRIAN VI., Pope, persecutes literary men, 18.
+
+AESTHETIC Critics, 282.
+
+AKENSIDE on the nature of genius, 30.
+
+ALFIERI, childhood of, 32;
+ loneliness of his character, 96;
+ excited by Plutarch's works, 141.
+
+ANGELO, Michael, illustrates Dante, 21;
+ his ideas of intellectual labour, 85;
+ his reason for a solitary life, 111;
+ his picture of battle of Pisa destroyed by Bandinelli, 158;
+ his elevated character, 252;
+ his letter to Vasari describing the death of his servant, 373.
+
+ANTIPATHIES of men of genius, 160-163.
+
+ANXIETY of genius, 74;
+ of authors and artists over their labours, 80-88.
+
+ARISTOPHANES, popularised by a false preface, 287.
+
+ART FRIENDSHIPS, 209-210.
+
+ARTISTS, "Studies," or first thoughts, 131;
+ their mutual jealousies, 156-158.
+
+AUTOBIOGRAPHY, its interest, 295.
+
+
+BARRY the painter, his love of ancient literature, 23;
+ his general enthusiasm, 60;
+ his rude eloquence, 107.
+
+BAILLET and his catalogue, 352.
+
+BEATTIE describes the powerful effect on himself of metaphysical study,
+ 147.
+
+BIRCH, Dr., and Robertson the Historian, 342-350.
+
+BOCCACCIO'S friendship for Petrarch, 212-214.
+
+BOOK COLLECTORS, 227-231.
+
+BOOKSELLERS, the test of public opinion, 194.
+
+BOSIUS, his researches in the Roman catacombs, 144.
+
+BOYLE on the disposition of childhood, 31;
+ his advertisement against visitors, _n_, 113;
+ his idea of a literary retreat, 188.
+
+BRUCE the traveller disbelieved, 78.
+
+BUFFON gives a reason for his fame, 92.
+
+BUONAPARTE revives old military tactics, 266.
+
+BURNS'S diary of the heart, 71.
+
+BURTON, his constitutional melancholy, 220.
+
+BUNYAN a self-taught genius, 60.
+
+BYRON'S loneliness of feeling, _n._, 96.
+
+
+CALUMNY frequently attacks genius, 185.
+
+CANTENAC and his autobiography, 296.
+
+CARACCI, the, their unfortunate jealousies, 157.
+
+CASTAGNO murders a rival artist, 157.
+
+CHARLES V., friendship for Titian, 253;
+ Robertson's life of, 343.
+
+CHATELET, Madame de, a female philosopher and friend of Voltaire, 95.
+
+CHATHAM, Earl of, his constancy of study, 96.
+
+CHENIER a literary fratricide, 173.
+
+CICERO on youthful influence, 32.
+
+CLARENDON, his love of retirement, 111.
+
+COACHES, their first invention, 359.
+
+COAL, its first use as fuel, 362.
+
+COMA VIGIL, a disease produced by study, 147.
+
+COMPOSITION, its toils, 80-81.
+
+CONTEMPORARY criticism, frequently unjust, 75.
+
+CONVERSATIONS of men of genius, 99-109;
+ those who converse well seldom write well, 104.
+
+COTIN, Abbe, troubled by wealth, 188.
+
+CRACHERODE, Rev. C.M., his collections of art and literature, _n._, 13.
+
+CRITICISM not always just, 65-75.
+
+CURRIE, his idea of the power of genius, 26.
+
+CUVIER'S discoveries in natural history, 145.
+
+
+DANTE, his great abstraction of mind, 134.
+
+DEATHS of literary men, 243.
+
+DEPRECIATION, theory of, 160.
+
+DIARIES, their value, 122.
+
+DISEASE induced by severe study, 147.
+
+DOMENICHINO poisoned by rivals, 158.
+
+DOMESTIC Novelties at first condemned, 355-364.
+
+DOMESTIC life of literary men, 173-186.
+
+DREAMS of eminent men, 127-128.
+
+DROUAIS an enthusiastic painter, 153.
+
+
+ENGLAND and its tastes, 264.
+
+
+FAMILY affection an incentive to genius, 179-182.
+
+FENELON'S early enthusiasm for Greece, 151.
+
+FIRST STUDIES of great men, 55-59;
+ first thoughts for great works, 129-133.
+
+FORKS, when first used, 356.
+
+FRANKLIN, Dr., notes the calming of the sea, 133;
+ his influence on American manners, 272.
+
+FUSELI'S imaginative power, 151.
+
+
+GALILEO invents the pendulum, 132.
+
+GALVANISM first discovered, 133.
+
+GESNER recommends a study of literature to artists, 22;
+ on enthusiasm, 154;
+ his wife a model for those of literary men, 206-208.
+
+GLEIM and his portrait gallery, 211.
+
+GOLDSMITH contrasted with Johnson, 294.
+
+GOLDONI overworks his mind, 147.
+
+GOVERNMENT of the thoughts, 117.
+
+GRAY'S excitement in composing verse, 141;
+
+GUIBERT, his great work on military tactics, 265.
+
+
+HABITUAL PURSUITS, their power over the mind, 302-304.
+
+HALLUCINATIONS of genius, 148;
+ realities with some minds, 150.
+
+HAYDN, his regulation of his time, 92.
+
+HELMONT'S (Van) love of study, 152.
+
+HERBERT of Cherbury, Lord, questions the Deity as to the publication of
+ his book, 148.
+
+HOBBES, theory to explain his terror, 150.
+
+HOGARTH, attacks on, _n._ 87.
+
+HOLLIS, his miserable celibacy, 201.
+
+HONOURS awarded literary men, 249-258.
+
+HORNE (Bishop), his love of literary labour, 135.
+
+HUME the historian, his irritability, 86;
+ unfitted for gay life, 99;
+ gives his reason for literary labour, _n._ 177;
+ endeavours to correct Robertson, 342.
+
+HUNTER, Dr., fraternal jealousy, 156.
+
+HYPOCHONDRIA, its cause and effect, 150.
+
+
+IDEALITY defined, 137;
+ its power, 138-154.
+
+INCOMPLETED books, 350-355.
+
+INDUSTRY of great writers, 125.
+
+INFLUENCE of authors, 267-270; 273-277.
+
+INTELLECTUAL nobility, 250.
+
+IMITATION in literature, 305-307.
+
+IRRITABILITY of genius, 70, 86-88.
+
+ISOCRATES' belief in native character, 32.
+
+
+JAMES I., a critical disquisition on the character of, 385-455.
+
+JULIAN, Emperor, anecdotes of, 97.
+
+JEALOUSY in art and literature, 154-159;
+ of honours paid to literary men, 251.
+
+JOHNSON, Dr., defines the literary character, 12;
+ his moral dignity, 192;
+ his metaphysical loves, 200;
+ anecdotes of him and Goldsmith, 294.
+
+JUVENILE WORKS, their value, 67.
+
+
+LABOUR endured by great authors, 75;
+ a pleasure to some minds, 176-177.
+
+LETTERS in the vernacular idiom, 375-379.
+
+LINNAEUS sensitive to ridicule, 75;
+ honours awarded to, 191.
+
+LITERARY FRIENDSHIP, 209-217.
+
+LITERATURE an avenue to glory, 248.
+
+LOCKE'S simile of the human mind, 25.
+
+
+MANNERISTS in literature, 293.
+
+MARCO Polo ridiculed unjustly, _n._ 79.
+
+MATRIMONIAL STATE in literature and art, 198-208.
+
+MAZZUCHELLI a great literary historian, 352.
+
+MEDITATION, value of, 129.
+
+MEMORY, as an art, 120, 122.
+
+MENDELSSOHN, Moses, his remarkable history, 61-64.
+
+MEN of LETTERS, their definition, 226-238.
+
+METASTASIO a bad sportsman, 38;
+ his susceptibility, 140.
+
+MILTON, his high idea of the literary character, 12;
+ his theory of genius, 25;
+ his love of study, 135;
+ sacrifices sight to poetry, 152.
+
+MISCELLANISTS and their works, 282-286.
+
+MODES OF STUDY used by great men, 125.
+
+MOLIERE, his dramatic career, 310-325.
+
+MONTAIGNE, his personal traits, 223.
+
+MORE, Dr., on enthusiasm of genius, 149.
+
+MORERI devotes a life to literature, 152.
+
+MORTIMER the artist, his athletic exercises, 39.
+
+MURATORI, his literary industry, 351.
+
+
+NATIONAL tastes in literature, 260.
+
+NECESSITY, its influence on literature, 193-194.
+
+
+OBSCURE BIRTHS of great men, 248-249.
+
+OLD AGE of literary men, 238-244.
+
+
+PECULIAR habits of authors, 119-120.
+
+PEIRESC, his early bias toward literature, 234;
+ his studious career, 235.
+
+PERSONAL CHARACTER differs from the literary one, 217-226.
+
+PETRARCH'S remarkable conversation on his melancholy, 68;
+ his mode of life, 114.
+
+POPE, his anxiety over his Homer, 81;
+ severity of his early studies, 147.
+
+POUSSIN fears trading in art, 193.
+
+POVERTY of literary men, 186;
+ sometimes a choice, 188-190.
+
+PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE of life wanting in studious men, 183-185.
+
+PRAYERS of great men, 146.
+
+PRECIEUSES, 315-318.
+
+PREDISPOSITION of the mind, 118.
+
+PREFACES, their interest, 286;
+ their occasional falsehood, 287;
+ vanity of authors in, 288;
+ idle apologies in, 289;
+ Dryden's interesting, 290.
+
+PREJUDICES, literary, 160-163.
+
+PUBLIC TASTE formed by public writers, 268.
+
+
+RACINE, sensibility of, 83; 325-332.
+
+RAMBOUILLET, Hotel de, 315-317.
+
+READING analyzed, 298-302.
+
+RECLUSE manners in great authors, 98-99.
+
+RELICS of men of genius, 255-258.
+
+REMUNERATION of literature, 194-195.
+
+RESIDENCES of literary men, 255-257.
+
+REYNOLDS, Sir J., his "automatic system," 26;
+ discovers its inconsistencies, 27.
+
+RIDICULE the terror of genius, 94
+
+ROBERTSON the historian, 341-350.
+
+ROLAND, Madame, anecdote of the power of poetry on, 141.
+
+ROMNEY, his anxiety over his picture of the Tempest, 81-82.
+
+ROUSSEAU'S expedient to endure society, 73;
+ his domestic infelicity, 175.
+
+ROYAL SOCIETY, attacks on, _n._ 14.
+
+RUBENS' transcripts of the poets, 21.
+
+
+SANDWICH, Lord, his first idea of a stratagem at sea, 132.
+
+SCUDERY, Mademoiselle, 316.
+
+SENSITIVENESS of genius, 72, 78, 78; 139-140.
+
+SELF-IMMOLATION of genius to labour, 152.
+
+SELF-PRAISE of genius, 162-170.
+
+SERVANTS, a dissertation on, 364-374.
+
+SHEE, Sir M.A., relations of poetry and painting, _n._, 21.
+
+SHENSTONE, his early love, 199.
+
+SIDDONS, Mrs., anecdote of, 137.
+
+SINGLENESS of genius, 245-247.
+
+SOCIETY, artificial, an injury to genius, 90.
+
+SOLITUDE loved by men of genius, 35-40; 109-115.
+
+STEAM first discovered, 133.
+
+STUDIES of advanced life, 241-243.
+
+STERNE, anecdotes of, 332-340.
+
+STYLE and its peculiarities, 291-294.
+
+SUSCEPTIBILITY of men of genius, 170-172.
+
+SUGGESTIONS of one mind perfected by another, 275-276.
+
+
+TASSO uneasy in his labours, 84.
+
+TAYLOR, Dr. Brooke, his torpid melancholy, 175.
+
+TEMPLE, Sir W., his love of gardens, 283.
+
+THEORETICAL history, 342.
+
+THOMSON, his sensitiveness to grand poetry, 142;
+ irritability over false criticisms, 65.
+
+TOBACCO, its introduction to England, 362.
+
+TOOTHPICKS, origin of, 358.
+
+TOWNLEY Gallery of Sculpture, _n._, 13.
+
+TROUBADOURS, their influence, 285.
+
+
+UMBRELLAS, their history, 358.
+
+UTILITARIANISM and its narrow view of literature, 15.
+
+UNIVERSALITY Of genius, 244.
+
+
+VAN PRAUN refuses to part with his collection to an emperor, 229.
+
+VERNET sketches in a storm, 144.
+
+VERS DE SOCIETE, 308-310.
+
+VINDICTIVENESS of genius, 170-173.
+
+VISIONARIES of genius, 148.
+
+VISITORS disliked by literary men, 112-113.
+
+VOLTAIRE, anecdote of his visit to a country house, 95;
+ his universal genius, 245.
+
+WALPOLE's, Horace, opinion of Gray, 91;
+ of Burke, _ib._
+
+WATSON neglects research in his professorship, 17.
+
+WERNER'S discoveries in science, 145.
+
+WILKES desirous of literary glory, 17.
+
+WIT sometimes mechanical, 126.
+
+WIVES of literary men, 202-208.
+
+WORKS intended, but not executed, 123.
+
+WOOD, Anthony, sacrifices all to study, 152.
+
+
+YOUNG the poet, his want of sympathy, 185.
+
+YOUTH of great men, 34-54.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
+
+
+_FREDERICK WARNE & CO., PUBLISHERS,_
+
+ * * * * *
+
+THE CHANDOS POETS.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_Under this distinctive title are now published New and Elegant Volumes of
+Standard Poetry, fully Illustrated, well Edited, and printed with a
+Red-line Border, Steel Portraits, &c._.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+In crown 8vo, price _7s. 6d._ each, cloth gilt, gilt edges; or morocco,
+ _16s._
+
+The Poetical Works of Longfellow.
+
+The Legendary Ballads of England and Scotland. Edited
+ and compiled by JOHN S. ROBERTS.
+
+Scott's Poetical Works. With numerous Notes.
+
+Eliza Cook's Poems. A Complete Edition, with Portrait and
+ Steel Illustrations.
+
+Moore's Poetical Works. With numerous Notes.
+
+Cowper's Poetical Works. Edited from the best Editions.
+
+Milton's Poetical Works. Edited from the best Editions.
+
+Wordsworth's Poetical Works.
+
+Byron's Poetical Works. With Explanatory Notes.
+
+Mrs. Hemans' Poetical Works. With Memoir, &c.
+
+Burns' Poetical Works. With Explanatory Glossarial Notes.
+
+Hood's Poetical Works. With Life.
+
+Campbell's Poetical Works. With Memoir.
+
+Coleridge's Poetical Works. With Memoir, Notes, &c.
+
+Shelley's Poetical Works. With Memoir, Notes, &c.
+
+Pope's Homer's Iliad & Odyssey. With Flaxman's Illustrations.
+
+Pope's Poetical Works. With Original Notes.
+
+Mackay's Complete Poetical Works; Revised by the Author.
+
+Herbert's (George) Poems and Prose. With Notes, &c.
+
+Heber's (Bishop) Poetical Works. With Notes, &c.
+
+Keble's (John) The Christian Year.
+
+
+_Uniform in size, price, and style, but without Red-line._
+
+
+Poets of the Nineteenth Century. With 120 Illustrations by
+ J.E. MILLAIS, TENNIEL, PICKERSGILL, Sir J. GILBERT, HARRISON
+ WEIR, &c.
+
+The Spirit of Praise. A Collection of Hymns, Old and New,
+ with upwards of One Hundred choice Illustrations.
+
+Christian Lyrics. From Modern Authors. With Two Hundred
+ and Fifty Illustrations.
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+Shakspeare: The Plays and Poems. 1200 pp., with Portrait.
+
+Montgomery's (James) Poetical Works. With Prefatory
+ Memoir and Explanatory Notes. 100 Original Illustrations.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_BEDFORD STREET, STRAND_.
+
+
+_FREDERICK WARNE & CO., PUBLISHERS._
+
+ * * * * *
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+THE CHANDOS LIBRARY.
+
+_A Series of Standard Works in all Classes of Literature._
+
+ * * * * *
+
+In crown 8vo, price 3s. 6d. each, cloth gilt.
+
+The Percy Anecdotes. By REUBEN and SHOLTO PERCY.
+ Verbatim Reprint of Original Edition. Introduction by JOHN TIMBS.
+ Original Steel Portraits, and Index. Three Vols., each Complete in
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+ Their Legendary Lore and Popular History--South, Midland, North. By
+ JOHN TIMBS. Author of "Curiosities of London," and ALEXANDER GUNN.
+ New Frontispiece. Three Vols. Each Volume Complete in itself.
+
+Johnson's Lives of the Poets; with Critical Observations on
+ their Works, and a Sketch of the Author's Life by Sir WALTER SCOTT.
+
+Book of Authors. A Collection of Criticisms, Ana, Mots, Personal
+ Descriptions, &c. By W. CLARK RUSSELL.
+
+Evelyn's Diary and Correspondence. Edited by BRAY. 784 pp.
+ With Frontispiece and full Index.
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+Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. With
+ Portrait. Three Vols.
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+A Century of Anecdote. Compiled and Edited by JOHN TIMBS.
+ With Frontispiece.
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+
+Scott's Lives of Eminent Novelists and Dramatists.
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+
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+
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+ CHRISTOPHER DAVIES.
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+ France and Belgium. By H.R. CLINTON.
+
+Fugitive Poetry of the Last Three Centuries. Edited by
+ J.C. HUTCHIESON.
+
+White's Natural History of Selborne. Numerous Illustrations.
+
+Lamb's Poems and Essays.
+
+Spenser's Poetical Works. With Portrait.
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