Literary Character of Men of Genius Part 14

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 amus.e.m.e.nts 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. c.u.mBERLAND, a.s.sures 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 c.u.mberland 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, rus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sisted 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 amus.e.m.e.nts--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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 ma.n.u.script 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 ill.u.s.trious than that of all the Warwicks, on her alliance to which n.o.ble 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 doc.u.ments are two letters. .h.i.therto 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 acc.u.mulate 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 apprais.e.m.e.nt. In a country where "The Wealth of Nations" has been fixed as the first principle of political existence, wealth has raised an aristocracy more n.o.ble than n.o.bility, 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 acc.u.mulate a large fortune; but I do not lament the mediocrity of my circ.u.mstances 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 pa.s.s 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 circ.u.mstance 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 a.s.suming 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 inc.u.mbrance 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.sions 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 compa.s.sionate 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 ill.u.s.trious examples of those who have even _learnt to want,_ that they might emanc.i.p.ate their genius from their necessities!

We see ROUSSEAU rus.h.i.+ng 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 n.o.blest 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 furnis.h.i.+ng 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 polis.h.i.+ng optical gla.s.ses, 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 dest.i.tution 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 ill.u.s.tri porte, Nudo accorra, ma libero Il regno della morte.

Naked, but free! A life of hard deprivations was long that of the ill.u.s.trious LINNaeUS. Without fortune, to that great mind it never seemed necessary to acquire any. Perigrinating on foot with a stylus, a magnifying-gla.s.s, 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 a.n.a.logy 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 finis.h.i.+ng 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. x.x.xi, p. 283; vol. x.x.xii. 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 a.s.sociated 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. Dest.i.tute of this enn.o.bling 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 a.s.sumed t.i.tle 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 unblus.h.i.+ngly 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 subst.i.tuting 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-gla.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trates this degradation by a novel image. "Chide Fortune," cries the bard,--

The guilty G.o.ddess 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.ble 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 subst.i.tute for that "friends.h.i.+p 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.]