Literary Character of Men of Genius Part 19

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 astonis.h.i.+ng. 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 cla.s.s, 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 dest.i.tute 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 cla.s.s 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 impa.s.sioned 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 a.s.sociations, 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 t.i.tian'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 n.o.bility not chimerical, but created by public opinion.--Literary honours of various nations.-- Local a.s.sociations 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 Parna.s.sus." The great political negotiator, Cardinal D'OSSAT, was elevated by his genius from an orphan state of indigence, and was alike dest.i.tute of ancestry, of t.i.tles, even of parents. On the day of his creation, when others of n.o.ble extraction a.s.sumed new t.i.tles 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 Ma.s.sillon, the brilliant Flechier, Rousseau, and Diderot; Johnson, Goldsmith, and Franklin, arose amidst the most humble avocations.

Vespasian raised a statue to the historian JOSEPHUS, though a Jew; and the Athenians one to 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sert that genius creates a sort of intellectual n.o.bility, which is now conferred by public feeling; as heretofore the surnames of "the African," and of "Coriola.n.u.s," won by valour, a.s.sociated 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 n.o.bility 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 circ.u.mstance, that by these instruments he had strengthened the works he had invented, when his genius poured forth the waters through our metropolis, thereby distinguis.h.i.+ng 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 circ.u.mference 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 t.i.tles of literary n.o.bility 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 n.o.bility is not chimerical. Such t.i.tles 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 n.o.bility to n.o.bility; and make a name instantly recognised which might otherwise be hidden under its rank, and remain unknown by its t.i.tle? Our ill.u.s.trious list of literary n.o.blemen is far more glorious than the satirical "Catalogue of n.o.ble 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 n.o.bility, from the extraordinary circ.u.mstance 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 n.o.blemen at POPE'S indifference to their rank; and MAGLIABECHI, the book prodigy of his age, whom every literary stranger visited at Florence, a.s.sured 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 n.o.bleman: "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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 lords.h.i.+p'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 n.o.bleman, who was conducting another peer to the stairs-head, the latter stopped to make way for Piron: "Pa.s.s on, my lord," said the n.o.ble master; "pa.s.s, 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 lords.h.i.+p, 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 enc.u.mbers 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 t.i.tian," 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 n.o.bility seems to have been a.s.serted 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 a.s.sisted 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 s.p.a.ce 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 n.o.blemen, who were desirous of seeing the British Pliny; and POc.o.c.k, 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 ill.u.s.trious foreigner, who had written on the English parliament, was accommodated with a seat. SPINOSA, when he gained an humble livelihood by grinding optical gla.s.ses, 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 pa.s.sion 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 mult.i.tude 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 n.o.ble 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 ill.u.s.trious men spread inspiration on the spots which living they would have haunted:--in their theatres, the great dramatists; in their Inst.i.tute their ill.u.s.trious 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 n.o.ble acknowledgment of our great men. The statue of Dr. Jenner is placed in Trafalgar Square; and Grantham has now a n.o.ble 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 a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sed many days in composing his Lusiad. When PETRARCH was pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sage I find a remarkable ma.n.u.script 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 ARIOs...o...b..ilt was purchased, to be preserved, by the munic.i.p.ality, 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 a.s.sist 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 a.s.sociation 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 n.o.ble reply of the artist PROTOGENES. When the city of Rhodes was taken by Demetrius, the man of genius was discovered in his garden, tranquilly finis.h.i.+ng a picture. "How is it that you do not partic.i.p.ate 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 a.s.sociated 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, a.s.sociated 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 ill.u.s.trated by their genealogy.