Literary Character of Men of Genius Part 9

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 a.s.sist 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, const.i.tute 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 const.i.tuent 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 l.u.s.tre which man casts around him, like the flame of a meteor, s.h.i.+nes 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 s.p.a.ce.

[Footnote A: I recommend the reader to turn to the whole pa.s.sage, 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 circ.u.mstance 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 circ.u.mstance has been, recorded of GRAY, by Mr. Mathias, "as worthy of all acceptation among the higher votaries of the divine art, when they are a.s.sured that Mr. Gray never sate down to compose any poetry without previously, and for a considerable time, reading the works of Spenser."

But the circ.u.mstance 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 circ.u.mstance 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 Ma.s.sillon, 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 a.s.sociations, inspired feelings of

Tipsy dance and revelry.

There are slight habits which may be contracted by genius, which a.s.sist 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 pa.s.sion; 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 pa.s.sing 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 s.p.a.cious 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 pa.s.sing 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.

c.u.mberland'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 ill.u.s.trated 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 s.p.a.ces 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 astonis.h.i.+ng instances of a well-regulated memory depend on the practice of its art gradually formed by frequent a.s.sociations. 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 acc.u.mulating 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 a.s.sociated with imagination and pa.s.sion; 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 acc.u.mulate 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 ama.s.sed 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 ent.i.tles 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, ent.i.tled "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 a.s.sist 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, a.s.signing 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 a.s.surance, 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 pa.s.sed away in incessant compet.i.tion, 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 pa.s.sing in his mind by a remarkable ill.u.s.tration:--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 p.r.o.neness 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 a.s.sured," 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 acc.u.mulated; and the familiar _rime_ of BERNT, the burlesque poet, his existing ma.n.u.scripts will prove, were produced by perpetual re-touches. Even in the sublime efforts of imagination, this art of meditation may be practised; and ALFIERI has shown us, that in those energetic tragic dramas which were often produced in a state of enthusiasm, he pursued a regulated process. "All my tragedies have been 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 vanis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.s away unnoticed, and keeps what he calls a register of nocturnals. Ta.s.sO 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 emba.s.sies, which went to the formation of a great man. DE THOU has given a very curious account of his dreams. Such was his pa.s.sion 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

s.n.a.t.c.h 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, encompa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociations, to their authors. Two or three striking circ.u.mstances, un.o.bserved 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 ma.s.s 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 t.i.tle 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 n.o.bleman 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 circ.u.mstance 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 t.i.tle of "The Greatest Birth of Time," a t.i.tle 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 acc.u.mulating 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 ent.i.tled "_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 a.s.semblies, 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 finis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sages 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 s.h.i.+p, sailing slowly along the coast, pa.s.sing 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.