We possess, among our own native treasures, two treatises on this
subject, composed with no ordinary talent, and not their least value
consists in one being an apology for solitude, while the other combats
that prevailing passion of the studious. Zimmerman's popular work is
overloaded with commonplace; the garrulity of eloquence. The two
treatises now noticed may be compared to the highly-finished gems, whose
figure may be more finely designed, and whose strokes may be more
delicate in the smaller space they occupy than the ponderous block of
marble hewed out by the German chiseller.
Sir George Mackenzie, a polite writer, and a most eloquent pleader,
published, in 1665, a moral essay, preferring Solitude to public
employment. The eloquence of his style was well suited to the dignity of
his subject; the advocates for solitude have always prevailed over those
for active life, because there is something sublime in those feelings
which would retire from the circle of indolent triflers, or depraved
geniuses. The tract of Mackenzie was ingeniously answered by the elegant
taste of John Evelyn in 1667. Mackenzie, though he wrote in favour of
solitude, passed a very active life, first as a pleader, and afterwards
as a judge; that he was an eloquent writer, and an eloquent critic, we
have the authority of Dryden, who says, that till he was acquainted with
that noble wit of Scotland, Sir George Mackenzie, he had not known the
beautiful turn of words and thoughts in poetry, which Sir George had
explained and exemplified to him in conversation. As a judge, and king's
advocate, will not the barbarous customs of the age defend his name? He
is most hideously painted forth by the dark pencil of a poetical
Spagnoletti (Grahame), in his poem on "The Birds of Scotland." Sir
George lived in the age of rebellion, and used torture: we must entirely
put aside his political, to attend to his literary character. Blair has
quoted his pleadings as a model of eloquence, and Grahame is unjust to
the fame of Mackenzie, when he alludes to his "half-forgotten name." In
1689, he retired to Oxford, to indulge the luxuries of study in the
Bodleian Library, and to practise that solitude which so delighted him
in theory; but three years afterwards he fixed himself in London.
Evelyn, who wrote in favour of public employment being preferable to
solitude, passed his days in the tranquillity of his studies, and wrote
against the habits which he himself most loved. By this it may appear,
that that of which we have the least experience ourselves, will ever be
what appears most delightful! Alas! everything in life seems to have in
it the nature of a bubble of air, and, when touched, we find nothing but
emptiness in our hand. It is certain that the most eloquent writers in
favour of solitude have left behind them too many memorials of their
unhappy feelings, when they indulged this passion to excess; and some
ancient has justly said, that none but a god, or a savage, can suffer
this exile from human nature.
The following extracts from Sir George Mackenzie's tract on Solitude are
eloquent and impressive, and merit to be rescued from that oblivion
which surrounds many writers, whose genius has not been effaced, but
concealed, by the transient crowd of their posterity:--
I have admired to see persons of virtue and humour long much to
be in the city, where, when they come they found nor sought for
no other divertissement than to visit one another; and there to
do nothing else than to make legs, view others habit, talk of
the weather, or some such pitiful subject, and it may be, if
they made a farther inroad upon any other affair, they did so
pick one another, that it afforded them matter of eternal
quarrel; for what was at first but an indifferent subject, is
by interest adopted into the number of our quarrels.--What
pleasure can be received by talking of new fashions, buying and
selling of lands, advancement or ruin of favourites, victories
or defeats of strange princes, which is the ordinary subject of
ordinary conversation?--Most desire to frequent their
superiors, and these men must either suffer their raillery, or
must not be suffered to continue in their society; if we
converse with them who speak with more address than ourselves,
then we repine equally at our own dulness, and envy the
acuteness that accomplishes the speaker; or, if we converse
with duller animals than ourselves, then we are weary to draw
the yoke alone, and fret at our being in ill company; but if
chance blows us in amongst our equals, then we are so at guard
to catch all advantages, and so interested in point d'honneur,
that it rather cruciates than recreates us. How many make
themselves cheap by these occasions, whom we had valued highly
if they had frequented us less! And how many frequent persons
who laugh at that simplicity which the addresser admires in
himself as wit, and yet both recreate themselves with double
laughters!
In solitude, he addresses his friend:--"My dear Celador, enter
into your own breast, and there survey the several operations
of your own soul, the progress of your passions, the
strugglings of your appetite, the wanderings of your fancy, and
ye will find, I assure you, more variety in that one piece than
there is to be learned in all the courts of Christendom.
Represent to yourself the last age, all the actions and
interests in it, how much this person was infatuated with zeal,
that person with lust; how much one pursued honour, and another
riches; and in the next thought draw that scene, and represent
them all turned to dust and ashes!"
I cannot close this subject without the addition of some anecdotes,
which may be useful. A man of letters finds solitude necessary, and for
him solitude has its pleasures and its conveniences; but we shall find
that it also has a hundred things to be dreaded.
Solitude is indispensable for literary pursuits. No considerable work
has yet been composed, but its author, like an ancient magician, retired
first to the grove or the closet, to invocate his spirits. Every
production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm. When the
youth sighs and languishes, and feels himself among crowds in an irksome
solitude,--that is the moment to fly into seclusion and meditation.
Where can he indulge but in solitude the fine romances of his soul?
where but in solitude can he occupy himself in useful dreams by night,
and, when the morning rises, fly without interruption to his unfinished
labours? Retirement to the frivolous is a vast desert, to the man of
genius it is the enchanted garden of Armida.
Cicero was uneasy amidst applauding Rome, and he has designated his
numerous works by the titles of his various villas, where they were
composed. Voltaire had talents, and a taste for society, yet he not only
withdrew by intervals, but at one period of his life passed five years
in the most secret seclusion and fervent studies. Montesquieu quitted
the brilliant circles of Paris for his books, his meditations, and for
his immortal work, and was ridiculed by the gay triflers he
relinquished. Harrington, to compose his Oceana, severed himself from
the society of his friends, and was so wrapped in abstraction, that he
was pitied as a lunatic. Descartes, inflamed by genius, abruptly breaks
off all his friendly connexions, hires an obscure house in an
unfrequented corner at Paris, and applies himself to study during two
years unknown to his acquaintance. Adam Smith, after the publication of
his first work, throws himself into a retirement that lasted ten years;
even Hume rallied him for separating himself from the world; but the
great political inquirer satisfied the world, and his friends, by his
great work on the Wealth of Nations.
But this solitude, at first a necessity, and then a pleasure, at length
is not borne without repining. I will call for a witness a great genius,
and he shall speak himself. Gibbon says, "I feel, and shall continue to
feel, that domestic solitude, however it may be alleviated by the world,
by study, and even by friendship, is a comfortless state, which will
grow more painful as I descend in the vale of years." And afterwards he
writes to a friend, "Your visit has only served to remind me that man,
however amused and occupied in his closet, was not made to live alone."
I must therefore now sketch a different picture of literary solitude
than some sanguine and youthful minds conceive.
Even the sublimest of men, Milton, who is not apt to vent complaints,
appears to have felt this irksome period of life. In the preface to
Smectymnuus, he says, "It is but justice, not to defraud of due esteem
the _wearisome labours_ and _studious watchings,_ wherein I have spent
and _tired_ out almost a whole youth."
Solitude in a later period of life, or rather the neglect which awaits
the solitary man, is felt with acuter sensibility. Cowley, that
enthusiast for rural seclusion, in his retirement calls himself "The
melancholy Cowley." Mason has truly transferred the same epithet to
Gray. Bead in his letters the history of solitude. We lament the loss of
Cowley's correspondence, through the mistaken notion of Sprat; he
assuredly had painted the sorrows of his heart. But Shenstone has filled
his pages with the cries of an amiable being whose soul bleeds in the
dead oblivion of solitude. Listen to his melancholy expressions:--"Now I
am come from a visit, every little uneasiness is sufficient to
introduce my whole train of melancholy considerations, and to make me
utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life I foresee I
shall lead. I am angry, and envious, and dejected, and frantic, and
disregard all present things, as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely
pleased (though it is a gloomy joy) with the application of Dr. Swift's
complaint, that he is forced to die in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a
hole." Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture throughout the
year, in the following stanza by the same poet:--
Tedious again to curse the drizzling day,
Again to trace the wintry tracks of snow!
Or, soothed by vernal airs, again survey
The self-same hawthorns bud, and cowslips blow!
Swift's letters paint in terrifying colours a picture of solitude, and
at length his despair closed with idiotism. The amiable Gresset could
not sport with the brilliant wings of his butterfly muse, without
dropping some querulous expression on the solitude of genius. In his
"Epistle to his Muse," he exquisitely paints the situation of men of
genius:
----Je les vois, victimes du génie,
Au foible prix d'un éclat passager,
Vivre isolés, sans jouir de la vie!
And afterwards he adds,
Vingt ans d'ennuis, pour quelques jours de gloire!
I conclude with one more anecdote on solitude, which may amuse. When
Menage, attacked by some, and abandoned by others, was seized by a fit
of the spleen, he retreated into the country, and gave up his famous
Mercuriales; those Wednesdays when the literati assembled at his house,
to praise up or cry down one another, as is usual with the literary
populace. Menage expected to find that tranquillity in the country which
he had frequently described in his verses; but as he was only a poetical
plagiarist, it is not strange that our pastoral writer was greatly
disappointed. Some country rogues having killed his pigeons, they gave
him more vexation than his critics. He hastened his return to Paris. "It
is better," he observed, "since we are born to suffer, to feel only
reasonable sorrows."