Some have exercised this power of abstraction to a degree that appears
marvellous to volatile spirits, and puny thinkers.
To this patient habit, Newton is indebted for many of his great
discoveries; an apple falls upon him in his orchard,--and the system of
attraction succeeds in his mind! he observes boys blowing soap bubbles,
and the properties of light display themselves! Of Socrates, it is said,
that he would frequently remain an entire day and night in the same
attitude, absorbed in meditation; and why should we doubt this, when we
know that La Fontaine and Thomson, Descartes and Newton, experienced the
same abstraction? Mercator, the celebrated geographer, found such
delight in the ceaseless progression of his studies, that he would never
willingly quit his maps to take the necessary refreshments of life. In
Cicero's Treatise on Old Age, Cato applauds Gallus, who, when he sat
down to write in the morning, was surprised by the evening; and when he
took up his pen in the evening was surprised by the appearance of the
morning. Buffon once described these delicious moments with his
accustomed eloquence:--"Invention depends on patience; contemplate your
subject long; it will gradually unfold, till a sort of electric spark
convulses for a moment the brain, and spreads down to the very heart a
glow of irritation. Then come the luxuries of genius! the true hours for
production and composition; hours so delightful, that I have spent
twelve and fourteen successively at my writing-desk, and still been in a
state of pleasure." The anecdote related of Marini, the Italian poet,
may be true. Once absorbed in revising his Adonis, he suffered his leg
to be burnt for some time, without any sensation.
Abstraction of this sublime kind is the first step to that noble
enthusiasm which accompanies Genius; it produces those raptures and that
intense delight, which some curious facts will explain to us.
Poggius relates of Dante, that he indulged his meditations more strongly
than any man he knew! whenever he read, he was only alive to what was
passing in his mind; to all human concerns, he was as if they had not
been! Dante went one day to a great public procession; he entered the
shop of a bookseller to be a spectator of the passing show. He found a
book which greatly interested him; he devoured it in silence, and
plunged into an abyss of thought. On his return he declared that he had
neither seen, nor heard, the slightest occurrence of the public
exhibition which had passed before him. This enthusiasm renders
everything surrounding us as distant as if an immense interval separated
us from the scene. A modern astronomer, one summer night, withdrew to
his chamber; the brightness of the heaven showed a phenomenon. He passed
the whole night in observing it, and when they came to him early in the
morning, and found him in the same attitude, he said, like one who had
been recollecting his thoughts for a few moments, "It must be thus; but
I'll go to bed before 'tis late!" He had gazed the entire night in
meditation, and did not know it.
This intense abstraction operates visibly; this perturbation of the
faculties, as might be supposed, affects persons of genius physically.
What a forcible description the late Madame Roland, who certainly was a
woman of the first genius, gives of herself on her first reading of
Telemachus and Tasso. "My respiration rose; I felt a rapid fire
colouring my face, and my voice changing, had betrayed my agitation; I
was Eucharis for Telemachus, and Erminia for Tancred; however, during
this perfect transformation, I did not yet think that I myself was any
thing, for any one. The whole had no connexion with myself, I sought for
nothing around me; I was them, I saw only the objects which existed for
them; it was a dream, without being awakened."--Metastasio describes a
similar situation. "When I apply with a little attention, the nerves of
my sensorium are put into a violent tumult. I grow as red in the face as
a drunkard, and am obliged to quit my work." When Malebranche first took
up Descartes on Man, the germ and origin of his philosophy, he was
obliged frequently to interrupt his reading by a violent palpitation of
the heart. When the first idea of the Essay on the Arts and Sciences
rushed on the mind of Rousseau, it occasioned such a feverish agitation
that it approached to a delirium.
This delicious inebriation of the imagination occasioned the ancients,
who sometimes perceived the effects, to believe it was not short of
divine inspiration. Fielding says, "I do not doubt but that the most
pathetic and affecting scenes have been writ with tears." He perhaps
would have been pleased to have confirmed his observation by the
following circumstances. The tremors of Dryden, after having written an
Ode, a circumstance tradition has accidentally handed down, were not
unusual with him; in the preface to his Tales he tells us, that in
translating Homer he found greater pleasure than in Virgil; but it was
not a pleasure without pain; the _continual agitation of the spirits_
must needs be a weakener to any constitution, especially in age, and
many pauses are required for refreshment betwixt the heats. In writing
the ninth scene of the second act of the Olimpiade, Metastasio found
himself in tears; an effect which afterwards, says Dr. Burney, proved
very contagious. It was on this occasion that that tender poet
commemorated the circumstance in the following interesting sonnet:--
SONNET FROM METASTASIO.
"_Scrivendo l'Autore in Vienna l'anno 1733 la sua Olimpiade si
senti commosa fino alle lagrime nell' esprimere la divisione di
due teneri amici: e meravigliandosi che un falso, e da lui
inventato disastro, potesse cagionargli una si vera passione,
si fece a riflettere quanto poco ragionevole e solido
fondamento possano aver le altre che soglion frequentamente
agitarci, nel corso di nostra vita_.
Sogni e favole io fingo, e pure in carte
Mentre favole, e sogni, orno e disegno,
In lor, (folle ch' io son!) prendo tal parte
Che del mal che inventai piango, e mi sdegno.
Ma forse allor che non m' inganna l'arte,
Più saggio io sono e l'agitato ingegno
Forse allo più tranquillo? O forse parte
Da più salda cagion l'amor, lo sdegno?
Ah che non sol quelle, ch'io canto, o scrivo
Favole son; ma quanto temo, o spero,
Tutt' è manzogna, e delirando io vivo!
Sogno della mia vita è il corso intero.
Deh tu, Signor, quando a destarmi arrivo
Fa, ch'io trovi riposo in sen del VERO.
_In 1733, the Author, composing his Olimpiade, felt himself
suddenly moved, even to tears, in expressing the separation of
two tender lovers. Surprised that a fictitious grief, invented
too by himself, could raise so true a passion, he reflected how
little reasonable and solid a foundation the others had, which,
so frequently agitated us in this state of our existence._