"Some persons, in looking upon life, view it as they would view a
picture, with a stern and criticising eye. He also looks upon life as a
picture, but to catch its beauties, its lights,--not its defects and
shadows. On the former he loves to dwell. He has a wonderful knack at
shutting his eyes to the sinister side of anything. Never beat a more
kindly heart than his; alive to the sorrows, but not to the faults, of
his friends, but doubly alive to their virtues and goodness. Indeed,
people seemed to grow more good with one so unselfish and so gentle."
--Emily Foster.
....authors are particularly candid in admitting the faults of their
friends.
The governor, from the stern of his schooner, gave a short but truly
patriarchal address to his citizens, wherein he recommended them to
comport like loyal and peaceable subjects,--to go to church regularly on
Sundays, and to mind their business all the week besides. That the women
should be dutiful and affectionate to their husbands,--looking after
nobody's concerns but their own,--eschewing all gossipings and morning
gaddings,--and carrying short tongues and long petticoats. That the men
should abstain from intermeddling in public concerns, intrusting the
cares of government to the officers appointed to support them, staying at
home, like good citizens, making money for themselves, and getting
children for the benefit of their country.
It happens to the princes of literature to encounter periods of varying
duration when their names are revered and their books are not read. The
growth, not to say the fluctuation, of Shakespeare's popularity is one of
the curiosities of literary history. Worshiped by his contemporaries,
apostrophized by Milton only fourteen pears after his death as the "dear
son of memory, great heir to fame,"--"So sepulchred in such pomp dost
lie, That kings, for such a tomb, would wish to die,"--he was neglected
by the succeeding age, the subject of violent extremes of opinion in the
eighteenth century, and so lightly esteemed by some that Hume could doubt
if he were a poet "capable of furnishing a proper entertainment to a
refined and intelligent audience," and attribute to the rudeness of his
"disproportioned and misshapen" genius the "reproach of barbarism" which
the English nation had suffered from all its neighbors.
I have lost confidence in the favorable disposition of my countrymen, and
look forward to cold scrutiny and stern criticism, and this is a line of
writing in which I have not hitherto ascertained my own powers. Could I
afford it, I should like to write, and to lay my writings aside when
finished. There is an independent delight in study and in the creative
exercise of the pen; we live in a world of dreams, but publication lets
in the noisy rabble of the world, and there is an end of our dreaming.