This episode in man’s history,—this stage in the great struggle of
life,—has been thus powerfully painted by a contemporary:
We presume there can be little doubt that circumstances have an
effect upon the lives and characters of men; to say any thing else
would be to contradict flatly the ordinary opinion of the world.
Notwithstanding, if one will but look at one’s private experience
among the most ordinary and obscure actors in the life-drama, how
wonderfully, one must allow, character, temper, heart, and spirit,
assert themselves beyond the reach of all external powers! How
triumphantly the poor prodigal, to whom Providence has given the
fairest prospects, and whose steps are guarded by love and kindness,
can vindicate his own instincts against all the virtuous force of
circumstance surrounding him, and go to destruction in its very
face! Who needs to be taught that ever-recurring lesson? Who can be
ignorant that scarcely a great career has ever been made in this
world otherwise than in the face of circumstances—in strenuous
defiance of all that external elements could do to overcome the
unconquerable soul? In the face of such examples, what are we to say
to the theory that adverse circumstances can excuse a man born with
all the compensations of genius for an unlovely and ignoble life, a
bitter and discontented heart, a course of vulgar vice and sordid
meanness? Never was genius more wickedly disparaged. That celestial
gift to which God has given capacities of enjoyment beyond the reach
of the crowd, is of itself an armour against circumstance more proof
than steel, and continually holds open to its possessor a refuge
against the affronts of the world, a shelter from its contumelies,
which is denied to other men. He who reckons of this endowment as of
something which gives only a more exquisite egotism, a finer touch
of selfishness, a sublimation of envy and self-assertion, and
dependence upon the applause of the crowd, forms a mean estimate,
against which it is the duty of every man who knows better to
protest. Outside circumstances, disappointment, neglect, dark want
and misery, have plagued the souls and disturbed the temper of great
men before now, but have never, so far as we are aware, polluted a
pure heart, or made a noble mind despicable. The bitter soreness of
unappreciated genius belongs proverbially to those whose gift is of
the smallest; and the man who excuses a bad life by the pretence
that this divine lymph contained within it has been soured by
popular neglect and turned to gall, speaks sacrilege and
profanity.[124]
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Footnote 124:
_Quarterly Review._
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