A steam-engine may be called the greatest of inventions, and could the
best one as yet constructed have sufficient consciousness to register its
excellencies and defects, according to its own knowledge and experience,
it could not be accused of boastfulness or self-depreciation. Again, if
a dog could be endowed, in addition to its faculties, with the power of
expression, and could define in exact terms its sense of smell and so
announce it more keen than that of all other animals, it could not be
accused of vanity.
The steam-engine in its revelation might reflect credit on its designer
and on the man who constructed it, and these might reflect credit on
their maker, but not on themselves; they had no hand in the acquisition
of their faculties. So with the dog, it would simply make its statement,
and in so doing communicate a phenomenon that the science of man would
otherwise be slow to reach.
As it is with the dog, so it should be with men in giving expression to
their natural gifts. A Shakespeare, knowing and avowing himself to be a
vehicle constructed of phosphorized brain and ozonized blood, through
which the higher revelations of nature are poured out on the senses of
men, might describe the glorious machinery as it worked within him;
might declare himself to be the most highly perfected of human beings,
and that without vanity or boast, but not without a benefit to others,
affording them details concerning himself absolutely unattainable by
ordinary means; for no one has yet fathomed him as he did himself, and
his knowledge died with him.
If Lord Bacon had taken the trouble to explain to us all about the
wheels that moved his apparent delinquencies, it would have afforded a
scientific lesson, and have ranked with his other essays. He would have
lost nothing by it; minds of the size of his suffer nothing from opinion,
and can be as indifferent to it as a cat, or a dog, or a horse, or a
cow is to what we call decency. The degree of energy people display in
vociferating against the anomalies of morals is the best measure one
can have of their own failings. If I were to hear a man rail vehemently
against a swindle, I should at once conclude that the machinery of
cheating within him was in good working order, unless it had been his lot
to be the party swindled.
There is no genius without humour, at least no literary genius, for that
differentiating faculty is the basis of all self-criticism. Men have
been challenged to define genius, and they have tried to do it without
being asked. The fact is that clever people can do nothing unless it
is a little difficult; they cannot see what lies directly under their
noses, and one of the truths so situated is that perfect genius has
never existed. Such genius as a man can possess is fragmentary, never
whole. He may have literary genius, and that is enough for one. He may
have scientific genius, like Goethe, Oken, Lamark, Geoffrey St. Hilaire,
Darwin, Helmholtz, Davy, Faraday, Hunter, Cuvier, Laenec; but many of
these were poor creatures in other branches than their own. He may have
genius in mathematical philosophy, like Newton; but that great man had
an intellectual weakness. Real genius of the perfect kind would be more
than one man could carry; the ideal whole is broken up and distributed in
fragments, some immense, like that falling to Leonardo da Vinci’s share,
some small and constituting mere talent.
I have somewhere a list of men of genius who were originators, beginning
with Homer as the father of Poetry, and coming down to Goethe who began
the transcendental philosophy of to-day in his “Metamorphoses of Plants;”
and I could never get beyond sixty or seventy names.
Any one giving an estimate of his own capabilities, whether favourable
or unfavourable, or both, without illustrating what he states by his
own work, and by the opinions of competent critics, is an egotist. If
hereafter I should enter on the subject of my mental capabilities, it
will be on the principle not of self-consciousness, but of mechanical
candour. Having never ceased my work up to the age of eighty-four, I
may have within me an ample experience of my mental operations; but any
account of these the reader has the advantage of testing with what he
finds his own superior judgment.
I produced very little in my early days, though a passion for literary
success then governed me, alternating with a passion for scientific.
A career in the direction of either was impeded in middle life by
professional practice, which had its fascinations. But the young have not
really much that is worth saying to the middle-aged or old. I had been
nourished on the Greek and Roman classics; under the special influence
of Herodotus I composed an Egyptian drama of the time of Cambyses, and
it cost me much labour and greatly improved me in the art of composing;
but not having read it for more than half a century I am quite unable now
to judge of it. The flight I know to have been high, but whether through
clear atmosphere or fog I cannot say. Sir Sibbald Scott, son of my friend
Sir David, told me that he had seen the authorship of “The Piromides”
inquired for in _Notes and Queries_ at two different times. It was
received by the press as a work of solemn purpose throughout.
I may mention that Lord Elgin, to whom I inscribed this play, thought it
betrayed poetic taste, and he expressed his opinion in warmer terms than
I cite.
It is surprising to witness how many good writers of their own language
there are in this country: in reading the papers this is extensively
seen; the leading articles appear equal, all marked by idiomatic
clearness of expression. Then, in literary criticism, it is noticeable
how much deeper the writers penetrate into the arcana, perceiving what
is rendered, and what is left wanting, in a poetic composition, and that
with a psychological acuteness much more general than was met with a
generation or two ago. This is the more valuable, since criticism is the
profoundest of studies; it demands an adequate knowledge of every science
and art, as well as a competent observation of nature.
In speaking of my own intellectual mechanism, this I say once more is
none of my own, but an instrument placed temporarily among visible
things, to reveal what it may to the less knowing.