Of the irritability of genius.--Genius in society often in a state of
suffering.--Equality of temper more prevalent among men of letters.--Of
the occupation of making a great name.--Anxieties of the most successful.
--Of the inventors.--Writers of learning.--Writers of taste.--Artists.
The modes of life of a man of genius, often tinctured by eccentricity and
enthusiasm, maintain an eternal conflict with the monotonous and imitative
habits of society, as society is carried on in a great metropolis, where
men are necessarily alike, and where, in perpetual intercourse, they shape
themselves to one another.
The occupations, the amusements, and the ardour of the man of genius are
at discord with the artificial habits of life: in the vortexes of
business, or the world of pleasure, crowds of human beings are only
treading in one another's steps. The pleasures and the sorrows of this
active multitude are not his, while his are not obvious to them; and his
favourite occupations strengthen his peculiarities, and increase his
sensibility. Genius in society is often in a state of suffering.
Professional characters, who are themselves so often literary, yielding to
their predominant interests, conform to that assumed urbanity which levels
them with ordinary minds; but the man of genius cannot leave himself
behind in the cabinet he quits; the train of his thoughts is not stopped
at will, and in the range of conversation the habits of his mind will
prevail: the poet will sometimes muse till he modulates a verse; the
artist is sketching what a moment presents, and a moment changes; the
philosophical historian is suddenly absorbed by a new combination of
thought, and, placing his hands over his eyes, is thrown back into the
Middle Ages. Thus it happens that an excited imagination, a high-toned
feeling, a wandering reverie, a restlessness of temper, are perpetually
carrying the man of genius out of the processional line of the mere
conversationists. Like all solitary beings, he is much too sentient, and
prepares for defence even at a random touch or a chance hit. His
generalising views take things only in masses, while in his rapid emotions
he interrogates, and doubts, and is caustic; in a word, he thinks he
converses while he is at his studies. Sometimes, apparently a complacent
listener, we are mortified by detecting the absent man: now he appears
humbled and spiritless, ruminating over some failure which probably may be
only known to himself; and now haughty and hardy for a triumph he has
obtained, which yet remains a secret to the world. No man is so apt to
indulge the extremes of the most opposite feelings: he is sometimes
insolent, and sometimes querulous; now the soul of tenderness and
tranquillity,--then stung by jealousy, or writhing in aversion! A fever
shakes his spirit; a fever which has sometimes generated a disease, and
has even produced a slight perturbation of the faculties.[A] In one of
those manuscript notes by Lord BYRON on this work, which I have wished to
preserve, I find his lordship observing on the feelings of genius, that
"the depreciation of the lowest of mankind is more painful than the
applause of the highest is pleasing." Such is the confession of genius,
and such its liability to hourly pain.
[Footnote A: I have given a history of _literary quarrels from personal
motives_, in "Quarrels of Authors," p. 529. There we find how many
controversies, in which the public get involved, have sprung from some
sudden squabbles, some neglect of petty civility, some unlucky epithet, or
some casual observation dropped without much consideration, which
mortified or enraged the _genus irritabile_; a title which from ancient
days has been assigned to every description of authors. The late Dr.
WELLS, who had some experience in his intercourse with many literary
characters, observed, that "in whatever regards the fruits of their mental
labours, this is universally acknowledged to be true. Some of the
malevolent passions indeed frequently become in learned men more than
ordinarily strong, from want of that restraint upon their excitement which
society imposes." A puerile critic has reproached me for having drawn my
description entirely from my own fancy:--I have taken it from life!
See further symptoms of this disease at the close of the chapter on
_Self-praise_ in the present work.]
Once we were nearly receiving from the hand of genius the most curious
sketches of the temper, the irascible humours, the delicacy of soul, even
to its shadowiness, from the warm _sbozzos_ of BURNS, when he began a
diary of the heart,--a narrative of characters and events, and a
chronology of his emotions. It was natural for such a creature of
sensation and passion to project such a regular task, but quite impossible
for him to get through it. The paper-book that he conceived would have
recorded all these things turns out, therefore, but a very imperfect
document. Imperfect as it was, it has been thought proper not to give it
entire. Yet there we view a warm original mind, when he first stepped
into the polished circles of society, discovering that he could no
longer "pour out his bosom, his every thought and floating fancy, his very
inmost soul, with unreserved confidence to another, without hazard of
losing part of that respect which man deserves from man; or, from the
unavoidable imperfections attending human nature, of one day repenting his
confidence." This was the first lesson he learned at Edinburgh, and it was
as a substitute for such a human being that he bought a paper-book to keep
under lock and key: "a security at least equal," says he, "to the bosom of
any friend whatever." Let the man of genius pause over the fragments of
this "paper-book;"--it will instruct as much as any open confession of a
criminal at the moment he is about to suffer. No man was more afflicted
with that miserable pride, the infirmity of men of imagination, which is
so jealously alive, even among their best friends, as to exact a perpetual
acknowledgment of their powers. Our poet, with all his gratitude and
veneration for "the noble Glencairn," was "wounded to the soul" because
his lordship showed "so much attention, engrossing attention, to the only
blockhead at table; the whole company consisted of his lordship,
Dunderpate, and myself." This Dunderpate, who dined with Lord Glencairn,
might have been a useful citizen, who in some points is of more value than
an irritable bard. Burns was equally offended with another patron, who was
also a literary brother, Dr. Blair. At the moment, he too appeared to be
neglecting the irritable poet "for the mere carcass of greatness, or when
his eye measured the difference of their point of elevation; I say to
myself, with scarcely any emotion," (he might have added, except a good
deal of painful contempt,) "what do I care for him or his pomp either?"
--"Dr. Blair's vanity is proverbially known among his acquaintance," adds
Burns, at the moment that the solitary haughtiness of his own genius had
entirely escaped his self-observation.
This character of genius is not singular. Grimm tells of MARIVAUX, that
though a good man, there was something dark and suspicious in his
character, which made it difficult to keep on terms with him; the most
innocent word would wound him, and he was always inclined to think that
there was an intention to mortify him; this disposition made him unhappy,
and rendered his acquaintance too painful to endure.
What a moral paradox, but what an unquestionable fact, is the wayward
irritability of some of the finest geniuses, which is often weak to
effeminacy, and capricious to childishness! while minds of a less delicate
texture are not frayed and fretted by casual frictions; and plain sense
with a coarser grain, is sufficient to keep down these aberrations of
their feelings. How mortifying is the list of--
Fears of the brave and follies of the wise!
Many have been sore and implacable on an allusion to some personal defect
--on the obscurity of their birth--on some peculiarity of habit; and have
suffered themselves to be governed in life by nervous whims and chimeras,
equally fantastic and trivial. This morbid sensibility lurks in the
temperament of genius, and the infection is often discovered where it is
not always suspected. Cumberland declared that the sensibility of some men
of genius is so quick and captious, that you must first consider whom they
can be happy with, before you can promise yourself any happiness with
them: if you bring uncongenial humours into contact with each other, all
the objects of society will be frustrated by inattention to the proper
grouping of the guests. Look round on our contemporaries; every day
furnishes facts which confirm our principle. Among the vexations of POPE
was the libel of "the pictured shape;"[A] and even the robust mind of
JOHNSON could not suffer to be exhibited as "blinking Sam."[B] MILTON must
have delighted in contemplating his own person; and the engraver not
having reached our sublime bard's ideal grace, he has pointed his
indignation in four iambics. The praise of a skipping ape raised the
feeling of envy in that child of nature and genius, GOLDSMITH. VOITURE,
the son of a vintner, like our PRIOR, was so mortified whenever reminded
of his original occupation, that it was bitterly said, that wine, which
cheered the hearts of all men, sickened the heart of Voiture. AKENSIDE
ever considered his lameness as an unsupportable misfortune, for it
continually reminded him of the fall of the cleaver from one of his
father's blocks. BECCARIA, invited to Paris by the literati, arrived
melancholy and silent, and abruptly returned home. At that moment this
great man was most miserable from a fit of jealousy: a young female had
extinguished all his philosophy. The poet ROUSSEAU was the son of a
cobbler; and when his honest parent waited at the door of the theatre to
embrace his son on the success of his first piece, genius, whose
sensibility is not always virtuous, repulsed the venerable father with
insult and contempt. But I will no longer proceed from folly to crime.
[Footnote A: He was represented as an ill-made monkey in the frontispiece
to a satire noted in "Quarrels of Authors," p. 286 (last edition).--ED.]
[Footnote B: Johnson was displeased at the portrait Reynolds painted of
him which dwelt on his nearsightedness; declaring that "a man's defects
should never be painted." The same defect was made the subject of a
caricature particularly allusive to critical prejudices in his "Lives of
the Poets," in which he is pictured as an owl "blinking at the stars."
--ED.]
Those who give so many sensations to others must themselves possess an
excess and a variety of feelings. We find, indeed, that they are censured
for their extreme irritability; and that happy equality of temper so
prevalent among MEN OF LETTERS, and which is conveniently acquired by men
of the world, has been usually refused to great mental powers, or to
fervid dispositions--authors and artists. The man of wit becomes petulant,
the profound thinker morose, and the vivacious ridiculously thoughtless.
When ROUSSEAU once retired to a village, he had to learn to endure its
conversation; for this purpose he was compelled to invent an expedient to
get rid of his uneasy sensations. "Alone, I have never known ennui,
even when perfectly unoccupied: my imagination, filling the void, was
sufficient to busy me. It is only the inactive chit-chat of the room, when
every one is seated face to face, and only moving their tongues, which I
never could support. There to be a fixture, nailed with one hand on the
other, to settle the state of the weather, or watch the flies about
one, or, what is worse, to be bandying compliments, this to me is not
bearable." He hit on the expedient of making lace-strings, carrying his
working cushion in his visits, to keep the peace with the country gossips.
Is the occupation of making a great name less anxious and precarious than
that of making a great fortune? the progress of a man's capital is
unequivocal to him, but that of the fame of authors and artists is for the
greater part of their lives of an ambiguous nature. They become whatever
the minds or knowledge of others make them; they are the creatures of the
prejudices and the predispositions of others, and must suffer from those
precipitate judgments which are the result of such prejudices and such
predispositions. Time only is the certain friend of literary worth, for
time makes the world disagree among themselves; and when those who condemn
discover that there are others who approve, the weaker party loses itself
in the stronger, and at length they learn that the author was far more
reasonable than their prejudices had allowed them to conceive. It is thus,
however, that the regard which men of genius find in one place they lose
in another. We may often smile at the local gradations of genius; the
fervid esteem in which an author is held here, and the cold indifference,
if not contempt, he encounters in another place; here the man of learning
is condemned as a heavy drone, and there the man of wit annoys the unwitty
listener.
And are not the anxieties of even the most successful men of genius
renewed at every work--often quitted in despair, often returned to with
rapture? the same agitation of the spirits, the same poignant delight, the
same weariness, the same dissatisfaction, the same querulous languishment
after excellence? Is the man of genius an INVENTOR? the discovery is
contested, or it is not comprehended for ten years after, perhaps not
during his whole life; even men of science are as children before him. Sir
Thomas Bodley wrote to Lord Bacon, remonstrating with him on his _new mode
of philosophising_. It seems the fate of all originality of thinking to be
immediately opposed; a contemporary is not prepared for its comprehension,
and too often cautiously avoids it, from the prudential motive which turns
away from a new and solitary path. BACON was not at all understood at home
in his own day; his reputation--for it was not celebrity--was confined to
his history of Henry VII., and his Essays; it was long after his death
before English writers ventured to quote Bacon as an authority; and with
equal simplicity and grandeur, BACON called himself "the servant of
posterity." MONTESQUIEU gave his _Esprit des Loix_ to be read by that man
in France, whom he conceived to be the best judge, and in return received
the most mortifying remarks. The great philosopher exclaimed in despair,
"I see my own age is not ripe enough to understand my work; however, it
shall be published!" When KEPLER published the first rational work on
comets, it was condemned, even by the learned, as a wild dream. COPERNICUS
so much dreaded the prejudice of mankind against his treatise on "The
Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies," that, by a species of continence of
all others most difficult to a philosopher, says Adam Smith, he detained
it in his closet for thirty years together. LINNÆUS once in despair
abandoned his beloved studies, from a too irritable feeling of the
ridicule in which, as it appeared to him, a professor Siegesbeck had
involved his famous system. Penury, neglect, and labour LINNÆUS could
endure, but that his botany should become the object of ridicule for all
Stockholm, shook the nerves of this great inventor in his science. Let him
speak for himself. "No one cared how many sleepless nights and toilsome
hours I had passed, while all with one voice declared, that Siegesbeck had
annihilated me. I took my leave of Flora, who bestows on me nothing but
Siegesbecks; and condemned my too numerous observations a thousand times
over to eternal oblivion. What a fool have I been to waste so much time,
to spend my days in a study which yields no better fruit, and makes me the
laughing stock of the world." Such are the cries of the irritability of
genius, and such are often the causes. The world was in danger of losing a
new science, had not LINNÆUS returned to the discoveries which he had
forsaken in the madness of the mind! The great SYDENHAM, who, like our
HARVEY and our HUNTER, effected a revolution in the science of medicine,
and led on alone by the independence of his genius, attacked the most
prevailing prejudices, so highly provoked the malignant emulation of his
rivals, that a conspiracy was raised against the father of our modern
practice to banish him out of the college, as "guilty of medical heresy."
JOHN HUNTER was a great discoverer in his own science; but one who well
knew him has told us, that few of his contemporaries perceived the
ultimate object of his pursuits; and his strong and solitary genius
laboured to perfect his designs without the solace of sympathy, without
one cheering approbation. "We bees do not provide honey for ourselves,"
exclaimed VAN HELMONT, when worn out by the toils of chemistry, and still
contemplating, amidst tribulation and persecution, and approaching death,
his "Tree of Life," which he imagined he had discovered in the cedar. But
with a sublime melancholy his spirit breaks out; "My mind breathes some
unheard-of thing within; though I, as unprofitable for this life, shall be
buried!" Such were the mighty but indistinct anticipations of this
visionary inventor, the father of modern chemistry!
I cannot quit this short record of the fates of the inventors in science,
without adverting to another cause of that irritability of genius which is
so closely connected with their pursuits. If we look into the history of
theories, we shall be surprised at the vast number which have "not left a
rack behind." And do we suppose that the inventors themselves were not at
times alarmed by secret doubts of their soundness and stability? They
felt, too often for their repose, that the noble architecture which they
had raised might be built on moveable sands, and be found only in the dust
of libraries; a cloudy day, or a fit of indigestion, would deprive an
inventor of his theory all at once; and as one of them said, "after
dinner, all that I have written in the morning appears to me dark,
incongruous, nonsensical." At such moments we should find this man of
genius in no pleasant mood. The true cause of this nervous state cannot,
nay, must not, be confided to the world: the honour of his darling theory
will always be dearer to his pride than the confession of even slight
doubts which may shake its truth. It is a curious fact which we have
but recently discovered, that ROUSSEAU was disturbed by a terror he
experienced, and which we well know was not unfounded, that his theories
of education were false and absurd. He could not endure to read a page in
his own "Emile"[A] without disgust after the work had been published! He
acknowledged that there were more suffrages against his notions than for
them. "I am not displeased," says he, "with myself on the style and
eloquence, but I still dread that my writings are good for nothing at the
bottom, and that all my theories are full of extravagance." [_Je crains
toujours que je pèche par le fond, et que tous mes systèmes ne sont que
des extravagances._] HARTLEY with his "Vibrations and Vibrationeles,"
LEIBNITZ with his "Monads," CUDWORTH with his "Plastic Natures,"
MALEBRANCHE with his paradoxical doctrine of "Seeing all things in God,"
and BURNET with his heretical "Theory of the Earth," must unquestionably
at times have betrayed an irritability which those about them may have
attributed to temper, rather than to genius.
[Footnote A: In a letter by Hume to Blair, written in 1766, apparently
first published in the _Literary Gazette_, Nov. 17, 1821.]
Is our man of genius--not the victim of fancy, but the slave of truth--a
learned author? Of the living waters of human knowledge it cannot be said
that "If a man drink thereof, he shall never thirst again." What volumes
remain to open! what manuscript but makes his heart palpitate! There is no
term in researches which new facts may not alter, and a single date may
not dissolve. Truth! thou fascinating, but severe mistress, thy adorers
are often broken down in thy servitude, performing a thousand unregarded
task-works! Now winding thee through thy labyrinth with a single thread,
often unravelling--now feeling their way in darkness, doubtful if it be
thyself they are touching. How much of the real labour of genius and
erudition must remain concealed from the world, and never be reached by
their penetration! MONTESQUIEU has described this feeling after its agony:
"I thought I should have killed myself these three months to finish a
_morceau_ (for his great work), which I wished to insert, on the origin
and revolutions of the civil laws in France. You will read it in three
hours; but I do assure you that it cost me so much labour that it has
whitened my hair." Mr. Hallam, stopping to admire the genius of GIBBON,
exclaims, "In this, as in many other places, the masterly boldness and
precision of his outline, which astonish those who have trodden parts of
the same field, is apt to escape an uninformed reader." Thrice has my
learned friend, SHARON TURNER, recomposed, with renewed researches, the
history of our ancestors, of which Milton and Hume had despaired--thrice,
amidst the self-contests of ill-health and professional duties!
The man of erudition in closing his elaborate work is still exposed to the
fatal omissions of wearied vigilance, or the accidental knowledge of some
inferior mind, and always to the reigning taste, whatever it chance to be,
of the public. Burnet criticised VARILLAS unsparingly;[A] but when he
wrote history himself, Harmer's "Specimen of Errors in Burnet's History,"
returned Burnet the pangs which he had inflicted on another. NEWTON'S
favourite work was his "Chronology," which he had written over fifteen
times, yet he desisted from its publication during his life-time, from the
ill-usage of which he complained. Even the "Optics" of Newton had no
character at home till noticed in France. The calm temper of our great
philosopher was of so fearful a nature in regard to criticism, that
Whiston declares that he would not publish his attack on the "Chronology,"
lest it might have killed our philosopher; and thus Bishop STILLINGFLEET'S
end was hastened by LOCKE's confutation of his metaphysics. The feelings
of Sir JOHN MARSHAM could hardly be less irritable when he found his great
work tainted by an accusation that it was not friendly to revelation.[B]
When the learned POCOCK published a specimen of his translation of
Abulpharagias, an Arabian historian, in 1649, it excited great interest;
but in 1663, when he gave the world the complete version, it met with no
encouragement: in the course of those thirteen years, the genius of the
times had changed, and Oriental studies were no longer in request.
[Footnote A: For an account of this work, and Burnet's _exposé_ of it, see
"Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 132.--ED.]
[Footnote B: This great work the _Canon Chronicus_, was published in 1672,
and was the first attempt to make the Egyptian chronology clear and
intelligible, and to reconcile the whole to the Scripture chronology; a
labour he had commenced in _Diatriba Chronologica_, published in 1649.
--ED.]
The great VERULAM profoundly felt the retardment of his fame; for he has
pathetically expressed this sentiment in his testament, where he bequeaths
his name to posterity, AFTER SOME GENERATIONS SHALL BE past. BRUCE sunk
into his grave defrauded of that just fame which his pride and vivacity
perhaps too keenly prized, at least for his happiness, and which he
authoritatively exacted from an unwilling public. Mortified and indignant
at the reception of his great labour by the cold-hearted scepticism of
little minds, and the maliciousness of idling wits, he, whose fortitude
had toiled through a life of difficulty and danger, could not endure the
laugh and scorn of public opinion; for BRUCE there was a simoon more
dreadful than the Arabian, and from which genius cannot hide its head. Yet
BRUCE only met with the fate which MARCO POLO had before encountered;
whose faithful narrative had been contemned by his contemporaries, and who
was long thrown aside among legendary writers.[A]
[Footnote A: His stories of the wealth and population of China, which he
described as consisting of _millions_ obtained for him the nickname of
_Marco Milione_ among the Venetians and other small Italian states, who
were unable to comprehend the greatness of his truthful narratives of
Eastern travel. Upon his death-bed he was adjured by his friends to
retract his statements, which he indignantly refused. It was long after
ere his truthfulness was established by other travellers; the Venetian
populace gave his house the name _La Corte di Milioni_: and a vulgar
caricature of the great traveller was always introduced in their
carnivals, who was termed _Marco Milione_; and delighted them with the
most absurd stories, in, which everything was computed by millions.--ED.]
HARVEY, though his life was prolonged to his eightieth year, hardly lived
to see his great discovery of the circulation of the blood established: no
physician adopted it; and when at length it was received, one party
attempted to rob Harvey of the honour of the discovery, while another
asserted that it was so obvious, that they could only express their
astonishment that it had ever escaped observation. Incredulity and envy
are the evil spirits which have often dogged great inventors to their
tomb, and there only have vanished.--But I seem writing the "calamities of
authors," and have only begun the catalogue.
The reputation of a writer of taste is subject to more difficulties than
any other. Similar was the fate of the finest ode-writers in our poetry.
On their publication, the odes of COLLINS could find no readers; and those
of GRAY, though ushered into the reading world by the fashionable press of
Walpole, were condemned as failures. When RACINE produced his "Athalie,"
it was not at all relished: Boileau indeed declared that he understood
these matters better than the public, and prophesied that the public would
return to it: they did so; but it was sixty years afterwards; and Racine
died without suspecting that "Athalie" was his masterpiece. I have heard
one of our great poets regret that he had devoted so much of his life to
the cultivation of his art, which arose from a project made in the golden
vision of his youth: "at a time," said he, "when I thought that the
fountain could never be dried up."--"Your baggage will reach posterity,"
was observed.--"There is much to spare," was the answer.
Every day we may observe, of a work of genius, that those parts which have
all the raciness of the soil, and as such are most liked by its admirers,
are those which are the most criticised. Modest critics shelter themselves
under that general amnesty too freely granted, that tastes are allowed to
differ; but we should approximate much nearer to the truth, if we were to
say, that but few of mankind are prepared to relish the beautiful with
that enlarged taste which comprehends all the forms of feeling which
genius may assume; forms which may be necessarily associated with defects.
A man of genius composes in a state of intellectual emotion, and the magic
of his style consists in the movements of his soul; but the art of
conveying those movements is far separated from the feeling which inspires
them. The idea in the mind is not always found under the pen, any more
than the artist's conception can always breathe in his pencil. Like
FIAMINGO'S image, which he kept polishing till his friend exclaimed, "What
perfection would you have?"--"Alas!" exclaimed the sculptor, "the original
I am labouring to come up to is in my head, but not yet in my hand."
The writer toils, and repeatedly toils, to throw into our minds that
sympathy with which we hang over the illusion of his pages, and become
himself. ARIOSTO wrote sixteen different ways the celebrated stanza
descriptive of a tempest, as appears by his MSS. at Ferrara; and the
version he preferred was the last of the sixteen. We know that PETRARCH
made forty-four alterations of a single verse: "whether for the thought,
the expression, or the harmony, it is evident that as many operations in
the heart, the head, or the ear of the poet occurred," observes a man of
genius, Ugo Foscolo. Quintilian and Horace dread the over-fondness of an
author for his compositions: alteration is not always improvement. A
picture over-finished fails in its effect. If the hand of the artist
cannot leave it, how much beauty may it undo! yet still he is lingering,
still strengthening the weak, still subduing the daring, still searching
for that single idea which awakens so many in the minds of others, while
often, as it once happened, the dash of despair hangs the foam on the
horse's nostrils. I have known a great sculptor, who for twenty years
delighted himself with forming in his mind the nymph his hand was always
creating. How rapturously he beheld her! what inspiration! what illusion!
Alas! the last five years spoiled the beautiful which he had once reached,
and could not stop and finish!
The art of composition, indeed, is of such slow attainment, that a man of
genius, late in life, may discover how its secret conceals itself in the
habit; how discipline consists in exercise, how perfection comes from
experience, and how unity is the last effort of judgment. When Fox
meditated on a history which should last with the language, he met his
evil genius in this new province. The rapidity and the fire of his
elocution were extinguished by a pen unconsecrated by long and previous
study; he saw that he could not class with the great historians of every
great people; he complained, while he mourned over the fragment of genius
which, after such zealous preparation, he dared not complete. CURRAN, an
orator of vehement eloquence, often strikingly original, when late in life
he was desirous of cultivating literary composition, unaccustomed to its
more gradual march, found a pen cold, and destitute of every grace.
ROUSSEAU has glowingly described the ceaseless inquietude by which he
obtained the seductive eloquence of his style; and has said, that with
whatever talent a man may be born, the art of writing is not easily
obtained. The existing manuscripts of ROUSSEAU display as many erasures as
those of Ariosto or Petrarch; they show his eagerness to dash down his
first thoughts, and the art by which he raised them to the impassioned
style of his imagination. The memoir of GIBBON was composed seven or nine
times, and, after all, was left unfinished; and BUFFON tells us that he
wrote his "Epoques de la Nature" eighteen times before it satisfied his
taste. BURNS'S anxiety in finishing his poems was great; "all my poetry,"
said he, "is the effect of easy composition, but of laborious correction."
POPE, when employed on the _Iliad_, found it not only occupy his thoughts
by day, but haunting his dreams by night, and once wished himself hanged,
to get rid of Homer: and that he experienced often such literary agonies,
witness his description of the depressions and elevations of genius:
Who pants for glory, finds but short repose;
A breath revives him, or a breath o'erthrows!
When ROMNEY undertook to commence the first subject for the Shakspeare
Gallery, in the rapture of enthusiasm, amidst the sublime and pathetic
labouring in his whole mind, arose the terror of failure. The subject
chosen was "The Tempest;" and, as Hayley truly observes, it created many a
tempest in the fluctuating spirits of Romney. The vehement desire of that
perfection which genius conceives, and cannot always execute, held a
perpetual contest with that dejection of spirits which degrades the
unhappy sufferer, and casts him, grovelling among the mean of his class.
In a national work, a man of genius pledges his honour to the world for
its performance; but to redeem that pledge, there is a darkness in the
uncertain issue, and he is risking his honour for ever. By that work he
will always be judged, for public failures are never forgotten, and it is
not then a party, but the public itself, who become his adversaries. With
ROMNEY it was "a fever of the mad;" and his friends could scarcely inspire
him with sufficient courage to proceed with his arduous picture, which
exercised his imagination and his pencil for several years. I have heard
that he built a painting-room purposely for this picture; and never did an
anchorite pour fourth a more fervent orison to Heaven, than Romney when
this labour was complete. He had a fine genius, with all its solitary
feelings, but he was uneducated, and incompetent even to write a letter;
yet on this occasion, relieved from his intense anxiety under so long a
work, he wrote one of the most eloquent. It is a document in the history
of genius, and reveals all those feelings which are here too faintly
described.[A] I once heard an amiable author, whose literary career has
perhaps not answered the fond hopes of his youth, half in anger and in
love, declare that he would retire to some solitude, where, if any
one would follow him, he would found a new order--the order of THE
DISAPPOINTED.
[Footnote A: "My DEAR FRIEND,--Your kindness in rejoicing so heartily at
the birth of my picture has given me great satisfaction.
"There has been an anxiety labouring in my mind the greater part of the
last twelvemonth. At times it had nearly overwhelmed me. I thought I
should absolutely have sunk into despair. O! what a kind friend is in
those times! I thank God, whatever my picture may be, I can say thus much,
I am a greater philosopher and a better Christian."]
Thus the days of a man of genius are passed in labours as unremitting and
exhausting as those of the artisan. The world is not always aware, that to
some, meditation, composition, and even conversation, may inflict pains
undetected by the eye and the tenderness of friendship. Whenever ROUSSEAU
passed a morning in society, it was observed, that in the evening he was
dissatisfied and distressed; and JOHN HUNTER, in a mixed company, found
that conversation fatigued, instead of amusing him. HAWKESWORTH, in the
second paper of the "Adventurer," has drawn, from his own feelings, an
eloquent comparative estimate of intellectual with corporeal labour; it
may console the humble mechanic; and Plato, in his work on "Laws," seems
to have been aware of this analogy, for he consecrates all working men or
artisans to Vulcan and Minerva, because both those deities alike are hard
labourers. Yet with genius all does not terminate, even with the most
skilful labour. What the toiling Vulcan and the thoughtful Minerva may
want, will too often be absent--the presence of the Graces. In the
allegorical picture of the School of Design, by Carlo Maratti, where the
students are led through their various studies, in the opening clouds
above the academy are seen the Graces, hovering over their pupils, with an
inscription they must often recollect--_Senza di noi ogni fatica è vana_.
The anxious uncertainty of an author for his compositions resembles the
anxiety of a lover when he has written to a mistress who has not yet
decided on his claims; he repents his labour, for he thinks he has written
too much, while he is mortified at recollecting that he had omitted some
things which he imagines would have secured the object of his wishes.
Madame DE STAEL, who has often entered into feelings familiar to a
literary and political family, in a parallel between ambition and genius,
has distinguished them in this; that while "ambition _perseveres_ in the
desire of acquiring power, genius _flags_ of itself. Genius in the midst
of society is a pain, an internal fever which would require to be treated
as a real disease, if the records of glory did not soften the sufferings
it produces."--"Athenians! what troubles have you not cost me," exclaimed
DEMOSTHENES, "that I may be talked of by you!"
These moments of anxiety often darken the brightest hours of genius.
RACINE had extreme sensibility; the pain inflicted by a severe criticism
outweighed all the applause he received. He seems to have felt, what he
was often reproached with, that his Greeks, his Jews, and his Turks, were
all inmates of Versailles. He had two critics, who, like our Dennis with
Pope and Addison, regularly dogged his pieces as they appeared[A].
Corneille's objections he would attribute to jealousy--at his pieces when
burlesqued at the Italian theatre[B] he would smile outwardly, though sick
at heart; but his son informs us, that a stroke of raillery from his witty
friend Chapelle, whose pleasantry hardly sheathed its bitterness, sunk
more deeply into his heart than the burlesques at the Italian theatre, the
protest of Corneille, and the iteration of the two Dennises. More than
once MOLIERE and Racine, in vexation of spirit, resolved to abandon their
dramatic career; it was BOILEAU who ceaselessly animated their languor:
"Posterity," he cried, "will avenge the injustice of our age!" And
CONGREVE'S comedies met with such moderate success, that it appears the
author was extremely mortified, and on the ill reception of _The Way of
the World_, determined to write no more for the stage. When he told
Voltaire, on the French wit's visit, that Voltaire must consider him as a
private gentleman, and not as an author,--which apparent affectation
called down on Congreve the sarcastic severity of the French author,[C]
--more of mortification and humility might have been in Congreve's
language than of affectation or pride.
[Footnote A: See the article "On the Influence of a bad temper in
Criticism" in "Calamities of Authors," for a notice of Dennis and his
career.--ED.]
[Footnote B: See the article on "The Sensibility of Racine" in "Literary
Miscellanies," (in the present volume) and that on "Parody," in
"Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p. 459.--ED.]
[Footnote C: Voltaire quietly said he should not have troubled himself to
visit him if he had been merely a private gentleman.--ED.]
The life of TASSO abounds with pictures of a complete exhaustion of this
kind. His contradictory critics had perplexed him with the most intricate
literary discussions, and either occasioned or increased a mental
alienation. In one of his letters, we find that he repents the composition
of his great poem, for although his own taste approved of that marvellous,
which still forms a noble part of its creation, yet he confesses that his
cold reasoning critics have decided that the history of his hero, Godfrey,
required another species of conduct. "Hence," cries the unhappy bard,
"doubts torment me; but for the past, and what is done, I know of no
remedy;" and he longs to precipitate the publication, that "he may be
delivered from misery and agony." He solemnly swears--"Did not the
circumstances of my situation compel me, I would not print it, even
perhaps during my life, I so much doubt of its success." Such was the
painful state of fear and doubt experienced by the author of the
"Jerusalem Delivered," when he gave it to the world; a state of suspense,
among the children of imagination, in which none are more liable to
participate than the true sensitive artist. We may now inspect the severe
correction of Tasso's muse, in the fac-simile of a page of his manuscripts
in Mr. Dibdin's late "Tour." She seems to have inflicted tortures on his
pen, surpassing even those which may be seen in the fac-simile page which,
thirty years ago, I gave of Pope's Homer.[A] At Florence may still be
viewed the many works begun and abandoned by the genius of MICHAEL ANGELO;
they are preserved inviolate--"so sacred is the terror of Michael Angelo's
genius!" exclaims Forsyth. These works are not always to be considered as
failures of the chisel; they appear rather to have been rejected for
coming short of the artist's first conceptions: yet, in a strain
of sublime poetry, he has preserved his sentiments on the force of
intellectual labour; he thought that there was nothing which the
imagination conceived, that could not be made visible in marble, if the
hand were made to obey the mind:--
Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto,
Ch' un marmo solo in se non circoseriva
Col suo soverchio, e solo a quello arriva
La man che obbedisce all' intelletto.
IMITATED.
The sculptor never yet conceived a thought
That yielding marble has refused to aid;
But never with a mastery he wrought--
Save when the hand the intellect obeyed.
[Footnote A: It now forms the frontispiece to vol. ii. of the last edition
of the "Curiosities of Literature."--ED.]
An interesting domestic story has been preserved of GESNER, who so
zealously devoted his graver and his pencil to the arts. His sensibility
was ever struggling after that ideal excellence which he could not attain.
Often he sunk into fits of melancholy, and, gentle as he was, the
tenderness of his wife and friends could not soothe his distempered
feelings; it was necessary to abandon him to his own thoughts, till, after
a long abstinence from his neglected works, in a lucid moment, some
accident occasioned him to return to them. In one of these hypochondria of
genius, after a long interval of despair, one morning at breakfast with
his wife, his eye fixed on one of his pictures: it was a group of fauns
with young shepherds dancing at the entrance of a cavern shaded with
vines; his eye appeared at length to glisten; and a sudden return
to good humour broke out in this lively apostrophe--"Ah! see those
playful children, they always dance!" This was the moment of gaiety and
inspiration, and he flew to his forsaken easel.
La Harpe, an author by profession, observes, that as it has been shown
that there are some maladies peculiar to artisans[A]--there are also some
sorrows peculiar to them, and which the world can neither pity nor soften,
because they do not enter into their experience. The querulous language of
so many men of genius has been sometimes attributed to causes very
different from the real ones--the most fortunate live to see their talents
contested and their best works decried. Assuredly many an author has sunk
into his grave without the consciousness of having obtained that fame for
which he had sacrificed an arduous life. The too feeling SMOLLETT has left
this testimony to posterity:--"Had some of those, who are pleased to call
themselves my friends, been at any pains to deserve the character, and
told me ingenuously what I had to expect in the capacity of an _author_, I
should, in all probability, have spared myself the _incredible labour_ and
_chagrin_ I have since undergone." And Smollett was a popular writer!
POPE'S solemn declaration in the preface to his collected works comes by
no means short of Smollett's avowal. HUME'S philosophical indifference
could often suppress that irritability which Pope and Smollett fully
indulged.
[Footnote A: See Ramazini, "De Morbis Artificium Diatriba," which Dr.
James translated in 1750. It is a sad reflection, resulting from this
curious treatise, that the arts entail no small mischief upon their
respective workmen; so that the means by which they live are too often the
occasion of their being hurried out of the world.]
But were the feelings of HUME more obtuse, or did his temper, gentle as it
was by constitution, bear, with a saintly patience, the mortifications his
literary life so long endured? After recomposing two of his works, which
incurred the same neglect in their altered form, he raised the most
sanguine hopes of his History, but he tells us, "miserable was my
disappointment!" Although he never deigned to reply to his opponents, yet
they haunted him; and an eye-witness has thus described the irritated
author discovering in conversation his suppressed resentment--"His
forcible mode of expression, the brilliant quick movements of his eyes,
and the gestures of his body," these betrayed the pangs of contempt, or of
aversion! HOGARTH, in a fit of the spleen, advertised that he had
determined not to give the world any more original works, and intended to
pass the rest of his days in painting portraits. The same advertisement is
marked by farther irritability. He contemptuously offers the purchasers of
his "Analysis of Beauty," to present them _gratis_ with "an eighteenpenny
pamphlet," published by Ramsay the painter, written in opposition to
Hogarth's principles. So untameable was the irritability of this great
inventor in art, that he attempts to conceal his irritation by offering to
dispose gratuitously of the criticism which had disturbed his nights.[A]
[Footnote A: Hogarth was not without reason for exasperation. He was
severely attacked for his theories about the curved line of beauty, which
was branded as a foolish attempt to prove crookedness elegant, and himself
vulgarly caricatured. It was even asserted that the theory was stolen from
Lomazzo. ED.]
Parties confederate against a man of genius,--as happened to Corneille, to
D'Avenant,[A] and Milton; and a Pradon and a Settle carry away the meed of
a Racine and a Dryden. It was to support the drooping spirit of his friend
Racine on the opposition raised against Phædra, that Boileau addressed to
him an epistle "On the Utility to be drawn from the Jealousy of the
Envious." The calm dignity of the historian DE THOU, amidst the passions
of his times, confidently expected that justice from posterity which his
own age refused to his early and his late labour. That great man was,
however, compelled by his injured feelings, to compose a poem under the
name of another, to serve as his apology against the intolerant court of
Rome, and the factious politicians of France; it was a noble subterfuge to
which a great genius was forced. The acquaintances of the poet COLLINS
probably complained of his wayward humours and irritability; but how could
they sympathise with the secret mortification of the poet, who imagined
that he had composed his Pastorals on wrong principles, or when, in the
agony of his soul, he consigned to the flames with his own hands his
unsold, but immortal odes? Can we forget the dignified complaint of the
Rambler, with which he awfully closes his work, appealing to posterity?
[Footnote A: See "Quarrels of Authors," p. 403, on the confederacy of
several wits against D'Avenant, a great genius; where I discovered that a
volume of poems, said "to be written by the author's friends," which had
hitherto been referred to as a volume of panegyrics, contains nothing but
irony and satire, which had escaped the discovery of so many transcribers
of title-pages, frequently miscalled literary historians.]
Genius contracts those peculiarities of which it is so loudly accused
in its solitary occupations--that loftiness of spirit, those quick
jealousies, those excessive affections and aversions which view everything
as it passes in its own ideal world, and rarely as it exists in the
mediocrity of reality. If this irritability of genius be a malady which
has raged even among philosophers, we must not be surprised at the
temperament of poets. These last have abandoned their country; they have
changed their name; they have punished themselves with exile in the rage
of their disorder. No! not poets only. DESCARTES sought in vain, even in
his secreted life, for a refuge for his genius; he thought himself
persecuted in France, he thought himself calumniated among strangers, and
he went and died in Sweden; and little did that man of genius think that
his countrymen would beg to have his ashes restored to them. Even the
reasoning HUME once proposed to change his name and his country; and I
believe did. The great poetical genius of our own times has openly
alienated himself from the land of his brothers. He becomes immortal in
the language of a people whom he would contemn.[A] Does he accept with
ingratitude the fame he loves more than life?
[Footnote A: I shall preserve a manuscript note of Lord BYRON on this
passage; not without a hope that we shall never receive from him the
genius of Italian poetry, otherwise than in the language of his "_father
land_"; an expressive term, which I adopted from the Dutch language some
years past, and which I have seen since sanctioned by the pens of Lord
Byron and of Mr. Southey.
His lordship has here observed, "It is not my fault that I am obliged to
write in English. If I understood my present language equally well, I
would write in it; but this will require ten years at least to form a
style: no tongue so easy to acquire a little of, or so difficult to master
thoroughly, as Italian." On the same page I find the following note: "What
was rumoured of me in that language? If true, I was unfit for England: if
false, England was unfit for me:--'There is a world elsewhere.' I have
never regretted for a moment that country, but often that I ever returned
to it at all."]
Such, then, is that state of irritability in which men of genius
participate, whether they be inventors, men of learning, fine writers, or
artists. It is a state not friendly to equality of temper. In the various
humours incidental to it, when they are often deeply affected, the cause
escapes all perception of sympathy. The intellectual malady eludes even
the tenderness of friendship. At those moments, the lightest injury to the
feelings, which at another time would make no impression, may produce a
perturbed state of feeling in the warm temper, or the corroding chagrin of
a self-wounded spirit. These are moments which claim the encouragements of
a friendship animated by a high esteem for the intellectual excellence of
the man of genius; not the general intercourse of society; not the
insensibility of the dull, nor the levity of the volatile.
Men of genius are often reverenced only where they are known by their
writings--intellectual beings in the romance of life; in its history, they
are men! ERASMUS compared them to the great figures in tapestry-work,
which lose their effect when not seen at a distance. Their foibles and
their infirmities are obvious to their associates, often only capable of
discerning these qualities. The defects of great men are the consolation
of the dunces.