The meditations of genius.--A work on the art of meditation not yet
produced.--Predisposing the mind.--Imagination awakens imagination.
--Generating feelings by music.--Slight habits.--Darkness and silence, by
suspending the exercise of our senses, increase the vivacity of our
conceptions.--The arts of memory.--Memory the foundation of genius.
--Inventions by several to preserve their own moral and literary
character.--And to assist their studies.--The meditations of genius depend
on habit.--Of the night-time.--A day of meditation should precede a day of
composition.--Works of magnitude from slight conceptions.--Of thoughts
never written.--The art of meditation exercised at all hours and places.
--Continuity of attention the source of philosophical discoveries.
--Stillness of meditation the first state of existence in genius.
A continuity of attention, a patient quietness of mind, forms one of the
characteristics of genius. To think, and to feel, constitute the two
grand divisions of men of genius--the men of reasoning and the men of
imagination. There is a thread in our thoughts, as there is a pulse in our
hearts; he who can hold the one, knows how to think; and he who can move
the other, knows how to feel.
A work on the art of meditation has not yet been produced; yet such a work
might prove of immense advantage to him who never happened to have more
than one solitary idea. The pursuit of a single principle has produced a
great system. Thus probably we owe ADAM SMITH to the French economists.
And a loose hint has conducted to a new discovery. Thus GIRARD, taking
advantage of an idea first started by Fenelon, produced his "Synonymes."
But while, in every manual art, every great workman improves on his
predecessor, of the art of the mind, notwithstanding the facility of
practice, and our incessant experience, millions are yet ignorant of the
first rudiments; and men of genius themselves are rarely acquainted with
the materials they are working on. Certain constituent principles of the
mind itself, which the study of metaphysics curiously developes, offer
many important regulations in this desirable art. We may even suspect,
since men of genius in the present age have confided to us the secrets of
their studies, that this art may be carried on by more obvious means than
at first would appear, and even by mechanical contrivances and practical
habits. A mind well organised may be regulated by a single contrivance, as
by a bit of lead we govern the fine machinery by which we track the flight
of time. Many secrets in this art of the mind yet remain as insulated
facts, which may hereafter enter into an experimental history.
Johnson has a curious observation on the Mind itself. He thinks it obtains
a stationary point, from whence it can never advance, occurring before the
middle of life. "When the powers of nature have attained their intended
energy, they can be no more advanced. The shrub can never become a tree.
Nothing then remains but _practice_ and _experience_; and perhaps _why
they do so little may be worth inquiry_."[A] The result of this inquiry
would probably lay a broader foundation for this art of the mind than we
have hitherto possessed, ADAM FERGUSON has expressed himself with
sublimity:--"The lustre which man casts around him, like the flame
of a meteor, shines only while his motion continues; the moments of rest
and of obscurity are the same." What is this art of meditation, but the
power of withdrawing ourselves from the world, to view that world moving
within ourselves, while we are in repose? As the artist, by an optical
instrument, reflects and concentrates the boundless landscape around him,
and patiently traces all nature in that small space.
[Footnote A: I recommend the reader to turn to the whole passage, in
Johnson's "Betters to Mrs. Thrale," vol. i. p. 296.]
There is a government of our thoughts. The mind of genius can be made to
take a particular disposition or train of ideas. It is a remarkable
circumstance in the studies of men of genius, that previous to composition
they have often awakened their imagination by the imagination of their
favourite masters. By touching a magnet, they become a magnet. A
circumstance has been, recorded of GRAY, by Mr. Mathias, "as worthy of all
acceptation among the higher votaries of the divine art, when they are
assured that Mr. Gray never sate down to compose any poetry without
previously, and for a considerable time, reading the works of Spenser."
But the circumstance was not unusual with Malherbe, Corneille, and Racine;
and the most fervid verses of Homer, and the most tender of Euripides,
were often repeated by Milton. Even antiquity exhibits the same exciting
intercourse of the mind of genius. Cicero informs us how his eloquence
caught inspiration from a constant study of the Latin and Grecian poetry;
and it has been recorded of Pompey, who was great even in his youth, that
he never undertook any considerable enterprise without animating his
genius by having read to him the character of Achilles in the first
_Iliad_; although he acknowledged that the enthusiasm he caught came
rather from the poet than the hero. When BOSSUET had to compose a funeral
oration, he was accustomed to retire for several days to his study, to
ruminate over the pages of Homer; and when asked the reason of this habit,
he exclaimed, in these lines--
--magnam mihi mentem, animumque
Delius inspiret Vates.
It is on the same principle of predisposing the mind, that many have first
generated their feelings by the symphonies of music. ALFIERI often before
he wrote prepared his mind by listening to music: "Almost all my tragedies
were sketched in my mind either in the act of hearing music, or a few
hours after"--a circumstance which has been recorded of many others. Lord
BACON had music often played in the room adjoining his study: MILTON
listened to his organ for his solemn inspiration, and music was even
necessary to WARBURTON. The symphonies which awoke in the poet sublime
emotions, might have composed the inventive mind of the great critic in
the visions of his theoretical mysteries. A celebrated French preacher,
Bourdaloue or Massillon, was once found playing on a violin, to screw his
mind up to the pitch, preparatory for his sermon, which within a short
interval he was to preach before the court. CURRAN'S favourite mode of
meditation was with his violin in his hand; for hours together would
he forget himself, running voluntaries over the strings, while his
imagination in collecting its tones was opening all his faculties for the
coming emergency at the bar. When LEONARDO DA VINCI was painting his
"Lisa," commonly called _La Joconde_, he had musicians constantly in
waiting, whose light harmonies, by their associations, inspired feelings
of
Tipsy dance and revelry.
There are slight habits which may be contracted by genius, which assist
the action of the mind; but these are of a nature so trivial, that they
seem ridiculous when they have not been experienced: but the imaginative
race exist by the acts of imagination. HAYDN would never sit down to
compose without being in full dress, with his great diamond ring, and the
finest paper to write down his musical compositions. ROUSSEAU has told
us, when occupied by his celebrated romance, of the influence of the
rose-coloured knots of ribbon which tied his portfolio, his fine paper,
his brilliant ink, and his gold sand. Similar facts are related of many.
Whenever APOSTOLO ZENO, the predecessor of Metastasio, prepared himself to
compose a new drama, he used to say to himself, "_Apostolo! recordati che
questa è la prima opera che dai in luce._"--"Apostolo! remember that this
is the first opera you are presenting to the public." We are scarcely
aware how we may govern our thoughts by means of our sensations: DE LUC
was subject to violent bursts of passion; but he calmed the interior
tumult by the artifice of filling his mouth with sweets and comfits. When
GOLDONI found his sleep disturbed by the obtrusive ideas still floating
from the studies of the day, he contrived to lull himself to rest by
conning in his mind a vocabulary of the Venetian dialect, translating some
word into Tuscan and French; which being a very uninteresting occupation,
at the third or fourth version this recipe never failed. This was an art
of withdrawing attention from the greater to the less emotion; by which,
as the interest weakened, the excitement ceased. MENDELSSOHN, whose feeble
and too sensitive frame was often reduced to the last stage of suffering
by intellectual exertion, when engaged in any point of difficulty, would
in an instant contrive a perfect cessation from thinking, by mechanically
going to the window, and counting the tiles upon the roof of his
neighbour's house. Such facts show how much art may be concerned in the
government of our thoughts.
It is an unquestionable fact that some profound thinkers cannot pursue
their intellectual operations amidst the distractions of light and noise.
With them, attention to what is passing within is interrupted by the
discordant impressions from objects pressing and obtruding on the
external senses. There are indeed instances, as in the case of Priestley
and others, of authors who have pursued their literary works amidst
conversation and their family; but such minds are not the most original
thinkers, and the most refined writers; or their subjects are of a nature
which requires little more than judgment and diligence. It is the mind
only in its fulness which can brood over thoughts till the incubation
produces vitality. Such is the feeling in this act of study. In Plutarch's
time they showed a subterraneous place of study built by Demosthenes, and
where he often continued for two or three months together. Malebranche,
Hobbes, Corneille, and others, darkened their apartment when they wrote,
to concentrate their thoughts, as Milton says of the mind, "in the
spacious circuits of her musing." It is in proportion as we can suspend
the exercise of all our other senses that the liveliness of our conception
increases--this is the observation of the most elegant metaphysician of
our times; and when Lord Chesterfield advised that his pupil--whose
attention wandered on every passing object, which unfitted him for study
--should be instructed in a darkened apartment, he was aware of this
principle; the boy would learn, and retain what he learned, ten times as
well. We close our eyes whenever we would collect our mind together, or
trace more distinctly an object which seems to have faded away in our
recollection. The study of an author or an artist would be ill placed in
the midst of a beautiful landscape; the "Penseroso" of Milton, "hid from
day's garish eye," is the man of genius. A secluded and naked apartment,
with nothing but a desk, a chair, and a single sheet of paper, was for
fifty years the study of BUFFON; the single ornament was a print of Newton
placed before his eyes--nothing broke into the unity of his reveries.
Cumberland's liveliest comedy, _The West Indian_, was written in an
unfurnished apartment, close in front of an Irish turf-stack; and our
comic writer was fully aware of the advantages of the situation. "In all
my hours of study," says that elegant writer, "it has been through life my
object so to locate myself as to have little or nothing to distract my
attention, and therefore brilliant rooms or pleasant prospects I have ever
avoided. A dead wall, or, as in the present case, an Irish turf-stack, are
not attractions that can call off the fancy from its pursuits; and whilst
in these pursuits it can find interest and occupation, it wants no outward
aid to cheer it. My father, I believe, rather wondered at my choice." The
principle ascertained, the consequences are obvious.
The arts of memory have at all times excited the attention of the
studious; they open a world of undivulged mysteries, where every one seems
to form some discovery of his own, rather exciting his astonishment than
enlarging his comprehension. LE SAGE, a modern philosopher, had a memory
singularly defective. Incapable of acquiring languages, and deficient in
all those studies which depend on the exercise of the memory, it became
the object of his subsequent exertions to supply this deficiency by the
order and method he observed in arranging every new fact or idea he
obtained; so that in reality with a very bad memory, it appears that he
was still enabled to recall at will any idea or any knowledge which he had
stored up. JOHN HUNTER happily illustrated the advantages which every one
derives from putting his thoughts in writing, "it resembles a tradesman
taking stock; without which he never knows either what he possesses, or in
what he is deficient." The late WILLIAM HUTTON, a man of an original cast
of mind, as an experiment in memory, opened a book which he had divided
into 365 columns, according to the days of the year: he resolved to try to
recollect an anecdote, for every column, as insignificant and remote as he
was able, rejecting all under ten years of age; and to his surprise, he
filled those spaces for small reminiscences, within ten columns; but till
this experiment had been made, he never conceived the extent of his
faculty. WOLF, the German metaphysician, relates of himself that he had,
by the most persevering habit, in bed and amidst darkness, resolved his
algebraic problems, and geometrically composed all his methods merely by
the aid of his imagination and memory; and when in the daytime he verified
the one and the other of these operations, he had always found them
true. Unquestionably, such astonishing instances of a well-regulated
memory depend on the practice of its art gradually formed by frequent
associations. When we reflect that whatever we know, and whatever we feel,
are the very smallest portions of all the knowledge we have been
acquiring, and all the feelings we have experienced through life, how
desirable would be that art which should again open the scenes which have
vanished, and revivify the emotions which other impressions have effaced?
But the faculty of memory, although perhaps the most manageable of all
others, is considered a subordinate one; it seems only a grasping and
accumulating power, and in the work of genius is imagined to produce
nothing of itself; yet is memory the foundation of Genius, whenever this
faculty is associated with imagination and passion; with men of genius it
is a chronology not merely of events, but of emotions; hence they remember
nothing that is not interesting to their feelings. Persons of inferior
capacity have imperfect recollections from feeble impressions. Are not the
incidents of the great novelist often founded on the common ones of life?
and the personages so admirably alive in his fictions, were they not
discovered among the crowd? The ancients have described the Muses as the
daughters of Memory; an elegant fiction, indicating the natural and
intimate connexion between imagination and reminiscence.
The arts of memory will form a saving-bank of genius, to which it may have
recourse, as a wealth which it can accumulate imperceptibly amidst the
ordinary expenditure. LOCKE taught us the first rudiments of this art,
when he showed us how he stored his thoughts and his facts, by an
artificial arrangement; and Addison, before he commenced his "Spectators,"
had amassed three folios of materials. But the higher step will be the
volume which shall give an account of a man to himself, in which a single
observation immediately becomes a clue of past knowledge, restoring to him
his lost studies, and his evanescent existence. Self-contemplation makes
the man more nearly entire: and to preserve the past, is half of
immortality.
The worth of the diary must depend on the diarist; but "Of the things
which concern himself," as MARCUS ANTONINUS entitles his celebrated work
--this volume, reserved for solitary contemplation, should be considered
as a future relic of ourselves. The late Sir SAMUEL ROMILLY commenced,
even in the most occupied period of his life, a diary of his last twelve
years; which he declares in his will, "I bequeath to my children, as it
may be serviceable to them." Perhaps in this Romilly bore in mind the
example of another eminent lawyer, the celebrated WHITELOCKE, who
had drawn up a great work, entitled "Remembrances of the Labours of
Whitelocke, in the Annals of his Life, for the Instruction of his
Children." That neither of these family books has appeared, is our common
loss. Such legacies from such men ought to become the inheritance of their
countrymen.
To register the transactions of the day, with observations on what, and on
whom, he had seen, was the advice of Lord KAIMES to the late Mr. CURWEN;
and for years his head never reached its pillow without performing a task
which habit had made easy. "Our best and surest road to knowledge," said
Lord Kaimes, "is by profiting from the labours of others, and making their
experience our own." In this manner Curwen tells us he acquired by habit
_the art of thinking_; and he is an able testimony of the practicability
and success of the plan, for he candidly tells us, "Though many would
sicken at the idea of imposing such a task upon themselves, yet the
attempt, persevered in for a short time, would soon become a custom more
irksome to omit than it was difficult to commence."
Could we look into the libraries of authors, the studios of artists, and
the laboratories of chemists, and view what they have only sketched, or
what lie scattered in fragments, and could we trace their first and last
thoughts, we might discover that we have lost more than we possess. There
we might view foundations without superstructures, once the monuments of
their hopes! A living architect recently exhibited to the public an
extraordinary picture of his mind, in his "Architectural Visions of Early
Fancy in the Gay Morning of Youth," and which now were "dreams in the
evening of life." In this picture he had thrown together all the
architectural designs his imagination had conceived, but which remained
unexecuted. The feeling is true, however whimsical such unaccomplished
fancies might appear when thrown together into one picture. In literary
history such instances have occurred but too frequently: the imagination
of youth, measuring neither time nor ability, creates what neither time
nor ability can execute. ADAM SMITH, in the preface to the first edition
of his "Theory of Sentiments," announced a large work on law and
government; and in a late edition he still repeated the promise, observing
that "Thirty years ago I entertained no doubt of being able to execute
everything which it announced." The "Wealth of Nations" was but a fragment
of this greater work. Surely men of genius, of all others, may mourn over
the length of art and the brevity of life!
Yet many glorious efforts, and even artificial inventions, have been
contrived to assist and save its moral and literary existence in that
perpetual race which genius holds with time. We trace its triumph in the
studious days of such men as GIBBON, Sir WILLIAM JONES, and PRIESTLEY. An
invention by which the moral qualities and the acquisitions of the
literary character were combined and advanced together, is what Sir
WILLIAM JONES ingeniously calls his "Andrometer." In that scale of human
attainments and enjoyments which ought to accompany the eras of human
life, it reminds us of what was to be learned, and what to be practised,
assigning to stated periods their appropriate pursuits. An occasional
recurrence, even to so fanciful a standard, would be like looking on a
clock to remind the student how he loiters, or how he advances in the
great day's work. Such romantic plans have been often invented by the
ardour of genius. There was no communication between Sir WILLIAM JONES and
Dr. FRANKLIN; yet, when young, the self-taught philosopher of America
pursued the same genial and generous devotion to his own moral and
literary excellence.
"It was about this time I conceived," says Franklin, "the bold and arduous
project of arriving at moral perfection," &c. He began a daily journal, in
which against thirteen virtues accompanied by seven columns to mark the
days of the week, he dotted down what he considered to be his failures; he
found himself fuller of faults than he had imagined, but at length his
blots diminished. This self-examination, or this "Faultbook," as Lord
Shaftesbury would have called it, was always carried about him. These
books still exist. An additional contrivance was that of journalising his
twenty-four hours, of which he has furnished us both with descriptions and
specimens of the method; and he closes with a solemn assurance, that "It
may be well my posterity should be informed, that to this _little
artifice_ their ancestor owes the constant felicity of his life." Thus we
see the fancy of Jones and the sense of Franklin, unconnected either by
character or communication, but acted on by the same glorious feeling to
create their own moral and literary character, inventing similar although
extraordinary methods.
The memorials of Gibbon and Priestley present us with the experience and
the habits of the literary character. "What I have known," says Dr.
Priestley, "with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my
admiration and my contempt of others. Could we have entered into the mind
of Sir Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by which he produced
his great works, we might see nothing very extraordinary in the process."
Our student, with an ingenuous simplicity, opens to us that "variety of
mechanical expedients by which he secured and arranged his thoughts," and
that discipline of the mind, by means of a peculiar arrangement of his
studies for the day and for the year, in which he rivalled the calm and
unalterable system pursued by Gibbon, Buffon, and Voltaire, who often only
combined the knowledge they obtained by humble methods. They knew what to
ask for; and where what is wanted may be found: they made use of an
intelligent secretary; aware, as Lord Bacon has expressed it, that some
books "may be read by deputy."
Buffon laid down an excellent rule to obtain originality, when he advised
the writer first to exhaust his own thoughts, before he attempted to
consult other writers; and Gibbon, the most experienced reader of all our
writers, offers the same important advice to an author. When engaged on a
particular subject, he tells us, "I suspended my perusal of any new book
on the subject, till I had reviewed all that I knew, or believed, or had
thought on it, that I might be qualified to discern how much the authors
added to my original stock." The advice of Lord Bacon, that we should
pursue our studies in whatever disposition the mind may be, is excellent.
If happily disposed, we shall gain a great step; and if indisposed, we
"shall work out the knots and strands of the mind, and make the middle
times the more pleasant." Some active lives have passed away in incessant
competition, like those of Mozart, Cicero, and Voltaire, who were
restless, perhaps unhappy, when their genius was quiescent. To such minds
the constant zeal they bring to their labour supplies the absence of that
inspiration which cannot always be the same, nor always at its height.
Industry is the feature by which the ancients so frequently describe an
eminent character; such phrases as "_incredibili industria; diligentia
singulars_" are usual. We of these days cannot conceive the industry of
Cicero; but he has himself told us that he suffered no moments of his
leisure to escape from him. Not only his spare hours were consecrated to
his books; but even on days of business he would take a few turns in his
walk, to meditate or to dictate; many of his letters are dated before
daylight, some from the senate, at his meals, and amid his morning levées.
The dawn of day was the summons of study to Sir William Jones. John
Hunter, who was constantly engaged in the search and consideration of
new facts, described what was passing in his mind by a remarkable
illustration:--he said to Abernethy, "My mind is like a bee-hive." A
simile which was singularly correct; "for," observes Abernethy, "in the
midst of buzz and apparent confusion there was great order, regularity of
structure, and abundant food, collected with incessant industry from the
choicest stores of nature." Thus one man of genius is the ablest
commentator on the thoughts and feelings of another. When we reflect on
the magnitude of the labours of Cicero and the elder Pliny, on those of
Erasmus, Petrarch, Baronius, Lord Bacon, Usher, and Bayle, we seem at the
base of these monuments of study, we seem scarcely awake to admire. These
were the laborious instructors of mankind; their age has closed.
Yet let not those other artists of the mind, who work in the airy looms of
fancy and wit, imagine that they are weaving their webs, without the
direction of a principle, and without a secret habit which they have
acquired, and which some have imagined, by its quickness and facility, to
be an instinct. "Habit," says Reid, "differs from instinct, not in its
nature, but in its origin; the last being natural, the first acquired."
What we are accustomed to do, gives a facility and proneness to do on like
occasions; and there may be even an art, unperceived by themselves, in
opening and pursuing a scene of pure invention, and even in the happiest
turns of wit. One who had all the experience of such an artist has
employed the very terms we have used, of "mechanical" and "habitual." "Be
assured," says Goldsmith, "that wit is in some measure mechanical; and
that a man long habituated to catch at even its resemblance, will at last
be happy enough to possess the substance. By a long habit of writing he
acquires a justness of thinking, and a mastery of manner which holiday
writers, even with ten times his genius, may vainly attempt to equal." The
wit of BUTLER was not extemporaneous, but painfully elaborated from notes
which he incessantly accumulated; and the familiar _rime_ of BERNT, the
burlesque poet, his existing manuscripts will prove, were produced by
perpetual re-touches. Even in the sublime efforts of imagination, this
art of meditation may be practised; and ALFIERI has shown us, that in
those energetic tragic dramas which were often produced in a state of
enthusiasm, he pursued a regulated process. "All my tragedies have been
composed three times;" and he describes the three stages of conception,
development, and versifying. "After these three operations, I proceed,
like other authors, to publish, correct, or amend."
"All is habit in mankind, even virtue itself!" exclaimed METASTASIO;
and we may add, even the meditations of genius. Some of its boldest
conceptions, are indeed fortuitous, starting up and vanishing almost in
the perception; like that giant form, sometimes seen amidst the glaciers,
afar from the opposite traveller, moving as he moves, stopping as he
stops, yet, in a moment lost, and perhaps never more seen, although but
his own reflection! Often in the still obscurity of the night, the ideas,
the studies, the whole history of the day, is acted over again. There are
probably few mathematicians who have not dreamed of an interesting
problem, observes Professor Dugald Stewart. In these vivid scenes we are
often so completely converted into spectators, that a great poetical
contemporary of our country thinks that even his dreams should not pass
away unnoticed, and keeps what he calls a register of nocturnals. TASSO
has recorded some of his poetical dreams, which were often disturbed by
waking himself in repeating a verse aloud. "This night I awaked with this
verse in my mouth--
"_E i duo che manda il nero adusto suolo_.
The two, the _dark_ and burning soil has sent."
He discovered that the epithet _black_ was not suitable; "I again fell
asleep, and in a dream I read in Strabo that the sand of Ethiopia and
Arabia is extremely _white_, and this morning I have found the place. You
see what learned dreams I have."
But incidents of this nature are not peculiar to this great bard. The
_improvvisatori_ poets, we are told, cannot sleep after an evening's
effusion; the rhymes are still ringing in their ears, and imagination, if
they have any, will still haunt them. Their previous state of excitement
breaks into the calm of sleep; for, like the ocean, when its swell is
subsiding, the waves still heave and beat. A poet, whether a Milton or a
Blackmore, will ever find that his muse will visit his "slumbers nightly."
His fate is much harder than that of the great minister, Sir Robert
Walpole, who on retiring to rest could throw aside his political intrigues
with his clothes; but Sir Robert, to judge by his portrait and anecdotes
of him, had a sleekiness and good-humour, and an unalterable equanimity of
countenance, not the portion of men of genius: indeed one of these has
regretted that his sleep was so profound as not to be interrupted by
dreams; from a throng of fantastic ideas he imagined that he could have
drawn new sources of poetic imagery. The historian DE THOU was one of
those great literary characters who, all his life, was preparing to write
the history which he afterwards composed; omitting nothing in his travels
and his embassies, which went to the formation of a great man. DE THOU has
given a very curious account of his dreams. Such was his passion for
study, and his ardent admiration of the great men whom he conversed with,
that he often imagined in his sleep that he was travelling in Italy,
Germany, and in England, where he saw and consulted the learned, and
examined their curious libraries. He had all his lifetime these literary
dreams, but more particularly in his travels they reflected these images
of the day.
If memory do not chain down these hurrying fading children of the
imagination, and
Snatch the faithless fugitives to light
with the beams of the morning, the mind suddenly finds itself forsaken and
solitary.[A] ROUSSEAU has uttered a complaint on this occasion. Full of
enthusiasm, he devoted to the subject of his thoughts, as was his custom,
the long sleepless intervals of his nights. Meditating in bed with his
eyes closed, he turned over his periods in a tumult of ideas; but when he
rose and had dressed, all was vanished; and when he sat down to his
breakfast he had nothing to write. Thus genius has its vespers and its
vigils, as well as its matins, which we have been so often told are the
true hours of its inspiration; but every hour may be full of inspiration
for him who knows to meditate. No man was more practised in this art of
the mind than POPE, and even the night was not an unregarded portion of
his poetical existence, not less than with LEONARDO DA VINCI, who tells us
how often he found the use of recollecting the ideas of what he had
considered in the day after he had retired to bed, encompassed by the
silence and obscurity of the night. Sleepless nights are the portion of
genius when engaged in its work; the train of reasoning is still pursued;
the images of fancy catch a fresh illumination; and even a happy
expression shall linger in the ear of him who turns about for the soft
composure to which his troubled spirit cannot settle.
[Footnote A: One of the most extraordinary instances of inspiration in
dreams is told of Tartini, the Italian musician, whose "Devil's Sonata" is
well known to musicians. He dreamed that the father of evil played this
piece to him, and upon waking he put it on paper. It is a strange wild
performance, possessing great originality and vigour.--ED.]
But while with genius so much seems fortuitous, in its great operations
the march of the mind appears regular, and requires preparation. The
intellectual faculties are not always co-existent, or do not always act
simultaneously. Whenever any particular faculty is highly active, while
the others are languid, the work, as a work of genius, may be very
deficient. Hence the faculties, in whatever degree they exist, are
unquestionably enlarged by _meditation_. It seems trivial to observe that
meditation should precede composition, but we are not always aware of its
importance; the truth is, that it is a difficulty unless it be a habit. We
write, and we find we have written ill; we re-write, and feel we have
written well: in the second act of composition we have acquired the
necessary meditation. Still we rarely carry on our meditation so far as
its practice would enable us. Many works of mediocrity might have
approached to excellence, had this art of the mind been exercised. Many
volatile writers might have reached even to deep thinking, had they
bestowed a day of meditation before a day of composition, and thus
engendered their thoughts. Many productions of genius have originally been
enveloped in feebleness and obscurity, which have only been brought to
perfection by repeated acts of the mind. There is a maxim of Confucius,
which in the translation seems quaint, but which is pregnant with sense--
Labour, but slight not meditation;
Meditate, but slight not labour.
Few works of magnitude presented themselves at once, in their extent
and with their associations, to their authors. Two or three striking
circumstances, unobserved before, are perhaps all which the man of genius
perceives. It is in revolving the subject that the whole mind becomes
gradually agitated; as a summer landscape, at the break of day, is wrapped
in mist: at first, the sun strikes on a single object, but the light and
warmth increasing, the whole scene glows in the noonday of imagination.
How beautifully this state of the mind, in the progress of composition,
is described by DRYDEN, alluding to his work, "when it was only a confused
mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy
was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards
the light, there to be distinguished, and then either to be chosen or
rejected by the judgment!" At that moment, he adds, "I was in that
eagerness of imagination which, by over-pleasing fanciful men, flatters
them into the danger of writing." GIBBON tells us of his history, "At the
onset all was dark and doubtful; even the title of the work, the true era
of the decline and fall of the empire, &c. I was often tempted to cast
away the labour of seven years." WINCKELMANN was long lost in composing
his "History of Art;" a hundred fruitless attempts were made, before he
could discover a plan amidst the labyrinth. Slight conceptions kindle
finished works. A lady asking for a few verses on rural topics of the Abbé
de Lille, his specimens pleased, and sketches heaped on sketches produced
"Les Jardins." In writing the "Pleasures of Memory," as it happened with
"The Rape of the Lock," the poet at first proposed a simple description in
a few lines, till conducted by meditation the perfect composition of
several years closed in that fine poem. That still valuable work, _L'Art
de Penser_ of the Port-Royal, was originally projected to teach a young
nobleman all that was practically useful in the art of logic in a few
days, and was intended to have been written in one morning by the great
ARNAULD; but to that profound thinker so many new ideas crowded in that
slight task, that he was compelled to call in his friend NICOLLE; and thus
a few projected pages closed in a volume so excellent, that our elegant
metaphysician has recently declared, that "it is hardly possible to
estimate the merits too highly." Pemberton, who knew NEWTON intimately,
informs us that his Treatise on Natural Philosophy, full of a variety of
profound inventions, was composed by him from scarcely any other materials
than the _few propositions he had set down several years before_, and
which having resumed, occupied him in writing one year and a half. A
curious circumstance has been preserved in the life of the other immortal
man in philosophy, Lord BACON. When young, he wrote a letter to Father
Fulgentio concerning an Essay of his, to which he gave the title of "The
Greatest Birth of Time," a title which he censures as too pompous. The
Essay itself is lost, but it was the first outline of that great design
which he afterwards pursued and finished in his "Instauration of the
Sciences." LOCKE himself has informed us, that his great work on "The
Human Understanding," when he first put pen to paper, he thought "would
have been contained in one sheet, but that the farther he went on, the
larger prospect he had." In this manner it would be beautiful to trace the
history of the human mind, and observe how a NEWTON and a BACON and a
LOCKE were proceeding for thirty years together, in accumulating truth
upon truth, and finally building up these fabrics of their invention.
Were it possible to collect some thoughts of great thinkers, which were
never written, we should discover vivid conceptions, and an originality
they never dared to pursue in their works! Artists have this advantage
over authors, that their virgin fancies, their chance felicities, which
labour cannot afterwards produce, are constantly perpetuated; and those
"studies," as they are called, are as precious to posterity as their more
complete designs. In literature we possess one remarkable evidence of
these fortuitous thoughts of genius. POPE and SWIFT, being in the country
together, observed, that if contemplative men were to notice "the thoughts
which suddenly present themselves to their minds when walking in the
fields, &c., they might find many as well worth preserving as some of
their more deliberate reflections." They made a trial, and agreed to write
down such involuntary thoughts as occurred during their stay there. These
furnished out the "Thoughts" in Pope's and Swift's Miscellanies.[A] Among
Lord Bacon's Remains, we find a paper entitled "_Sudden Thoughts,_ set
down for Profit." At all hours, by the side of VOLTAIRE'S bed, or on his
table, stood his pen and ink with slips of paper. The margins of his books
were covered with his "sudden thoughts." CICERO, in reading, constantly
took notes and made comments. There is an art of reading, as well as an
art of thinking, and an art of writing.
[Footnote A: This anecdote is found in Ruffhead's "Life of Pope,"
evidently given by Warburton, as was everything of personal knowledge in
that tasteless volume of a mere lawyer, who presumed to write the life of
a poet.]
The art of meditation may be exercised at all hours, and in all places;
and men of genius, in their walks, at table, and amidst assemblies,
turning the eye of the mind inwards, can form an artificial solitude;
retired amidst a crowd, calm amidst distraction, and wise amidst folly.
When DOMENICHINO was reproached for his dilatory habits, in not finishing
a great picture for which he had contracted, his reply described this
method of study: _Eh! lo la sto continuamente dipingendo entro di me_--I
am continually painting it within myself. HOGARTH, with an eye always
awake to the ridiculous, would catch a character on his thumb-nail.
LEONARDO DA VINCI has left a great number of little books which lie
usually carried in his girdle, that he might instantly sketch whatever he
wished to recal to his recollection; and Amoretti discovered, that, in
these light sketches, this fine genius was forming a system of physiognomy
which he frequently inculcated to his pupils.[A] HAYDN carefully noted
down in a pocket-book the passages and ideas which came to him in his
walks or amid company. Some of the great actions of men of this habit of
mind were first meditated on amidst the noise of a convivial party, or the
music of a concert. The victory of Waterloo might have been organized in
the ball-room at Brussels: and thus RODNEY, at the table of Lord Sandwich,
while the bottle was briskly circulating, being observed arranging bits of
cork, and his solitary amusement having excited inquiry, said that he was
practising a plan to annihilate an enemy's fleet. This proved to be that
discovery of breaking the line, which the happy audacity of the hero
afterwards executed. What situation is more common than a sea-voyage,
where nothing presents itself to the reflections of most men than irksome
observations on the desert of waters? But the constant exercise of the
mind by habitual practice is the privilege of a commanding genius, and, in
a similar situation, we discover CICERO and Sir WILLIAM JONES acting
alike. Amidst the Oriental seas, in a voyage of 12,000 miles, the mind of
JONES kindled with delightful enthusiasm, and he has perpetuated those
elevating feelings in his discourse to the Asiatic Society; so CICERO on
board a ship, sailing slowly along the coast, passing by a town where his
friend Trebatius resided, wrote a work which the other had expressed a
wish to possess, and of which wish the view of the town had reminded him.
[Footnote A: A collection of sixty-four of these sketches were published
at Paris in 1730. They are remarkable as delineations of mental character
in feature as strongly felt as if done under the direction of Larater
himself.--ED.]
To this habit of continuity of attention, tracing the first simple idea to
its remoter consequences, the philosophical genius owes many of its
discoveries. It was one evening in the cathedral of Pisa that GALILEO
observed the vibrations of a brass lustre pendent from the vaulted roof,
which had been left swinging by one of the vergers. The habitual
meditation of genius combined with an ordinary accident a new idea of
science, and hence conceived the invention of measuring time by the medium
of a pendulum. Who but a genius of this order, sitting in his orchard,
and observing the descent of an apple, could have discovered a new quality
in matter, and have ascertained the laws of attraction, by perceiving
that the same causes might perpetuate the regular motions of the planetary
system; who but a genius of this order, while viewing boys blowing
soap-bladders, could have discovered the properties of light and colours,
and then anatomised a ray? FRANKLIN, on board a ship, observing a partial
stillness in the waves when they threw down water which had been used for
culinary purposes, by the same principle of meditation was led to the
discovery of the wonderful property in oil of calming the agitated ocean;
and many a ship has been preserved in tempestuous weather, or a landing
facilitated on a dangerous surf, by this solitary meditation of genius.
Thus meditation draws out of the most simple truths the strictness
of philosophical demonstration, converting even the amusements of
school-boys, or the most ordinary domestic occurrences, into the principle
of a new science. The phenomenon of galvanism was familiar to students;
yet was there but one man of genius who could take advantage of an
accident, give it his name, and fix it as a science. It was while lying in
his bath, but still meditating on the means to detect the fraud of the
goldsmith who had made Hiero's crown, that the most extraordinary
philosopher of antiquity was led to the investigation of a series of
propositions demonstrated in the two books of ARCHIMEDES, _De insidentibus
in fluido,_ still extant; and which a great mathematician admires both for
the strictness and elegance of the demonstrations. To as minute a domestic
occurrence as GALVANI'S we owe the steam-engine. When the Marquis of
WORCESTER was a State prisoner in the Tower, he one day observed, while
his meal was preparing in his apartment, that the cover of the vessel
being tight, was, by the expansion of the steam, suddenly forced off, and
driven up the chimney. His inventive mind was led on in a train of thought
with reference to the practical application of steam as a first mover. His
observations, obscurely exhibited in his "Century of Inventions," were
successively wrought out by the meditations of others, and an incident, to
which one can hardly make a formal reference without a risible emotion,
terminated in the noblest instance of mechanical power.
Into the stillness of meditation the mind of genius must be frequently
thrown; it is a kind of darkness which hides from us all surrounding
objects, even in the light of day. This is the first state of existence in
genius. In Cicero's "Treatise on Old Age," we find Cato admiring Caius
Sulpitius 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. SOCRATES sometimes remained a
whole day in immovable meditation, his eyes and countenance directed to
one spot, as if in the stillness of death. LA FONTAINE, when writing his
comic tales, has been observed early in the morning and late in the
evening in the same recumbent posture under the same tree. This quiescent
state is a sort of enthusiasm, and renders everything that surrounds us as
distant as if an immense interval separated us from the scene. Poggius has
told us of DANTE, that he indulged his meditations more strongly than any
man he knew; for when deeply busied in reading, he seemed to live only in
his ideas. Once the poet went to view a public procession; having entered
a bookseller's shop, and taken up a book, he sunk into a reverie; on his
return he declared that he had neither seen nor heard a single occurrence
in the public exhibition, which had passed unobserved before him. It has
been told of a modern astronomer, that one summer night, when he was
withdrawing to his chamber, the brightness of the heavens 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 it is late." He had gazed the
entire night in meditation, and was not aware of it. Abernethy has finely
painted the situation of NEWTON in this state of mind. I will not change
his words, for his words are his feelings. "It was this power of mind
--which can contemplate the greatest number of facts or propositions with
accuracy--that so eminently distinguished Newton from other men. It was
this power that enabled him to arrange the whole of a treatise in his
thoughts before he committed a single idea to paper. In the exercise of
this power, he was known occasionally to have passed a whole night or day,
entirely inattentive to surrounding objects."
There is nothing incredible in the stories related of some who have
experienced this entranced state in study, where the mind, deliciously
inebriated with the object it contemplates, feels nothing, from the excess
of feeling, as a philosopher well describes it. The impressions from our
exterior sensations are often suspended by great mental excitement.
ARCHIMEDES, involved in the investigation of mathematical truth, and the
painters PROTOGENES and PARMEGIANO, found their senses locked up as it
were in meditation, so as to be incapable of withdrawing themselves from
their work, even in the midst of the terrors and storming of the place by
the enemy. MARINO was so absorbed in the composition of his "Adonis," that
he suffered his leg to be burned before the painful sensation grew
stronger than the intellectual pleasure of his imagination. Monsieur
THOMAS, a modern French writer, and an intense thinker, would sit for
hours against a hedge, composing with a low voice, taking the same pinch
of snuff for half an hour together without being aware that it had long
disappeared. When he quitted his apartment, after prolonging his studies
there, a visible alteration was observed in his person, and the agitation
of his recent thoughts was still traced in his air and manner. With
eloquent truth BUFFON described those reveries of the student, which
compress his day, and mark the hours by the sensations of minutes!
"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 or fourteen successively
at my writing-desk, and still been in a state of pleasure." Bishop HORNE,
whose literary feelings were of the most delicate and lively kind, has
beautifully recorded them in his progress through a favourite and
lengthened work--his Commentary on the Psalms. He alludes to himself in
the third person; yet who but the self-painter could have caught those
delicious emotions which are so evanescent in the deep occupation of
pleasant studies? "He arose fresh in the morning to his task; the silence
of the night invited him to pursue it; and he can truly say, that food and
rest were not preferred before it. Every part improved infinitely upon his
acquaintance with it, and no one gave him uneasiness but the last, for
then he grieved that his work was done."
This eager delight of pursuing study, this impatience of interruption, and
this exultation in progress, are alike finely described by MILTON in a
letter to his friend Diodati.
"Such is the character of my mind, that no delay, none of the ordinary
cessations for rest or otherwise, I had nearly said care or thinking of
the very subject, can hold me back from being hurried on to the destined
point, and from completing the great circuit, as it were, of the study in
which I am engaged."
Such is the picture of genius viewed in the stillness of MEDITATION; but
there is yet a more excited state, when, as if consciousness were mixing
with its reveries, in the allusion of a scene, of a person, of a passion,
the emotions of the soul affect even the organs of sense. This excitement
is experienced when the poet in the excellence of invention, and the
philosopher in the force of intellect, alike share in the hours of
inspiration and the ENTHUSIASM of genius.