The domestic life of genius.--Defects of great compositions attributed to
domestic infelicities.--The home of the literary character should be the
abode of repose and silence.--Of the Father.--Of the Mother.--Of family
genius.--Men of genius not more respected than other men in their domestic
circle.--The cultivators of science and art do not meet on equal terms
with others, in domestic life.--Their neglect of those around them.--Often
accused of imaginary crimes.
When the temper and the leisure of the literary character are alike
broken, even his best works, the too faithful mirrors of his state of
mind, will participate in its inequalities; and surely the incubations of
genius, in its delicate and shadowy combinations, are not less sensible in
their operation than the composition of sonorous bodies, where, while the
warm metal is settling in the mould, even an unusual vibration of the air
during the moment of fusion will injure the tone.
Some of the conspicuous blemishes of several great compositions may be
attributed to the domestic infelicities of their authors. The desultory
life of CAMOENS is imagined to be perceptible in the deficient connexion
of his epic; and MILTON'S blindness and divided family prevented that
castigating criticism, which otherwise had erased passages which have
escaped from his revising hand. He felt himself in the situation of his
Samson Agonistes, whom he so pathetically describes--
His foes' derision, captive, poor, and blind.
Even LOCKE complains of his "discontinued way of writing," and "writing by
incoherent parcels," from the avocations of a busy and unsettled life,
which undoubtedly produced a deficiency of method in the disposition of
the materials of his great work. The careless rapid lines of DRYDEN
are justly attributed to his distress, and indeed he pleads for his
inequalities from his domestic circumstances. JOHNSON often silently, but
eagerly, corrected the "Ramblers" in their successive editions, of which
so many had been despatched in haste. The learned GREAVES offered some
excuses for his errors in his edition of "Abulfeda," from "his being five
years encumbered with lawsuits, and diverted from his studies." When at
length he returned to them, he expresses his surprise "at the pains he had
formerly undergone," but of which he now felt himself "unwilling, he knew
not how, of again undergoing." GOLDONI, when at the bar, abandoned his
comic talent for several years; and having resumed it, his first comedy
totally failed: "My head," says he, "was occupied with my professional
employment; I was uneasy in mind and in bad humour." A lawsuit, a
bankruptcy, a domestic feud, or an indulgence in criminal or in foolish
pursuits, have chilled the fervour of imagination, scattered into
fragments many a noble design, and paralysed the finest genius. The
distractions of GUIDO'S studies from his passion for gaming, and of
PARMEGIANO'S for alchemy, have been traced in their works, which are often
hurried over and unequal. It is curious to observe, that CUMBERLAND
attributes the excellence of his comedy, _The West Indian_, to the
peculiarly happy situation in which he found himself at the time of its
composition, free from the incessant avocations which had crossed him in
the writing of _The Brothers._ "I was master of my time, my mind was free,
and I was happy in the society of the dearest friends I had on earth. The
calls of office, the cavillings of angry rivals, and the gibings of
newspaper critics, could not reach me on the banks of the Shannon, where
all within-doors was love and affection. In no other period of my life
have the same happy circumstances combined to cheer me in any of my
literary labours."
The best years of MENGS' life were embittered by his father, a poor
artist, and who, with poorer feelings, converted his home into a
prison-house, forced his son into the slavery of stipulated task-work,
while bread and water were the only fruits of the fine arts. In this
domestic persecution, the son contracted those morose and saturnine
habits which in after-life marked the character of the ungenial MENGS.
ALONSO CANO, a celebrated Spanish painter, would have carried his art to
perfection, had not the unceasing persecution of the Inquisitors entirely
deprived him of that tranquillity so necessary to the very existence of
art. OVID, in exile on the barren shores of Tomos, deserted by his
genius, in his copious _Tristia_ loses much of the luxuriance of his
fancy.
We have a remarkable evidence of domestic unhappiness annihilating the
very faculty of genius itself, in the case of Dr. BROOK TAYLOR, the
celebrated author of the "Linear Perspective." This great mathematician in
early life distinguished himself as an inventor in science, and the most
sanguine hopes of his future discoveries were raised both at home and
abroad. Two unexpected events in domestic life extinguished his inventive
faculties. After the loss of two wives, whom he regarded with no common
affection, he became unfitted for profound studies; he carried his own
personal despair into his favourite objects of pursuit, and abandoned
them. The inventor of the most original work suffered the last fifteen
years of his life to drop away, without hope, and without exertion; nor is
this a solitary instance, where a man of genius, deprived of the idolised
partner of his existence, has no longer been able to find an object in his
studies, and where even fame itself has ceased to interest. The reason
which ROUSSEAU alleges for the cynical spleen which so frequently breathes
forth in his works, shows how the domestic character of the man of genius
leaves itself in his productions. After describing the infelicity of his
domestic affairs, occasioned by the mother of Theresa, and Theresa
herself, both women of the lowest class and the worst dispositions, he
adds, on this wretched marriage, "These unexpected disagreeable events, in
a state of my own choice, plunged me into literature, to give a new
direction and diversion to my mind; and in all my first works I scattered
that bilious humour which had occasioned this very occupation." Our
author's character in his works was the very opposite to the one in which
he appeared to these low people. Feeling his degradation among them, for
they treated his simplicity as utter silliness, his personal timidity
assumed a tone of boldness and originality in his writings, while a strong
personal sense of shame heightened his causticity, and he delighted to
contemn that urbanity in which he had never shared, and which he knew not
how to practise. His miserable subservience to these people was the real
cause of his oppressed spirit calling out for some undefined freedom in
society; and thus the real Rousseau, with all his disordered feelings,
only appeared in his writings. The secrets of his heart were confided to
his pen.
"The painting-room must be like Eden before the Fall; no joyless
turbulent passions must enter there"--exclaims the enthusiast RICHARDSON.
The home of the literary character should be the abode of repose and of
silence. There must he look for the feasts of study, in progressive and
alternate labours; a taste "which," says GIBBON, "I would not exchange
for the treasures of India." ROUSSEAU had always a work going on, for
rainy days and spare hours, such as his "Dictionary of Music:" a variety
of works never tired; it was the single one which exhausted. METASTASIO
looks with delight on his variety, which resembled the fruits in the
garden of Armida--
E mentre spunta l'un, l'altro mature.
While one matures, the other buds and blows.
Nor is it always fame, or any lower motive, which may induce the literary
character to hold an unwearied pen. Another equally powerful exists, which
must remain inexplicable to him who knows not to escape from the
listlessness of life--it is the passion for literary occupation. He whose
eye can only measure the space occupied by the voluminous labours of the
elder Pliny, of a Mazzuchelli, a Muratori, a Montfaucon, and a Gough, all
men who laboured from the love of labour, and can see nothing in that
space but the industry which filled it, is like him who only views a city
at a distance--the streets and the edifices, and all the life and
population within, he can never know. These literary characters projected
their works as so many schemes to escape from uninteresting pursuits; and,
in these folios, how many evils of life did they bury, while their
happiness expanded with their volume! Aulus Gellius desired to live no
longer than he was able to retain the faculty of writing and observing.
The literary character must grow as impassioned with his subject as
Ælian-with his "History of Animals;" "wealth and honour I might have
obtained at the courts of princes; but I preferred the delight of
multiplying my knowledge. I am aware that the avaricious and the ambitious
will accuse me of folly; but I have always found most pleasure in
observing the nature of animals, studying their character, and writing
their history."
Even with those who have acquired their celebrity, the love of literary
labour is not diminished--a circumstance recorded by the younger Pliny of
Livy. In a preface to one of his lost books, that historian had said that
he had obtained sufficient glory by his former writings on the Roman
history, and might now repose in silence; but his mind was so restless and
so abhorrent of indolence, that it only felt its existence in literary
exertion. In a similar situation the feeling was fully experienced by
HUME. Our philosopher completed his history neither for money nor for
fame, having then more than a sufficiency of both; but chiefly to indulge
a habit as a resource against indolence.[A] These are the minds which are
without hope if they are without occupation.
[Footnote A: This appears in one of his interesting letters first
published in the _Literary Gazette_, Oct. 20, 1821.--[It is addressed to
Adam Smith, dated July 28, 1759, and he says, "I signed an agreement with
Mr. Millar, where I mention that I proposed to write the History of
England from the beginning till the accession of Henry VII.,; and he
engages to give me 1400_l_. for the copy. This is the first previous
agreement ever I made with a bookseller. I shall execute the work at
leisure, without fatiguing myself by such ardent application as I have
hitherto employed. It is chiefly as a resource against idleness that I
shall undertake the work, for as to money I have enough: and as to
reputation what I have wrote already will be sufficient, if it be good; if
not, it is not likely I shall now write better."]]
Amidst the repose and silence of study, delightful to the literary
character, are the soothing interruptions of the voices of those whom he
loves, recalling him from his abstractions into social existence. These
re-animate his languor, and moments of inspiration are caught in the
emotions of affection, when a father or a friend, a wife, a daughter, or a
sister, become the participators of his own tastes, the companions of his
studies, and identify their happiness with his fame. A beautiful incident
in the domestic life of literature is one which Morellet has revealed of
MARMONTEL. In presenting his collected works to his wife, she discovered
that the author had dedicated his volumes to herself; but the dedication
was not made painful to her modesty, for it was not a public one. Nor was
it so concise as to be mistaken for a compliment. The theme was copious,
for the heart overflowed in the pages consecrated to her domestic virtues;
and MARMONTEL left it as a record, that their children might learn the
gratitude of their father, and know the character of their mother, when
the writer should be no more. Many readers were perhaps surprised to find
in NECKER's _Comte rendu au Roi_, a political and financial work, a great
and lovely character of domestic excellence in his wife. This was more
obtrusive than Marmontel's private dedication; yet it was not the less
sincere. If NECKER failed in the cautious reserve of private feelings, who
will censure? Nothing seems misplaced which the heart dictates.
If HORACE were dear to his friends, he declares they owed him to his
father:--
--purus et insons
(Ut me collaudem) si vivo et carus amicis,
Causa fuit Pater his.
If pure and innocent, if dear (forgive
These little praises) to my friends I live,
My father was the cause.
This intelligent father, an obscure tax-gatherer, discovered the
propensity of Horace's mind; for he removed the boy of genius from a rural
seclusion to the metropolis, anxiously attending on him to his various
masters. GROTIUS, like Horace, celebrated in verse his gratitude to his
excellent father, who had formed him not only to be a man of learning, but
a great character. VITRUVIUS pours forth a grateful prayer to the memory
of his parents, who had instilled into his soul a love for literary and
philosophical subjects; and it is an amiable trait in PLUTARCH to have
introduced his father in the Symposiacs, as an elegant critic and
moralist, and his brother Lamprias, whose sweetness of disposition,
inclining to cheerful raillery, the Sage of Cheronæa has immortalised.
The father of GIBBON urged him to literary distinction, and the dedication
of the "Essay on Literature" to that father, connected with his subsequent
labour, shows the force of the excitement. The father of POPE lived long
enough to witness his son's celebrity.
Tears such as tender fathers shed,
Warm from my eyes descend,
For joy, to think when I am dead,
My son shall have mankind his Friend.[A]
The son of BUFFON one day surprised his father by the sight of a column,
which he had raised to the memory of his father's eloquent genius. "It
will do you honour," observed the Gallic sage.[B] And when that son in the
revolution was led to the guillotine, he ascended in silence, so impressed
with his father's fame, that he only told the people, "I am the son of
Buffon!"
[Footnote A: These lines have been happily applied by Mr. BOWLES to the
father of POPE.--The poet's domestic affections were as permanent as they
were strong.]
[Footnote B: It still exists in the gardens of the old château at
Montbard. It is a pillar of marble bearing this inscription:--"Excelsæ
turris humilia columna, Parenti suo filius Buffon. 1785."--ED.]
Fathers absorbed in their occupations can but rarely attract their
offspring. The first durable impressions of our moral existence come from
the mother. The first prudential wisdom to which Genius listens falls from
her lips, and only her caresses can create the moments of tenderness. The
earnest discernment of a mother's love survives in the imagination of
manhood. The mother of Sir WILLIAM JONES, having formed a plan for the
education of her son, withdrew from great connexions that she might live
only for that son. Her great principle of education, was to excite by
curiosity; the result could not fail to be knowledge. "Read, and you will
know," she constantly replied to her filial pupil. And we have his own
acknowledgment, that to this maxim, which produced the habit of study, he
was indebted for his future attainments. KANT, the German metaphysician,
was always fond of declaring that he owed to the ascendancy of his
mother's character the severe inflexibility of his moral principles. The
mother of BURNS kindled his genius by reciting the old Scottish ballads,
while to his father he attributed his less pleasing cast of character.
Bishop WATSON traced to the affectionate influence of his mother, the
religious feelings which he confesses he inherited from her. The mother of
EDGEWORTH, confined through life to her apartment, was the only person who
studied his constitutional volatility. When he hastened to her death-bed,
the last imperfect accents of that beloved voice reminded him of the past
and warned him of the future, and he declares that voice "had a happy
influence on his habits,"--as happy, at least, as his own volatile nature
would allow. "To the manner in which my mother formed me at an early age,"
said Napoleon, "I principally owe my subsequent elevation. My opinion is,
that the future good or bad conduct of a child entirely depends upon the
mother."
There is this remarkable in the strong affections of the mother in the
formation of the literary character, that, without even partaking of, or
sympathising with the pleasures the child is fond of, the mother will
often cherish those first decided tastes merely from the delight of
promoting the happiness of her son; so that that genius, which some would
produce on a preconceived system, or implant by stratagem, or enforce by
application, with her may be only the watchful labour of love.[A] One of
our most eminent antiquaries has often assured me that his great passion,
and I may say his genius, for his curious knowledge and his vast
researches, he attributes to maternal affection. When his early taste for
these studies was thwarted by the very different one of his father, the
mother silently supplied her son with the sort of treasures he languished
for, blessing the knowledge, which indeed she could not share with him,
but which she beheld imparting happiness to her youthful antiquary.
[Footnote A: Kotzebue has noted the delicate attention of his mother in
not only fostering his genius, but in watching its too rapid development.
He says:--"If at any time my imagination was overheated, my mother always
contrived to select something for my evening reading which might moderate
this ardour, and make a gentler impression on my too irritable fancy."--
ED.]
There is, what may be called, FAMILY GENIUS. In the home of a man of
genius is diffused an electrical atmosphere, and his own pre-eminence
strikes out talents in all. "The active pursuits of my father," says the
daughter of EDGEWORTH, "spread an animation through the house by
connecting children with all that was going on, and allowing them to join
in thought and conversation; sympathy and emulation excited mental
exertion in the most agreeable manner." EVELYN, in his beautiful retreat
at Saye's Court, had inspired his family with that variety of taste which
he himself was spreading throughout the nation. His son translated Rapin's
"Gardens," which poem the father proudly preserved in his "Sylva;" his
lady, ever busied in his study, excelled in the arts her husband loved,
and designed the frontispiece to his "Lucretius:" she was the cultivator
of their celebrated garden, which served as "an example" of his great work
on "forest trees." Cowley, who has commemorated Evelyn's love of books and
gardens, has delightfully applied them to his lady, in whom, says the
bard, Evelyn meets both pleasures:--
The fairest garden in her looks,
And in her mind the wisest books.
The house of HALLER resembled a temple consecrated to science and the
arts, and the votaries were his own family. The universal acquirements of
Haller were possessed in some degree by every one under his roof; and
their studious delight in transcribing manuscripts, in consulting authors,
in botanising, drawing and colouring the plants under his eye, formed
occupations which made the daughters happy and the sons eminent.[A] The
painter STELLA inspired his family to copy his fanciful inventions, and
the playful graver of Claudine Stella, his niece, animated his "Sports of
Children." I have seen a print of COYPEL in his _studio_, and by his side
his little daughter, who is intensely watching the progress of her
father's pencil. The artist has represented himself in the act of
suspending his labour to look on his child. At that moment, his thoughts
were divided between two objects of his love. The character and the works
of the late ELIZABETH HAMILTON were formed entirely by her brother.
Admiring the man she loved, she imitated what she admired; and while the
brother was arduously completing the version of the Persian Hedaya, the
sister, who had associated with his morning tasks and his evening
conversations, was recalling all the ideas, and pourtraying her fraternal
master in her "Hindoo Rajah."
[Footnote A: Haller's death (A.D. 1777) was as remarkable for its calm
philosophy, as his life for its happiness. He was a professional surgeon,
and continued to the last an attentive and rational observer of the
symptoms of the disease which was bringing him to the grave. He
transmitted to the University of Gottingen a scientific analysis of his
case; and died feeling his own pulse.--ED.]
Nor are there wanting instances where this FAMILY GENIUS has been carried
down through successive generations: the volume of the father has been
continued by a son, or a relative. The history of the family of the
ZWINGERS is a combination of studies and inherited tastes. Theodore
published, in 1697, a folio herbal, of which his son Frederic gave an
enlarged edition in 1744; and the family was honoured by their name having
been given to a genus of plants dedicated to their memory, and known in
botany by the name of the _Zwingera_. In history and in literature, the
family name was equally eminent; the same Theodore continued a great work,
"The Theatre of Human Life," which had been begun by his father-in-law,
and which for the third time was enlarged by another son. Among the
historians of Italy, it is delightful to contemplate this family genius
transmitting itself with unsullied probity among the three VILLANIS, and
the MALASPINIS, and the two PORTAS. The history of the learned family of
the STEPHENS presents a dynasty of literature; and to distinguish the
numerous members, they have been designated as Henry I. and Henry II.,--as
Robert I., the II., and the III.[A] Our country may exult in having
possessed many literary families--the WARTONS, the father and two sons:
the BURNEYS, more in number; and the nephews of Milton, whose humble torch
at least was lighted at the altar of the great bard.[B]
[Footnote A: For an account of them and their works, see "Curiosities of
Literature," vol, i. p. 76.]
[Footnote B: The Phillips.]
No event in literary history is more impressive than the fate of
QUINTILIAN; it was in the midst of his elaborate work, which was composed
to form the literary character of a son, that he experienced the most
terrible affliction in the domestic life of genius--the successive deaths
of his wife and his only child. It was a moral earthquake with a single
survivor amidst the ruins. An awful burst of parental and literary
affliction breaks forth in Quintilian's lamentation,--"My wealth, and my
writings, the fruits of a long and painful life, must now be reserved only
for strangers; all I possess is for aliens, and no longer mine!" We feel
the united agony of the husband, the father, and the man of genius!
Deprived of these social consolations, we see JOHNSON call about him those
whose calamities exiled them from society, and his roof lodges the blind,
the lame, and the poor; for the heart must possess something it can call
its own, to be kind to.
In domestic life, the Abbé DE ST. PIERRE enlarged its moral vocabulary, by
fixing in his language two significant words. One served to explain the
virtue most familiar to him--_bienfaisance_; and that irritable vanity
which magnifies its ephemeral fame, the sage reduced to a mortifying
diminutive--_la gloriole!_
It has often excited surprise that men of genius are not more reverenced
than other men in their domestic circle. The disparity between the public
and the private esteem of the same man is often striking. In privacy we
discover that the comic genius is not always cheerful, that the sage is
sometimes ridiculous, and the poet seldom delightful. The golden hour of
invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius
returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of
life, his companions behold him as one of themselves--the creature of
habits and infirmities.
In the business of life, the cultivators of science and the arts, with all
their simplicity of feeling and generous openness about them, do not meet
on equal terms with other men. Their frequent abstractions calling off the
mind to whatever enters into its lonely pursuits, render them greatly
inferior to others in practical and immediate observation. Studious men
have been reproached as being so deficient in the knowledge of the human
character, that they are usually disqualified for the management of public
business. Their confidence in their friends has no bound, while they
become the easy dupes of the designing. A friend, who was in office with
the late Mr. CUMBERLAND, assures me, that he was so intractable to the
forms of business, and so easily induced to do more or to do less than he
ought, that he was compelled to perform the official business of this
literary man, to free himself from his annoyance; and yet Cumberland could
not be reproached with any deficiency in a knowledge of the human
character, which he was always touching with caustic pleasantry.
ADDISON and PRIOR were unskilful statesmen; and MALESHERBES confessed, a
few days before his death, that TURGOT and himself, men of genius and
philosophers, from whom the nation had expected much, had badly
administered the affairs of the state; for "knowing men but by books, and
unskilful in business, we could not form the king to the government." A
man of genius may know the whole map of the world of human nature; but,
like the great geographer, may be apt to be lost in the wood which any one
in the neighbourhood knows better than him.
"The conversation of a poet," says Goldsmith, "is that of a man of sense,
while his actions are those of a fool." Genius, careless of the future,
and often absent in the present, avoids too deep a commingling in the
minor cares of life. Hence it becomes a victim to common fools and vulgar
villains. "I love my family's welfare, but I cannot be so foolish as to
make myself the slave to the minute affairs of a house," said MONTESQUIEU.
The story told of a man of learning is probably true, however ridiculous
it may appear. Deeply occupied in his library, one, rushing in, informed
him that the house was on fire: "Go to my wife--these matters belong to
her!" pettishly replied the interrupted student. BACON sat at one end of
his table wrapt in many a reverie, while at the other the creatures about
him were trafficking with his honour, and ruining his good name: "I am
better fitted for this," said that great man once, holding out a book,
"than for the life I have of late led. Nature has not fitted me for that;
knowing myself by inward calling to be fitter to hold a book than to play
a part."
BUFFON, who consumed his mornings in his old tower of Montbard, at the end
of his garden,[A] with all nature opening to him, formed all his ideas of
what was passing before him from the arts of a pliant Capuchin, and the
comments of a perruquier on the scandalous chronicle of the village. These
humble confidants he treated as children, but the children were commanding
the great man! YOUNG, whose satires give the very anatomy of human
foibles, was wholly governed by his housekeeper. She thought and acted for
him, which probably greatly assisted the "Night Thoughts," but his curate
exposed the domestic economy of a man of genius by a satirical novel. If I
am truly informed, in that gallery of satirical portraits in his "Love of
Fame," YOUNG has omitted one of the most striking--his OWN! While the
poet's eye was glancing from "earth to heaven," he totally overlooked the
lady whom he married, and who soon became the object of his contempt; and
not only his wife, but his only son, who when he returned home for the
vacation from Winchester school, was only admitted into the presence of
his poetical father on the first and the last day; and whose unhappy life
is attributed to this unnatural neglect:[B]--a lamentable domestic
catastrophe, which, I fear, has too frequently occurred amidst the ardour
and occupations of literary glory. Much, too much, of the tender
domesticity of life is violated by literary characters. All that lives
under their eye, all that should be guided by their hand, the recluse and
abstracted men of genius must leave to their own direction. But let it not
be forgotten, that, if such neglect others, they also neglect themselves,
and are deprived of those family enjoyments for which few men have warmer
sympathies. While the literary character burns with the ambition of
raising a great literary name, he is too often forbidden to taste of this
domestic intercourse, or to indulge the versatile curiosity of his private
amusements--for he is chained to his great labour. ROBERTSON felt this
while employed on his histories, and he at length rejoiced when, after
many years of devoted toil, he returned to the luxury of reading for his
own amusement and to the conversation of his friends. "Such a sacrifice,"
observes his philosophical biographer, "must be more or less made by all
who devote themselves to letters, whether with a view to emolument or to
fame; nor would it perhaps be easy to make it, were it not for the
prospect (seldom, alas! realised) of earning by their exertions that
learned and honourable leisure which he was so fortunate as to attain."
[Footnote A: For some account of this place, see the chapter on "Literary
Residences" in vol. iii. p. 395, of "Curiosities of Literature."]
[Footnote B: These facts are drawn from a manuscript of the late Sir
Herbert Croft, who regretted that Dr. Johnson would not suffer him to give
this account during the doctor's lifetime, in his Life of Young, but which
it had always been his intention to have added to it.]
But men of genius have often been accused of imaginary crimes. Their very
eminence attracts the lie of calumny, which tradition often conveys beyond
the possibility of refutation. Sometimes they are reproached as wanting in
affection, when they displease their fathers by making an obscure name
celebrated. The family of DESCARTES lamented, as a blot in their
escutcheon, that Descartes, who was born a gentleman, should become a
philosopher; and this elevated genius was refused the satisfaction of
embracing an unforgiving parent, while his dwarfish brother, with a mind
diminutive as his person, ridiculed his philosophic relative, and turned
to advantage his philosophic disposition. The daughter of ADDISON was
educated with a perfect contempt of authors, and blushed to bear a name
more illustrious than that of all the Warwicks, on her alliance to which
noble family she prided herself. The children of MILTON, far from solacing
the age of their blind parent, became impatient for his death, embittered
his last hours with scorn and disaffection, and combined to cheat and rob
him. Milton, having enriched our national poetry by two immortal epics,
with patient grief blessed the single female who did not entirely abandon
him, and the obscure fanatic who was pleased with his poems because they
were religious. What felicities! what laurels! And now we have recently
learned, that the daughter of Madame DE SÉVIGNÉ lived on ill terms
with her mother, of whose enchanting genius she appears to have been
insensible! The unquestionable documents are two letters hitherto
cautiously secreted. The daughter was in the house of her mother when an
extraordinary letter was addressed to her from the chamber of Madame de
Sévigné after a sleepless night. In this she describes, with her peculiar
felicity, the ill-treatment she received from the daughter she idolised;
it is a kindling effusion of maternal reproach, and tenderness, and
genius.[A]
[Footnote A: Lettres inédites de Madame de Sévigné, pp. 201 and 203.]
Some have been deemed disagreeable companions, because they felt the
weariness of dulness, or the impertinence of intrusion; described as bad
husbands, when united to women who, without a kindred feeling, had the
mean art to prey upon their infirmities; or as bad fathers, because their
offspring have not always reflected the moral beauty of their own page.
But the magnet loses nothing of its virtue, even when the particles about
it, incapable themselves of being attracted, are not acted on by its
occult property.