Literary friendships.--In early life.--Different from those of men of the
world.--They suffer an unrestrained communication of their ideas, and bear
reprimands and exhortations.--Unity of feelings.--A sympathy not of
manners but of feelings.--Admit of dissimilar characters.--Their peculiar
glory.--Their sorrow.
Among the virtues which literature inspires, is often that of the most
romantic friendship. The delirium of love, and even its lighter caprices,
are incompatible with the pursuits of the student; but to feel friendship
like a passion is necessary to the mind of genius alternately elated and
depressed, ever prodigal of feeling and excursive in knowledge.
The qualities which constitute literary friendship, compared with those of
men of the world, must render it a sentiment as rare as love itself, which
it resembles in that intellectual tenderness in which both so deeply
participate.
Born "in the dews of their youth," this friendship will not expire on
their tomb. In the school or the college this immortality begins; and,
engaged in similar studies, should even one excel the other, he will find
in him the protector of his fame; as ADDISON did in STEELE, WEST in GRAY,
and GRAY in MASON. Thus PETRARCH was the guide of Boccaccio, thus
BOCCACCIO became the defender of his master's genius. Perhaps friendship
is never more intense than in an intercourse of minds of ready counsels
and inspiring ardours. United in the same pursuits, but directed by an
unequal experience, the imperceptible superiority interests, without
mortifying. It is a counsel, it is an aid; in whatever form it shows
itself, it has nothing of the malice of rivalry.
A beautiful picture of such a friendship among men of genius offers itself
in the history of MIGNARD, the great French painter, and DU FRESNOY, the
great critic of the art itself. DU FRESNOY, abandoned in utter scorn
by his stern father, an apothecary, for his entire devotion to his
seductive art, lived at Rome in voluntary poverty, till MIGNARD, his old
fellow-student, arrived, when they became known by the name of "the
inseparables." The talents of the friends were different, but their
studios were the same. Their days melted away together in drawing from the
ancient statues and the basso-relievos, in studying in the galleries of
paintings, or among the villas which embellish the environs of Rome. One
roof sheltered them, and one table supplied their sober meal. Light were
the slumbers which closed each day, each the pleasing image of the former.
But this remarkable friendship was not a simple sentiment which limited
the views of "the Inseparables," for with them it was a perpetual source
of mutual usefulness. They gave accounts to each other of whatever they
observed, and carefully noted their own defects. DU FRESNOY, so critical
in the theory of the art, was unsuccessful in the practical parts. His
delight in poetical composition had retarded the progress of his pictorial
powers. Not having been taught the handling of his pencil, he worked with
difficulty; but MIGNARD succeeded in giving him a freer command and a more
skilful touch; while DU FRESNOY, who was the more literary man, enriched
the invention of MIGNARD by reading to him an Ode of Anacreon or Horace, a
passage from the Iliad or Odyssey, or the Æneid, or the Jerusalem
Delivered, which offered subjects for the artist's invention, who would
throw out five or six different sketches on the same subject; a habit
which so highly improved the inventive powers of MIGNARD, that he could
compose a fine picture with playful facility. Thus they lived-together,
mutually enlightening each other. MIGNARD supplied DU FRESNOY with all
that fortune had refused him; and, when he was no more, perpetuated his
fame, which he felt was a portion of his own celebrity, by publishing his
posthumous poem, _De Arts Graphica;_[A] a poem, which Mason has made
readable by his versification, and Reynolds even interesting by his
invaluable commentary.
[Footnote A: La Vie de Pierre Mignard, par L'Abbé de Monville, the work of
an amateur.]
In the poem COWLET composed, on the death of his friend HARVEY, this
stanza opens a pleasing scene of two young literary friends engaged in
their midnight studies:
Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights!
How oft unwearied have we spent the nights,
Till the Ledæan stars, so famed for love,
Wonder'd at us from above.
We spent them not in toys, in lust, or wine;
But search of deep philosophy,
Wit, eloquence, and poetry;
Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine.
Touched by a personal knowledge of this union of genius and affection,
even MALONE commemorates, with unusual warmth, the literary friendships of
Sir Joshua Reynolds; and with a felicity of fancy, not often indulged, has
raised an unforced parallel between the bland wisdom of Sir Joshua and the
"mitis sapientia Laeli." "What the illustrious Scipio was to Laelius was
the all-knowing and all-accomplished BURKE to REYNOLDS;" and what the
elegant Laelius was to his master Panaetius, whom he gratefully protected,
and to his companion the poet Lucilius, whom he patronised, was REYNOLDS
to JOHNSON, of whom he was the scholar and friend, and to GOLDSMITH, whom
he loved and aided[A].
[Footnote A: Reynolds's hospitality was unbounded to all literary men, and
his evenings were devoted to their society. It was at his house they
compared notes; and the President of the Royal Academy obtained that
information which gave him a full knowledge of the outward world, which
his ceaseless occupation could not else have allowed.--ED.]
Count AZARA mourns with equal tenderness and force over the memory of the
artist and the writer Mengs. "The most tender friendship would call forth
tears in this sad duty of scattering flowers on his tomb; but the shade of
my extinct friend warns me not to be satisfied with dropping flowers and
tears--they are useless; and I would rather accomplish his wishes, in
making known the author and his works."
I am infinitely delighted by a circumstance communicated to me by one who
had visited GLEIM, the German poet, who seems to have been a creature made
up altogether of sensibility. His many and illustrious friends he had
never forgotten, and to the last hour of a life, prolonged beyond his
eightieth year, he possessed those interior feelings which can make even
an old man an enthusiast. There seemed for GLEIM to be no extinction in
friendship when the friend was no more; and he had invented a singular
mode of gratifying his feelings of literary friendships. The visitor found
the old man in a room of which the wainscot was panelled, as we still see
among us in ancient houses. In every panel GLEIM had inserted the
portrait of a friend, and the apartment was crowded. "You see," said the
grey-haired poet, "that I never have lost a friend, and am sitting always
among them."
Such friendship can never be the lot of men of the world; for the source
of these lies in the interior affections and the intellectual feelings.
FONTENELLE describes with characteristic delicacy the conversations of
such literary friends: "Our days passed like moments; thanks to those
pleasures, which, however, are not included in those which are commonly
called pleasures." The friendships of the men of society move on the
principle of personal interest, but interest can easily separate the
interested; or they are cherished to relieve themselves from the
listlessness of existence; but, as weariness is contagious, the contact of
the propagator is watched. Men of the world may look on each other with
the same countenances, but not with the same hearts. In the common mart of
life intimacies may be found which terminate in complaint and contempt;
the more they know one another, the less is their mutual esteem: the
feeble mind quarrels with one still more imbecile than itself; the
dissolute riot with the dissolute, and they despise their companions,
while they too have themselves become despicable.
Literary friendships are marked by another peculiarity; the true
philosophical spirit has learned to bear that shock of contrary opinions
which minds less meditative are unequal to encounter. Men of genius live
in the unrestrained communication of their ideas, and confide even their
caprices with a freedom which sometimes startles ordinary observers. We
see literary men, the most opposite in dispositions and opinions, deriving
from each other that fulness of knowledge which unfolds the certain, the
probable, the doubtful. Topics which break the world into factions and
sects, and truths which ordinary men are doomed only to hear from a
malignant adversary, they gather from a friend! If neither yields up his
opinions to the other, they are at least certain of silence and a hearing;
but usually
The wise new wisdom from the wise acquire.
This generous freedom, which spares neither reprimands nor exhortation,
has often occurred in the intercourse of literary men. HUME and ROBERTSON
were engaged in the same studies, but with very opposite principles; yet
Robertson declined writing the English history, which he aspired to do,
lest it should injure the plans of Hume; a noble sacrifice!
Politics once divided Boccaccio and Petrarch. The poet of Valchiusa had
never forgiven the Florentines for their persecution of his father. By the
mediation of BOCCACCIO they now offered to reinstate PETRARCH in his
patrimony and his honours. Won over by the tender solicitude of his
friend, PETRARCH had consented to return to his country; but with his
usual inconstancy of temper, he had again excused himself to the senate of
Florence, and again retreated to his solitude. Nor was this all; for the
Visconti of Milan had by their flattery and promises seduced PETRARCH to
their court; a court, the avowed enemy of Florence. BOCCACCIO, for the
honour of literature, of his friend, of his country, indignantly heard of
PETRARCH'S fatal decision, and addressed him by a letter--the most
interesting perhaps which ever passed between two literary friends, who
were torn asunder by the momentary passions of the vulgar, but who were
still united by that immortal friendship which literature inspires, and by
a reverence for that posterity which they knew would concern itself with
their affairs.
It was on a journey to Ravenna that BOCCACCIO first heard the news of
PETRARCH'S abandonment of his country, when he thus vehemently addressed
his brother-genius:--
"I would be silent, but I cannot: my reverence commands silence, but my
indignation speaks. How has it happened that Silvanus (under this name he
conceals Petrarch) has forgotten his dignity, the many conversations we
had together on the state of Italy, his hatred of the archbishop
(Visconti), his love of solitude and freedom, so necessary for study, and
has resolved to imprison the Muses at that court? Whom may we trust again,
if Silvanus, who once branded _Il Visconti_ as the Cruel, a Polyphemus, a
Cyclop, has avowed himself his friend, and placed his neck under the yoke
of him whose audacity, and pride, and tyranny, he so deeply abhorred? How
has Visconti obtained that which King Robert, which the pontiff, the
emperor, the King of France, could not? Am I to conclude that you accepted
this favour from a disdain of your fellow-citizens, who once indeed
scorned you, but who have reinstated you in the paternal patrimony of
which you have been deprived? I do not disapprove of a just indignation;
but I take Heaven to witness that I believe that no man, whoever he may
be, rightly and honestly can labour against his country, whatever be the
injury he has received. You will gain nothing by opposing me in this
opinion; for if stirred up by the most just indignation you become the
friend of the enemy of your country, unquestionably you will not spur him
on to war, nor assist him by your arm, nor by your counsel; yet how
can you avoid rejoicing with him, when you bear of the ruins, the
conflagrations, the imprisonments, death, and rapine, which he shall
spread among us?"
Such was the bold appeal to elevated feelings, and such the keen reproach
inspired by that confidential freedom which can only exist in the
intercourse of great minds. The literary friendship, or rather adoration
of BOCCACCIO for PETRARCH, was not bartered at the cost of his patriotism:
and it is worthy of our notice that PETRARCH, whose personal injuries from
an ungenerous republic were rankling in his mind, and whom even the
eloquence of Boccaccio could not disunite from his protector Visconti, yet
received the ardent reproaches of his friend without anger, though not
without maintaining the freedom of his own opinions. PETRARCH replied,
that the anxiety of BOCCACCIO for the liberty of his friend was a thought
most grateful to him; but he assured Boccaccio that he preserved his
freedom, even although it appeared that he bowed under a hard yoke. He
hoped that he had not to learn to serve in his old age, he who had
hitherto studied to preserve his independence; but, in respect to
servitude, he did not know whom it was most displeasing to serve, a tyrant
like Visconti, or with Boccaccio, a people of tyrants[A].
[Footnote A: These interesting letters are preserved in Count Baldelli's
"Life of Boccaccio," p. 115.]
The unity of feeling is displayed in such memorable associates as BEAUMONT
and FLETCHER; whose labours are so combined, that no critic can detect the
mingled production of either; and whose lives are so closely united, that
no biographer can compose the memoirs of the one without running into the
history of the other. Their days were interwoven as their verses.
MONTAIGNE and CHARRON, in the eyes of posterity, are rivals; but such
literary friendship knows no rivalry. Such was Montaigne's affection for
Charron, that he requested him by his will to bear the arms of the
Montaignes; and Charrot evinced his gratitude to the manes of his departed
friend, by leaving his fortune to the sister of Montaigne.
How pathetically ERASMUS mourns over the death of his beloved Sir THOMAS
MORE!--"_In Moro mihi videor extinctus"_--"I seem to see myself extinct in
More." It was a melancholy presage of his own death, which shortly after
followed. The Doric sweetness and simplicity of old ISAAC WALTON, the
angler, were reflected in a mind as clear and generous, when CHARLES
COTTON continued the feelings, rather than the little work of Walton.
METASTASIO and FARINELLI called each other _il Gemello_, the Twin: and
both delighted to trace the resemblance of their lives and fates, and the
perpetual alliance of the verse and the voice. The famous JOHN BAPTISTA
PORTA had a love of the mysterious parts of sciences, such as physiognomy,
natural magic, the cryptical arts of writing, and projected many curious
inventions which astonished his age, and which we have carried to
perfection. This extraordinary man saw his fame somewhat diminishing by a
rumour that his brother John Vincent had a great share in the composition
of his works; but this never disturbed him; and Peiresc, in an
interesting account of a visit to this celebrated Neapolitan, observed,
that though now aged and grey-haired, he treated his younger brother as a
son. These single-hearted brothers, who would not marry that they might
never be separated, knew of but one fame, and that was the fame of Porta.
GOGUET, the author of "The Origin of the Arts and Sciences," bequeathed
his MSS. and his books to his friend Fugere, with whom he had long united
his affections and his studies, that his surviving friend might proceed
with them: but the author had died of a slow and painful disorder, which
Fugere had watched by his side, in silent despair. The sight of those MSS.
and books was the friend's death-stroke; half his soul, which had once
given them animation, was parted from him, and a few weeks terminated his
own days. When LLOYD heard of the death of CHURCHILL, he neither wished to
survive him, nor did[A]. The Abbé de St. Pierre gave an interesting proof
of literary friendship for Varignon, the geometrician. They were of
congenial dispositions, and St. Pierre, when he went to Paris, could not
endure to part with Varignon, who was too poor to accompany him; and St.
Pierre was not rich. A certain income, however moderate, was necessary for
the tranquil pursuits of geometry. St. Pierre presented Varignon with a
portion of his small income, accompanied by that delicacy of feeling which
men of genius who know each other can best conceive: "I do not give it
you," said St. Pierre, "as a salary but as an annuity, that you may be
independent, and quit me when you dislike me." The same circumstance
occurred between AKENSIDE and DYSON. Dyson, when the poet was in great
danger of adding one more illustrious name to the "Calamities of Authors,"
interposed between him and ill-fortune, by allowing him an annuity of
three hundred a-year; and, when he found the fame of his literary friend
attacked, although not in the habit of composition, he published a defence
of his poetical and philosophical character. The name and character of
Dyson have been suffered to die away, without a single tribute of even
biographical sympathy; as that of LONGUEVILLE, the modest patron of
BUTLER, in whom that great political satirist found what the careless
ingratitude of a court had denied: but in the record of literary glory,
the patron's name should be inscribed by the side of the literary
character: for the public incurs an obligation whenever a man of genius is
protected.
[Footnote A: This event is thus told by Southey: "The news of Churchill's
death was somewhat abruptly announced to Lloyd as he sat at dinner; he was
seized with a sudden sickness, and saying, 'I shall follow poor Charles,'
took to his bed, from which he never rose again; dying, if ever man died,
of a broken heart. The tragedy did not end here: Churchill's favourite
sister, who is said to have possessed much of her brother's sense, and
spirit, and genius, and to have been betrothed to Lloyd, attended him
during his illness, and, sinking under the double loss, soon followed her
brother and her lover to the grave."--ED.]
The statesman Fouquet, deserted by all others, witnessed LA FONTAINE
hastening every literary man to his prison-gate. Many have inscribed their
works to their disgraced patrons, as POPE did so nobly to the Earl of
Oxford in the Tower:
When interest calls off all her sneaking train,
And all the obliged desert, and all the vain,
They wait, or to the scaffold, or the cell,
When the last lingering friend has bid farewell.
Literary friendship is a sympathy not of manners, but of feelings. The
personal character may happen to be very opposite: the vivacious may be
loved by the melancholic, and the wit by the man of learning. He who is
vehement and vigorous will feel himself a double man by the side of the
friend who is calm and subtle. When we observe such friendships, we are
apt to imagine that they are not real because the characters are
dissimilar; but it is their common tastes and pursuits which form a bond
of union. POMPONIUS LAETUS, so called from his natural good-humour, was
the personal friend of HERMOLATTS BARBABUS, whose saturnine and melancholy
disposition he often exhilarated; the warm, impetuous LUTHER, was the
beloved friend of the mild and amiable MELANCTHON; the caustic BOILEAU was
the companion of RACINE and MOLIERE; and France, perhaps, owes the
_chefs-d'oeuvre_ of her tragic and her comic poet to her satirist. The
delicate taste and the refining ingenuity of HURD only attached him the
more to the impetuous and dogmatic WARBURTON[A]. No men could be more
opposite in personal character than the careless, gay, and hasty STEELE,
and the cautious, serious, and the elegant ADDISON; yet no literary
friendship was more fortunate than their union.
[Footnote A: For a full account of their literary career see the first
article in "Quarrels of Authors."]
One glory is reserved for literary friendship. The friendship of a great
name indicates the greatness of the character who appeals to it. When
SYDENHAM mentioned, as a proof of the excellence of his method of treating
acute diseases, that it had received the approbation of his illustrious
friend LOCKE, the philosopher's opinion contributed to the physician's
success.
Such have been the friendships of great literary characters; but too true
it is, that they have not always contributed thus largely to their mutual
happiness. The querulous lament of GLEIM to KLOPSTOCK is too generally
participated. As Gleim lay on his death-bed he addressed the great bard of
Germany--"I am dying, dear Klopstock; and, as a dying man will I say, in
this world we have not lived long enough together and for each other; but
in vain would we now recal the past!" What tenderness in the reproach!
What self-accusation in its modesty!