The man of letters.--Occupies an intermediate station between authors and
readers.--His solitude described.--Often the father of genius.--Atticus, a
man of letters of antiquity.--The perfect character of a modern man of
letters exhibited in Peiresc.--Their utility to authors and artists.
Among the active members of the literary republic, there is a class whom
formerly we distinguished by the title of MEN OF LETTERS--a title which,
with us, has nearly gone out of currency, though I do not think that the
general term of "literary men" would be sufficiently appropriate.
The man of letters, whose habits and whose whole life so closely resemble
those of an author, can only be distinguished by this simple circumstance,
that the man of letters is not an author.
Yet he whose sole occupation through life is literature--he who is always
acquiring and never producing, appears as ridiculous as the architect who
never raised an edifice, or the statuary who refrains from sculpture. His
pursuits are reproached with terminating in an epicurean selfishness, and
amidst his incessant avocations he himself is considered as a particular
sort of idler.
This race of literary characters, as we now find them, could not have
appeared till the press had poured forth its affluence. In the degree that
the nations of Europe became literary, was that philosophical curiosity
kindled which induced some to devote their fortunes and their days, and to
experience some of the purest of human enjoyments in preserving and
familiarising themselves with "the monuments of vanished minds," as books
are called by D'Avenant with so much sublimity. Their expansive library
presents an indestructible history of the genius of every people, through
all their eras--and whatever men have thought and whatever men have done,
were at length discovered in books.
Men of letters occupy an intermediate station between authors and readers.
They are gifted with more curiosity of knowledge, and more multiplied
tastes, and by those precious collections which they are forming during
their lives, are more completely furnished with the means than are
possessed by the multitude who read, and the few who write.
The studies of an author are usually restricted to particular subjects.
His tastes are tinctured by their colouring, his mind is always shaping
itself by their form. An author's works form his solitary pride, and his
secret power; while half his life wears away in the slow maturity of
composition, and still the ambition of authorship torments its victim
alike in disappointment or in possession.
But soothing is the solitude of the MAN OF LETTERS! View the busied
inhabitant of the library surrounded by the objects of his love! He
possesses them--and they possess him! These volumes--images of our mind
and passions!--as he traces them from Herodotus to Gibbon, from Homer to
Shakspeare--those portfolios which gather up, the inventions of genius,
and that selected cabinet of medals which holds so many unwritten
histories;--some favourite sculptures and pictures, and some antiquities
of all nations, here and there about his house--these are his furniture!
In his unceasing occupations the only repose he requires, consists not in
quitting, but in changing them. Every day produces its discovery; every
day in the life of a man of letters may furnish a multitude of emotions
and of ideas. For him there is a silence amidst the world; and in the
scene ever opening before him, all that has passed is acted over again,
and all that is to come seems revealed as in a vision. Often his library
is contiguous to his chamber,[A] and this domain "_parva sed apta_," this
contracted space, has often marked the boundary of the existence of the
opulent owner, who lives where he will die, contracting his days into
hours; and a whole life thus passed is found too short to close its
designs. Such are the men who have not been unhappily described by the
Hollanders as _lief-hebbers_, lovers or fanciers, and their collection as
_lief-hebbery_, things of their love. The Dutch call everything for which
they are impassioned _lief-hebbery_; but their feeling being much stronger
than their delicacy, they apply the term to everything, from poesy
and picture to tulips and tobacco. The term wants the melody of the
languages of genius; but something parallel is required to correct
that indiscriminate notion which most persons associate with that of
_collectors_.
[Footnote A: The contiguity of the CHAMBER to the LIBRARY is not the
solitary fancy of an individual, but marks the class. Early in life, when
in France and Holland, I met with several of these _amateurs_, who had
bounded their lives by the circle of their collections, and were rarely
seen out of them. The late Duke of ROXBURGH once expressed his delight to
a literary friend of mine, that he had only to step from his sleeping
apartment into his fine library; so that he could command, at all moments,
the gratification of pursuing his researches while he indulged his
reveries. The Chevalier VERHULST, of Bruxelles, of whom we have a curious
portrait prefixed to the catalogue of his pictures and curiosities, was
one of those men of letters who experienced this strong affection for his
collections, and to such a degree, that he never went out of his house for
twenty years; where, however, he kept up a courteous intercourse with the
lovers of art and literature. He was an enthusiastic votary of Rubens, of
whom he has written a copious life in Dutch, the only work he appears to
have composed.]
It was fancifully said of one of these lovers, in the style of the age,
that, "His book was his bride, and his study his bride-chamber." Many
have voluntarily relinquished a public station and their rank in
society, neglecting even their fortune and their health, for the life of
self-oblivion of the man of letters. Count DE CAYLUS expended a princely
income in the study and the encouragement of Art. He passed his mornings
among the studios of artists, watching their progress, increasing his
collections, and closing his day in the retirement of his own cabinet. His
rank and his opulence were no obstructions to his settled habits. CICERO
himself, in his happier moments, addressing ATTICUS, exclaimed--"I had
much rather be sitting on your little bench under Aristotle's picture,
than in the curule chairs of our great ones." This wish was probably
sincere, and reminds us of another great politician who in his secession
from public affairs retreated to a literary life, where he appears
suddenly to have discovered a new-found world. Fox's favourite line, which
he often repeated, was--
How various his employments whom the world
Calls idle!
De Sacy, one of the Port-Royalists, was fond of repeating this lively
remark of a man of wit--"That all the mischief in the world comes from not
being able to keep ourselves quiet in our room."
But tranquillity is essential to the existence of the man of letters--an
unbroken and devotional tranquillity. For though, unlike the author, his
occupations are interrupted without inconvenience, and resumed without
effort; yet if the painful realities of life break into this visionary
world of literature and art, there is an atmosphere of taste about him
which will be dissolved, and harmonious ideas which will be chased away,
as it happens when something is violently flung among the trees where the
birds are singing--all instantly disperse!
Even to quit their collections for a short time is a real suffering to
these lovers; everything which surrounds them becomes endeared by habit,
and by some higher associations. Men of letters have died with grief from
having been forcibly deprived of the use of their libraries. DE THOU, with
all a brother's sympathy, in his great history, has recorded the sad fates
of several who had witnessed their collections dispersed in the civil wars
of France, or had otherwise been deprived of their precious volumes. Sir
ROBERT COTTON fell ill, and betrayed, in the ashy paleness of his
countenance, the misery which killed him on the sequestration of his
collections. "They have broken my heart who have locked up my library from
me," was his lament.
If this passion for acquisition and enjoyment be so strong and exquisite,
what wonder that these "lovers" should regard all things as valueless in
comparison with the objects of their love? There seem to be spells in
their collections, and in their fascination they have often submitted to
the ruin of their personal, but not of their internal enjoyments. They
have scorned to balance in the scales the treasures of literature and art,
though imperial magnificence once was ambitious to outweigh them.
VAN PRAUN, a friend of Albert Durer's, of whom we possess a catalogue of
pictures and prints, was one of these enthusiasts of taste. The Emperor of
Germany, probably desirous of finding a royal road to a rare collection,
sent an agent to procure the present one entire; and that some delicacy
might be observed with such a man, the purchase was to be proposed in the
form of a mutual exchange; the emperor had gold, pearls, and diamonds. Our
_lief-hebber_ having silently listened to the imperial agent, seemed
astonished that such things should be considered as equivalents for a
collection of works of art, which had required a long life of experience
and many previous studies and practised tastes to have formed, and
compared with which gold, pearls, and diamonds, afforded but a mean, an
unequal, and a barbarous barter.
If the man of letters be less dependent on others for the very perception
of his own existence than men of the world are, his solitude, however, is
not that of a desert: for all there tends to keep alive those concentrated
feelings which cannot be indulged with security, or even without ridicule
in general society. Like the Lucullus of Plutarch, he would not only live
among the votaries of literature, but would live for them; he throws open
his library, his gallery, and his cabinet, to all the Grecians. Such men
are the fathers of genius; they seem to possess an aptitude in discovering
those minds which are clouded over by the obscurity of their situations;
and it is they who so frequently project those benevolent institutions,
where they have poured out the philanthropy of their hearts in that world
which they appear to have forsaken. If Europe be literary, to whom does
she owe this more than to these men of letters? Is it not to their noble
passion of amassing through life those magnificent collections, which
often bear the names of their founders from the gratitude of a following
age? Venice, Florence, and Copenhagen, Oxford, and London, attest the
existence of their labours. Our BODLEYS and our HARLEYS, our COTTONS and
our SLOANES, our CRACHERODES, our TOWNLEYS, and our BANKS, were of this
race![A] In the perpetuity of their own studies they felt as if they were
extending human longevity, by throwing an unbroken light of knowledge into
the next age. The private acquisitions of a solitary man of letters during
half a century have become public endowments. A generous enthusiasm
inspired these intrepid labours, and their voluntary privations of what
the world calls its pleasures and its honours, would form an interesting
history not yet written; their due, yet undischarged.
[Footnote A: Sir Thomas Bodley, in 1602, first brought the old libraries
at Oxford into order for the benefit of students, and added thereto his
own noble collection. That of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford (died 1724),
was purchased by the country, and is now in the British Museum; and also
are the other collections named above. Sir Robert Cotton died 1631; his
collection is remarkable for its historic documents and state-papers. Sir
Hans Sloane's collections may be said to be the foundation of the British
Museum, and were purchased by Government for 20,000_l_., after his death,
in 1749. Of Cracherode and Townley some notice will be found on p. 2 of
the present volume. Sir Joseph Banks and his sister made large bequests to
the same national establishment.--ED.]
But "men of the world," as they are emphatically distinguished, imagine
that a man so lifeless in "the world" must be one of the dead in it, and,
with mistaken wit, would inscribe over the sepulchre of his library, "Here
lies the body of our friend." If the man of letters have voluntarily
quitted their "world," at least he has passed into another, where he
enjoys a sense of existence through a long succession of ages, and where
Time, who destroys all things for others, for him only preserves and
discovers. This world is best described by one who has lingered among its
inspirations. "We are wafted into other times and strange lands,
connecting us by a sad but exalting relationship with the great events and
great minds which have passed away. Our studies at once cherish and
control the imagination, by leading it over an unbounded range of the
noblest scenes in the overawing company of departed wisdom and genius."[A]
[Footnote A: "Quarterly Review," No. xxxiii. p. 145.]
Living more with books than with men, which is often becoming better
acquainted with man himself, though not always with men, the man
of letters is more tolerant of opinions than opinionists are among
themselves. Nor are his views of human affairs contracted to the day,
like those who, in the heat and hurry of a too active life, prefer
expedients to principles; men who deem themselves politicians because they
are not moralists; to whom the centuries behind have conveyed no results,
and who cannot see how the present time is always full of the future.
"Everything," says the lively Burnet, "must be brought to the nature of
tinder or gunpowder, ready for a spark to set it on fire," before they
discover it. The man of letters indeed is accused of a cold indifference
to the interests which divide society; he is rarely observed as the head
or the "rump of a party;" he views at a distance their temporary passions
--those mighty beginnings, of which he knows the miserable terminations.
Antiquity presents the character of a perfect man of letters in ATTICUS,
who retreated from a political to a literary life. Had his letters
accompanied those of Cicero, they would have illustrated the ideal
character of his class. But the sage ATTICUS rejected a popular celebrity
for a passion not less powerful, yielding up his whole soul to study.
CICERO, with all his devotion to literature, was at the same time agitated
by another kind of glory, and the most perfect author in Rome imagined
that he was enlarging his honours by the intrigues of the consulship. He
has distinctly marked the character of the man of letters in the person of
his friend ATTICUS, for which he has expressed his respect, although he
could not content himself with its imitation. "I know," says this man of
genius and ambition, "I know the greatness and ingenuousness of your soul,
nor have I found any difference between us, but in a different choice of
life; a certain sort of ambition has led me earnestly to seek after
honours, while other motives, by no means blameable, induced you to adopt
an honourable leisure; _honestum otium_."[A] These motives appear in the
interesting memoirs of this man of letters; a contempt of political
intrigues combined with a desire to escape from the splendid bustle of
Rome to the learned leisure of Athens. He wished to dismiss a pompous
train of slaves for the delight of assembling under his roof a literary
society of readers and transcribers. And having collected under that roof
the portraits or busts of the illustrious men of his country, inspired by
their spirit and influenced by their virtues or their genius, he inscribed
under them, in concise verses, the characters of their mind. Valuing
wealth only for its use, a dignified economy enabled him to be profuse,
and a moderate expenditure allowed him to be generous.
[Footnote A: "Ad Atticum," Lib. i. Ep. 17.]
The result of this literary life was the strong affections of the
Athenians. At the first opportunity the absence of the man of letters
offered, they raised a statue to him, conferring on our POMPONIUS the fond
surname of ATTICUS. To have received a name from the voice of the city
they inhabited has happened to more than one man of letters. PINELLI, born
a Neapolitan, but residing at Venice, among other peculiar honours
received from the senate, was there distinguished by the affectionate
title of "the Venetian."
Yet such a character as ATTICUS could not escape censure from "men of the
world." They want the heart and the imagination to conceive something
better than themselves. The happy indifference, perhaps the contempt
of our ATTICUS for rival factions, they have stigmatised as a cold
neutrality, a timid pusillanimous hypocrisy. Yet ATTICUS could not have
been a mutual friend, had not both parties alike held the man of letters
as a sacred being amidst their disguised ambition; and the urbanity of
ATTICUS, while it balanced the fierceness of two heroes, Pompey and Cæsar,
could even temper the rivalry of genius in the orators Hortensius and
Cicero. A great man of our own country widely differed from the accusers
of Atticus. Sir MATTHEW HALE lived in distracted times, and took the
character of our man of letters for his model, adopting two principles in
the conduct of the Roman. He engaged himself with no party business, and
afforded a constant relief to the unfortunate, of whatever party. He was
thus preserved amidst the contests of the times.
If the personal interests of the man of letters be not deeply involved in
society, his individual prosperity, however, is never contrary to public
happiness. Other professions necessarily exist by the conflict and the
calamities of the community: the politician becomes great by hatching
an intrigue; the lawyer, in counting his briefs; the physician, his
sick-list. The soldier is clamorous for war; the merchant riots on high
prices. But the man of letters only calls for peace and books, to unite
himself with his brothers scattered over Europe; and his usefulness can
only be felt at those intervals, when, after a long interchange of
destruction, men, recovering their senses, discover that "knowledge is
power." BURKE, whose ample mind took in every conception of the literary
character, has finely touched on the distinction between this order of
contemplative men, and the other active classes of society. In addressing
Mr. MALONE, whose real character was that of a man of letters who first
showed us the neglected state of our literary history, BURKE observed--for
I shall give his own words, always too beautiful to alter--"If you are not
called to exert your great talents, and employ your great acquisitions in
the transitory service of your country, which is done in active life, you
will continue to do it that permanent service which it receives from the
labours of those who know how to make the silence of closets more
beneficial to the world than all the noise and bustle of courts, senates,
and camps."
A moving picture of the literary life of a man of letters who was no
author, would have been lost to us, had not PEIRESC found in GASSENDI a
twin spirit. So intimate was the biographer with the very thoughts, so
closely united in the same pursuits, and so perpetual an observer of the
remarkable man whom he has immortalised, that when employed on this
elaborate resemblance of his friend, he was only painting himself with all
the identifying strokes of self-love[A].
[Footnote A: "I suppose," writes EVELYN, that most agreeable enthusiast of
literature, to a travelling friend, "that you carry the life of that
incomparable virtuoso always about you in your motions, not only because
it is portable, but for that it is written by the pen of the great
Gassendus."]
It was in the vast library of PINELLI, the founder of the most magnificent
one in Europe, that PEIRESC, then a youth, felt the remote hope of
emulating the man of letters before his eyes. His life was not without
preparation, nor without fortunate coincidences; but there was a grandeur
of design in the execution which originated in the genius of the man
himself.
The curious genius of PEIRESC was marked by its precocity, as usually are
strong passions in strong minds; this intense curiosity was the germ of
all those studies which seemed mature in his youth. He early resolved on a
personal intercourse with the great literary characters of Europe; and his
friend has thrown over these literary travels that charm of detail by
which we accompany PEIRESC into the libraries of the learned; there
with the historian opening new sources of history, or with the critic
correcting manuscripts, and settling points of erudition; or by the opened
cabinet of the antiquary, deciphering obscure inscriptions, and explaining
medals. In the galleries of the curious in art, among their marbles, their
pictures, and their prints, PEIRESC has often revealed to the artist some
secret in his own art. In the museum of the naturalist, or the garden of
the botanist, there was no rarity of nature on which he had not something
to communicate. His mind toiled with that impatience of knowledge, that
becomes a pain only when the mind is not on the advance. In England
PEIRESC was the associate of Camden and Selden, and had more than one
interview with that friend to literary men, our calumniated James the
First. One may judge by these who were the men whom PEIRESC sought, and
by whom he himself was ever after sought. Such, indeed, were immortal
friendships! Immortal they may be justly called, from the objects in which
they concerned themselves, and from the permanent results of the combined
studies of such friends.
Another peculiar greatness in this literary character was PEIRESC'S
enlarged devotion to literature out of its purest love for itself alone.
He made his own universal curiosity the source of knowledge to other men.
Considering the studious as forming but one great family wherever they
were, for PEIRESC the national repositories of knowledge in Europe formed
but one collection for the world. This man of letters had possessed
himself of their contents, that he might have manuscripts collated,
unedited pieces explored, extracts supplied, and even draughtsmen employed
in remote parts of the world, to furnish views and plans, and to copy
antiquities for the student, who in some distant retirement often
discovered that the literary treasures of the world were unfailingly
opened to him by the secret devotion of this man of letters.
Carrying on the same grandeur in his views, his universal mind busied
itself in every part of the habitable globe. He kept up a noble traffic
with all travellers, supplying them with philosophical instruments and
recent inventions, by which he facilitated their discoveries, and secured
their reception even in barbarous realms. In return he claimed, at his own
cost, for he was "born rather to give than to receive," says Gassendi,
fresh importations of Oriental literature, curious antiquities, or botanic
rarities; and it was the curiosity of PEIRESC which first embellished his
own garden, and thence the gardens of Europe, with a rich variety of
exotic flowers and fruits.[A] Whenever presented with a medal, a vase, or
a manuscript, he never slept over the gift till he had discovered what the
donor delighted in; and a book, a picture, a plant, when money could not
be offered, fed their mutual passion, and sustained the general cause of
science. The correspondence of PEIRESC branched out to the farthest bounds
of Ethiopia, connected both Americas, and had touched the newly-discovered
extremities of the universe, when this intrepid mind closed in a premature
death.
[Footnote A: On this subject see "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. p.
151; and for some further account of Peiresc and his labours, vol. iii. p.
409, of the same work.--ED.]
I have drawn this imperfect view of PEIRESC'S character, that men of
letters may be reminded of the capacities they possess. In the character
of PEIRESC, however, there still remains another peculiar feature. His
fortune was not great; and when he sometimes endured the reproach of those
whose sordidness was startled at his prodigality of mind, and the great
objects which were the result, PEIRESC replied, that "a small matter
suffices for the natural wants of a literary man, whose true wealth
consists in the monuments of arts, the treasures of his library, and the
brotherly affections of the ingenious." PEIRESC was a French judge, but he
supported his rank more by his own character than by luxury or parade. He
would not wear silk, and no tapestry hangings ornamented his apartments;
but the walls were covered with the portraits of his literary friends; and
in the unadorned simplicity of his study, his books, his papers, and his
letters were scattered about him on the tables, the seats, and the floor.
There, stealing from the world, he would sometimes admit to his spare
supper his friend Gassendi, "content," says that amiable philosopher, "to
have me for his guest."
PEIRESC, like PINELLI, never published any work. These men of letters
derived their pleasure, and perhaps their pride, from those vast strata of
knowledge which their curiosity had heaped together in their mighty
collections. They either were not endowed with that faculty of genius
which strikes out aggregate views, or were destitute of the talent of
composition which embellishes minute ones. This deficiency in the minds of
such men may be attributed to a thirst of learning, which the very means
to allay can only inflame. From all sides they are gathering information;
and that knowledge seems never perfect to which every day brings new
acquisitions. With these men, to compose is to hesitate; and to revise is
to be mortified by fresh doubts and unsupplied omissions. PEIRESC was
employed all his life on a history of Provence; but, observes Gassendi,
"He could not mature the birth of his literary offspring, or lick it into
any shape of elegant form; he was therefore content to take the midwife's
part, by helping the happier labours of others."
Such are the cultivators of knowledge, who are rarely authors, but who are
often, however, contributing to the works of others; and without whose
secret labours the public would not have possessed many valued ones. The
delightful instruction which these men are constantly offering to authors
and to artists, flows from their silent but uninterrupted cultivation of
literature and the arts.
When Robertson, after his successful "History of Scotland," was long
irresolute in his designs, and still unpractised in that curious research
which habitually occupies these men of letters, his admirers had nearly
lost his popular productions, had not a fortunate introduction to Dr.
BIRCH enabled him to open the clasped books, and to drink of the sealed
fountains. ROBERTSON has confessed his inadequate knowledge, and his
overflowing gratitude, in letters which I have elsewhere printed. A
suggestion by a man of letters has opened the career of many an aspirant.
A hint from WALSH conveyed a new conception of English poetry to one of
its masters. The celebrated treatise of GROTIUS on "Peace and War" was
projected by PEIRESC. It was said of MAGLIABECHI, who knew all books, and
never wrote one, that by his diffusive communications he was in some
respect concerned in all the great works of his times. Sir ROBERT COTTON
greatly assisted CAMDEN and SPEED; and that hermit of literature, BAKER,
of Cambridge, was ever supplying with his invaluable researches Burnet,
Kennet, Hearne, and Middleton. The concealed aid which men of letters
afford authors, may be compared to those subterraneous streams, which,
flowing into spacious lakes, are, though unobserved, enlarging the waters
which attract the public eye.
Count DE CAYLUS, celebrated for his collections, and for his generous
patronage of artists, has given the last touches to this picture of the
man of letters, with all the delicacy and warmth of a self-painter.
"His glory is confined to the mere power which he has of being one day
useful to letters and to the arts; for his whole life is employed in
collecting materials of which learned men and artists make no use till
after the death of him who amassed them. It affords him a very sensible
pleasure to labour in hopes of being useful to those who pursue the same
course of studies, while there are so great a number who die without
discharging the debt which they incur to society."
Such a man of letters appears to have been the late Lord WOODHOUSELEE. Mr.
Mackenzie, returning from his lordship's literary retirement, meeting Mr.
Alison, finely said, that "he hoped he was going to Woodhouselee; for no
man could go there without being happier, or return from it without being
better."
Shall we then hesitate to assert, that this class of literary men forms a
useful, as well as a select order in society? We see that their leisure is
not idleness, that their studies are not unfruitful for the public, and
that their opinions, purified from passions and prejudices, are always the
soundest in the nation. They are counsellors whom statesmen may consult;
fathers of genius to whom authors and artists may look for aid, and
friends of all nations; for we ourselves have witnessed, during a war of
thirty years, that the MEN OF LETTERS in England were still united with
their brothers in France. The abode of Sir JOSEPH BANKS was ever open to
every literary and scientific foreigner; while a wish expressed or a
communication written by this MAN OF LETTERS, was even respected by a
political power which, acknowledging no other rights, paid a voluntary
tribute to the claims of science and the privileges of literature.