Literature an avenue to glory.--An intellectual nobility not chimerical,
but created by public opinion.--Literary honours of various nations.--
Local associations with the memory of the man of genius.
Literature is an avenue to glory, ever open for those ingenious men who
are deprived of honours or of wealth. Like that illustrious Roman who owed
nothing to his ancestors, _videtur ex se natus_, these seem self-born; and
in the baptism of fame, they have given themselves their name. Bruyère has
finely said of men of genius, "These men have neither ancestors nor
posterity; they alone compose their whole race."
But AKENSIDE, we have seen, blushed when his lameness reminded him of the
fall of one of his father's cleavers; PRIOR, the son of a vintner, could
not endure to be reminded, though by his favourite Horace, that "the cask
retains its flavour;" like VOITURE, another descendant of a _marchand de
vin_, whose heart sickened over that which exhilarates all other hearts,
whenever his opinion of its _quality_ was maliciously consulted. All these
instances too evidently prove that genius is subject to the most vulgar
infirmities.
But some have thought more courageously. The amiable ROLLIN was the son of
a cutler, but the historian of nations never felt his dignity compromised
by his birth. Even late in life, he ingeniously alluded to his first
occupation, for we find an epigram of his in sending a knife for a
new-year's gift, "informing his friend, that should this present appear to
come rather from Vulcan than from Minerva, it should not surprise, for,"
adds the epigrammatist, "it was from the cavern of the Cyclops I began to
direct my footsteps towards Parnassus." The great political negotiator,
Cardinal D'OSSAT, was elevated by his genius from an orphan state of
indigence, and was alike destitute of ancestry, of titles, even of
parents. On the day of his creation, when others of noble extraction
assumed new titles from the seignorial names of their ancient houses, he
was at a loss to fix on one. Having asked the Pope whether he should
choose that of his bishopric, his holiness requested him to preserve his
plain family name, which he had rendered famous by his own genius. The
sons of a sword-maker, a potter, and a tax-gatherer, were the greatest of
the orators, the most majestic of the poets, and the most graceful of the
satirists of antiquity; Demosthenes, Virgil, and Horace. The eloquent
Massillon, the brilliant Fléchier, Rousseau, and Diderot; Johnson,
Goldsmith, and Franklin, arose amidst the most humble avocations.
Vespasian raised a statue to the historian JOSEPHUS, though a Jew; and the
Athenians one to Æsop, though a slave. Even among great military republics
the road to public honour was open, not alone to heroes and patricians,
but to that solitary genius which derives from itself all which it gives
to the public, and nothing from its birth or the public situation it
occupies.
It is the prerogative of genius to elevate obscure men to the higher class
of society. If the influence of wealth in the present day has created a
new aristocracy of its own, where they already begin to be jealous of
their ranks, we may assert that genius creates a sort of intellectual
nobility, which is now conferred by public feeling; as heretofore the
surnames of "the African," and of "Coriolanus," won by valour, associated
with the names of the conqueror of Africa and the vanquisher of Corioli.
Were men of genius, as such, to have armorial bearings they might consist,
not of imaginary things, of griffins and chimeras, but of deeds performed
and of public works in existence. When DONDI raised the great astronomical
clock at the University of Padua, which was long the admiration of Europe,
it gave a name and nobility to its maker and all his descendants. There
still lives a Marquis Dondi dal' Horologio. Sir HUGH MIDDLETON, in memory
of his vast enterprise, changed his former arms to bear three piles, to
perpetuate the interesting circumstance, that by these instruments he had
strengthened the works he had invented, when his genius poured forth the
waters through our metropolis, thereby distinguishing it from all
others in the world. Should not EVELYN have inserted an oak-tree in his
bearings? for his "Sylva" occasioned the plantation of "many millions of
timber-trees," and the present navy of Great Britain has been constructed
with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted. There was an eminent
Italian musician, who had a piece of music inscribed on his tomb; and I
have heard of a Dutch mathematician, who had a calculation for his
epitaph.
We who were reproached for a coldness in our national character, have
caught the inspiration and enthusiasm for the works and the celebrity of
genius; the symptoms indeed were long dubious. REYNOLDS wished to have one
of his own pictures, "Contemplation in the figure of an Angel," carried at
his funeral; a custom not unusual with foreign painters; but it was not
deemed prudent to comply with this last wish of the great artist, from the
fears entertained as to the manner in which a London populace might have
received such a novelty. This shows that the profound feeling of art
is still confined within a circle among us, of which hereafter the
circumference perpetually enlarging, may embrace even the whole people. If
the public have borrowed the names of some lords to dignify a "Sandwich"
and a "Spencer," we may be allowed to raise into titles of literary
nobility those distinctions which the public voice has attached to some
authors; _Æschylus_ Potter, _Athenian_ Stuart, and _Anacreon_ Moore.
BUTLER, in his own day, was more generally known by the single and
singular name of _Hudibras_, than by his own.
This intellectual nobility is not chimerical. Such titles must be found
indeed, in the years which are to come; yet the prelude of their fame
distinguishes these men from the crowd. Whenever the rightful possessor
appears, will not the eyes of all spectators be fixed on him? I allude to
scenes which I have witnessed. Will not even literary honours superadd a
nobility to nobility; and make a name instantly recognised which might
otherwise be hidden under its rank, and remain unknown by its title? Our
illustrious list of literary noblemen is far more glorious than the
satirical "Catalogue of Noble Authors," drawn up by a polished and
heartless cynic, who has pointed his brilliant shafts at all who were
chivalrous in spirit, or related to the family of genius. One may presume
on the existence of this intellectual nobility, from the extraordinary
circumstance that the great have actually felt a jealousy of the literary
rank. But no rivalry can exist in the solitary honour conferred on an
author. It is not an honour derived from birth nor creation, but from
PUBLIC OPINION, and inseparable from his name, as an essential quality;
for the diamond will sparkle and the rose will be fragrant, otherwise it
is no diamond or rose. The great may well condescend to be humble to
genius, since genius pays its homage in becoming proud of that humility.
Cardinal Richelieu was mortified at the celebrity of the unbending
CORNEILLE; so were several noblemen at POPE'S indifference to their rank;
and MAGLIABECHI, the book prodigy of his age, whom every literary stranger
visited at Florence, assured Lord Raley that the Duke of Tuscany had
become jealous of the attention he was receiving from foreigners, as they
usually went to visit MAGLIABECHI before the Grand Duke.
A confession by MONTESQUIEU states, with open candour, a fact in his life
which confirms this jealousy of the great with the literary character. "On
my entering into life I was spoken of as a man of talents, and people of
condition gave me a favourable reception; but when the success of my
Persian Letters proved perhaps that I was not unworthy of my reputation,
and the public began to esteem me, _my reception with the great was
discouraging, and I experienced innumerable mortifications."_ Montesquieu
subjoins a reflection sufficiently humiliating for the mere nobleman: "The
great, inwardly wounded with the glory of a celebrated name, seek to
humble it. In general he only can patiently endure the fame of others, who
deserves fame himself." This sort of jealousy unquestionably prevailed in
the late Lord ORFORD, a wit, a man of the world, and a man of rank; but
while he considered literature as a mere amusement, he was mortified at
not obtaining literary celebrity; he felt his authorial always beneath his
personal character. It fell to my lot to develope his real feelings
respecting himself and the literary men of his age.[A]
[Footnote A: "Calamities of Authors." I printed, in 1812, extracts from
Walpole's correspondence with Cole. Some have considered that there was a
severity of delineation in my character of Horace Walpole. I was the
_first_, in my impartial view of his literary character, to proclaim to
the world what it has now fully sanctioned, that "His most pleasing, if
not his great talent, lay in _letter-writing;_ here he was without a
rival. His correspondence abounded with literature, criticism, and wit of
the most original and brilliant composition." This was published several
years before the recent collection of his letters.]
Who was the dignified character, Lord Chesterfield or Samuel Johnson, when
the great author, proud of his protracted and vast labour, rejected his
lordship's tardy and trivial patronage?[A] "I value myself," says Swift,
"upon making the ministry desire to be acquainted with PARNELL, and not
Parnell with the ministry." PIRON would not suffer the literary character
to be lowered in his presence. Entering the apartment of a nobleman, who
was conducting another peer to the stairs-head, the latter stopped to make
way for Piron: "Pass on, my lord," said the noble master; "pass, he is
only a poet." PIRON replied, "Since our qualities are declared, I shall
take my rank," and placed himself before the lord. Nor is this pride, the
true source of elevated character, refused to the great artist as well as
the great author. MICHAEL ANGELO, invited by Julius II. to the court of
Rome, found that intrigue had indisposed his holiness towards him, and
more than once the great artist was suffered to linger in attendance in
the antechamber. One day the indignant man of genius exclaimed, "Tell his
holiness, if he wants me, he must look for me elsewhere." He flew back to
his beloved Florence, to proceed with that celebrated cartoon which
afterwards became a favourite study with all artists. Thrice the Pope
wrote for his return, and at length menaced the little State of Tuscany
with war, if Michael Angelo prolonged his absence. He returned. The
sublime artist knelt at the foot of the Father of the Church, turning
aside his troubled countenance in silence. An intermeddling bishop offered
himself as a mediator, apologising for our artist by observing, "Of this
proud humour are these painters made!" Julius turned to this pitiable
mediator, and, as Vasari tells, used a switch on this occasion, observing,
"You speak injuriously of him, while I am silent. It is you who are
ignorant." Raising Michael Angelo, Julius II. embraced the man of genius.
[Footnote A: Johnson had originally submitted the plan of his
"Dictionary" to Lord Chesterfield, but received no mark of interest or
sympathy during its weary progress; when the moment of publication
approached, his lordship, perhaps in the hope of earning a dedication,
published in _The World_ two letters commending Johnson and his labours.
It was this notice that produced Johnson's celebrated letter, in which he
asks,--"Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers
him with help? The notice you have been pleased to take of my labours, had
it been early had been kind, but it has been delayed till I am indifferent
and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am
known, and do not want it."--ED.]
"I can make lords of you every day, but I cannot create a Titian," said
the Emperor Charles V. to his courtiers, who had become jealous of the
hours and the half-hours which the monarch stole from them that he might
converse with the man of genius at his work. There is an elevated
intercourse between power and genius; and if they are deficient in
reciprocal esteem, neither are great. The intellectual nobility seems to
have been asserted by De Harlay, a great French statesman; for when the
Academy was once not received with royal honours, he complained to the
French monarch, observing, that when "a man of letters was presented to
Francis I. for the first time, the king always advanced three steps from
the throne to receive him." It is something more than an ingenious
thought, when Fontenelle, in his _éloge_ on LEIBNITZ, alluding to the
death of Queen Anne, adds of her successor, that "The Elector of Hanover
united under his dominion an electorate, the three kingdoms of Great
Britain, and LEIBNITZ and NEWTON."[A]
[Footnote A: This greatness of intellect that glorifies a court, however
small, is well instanced in that at Weimar, where the Duke Frederic
surrounded himself with the first men in Germany. It was the chosen
residence and burial-place of Herder; the birth-place of Kotzebue. Here
also Wieland resided for many years; and in the vaults of the ducal chapel
the ashes of Schiller repose by those of Goethe, who for more than half a
century assisted in the councils, and adorned the court of Weimar.--Ed.]
If ever the voice of individuals can recompense a life of literary labour,
it is in speaking a foreign accent. This sounds like the distant plaudit
of posterity. The distance of space between the literary character and the
inquirer, in some respects represents the distance of time which separates
the author from the next age. FONTENELLE was never more gratified than
when a Swede, arriving at the gates of Paris, inquired of the custom-house
officers where Fontenelle resided, and expressed his indignation that not
one of them had ever heard of his name. HOBBES expresses his proud delight
that his portrait was sought after by foreigners, and that the Great Duke
of Tuscany made the philosopher the object of his first inquiries. CAMDEN
was not insensible to the visits of German noblemen, who were desirous of
seeing the British Pliny; and POCOCK, while he received no aid from
patronage at home for his Oriental studies, never relaxed in those
unrequited labours, animated by the learned foreigners, who hastened to
see and converse with this prodigy of Eastern learning.
Yes! to the very presence of the man of genius will the world
spontaneously pay their tribute of respect, of admiration, or of love.
Many a pilgrimage has he lived to receive, and many a crowd has followed
his footsteps! There are days in the life of genius which repay its
sufferings. DEMOSTHENES confessed he was pleased when even a fishwoman of
Athens pointed him out. CORNEILLE had his particular seat in the theatre,
and the audience would rise to salute him when he entered. At the presence
of RAYNAL in the House of Commons, the Speaker was requested to suspend
the debate till that illustrious foreigner, who had written on the English
parliament, was accommodated with a seat. SPINOSA, when he gained an
humble livelihood by grinding optical glasses, at an obscure village in
Holland, was visited by the first general in Europe, who, for the sake of
this philosophical conference, suspended the march of the army.
In all ages and in all countries has this feeling been created. It is
neither a temporary ebullition nor an individual honour. It comes out of
the heart of man. It is the passion of great souls. In Spain, whatever was
most beautiful in its kind was described by the name of the great Spanish
bard:[A] everything excellent was called a Lope. Italy would furnish a
volume of the public honours decreed to literary men; nor is that spirit
extinct, though the national character has fallen by the chance of
fortune. METASTASIO and TIRABOSCHI received what had been accorded to
PETRARCH and to POGGIO. Germany, patriotic to its literary characters, is
the land of the enthusiasm of genius. On the borders of the Linnet, in the
public walk of Zurich, the monument of GESNER, erected by the votes of his
fellow-citizens attests their sensibility; and a solemn funeral honoured
the remains of KLOPSTOCK, led by the senate of Hamburgh, with fifty
thousand votaries, so penetrated by one universal sentiment, that this
multitude preserved a mournful silence, and the interference of the police
ceased to be necessary through the city at the solemn burial of the man of
genius. Has even Holland proved insensible? The statue of ERASMUS, in
Rotterdam, still animates her young students, and offers a noble example
to her neighbours of the influence even of the sight of the statue of a
man of genius. Travellers never fail to mention ERASMUS when Basle
occupies their recollections; so that, as Bayle observes, "He has rendered
the place of his death as celebrated as that of his birth." In France,
since Francis I. created genius, and Louis XIV. protected it, the impulse
has been communicated to the French people. There the statues of their
illustrious men spread inspiration on the spots which living they would
have haunted:--in their theatres, the great dramatists; in their Institute
their illustrious authors; in their public edifices, congenial men of
genius.[B] This is worthy of the country which privileged the family of LA
FONTAINE to be for ever exempt from taxes, and decreed that "the
productions of the mind were not seizable," when the creditors of
CREBILLON would have attached the produce of his tragedies.
[Footnote A: Lope de Vega.]
[Footnote B: We cannot bury the fame of our English worthies--that exists
before us, independent of ourselves; but we bury the influence of their
inspiring presence in those immortal memorials of genius easy to be read
by all men--their statues and their busts, consigning them to spots seldom
visited, and often too obscure to be viewed. [We have recent evidence of a
more noble acknowledgment of our great men. The statue of Dr. Jenner is
placed in Trafalgar Square; and Grantham has now a noble work to
commemorate its great townsman, Sir Isaac Newton.]]
These distinctive honours accorded to genius were in unison with their
decree respecting the will of BAYLE. It was the subject of a lawsuit
between the heir of the will and the inheritor by blood. The latter
contested that this great literary character, being a fugitive for
religion, and dying in a proscribed country, was divested by law of the
power to dispose of his property, and that our author, when resident in
Holland, in a civil sense was dead. In the Parliament of Toulouse the
judge decided that learned men are free in all countries: that he who had
sought in a foreign land an asylum from his love of letters, was no
fugitive; that it was unworthy of France to treat as a stranger a son in
whom she gloried, and he protested against the notion of a civil death to
such a man as Bayle, whose name was living throughout Europe. This
judicial decision in France was in unison with that of the senate of
Rotterdam, who declared of the emigrant BAYLE, that "such a man should not
be considered as a foreigner."
Even the most common objects are consecrated when associated with the
memory of the man of genius. We still seek for his tomb on the spot where
it has vanished. The enthusiasts of genius still wander on the hills of
Pausilippo, and muse on VIRGIL to retrace his landscape. There is a grove
at Magdalen College which retains the name of ADDISON's walk, where still
the student will linger; and there is a cave at Macao, which is still
visited by the Portuguese from a national feeling, for CAMOENS there
passed many days in composing his Lusiad. When PETRARCH was passing by his
native town, he was received with the honours of his fame; but when the
heads of the town conducted Petrarch to the house where the poet was born,
and informed him that the proprietor had often wished to make alterations,
but that the townspeople had risen to insist that the house which was
consecrated by the birth of Petrarch should be preserved unchanged; this
was a triumph more affecting to Petrarch than his coronation at Rome.[A]
[Footnote A: On this passage I find a remarkable manuscript note by Lord
Byron:--"It would have pained me more that 'the proprietor' should have
'often wished to make alterations, than it could give pleasure that the
rest of Arezzo rose against his _right_ (for _right_ he had); the
depreciation of the lowest of mankind is more painful than the applause of
the highest is pleasing; the sting of a scorpion is more in torture than
the possession of anything could be in rapture."]
In the village of Certaldo is still shown the house of BOCCACCIO; and on a
turret are seen the arms of the Medici, which they had sculptured there,
with an inscription alluding to a small house and a name which filled the
world; and in Ferrara, the small house which ARIOSTO built was purchased,
to be preserved, by the municipality, and there they still show the poet's
study; and under his bust a simple but affecting tribute to genius records
that "Ludovico Ariosto in this apartment wrote." Two hundred and eighty
years after the death of the divine poet it was purchased by the
_podesta_, with the money of the _commune_, that "the public veneration
may be maintained."[A] "Foreigners," says Anthony Wood of MILTON, "have,
out of pure devotion, gone to Bread-street to see the house and chamber
where he was born;" and at Paris the house which VOLTAIRE inhabited, and
at Ferney his study, are both preserved inviolate. In the study of
MONTESQUIEU at La Brede, near Bordeaux, the proprietor has preserved all
the furniture, without altering anything, that the apartment where this
great man meditated on his immortal work should want for nothing to assist
the reveries of the spectator; and on the side of the chimney is still
seen a place which while writing he was accustomed to rub his feet
against, as they rested on it. In a keep or dungeon of this feudal
_château_, the local association suggested to the philosopher his chapter
on "The Liberty of the Citizen." It is the second chapter of the twelfth
book, of which the close is remarkable.
[Footnote A: A public subscription secured the house in which Shakspeare
was born at Stratford-on-Avon. Durer's house, at Nuremberg, is still
religiously preserved, and its features are unaltered. The house in which
Michael Angelo resided at Florence is also carefully guarded, and the
rooms are still in the condition in which they were left by the great
master.--Ed.]
Let us regret that the little villa of POPE, and the poetic Leasowes of
SHENSTONE, have fallen the victims of property as much as if destroyed by
the barbarous hand which cut down the consecrated tree of Shakspeare. The
very apartment of a man of genius, the chair he studied in, the table he
wrote on, are contemplated with curiosity; the spot is full of local
impressions. And all this happens from an unsatisfied desire to see and
hear him whom we never can see nor hear; yet, in a moment of illusion, if
we listen to a traditional conversation, if we can revive one of his
feelings, if we can catch but a dim image, we reproduce this man of genius
before us, on whose features we so often dwell. Even the rage of the
military spirit has taught itself to respect the abode of genius; and
Cæsar and Sylla, who never spared the blood of their own Rome, alike felt
their spirit rebuked, and alike saved the literary city of Athens.
Antiquity has preserved a beautiful incident of this nature, in the noble
reply of the artist PROTOGENES. When the city of Rhodes was taken by
Demetrius, the man of genius was discovered in his garden, tranquilly
finishing a picture. "How is it that you do not participate in the general
alarm?" asked the conqueror. "Demetrius, you war against the Rhodians, but
not against the fine arts," replied the man of genius. Demetrius had
already shown this by his conduct, for he forbade firing that part of the
city where the artist resided.
The house of the man of genius has been spared amidst contending empires,
from the days of Pindar to those of Buffon; "the Historian of Nature's"
château was preserved from this elevated feeling by Prince Schwartzenberg,
as our MARLBOROUGH had performed the same glorious office in guarding the
hallowed asylum of FENELON.[A] In the grandeur of Milton's verse we
perceive the feeling he associated with this literary honour:
The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus when temple and tower
Went to the ground--.
[Footnote A: The printing office of Plantyn, at Antwerp, was guarded in a
similar manner during the great revolution that separated Holland and
Belgium, when a troop of soldiers were stationed in its courtyard. See
"Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 77, _note_.--ED.]
And the meanest things, the very household stuff, associated with the
memory of the man of genius, become the objects of our affections. At a
festival, in honour of THOMSON the poet, the chair in which he composed
part of his "Seasons" was produced, and appears to have communicated some
of the raptures to which he was liable who had sat in that chair.
RABEIAIS, amongst his drollest inventions, could not have imagined that
his old cloak would have been preserved in the university of Montpelier
for future doctors to wear on the day they took their degree; nor could
SHAKSPEARE have supposed, with all his fancy, that the mulberry-tree which
he planted would have been multiplied into relics. But in such instances
the feeling is right, with a wrong direction; and while the populace are
exhausting their emotions on an old tree, an old chair, and an old cloak,
they are paying that involuntary tribute to genius which forms its pride,
and will generate the race.