GENIUS
IN
SUNSHINE AND SHADOW.
By the Same Author
EDGE-TOOLS OF SPEECH.
One fine octavo volume. $3.50.
"A vast storehouse of the best thought of the world."--_Boston: Home
Journal._
"Will find its way into thousands of families. It is a volume to take up
when a few minutes of leisure are found, and it will always be read with
interest."--_Boston Journal._
"'Edge-Tools of Speech' is one of the best books of quotation in the
language. It is indispensable in the library and at the
office."--_Gazette._
"He has classified his quotations alphabetically under the head of subjects
('Ability,' 'Absence,' etc.), and has collected the most famous literary or
historical sayings bearing on each subject. Thus the word 'Ability' is made
the text of wise utterances from Napoleon I., Dr. Johnson, Wendell
Phillips, Longfellow, Maclaren, Gail Hamilton, Froude, Beaconsfield,
Zoroaster, Schopenhauer, La Rochefoucauld, Matthew Wren, Gibbon, and
Aristotle. It has no rival."--_Christian Union._
"The book is one which will at once command a place on the reference-shelf
of every well-appointed library, and which will be a most useful aid to
every literary man."--_Boston Courier._
"To open it at random anywhere is to chance upon the wisdom of the ages.
Every important authority of every age and clime is represented. The
choicest reading of a lifetime is brought, in its salient points, into the
limits of this volume."--_Boston Traveller._
*** _For sale by all booksellers. Sent, post-paid, upon receipt of price_,
TICKNOR AND COMPANY, BOSTON.
GENIUS
IN SUNSHINE AND SHADOW
BY
MATURIN M. BALLOU
AUTHOR OF "EDGE-TOOLS OF SPEECH," ETC.
'Tis in books the chief
Of all perfection to be plain and brief.
BUTLER
BOSTON
TICKNOR AND COMPANY
1887
_Copyright, 1886_,
BY MATURIN M. BALLOU.
_All rights reserved._
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
PREFACE.
The volume in hand might perhaps better have been entitled "Library
Notes," as the pages are literally the gathered notes of the author's
library-hours. The reader will kindly peruse these pages remembering
that they assume only to be the gossip, as it were, of the author with
himself,--notes which have grown to these proportions by casual
accumulation in the course of other studies, and without consecutive
purpose. That these notes thus made have been put into printed form, is
owing to the publisher's chance knowledge and hearty approval of them.
These few lines are by way, not of apology,--no sensible person ever
made an apology, according to Mr. Emerson,--but of introduction; so that
the reader may not fancy he is to encounter a labored essay upon the
theme suggested by the title of the volume.
These pages may not be without a certain wholesome influence, if,
fortunately, they shall incite others to analyze the character of genius
as exhibited by the masters of art and literature. The facts alluded
to, though familiar to many, are not so to all; wherefore the volume
may indirectly promote the knowledge of both history and biography, at
the same time leading the thoughtful reader to seek further and more
ample information concerning those individuals who are here so briefly
introduced.
M. M. B.
GENIUS
IN SUNSHINE AND SHADOW.
CHAPTER I.
The ever-flowing tide of time rapidly obliterates the footprints of
those whom the world has delighted to honor. While it has caused heroic
names, like their possessors, to lapse into oblivion, it has also
shrouded many a historical page with the softened veil of distance, like
ivy-grown towers, rendering what was once terrible now only picturesque.
In glancing back through thousands of years, and permitting the mind to
rest on the earliest recorded epochs, one is apt to forget how much
human life then, in all its fundamental characteristics, was like our
own daily experience. There never was a golden age; that is yet to come.
The most assiduous antiquarian has only corroborated the fact that human
nature is unchanged. Conventionalities, manners and customs, the
fashions, may change, but human nature does not. As an example of the
mutability of fame, we have only to ask ourselves what is actually
known to-day of Homer,[1] Aristophanes, and their renowned
contemporaries, or even of our more familiar Shakespeare?[2] Of the
existence of the first named we have evidence in his two great epics,
the Iliad and the Odyssey; but, though deemed the most famous poet that
ever lived, we do not even know his birthplace.
"Ten ancient towns contend for Homer dead,
Through which the living Homer begged his bread."
The cautious historian only tells us that he is supposed to have
flourished about nine hundred years before the time of Christ; while
there are also learned writers who contend that no such person as
Homer[3] ever lived, and who attribute the two most famous poems of
antiquity to various minstrels or ballad-mongers, who celebrated the
"tale of Troy divine" at various periods, and whose songs and legends
were fused into unity at the time of Pisistratus.
Over the personality of Aristophanes,[4] the great comic poet of
Greece, who is supposed to have flourished some five or six hundred
years later than Homer, there rests the same cloud of obscurity, and he
is clearly identified only by eleven authentic comedies which are still
extant, though he is believed to have written fifty. Of Shakespeare,
born some two thousand years later (1564), how little is actually known
beyond the fact of his birthplace! Even the authorship of his plays,
like that of Homer's poems, is a subject of dispute. Perhaps, however,
this loss of individuality but adds to the influence of the poet's
divine mission. The really great men of history, benefactors of their
race, are those who still live in the undying thoughts which they have
left behind them.
* * * * *
In this familiar gossip we propose to glance briefly at such names as
may suggest themselves, without observing any strict system of
classification. The theme is so fruitful, the pages of history so teem
with portraits which stand forth in groups to attract the eye, that one
hardly knows where to begin, what matter to exclude, what to adduce; and
therefore, closing the elaborate records of the past, we will trust to
momentary inspiration and the ready promptings of memory.
The first thought which strikes us in this connection is, that the
origin of those whom the world has called great--men who have written
their names indelibly upon the pages of history--is often of the
humblest character. Such men have most frequently risen from the ranks.
In fact, genius ignores all social barriers and springs forth wherever
heaven has dropped the seed. The grandest characters known in art,
literature, and the useful inventions have illustrated the axiom that
"brave deeds are the ancestors of brave men;" and it would almost appear
that an element of hardship is necessary to the effective development of
true genius. Indeed, when we come to the highest achievements of the
greatest minds, it seems that they were not limited by race, condition
of life, or the circumstances of their age. "It is," says Emerson, "the
nature of poetry to spring, like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from
the Invisible, to abolish the past and refuse all history." But this of
course refers only to poetry in its loftiest and noblest conceptions and
sentiments; and then only in passages of a great work.
Æsop, the fabulist, who flourished six hundred years before Christ, and
whose fables are as familiar to us after the lapse of twenty-five
hundred years as household words; Publius Syrus,[5] the eminent
moralist, who lived in the time of Julius Cæsar, and whose wise axioms
are to be found in every library; Terence,[6] the Carthaginian poet and
dramatist; Epictetus, the stoic philosopher,--all were slaves in early
life,[7] but won freedom and lasting fame by force of their native
genius. No man is nobler than another unless he is born with better
abilities, a more amiable disposition, and a larger heart and brain. The
field is open to all; for it is fixedness of purpose and perseverance
that win the prizes of this world,--qualities that can be exercised by
the most humble.
Protagoras, the Greek sophist and orator, was in his youth a street
porter of Athens, carrying loads upon his back like a beast of burden.
He was a singularly independent genius, and was expelled from his native
city because he openly doubted the existence of the gods. His
countryman, Cleanthes the stoic, was also "a hewer of stone and drawer
of water," but rose among the Athenians to be esteemed as a rival of the
great philosopher Zeno. He wrote many works in his day,--about three
hundred years before the Christian Era,--none of which have been
preserved except a hymn to Jupiter, which is remarkable for purity of
thought and elevation of sentiment.
We need not confine ourselves, however, to so remote a period to
illustrate that genius is independent of circumstances. In our random
treatment of the subject there occurs to us the name of Bandoccin, one
of the most learned men of the sixteenth century, who was the son of an
itinerant shoemaker, and who was himself brought up to the trade. Gelli,
the prolific Italian author, and president of the Florentine Academy,
was a tailor by trade, and of very humble birth. His moral dialogues
entitled, _I Capricci del Bottajo_ ("The Whims of the Cooper"), have
been pronounced by competent critics to be extraordinary for originality
and piquancy, while all his works are remarkable for purity of diction.
Canova, the sculptor of world-wide fame, was the son of a day-laborer in
the marble quarries. Opie, the distinguished English painter, earned his
bread at the carpenter's trade until his majority, but before his death
became professor of painting in the Royal Academy. Amyot, the brilliant
scholar, and professor of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, who is ranked among
those who have contributed most towards the perfection of the French
language, learned to write upon birch-bark with charcoal, while he lived
on a loaf of bread per day. This man rose to be grand almoner of France,
and proved that courage, perseverance, and genius need no ancestors.[8]
Akenside, the English didactic poet, wit, essayist, and physician,
author of the "Pleasures of the Imagination," was a butcher's boy. His
developed genius caused him to be appointed to the Queen's household.
Sir Humphry Davy was an apothecary's apprentice in his youth. Matthew
Prior, the English poet and diplomatist, began life as a charity
scholar. Rollin, famous for his "Ancient History," was the son of a poor
Parisian cutler, and began life at an iron-forge. James Barry, the
eminent historical painter, was in his minority a foremast hand on board
an Irish coasting-vessel. D'Alembert, the remarkable French
mathematician, author, and academician, was at birth a poor foundling in
the streets of Paris, though it must be added that he was the
illegitimate and discarded son of Madame de Tencin, one of the
wickedest, most profligate, most cynical, and ablest of the high-placed
women of France. D'Alembert scorned her[9] proffered help when she,
learning that he was the offspring of one of her desultory amours,
attempted to assist him by her money and patronage. He lived austerely
poor, and his love was lavished, not on his natural, or rather
unnatural, mother, but on the indigent woman who had picked him up in
the street, and who by self-denial had enabled him to obtain sustenance
and education. As soon as he was old enough to realize his true
situation, he said, "I have no name, but with God's help I will make
one!" The time came when Catherine II. of Russia offered him one hundred
thousand francs per annum to become the educator of her son, which he
declined.
Béranger, the lyric poet of France, whose effectiveness and purity of
style defy criticism, was at one time a barefooted orphan on the
boulevards of the great city. His verses, bold, patriotic, and
satirical, were in every mouth among the masses of his countrymen,
contributing more than any other cause to produce the revolution of
1830.[10] He had the noble independence to refuse all official
recognition under government. Rachel, it will be remembered, was in her
childhood a street-ballad singer. A resident of the French capital once
pointed out to the writer a spot on the Champs Élysées where at the age
of twelve, so pale as to seem scarcely more than a shadow, she used to
appear daily, accompanied by her brother. A rude cloth was spread on the
ground, upon which she stood and recited tragic scenes from Corneille
and Racine, or sang patriotic songs for pennies, accompanied upon the
violin by her brother.
Her attitudes, gestures, and voice always captivated a crowd of people.
Rachel was a Jewish pedler's daughter, though she was born in
Switzerland; and in these youthful days she wore a Swiss costume upon
the boulevards.[11]
Boccaccio, the most famous of Italian novelists, was the illegitimate
son of a Florentine tradesman, and began life as a merchant's clerk. It
is well known that Shakespeare borrowed the plot of "All's Well that
Ends Well" from Boccaccio.[12] In fact, the "Decamerone" furnished him
with plots for several of his plays. Chaucer derived from the same
source his poem of the "Knight's Tale." We never hear shallow people
reflecting upon the Bard of Avon for taking some of his plots from
earlier writers, and weaving about them the golden threads of his superb
genius, without recalling Dryden's remark relative to Ben Jonson's
adaptations and translations from the classics, in such plays as
"Catiline" and "Sejanus." "He invades authors," says Dryden, "like a
monarch; and what would be theft in other writers is but victory in
him." Sterne's idea upon the same subject also suggests itself. "As
monarchs have a right," he says, "to call in the specie of a State and
raise its value by their own impression, so are there certain
prerogative geniuses who are above plagiaries, who cannot be said to
steal, but from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and
repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again, and may more
properly be said to adopt than to kidnap a sentiment, by leaving it heir
to their own fame."
Columbus, who gave a new world to the old, was a weaver's son, and in
his youth he earned his bread as a cabin-boy in a coasting-vessel which
sailed from Genoa. The story of the great Genoese pilot possesses a more
thrilling interest than any narrative which the imagination of poet or
romancer has ever conceived. His name flashes a bright ray over the
mental darkness of the period in which he lived. In imagination one sees
him wandering for years from court to court, begging the necessary means
wherewith to prosecute his inspired purpose,[13] and finally, after
successfully accomplishing his mission, languishing in chains and in
prison.
How naturally Halleck's invocation to Death, in "Marco Bozarris," occurs
to us here, as the hero, when his object has been attained, joyfully
faces the grim monarch:
"Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
Of brother in a foreign land;
Thy summons welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh,
To the world-seeking Genoese,
When the land wind from woods of palm
And orange-groves and fields of balm
Blew o'er the Haytian seas."
De Foe, the author of "Robinson Crusoe," and of over two hundred other
books, was a hosier by trade, the son of a London butcher named James
Foe. The particle _De_ was added by the son without other authority than
the suggestion of his own fancy. Cardinal Wolsey and Kirke White were
also sons of butchers.
Claude Lorraine, the glorious colorist, whose very name has become a
synonym in art, was in youth employed as a pastry-cook. Molière, the
great French dramatist and actor, who presents one of the most
remarkable instances of literary success known to history, was the son
of a tapestry-maker, and was himself at one time apprenticed to a
tailor, and afterwards became a _valet-de-chambre_. When Molière was
valet to Louis XIII., he had already appeared upon the stage, and was
rather sneered at by the other members of the king's household. The
generous monarch observed this, and determined to put a stop to it: "I
am told you have short commons here, Molière, and some of my people
decline to serve you," said Louis, as he rose from his breakfast one
day. "Sit down here at my table. I warrant you are hungry." And the king
cut him a portion of chicken and put it upon his plate just at the
moment when a distinguished member of the royal household entered. "You
see me," said the king, "giving Molière his breakfast, as some of my
people do not think him good enough company for themselves." From that
hour the royal valet was treated with due consideration. William
Cobbett, the English author and vigorous political writer, was a poor
farmer's boy and entirely self-educated. Izaak Walton, the delightful
biographist and miscellaneous author, whose "Complete Angler" would make
any man's name justly famous, was for years a linen-draper in London.
Pope and Southey were the sons of linen-drapers.
How rapidly instances of the triumphs of genius over circumstances
multiply upon us when the mind is permitted to roam at will through the
long vista of the past! Cervantes, the Spanish Shakespeare, whose "Don
Quixote" is as much a classic[14] as "Hamlet," was a common foot-soldier
in the army of Castile. In 1575 he was captured by an Algerine corsair
and carried as a slave to Algiers, where he endured the most terrible
sufferings. He was finally ransomed and returned to Spain. Alexandre
Dumas's grandmother was an African slave. Hugh Miller, author, editor,
poet, distinguished naturalist, whose clear, choice Saxon-English caused
the Edinburgh "Review" to ask, "Where could this man have acquired his
style?" was a stone-mason, and his only college was a stone-quarry.[15]
Keats, the sweetest of English poets, whose delicacy of fancy and beauty
of versification are "a joy forever," was born in a stable. Oliver
Cromwell, one of the most extraordinary men in English history, famous
as a citizen, great as a general, and greatest as a ruler, was the son
of a malt-brewer. Howard, the philanthropist and author, whose name
stands a monument of Christian fame, was at first a grocer's boy.
Rossini, one of the greatest of modern composers, was the son of an
itinerant musician and a strolling actress. Andrea del Sarto was the son
of a tailor, and took his name from his father's trade. Perino del Vaga
was born in poverty and nearly starved in his boyhood. Perugino, whose
noble painting of the "Infant Christ and the Virgin" adorns the Albani
Palace at Rome, grew up in want and misery. We all remember the story of
the shepherd-boy Giotto, who finally came to be so eminent a painter,
and the intimate friend of Dante; like Michael Angelo, he was an
architect and sculptor. Paganini, one of the greatest of instrumental
performers that ever lived, was born in poverty and was illegitimate. He
gained enormous sums of money by his wonderful exhibitions and musical
compositions, but was spoiled by adulation, becoming reckless and
dissipated. His performances in the cities of Europe created a _furore_
before unparalleled in the history of music, and never since surpassed.
Wilson the unequalled ornithologist, Dr. Livingstone the heroic
missionary and African traveller, and Tannahill[16] the Scottish
poet,--author of that familiar and favorite song, "Jessie, the Flower of
Dumblane,"--earned their living in youth as journeymen weavers. Joost
van den Vondel, the national poet of Holland, was a hosier's apprentice.
Molière, already referred to, began his career as a journeyman tailor,
but occasionally his maternal grandfather took him to the play, and thus
were sown the seeds which led to his greatness as a dramatic author and
actor. Samuel Woodworth, author of the "Old Oaken Bucket," one of the
sweetest lyrics in our language, was a journeyman printer. Richard
Cobden, statesman, economist, and author, was a poor Sussex farmer's
son, whose youthful occupation was that of tending sheep. John Bright,
the intimate friend and coadjutor of Cobden, one of the greatest, most
eloquent, and most successful of English reformers, was the son of a
cotton-spinner. Lord Clyde, the successful general who crushed the
rebellion in India, and who was made a peer of England, was the son of a
carpenter. The motto of his life, always inscribed upon the fly-leaf of
his pocket memorandum-book, was: "By means of patience, common-sense,
and time, impossibilities become possible."
John Bunyan,[17] the author of "Pilgrim's Progress," the solace
and delight of millions, and a text-book for all future time, was a
tinker. His great work is said to have obtained a larger circulation
than any other English book except the translation of the Bible.
Benjamin Franklin, statesman, philosopher, epigrammatist, was a
tallow-chandler.[18] Nathaniel Bowditch, the eminent mathematician, was
a cooper's apprentice. He was twenty-one years of age before he may be
said to have begun his education, but in his prime was a Fellow of the
Royal Society of London, and was offered the chair of mathematics in
Harvard College. Hiram Powers, the first sculptor from this country to
win European fame, was brought up a ploughboy on a Vermont farm; his
"Greek Slave" gave him high rank among modern sculptors. Elihu Burritt,
the remarkable linguist, was a Connecticut horse-shoer. Whitefield, the
eloquent English preacher and father of the sect of Calvinistic
Methodists, was in youth the stable-boy of an English inn. Cardinal
Wolsey, chief minister of Henry VIII., was brought up to follow his
father's humble calling of a butcher. Horne Tooke, the English wit,
priest, lawyer, and genius, was the son of a poulterer.[19] Correra,
afterwards president of Guatemala, was born in poverty, and for years
was a drummer-boy in the army, where he was laughed at for saying that
the world should some day hear from him, being reminded that his present
business was to make a noise in the world. But he meant what he said,
and acted under Lord Clyde's motto. He rose by degrees to the highest
position in the gift of his countrymen. "To the persevering mortal the
blessed immortals are swift," says Zoroaster.
Ebenezer Elliott, the English "Corn-Law Rhymer,"[20] was a blacksmith,
but a poet by nature, and his songs created a political revolution in
his native land, though unlike Béranger's, in France, it was a peaceful
revolution. He was ever a true champion of the poor and oppressed. In
the latter portion of his life he was in easy pecuniary circumstances.
William Lloyd Garrison,[21] the beloved philanthropist, orator, and
writer, was born in poverty, and was early apprenticed to a shoemaker,
but became a journeyman printer before his majority. He suffered
imprisonment for his opinions' sake, and may be said to have been the
father of Abolitionism in America, fortunately living long enough to see
the grand effort of his life crowned with success, in the emancipation
of the blacks and the abolishment of slavery throughout the length and
breadth of his native land. Kepler, the famous German astronomer, was
the son of a poor innkeeper, and though enjoying royal patronage, often
felt the pressure of poverty. Coleridge said: "Galileo was a great
genius and so was Newton; but it would take two or three Galileos and
Newtons to make one Kepler." We owe our knowledge of the laws of the
planetary system to him.
Sir Richard Arkwright, inventor of the spinning-jenny, and founder of
the great cotton industries of England, never saw the inside of a
schoolhouse until after he was twenty years of age, having long served
as a barber's assistant. Justice Tenterden, and Turner, greatest among
landscape-painters, were also brought up to the same trade. James
Brindley, the English engineer and mechanician, and Cook, the famed
navigator, were day-laborers in early life. Romney, the artist, John
Hunter, the physiologist, Professor Lee, the Orientalist, and John
Gibson, the sculptor, were carpenters by trade. Shakespeare was a
wool-comber in his youth. These low estates, the workshop and the mine,
have often contributed liberally to recruit the ranks of those whom the
world has recognized as men of genius.
Horace Mann declared that education is our only political safety. He
might have gone further, and said our only moral safety also. It is not,
however, the school and the college alone that bring about this grand
object, though they are natural adjuncts. Real education is the
apprenticeship of life, and that is always the best which we realize in
our struggle to obtain a livelihood. Genius, as a rule, owes little to
scholastic training,--within these pages there will be found proof
sufficient of this. Sir T. F. Buxton says he owed more to his father's
gamekeeper, who could neither read nor write, than to any other source
of knowledge. He said this man was truly his "guide, philosopher, and
friend," whose memory was stored with more varied rustic knowledge, good
sense, and mother wit, than his young master ever met with afterwards.
He adds that he was his first instructor, and that he profited far more
by his remarks and admonitions than by those of his more learned
tutors.[22]
Perhaps at first thought it may seem singular that so many unschooled
geniuses should have risen to be famous in their several departments,
but it is because they were geniuses. They saw and understood nature and
art by intuition, while those of us who can claim no such distinction
have been compelled to acquire knowledge by plummet and line, so to
speak. "The ambition of a man of parts," says Sydney Smith, "should be
not to know books, but things; not to show other men that he has read
Locke, and Montesquieu, and Beccaria, and Dumont, but to show that he
knows the subjects upon which they have written." Let us pursue our
examples still further, for they are both interesting and remarkable
when brought thus together.
Benjamin West[23] was born in Pennsylvania, a poor farmer's boy; but the
genius of art was in him, and after patient study he became an eminent
painter, finally succeeding Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the
Royal Academy in 1792. George III. was his personal friend and patron.
He was so thoroughly appreciated there that he made England his home,
where he died in 1820. John Britton, author of the "Beauties of England
and Wales," as well as of several valuable works on architecture, was
born in a mud cabin in Wiltshire, and was for years engaged as a
bar-tender. He was finally turned adrift by his employer with two
guineas in his pocket, but before his death his list of published books
exceeded eighty volumes! Sir Francis Chantrey, the eminent sculptor, was
in his minority a journeyman carver in wood. Talma, the great tragic
actor of France, and favorite of the first Napoleon, was a dentist by
trade. Gifford, the eminent English critic and essayist, was "graduated"
from a cobbler's bench. When Cicero was asked concerning his lineage, he
replied, "I commence an ancestry." Beaumarchais, the successful French
dramatist, author of the "Barber of Seville" and the "Marriage of
Figaro," was a watchmaker by trade, but developed such versatile genius
as finally to excite the jealousy of the unscrupulous Voltaire.
Thomas Ball, the sculptor, who has done so much to ornament the parks
and squares of Boston, used as a lad to sweep out the halls of the
Boston Museum.[24] The author has often been within the walls of his
pleasant studio in the environs of Florence, adjoining his charming
domestic establishment. It is near to the spot where Powers produced his
"Greek Slave," and overlooks the lovely city of Florence, divided by the
Arno. Andrew Jackson, who became President of the United States, was the
son of a poor Irish emigrant, and so was John C. Calhoun, the great
Southern statesman and Vice-President. Abraham Lincoln and the late
President Garfield were both sons of toil, the former being commonly
designated as "the rail-splitter," the latter as "the canal-boy." Andrew
Johnson was a journeyman tailor. Henry Wilson was a cobbler at the bench
until he was nearly twenty-one. So also was Andersen,[25] the Danish
novelist. Jasmin, who has been called the Burns of France, was the son
of a street beggar. Allan Cunningham, poet, novelist, and miscellaneous
writer, began life as a stone-mason; he became the father of four sons,
all of whom won distinction in literature. Among the father's novels was
that of "Paul Jones," which was remarkably successful. Dr. Isaac Miller,
Dean of Carlisle, began life as a weaver, and Dr. Prideaux, Bishop of
Worcester, earned his living in youth as a kitchen-boy at Oxford. Watt,
the great Scotch inventor, whose steam-engine has revolutionized modern
industry, and Whitney, inventor of the cotton-gin, were street gamins
in childhood. Both these inventors were thought by their associates to
be "beside themselves" as they grew towards maturity. "No man is quite
sane," says Emerson; "each has a vein of folly in his composition, a
slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him
hard to some one point which nature has taken to heart."
The world's great men, according to the acceptation of the term, have
not always been great scholars. General Nathaniel Greene, the successful
Revolutionary commander, second only in military skill to Washington,
was brought up at a blacksmith's forge. Horace Greeley, orator and
journalist, was the son of a poor New Hampshire farmer and earned his
living for years by setting type. William Sturgeon the able and famous
electrician, Samuel Drew the English essayist, and Bloomfield the poet,
all rose from the cobbler's bench; and so did Thomas Edwards, the
profound naturalist. Robert Dodsley, the poet, dramatist, and friend of
Pope began life as a London footman in livery. His tragedy of "Cleone"
was so successful and well constructed, that Dr. Johnson said, "If Otway
had written it, no other of his pieces would have been remembered,"
which was certainly extravagant praise.[26] Douglas Jerrold was born in
a garret at Sheerness. Hobson, one of England's admirals, was a
tailor's apprentice in early life. Huntington, the remarkable preacher
and revivalist, was originally a coal-heaver, and Bewick, the father of
wood-engraving, was a laborer in a coal mine for many years.
John Gay, the English poet, was not "born with a silver spoon in his
mouth," but in youth he came up to London, where he served as a clerk to
a silk-mercer. "How long he continued behind the counter," says Dr.
Johnson, "or with what degree of softness and dexterity he received and
accommodated the ladies, as he probably took no delight in telling it,
is not known." He wrote comedies, fables, farces, and ballads, and wrote
well, and was vastly popular. Gay was a great gourmand, very lazy, and
fond of society.[27] The silk-mercer's clerk attained the much-coveted
honor of resting at last in Westminster Abbey. Boffin, the great
navigator, served at first before the mast as a common sailor. Robert
Dick, the geologist and botanist, followed his trade as a baker through
his whole life.
Would it not seem, in the light of these many instances, that practical
labor forms the best training even for genius?
Linnæus (Karl von Linné), the great Swedish botanist, the most
influential naturalist of the eighteenth century, was a shoemaker's
apprentice. His works upon his favorite study are authority with
students of science all over the world. He became physician to the king
and made his home at Stockholm, but roamed over all Scandinavia in
pursuing his special science of botany and also that of zoölogy. He will
always be remembered as having been the first to perfect a systematic
and scientific classification of plants and animals. He lies buried in
the Upsala Cathedral.
Thorwaldsen, the great Danish sculptor, was the son of an humble
Icelandic fisherman, but by reason of native genius he rose to bear the
name of the greatest of modern sculptors. He left in the Copenhagen
museum alone six hundred grand examples of the art he adorned. Many of
our readers will remember having seen near Lucerne, Switzerland, one of
his most remarkable pieces of sculpture, representing a wounded and
dying lion of colossal size, designed to commemorate the heroic fidelity
of the Swiss guards who fell Aug. 10, 1792. Thorwaldsen was passionately
fond of children, so that the moment he entered a house he gathered all
the juveniles about him; and in most of his marble groups he introduces
children. He never married, but made his beautiful mistress, the Roman
Fortunata, celebrated by repeating her face in many of his ideal groups.
Thorwaldsen gave an impulse to art in his native country which has no
like example in history; indeed, art is to-day the religion of
Copenhagen, and Thorwaldsen is its prophet.
George Stephenson, the English engineer and inventor, was in his youth a
stoker in a colliery, learning to read and write at a laborers' evening
school. John Jacob Astor began life as a pedler in the streets of New
York, where his descendants own a hundred million dollars worth of real
estate.[28] The elder Vanderbilt, famous not alone for his millions but
also for his vast enterprise in the development of commerce and
railroads, served as a cabin-boy on a North River sloop during several
years of his youth. George Peabody, the great American philanthropist
and millionnaire, was born in poverty. Fisher Ames, the eminent
statesman and orator, eked out a precarious living for years as a
country pedagogue. Greatness lies not alone in the possession of genius,
but in the right and effective use of it.
We have given examples sufficient to illustrate this branch of our
subject, though they might be almost indefinitely extended. It was
Daniel Webster[29] who said that "a man not ashamed of himself need not
be ashamed of his early condition in life." Titles are vendible, but
genius is the gift of Heaven.
Enthusiasm is the heritage of youth; it plans with audacity and executes
with vigor: "It is the leaping lightning," according to Emerson, "not to
be measured by the horse-power of the understanding." In the
accomplishment of great deeds it is undoubtedly the keenest spur, and
consequently those who have become eminent in the history of the world
have mostly achieved their greatness before gray hairs have woven
themselves about their brows. Unless the tree has borne ample blossoms
in the spring, we shall look in vain for a generous crop in the fall.
Notwithstanding the abundance of axioms as to youth and rashness
dwelling together, we have ample evidence that it is the period of
deeds, when the senses are unworn and the whole man is in the vigor of
strength and earnestness. Goethe tells us that the destiny of any nation
depends upon the opinions of its young men. Let us recall a few
examples, in corroboration of this view, among those who have made their
mark upon the times in which they lived.
Alexander the Great reigned over the Macedonians at sixteen; Scipio was
but twenty-nine at the zenith of his military glory; Charles XII.[30]
was only nineteen when, as commander-in-chief, he won the famous battle
of Narva; Condé was twenty-two when he gained the battle of Rocroi;
Scipio the Younger conquered Carthage at thirty-six, and Cortes subdued
Mexico at the same age. At thirty Charlemagne was master of France and
Germany; at thirty-two Clive had established the British power in India.
Hannibal won his greatest victories before he was thirty, and Napoleon
was but twenty-seven when he outgeneralled the veteran marshals of
Austria on the plains of Italy. George Washington won his first battle
as a colonel at twenty-two; Lafayette was a major-general in our army at
the age of twenty. Nor are we to look only for youthful greatness among
those who have won laurels in war. William Pitt was prime minister of
England at twenty-four; Calhoun had achieved national greatness before
he was thirty; while the names of John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and
the elder Pitt in England also suggest themselves in this
connection.[31]
Handel composed sonatas at ten years of age; Mozart was equally
precocious, and died at thirty-six, at which age Shakespeare had written
"Hamlet." Bellini, the composer, had produced "II Pirata," "La
Sonnambula," and "La Norma," before his thirtieth year; "I Puritani" was
finished at thirty, and he died two years later. Charles Matthews the
elder began to write for the press at fourteen, and Moore wrote verses
for print at the same age; undoubtedly both were open to cool and
judicious criticism.[32] Henry Kirke White published a volume of poems
at seventeen. Bryant, the first American poet of celebrity, began to
write verses at the age of ten, and his most celebrated poem,
"Thanatopsis," was written before he was twenty. Fitz-Greene Halleck,
author of "Marco Bozzaris," wrote verses for the magazines at fourteen.
Congreve was at the height of his literary fame at four-and-twenty,--he
to whom Dryden said Shakespeare had bequeathed his poetical crown, and
to whom Pope dedicated his version of the Iliad. Watt invented the
steam-engine before he was thirty. The reproof administered by his
grandmother for his idleness in taking off and replacing the cover of
the teakettle, and "playing with the steam to no purpose," will occur to
the reader. Joan of Arc[33] was but eighteen when she raised the siege
of Orléans and conquered city after city, until Charles VII. was crowned
king at Rheims.
Guizot, the distinguished French statesman and historian, seems to have
been "a child who had no childhood." At eleven years of age he was able
to read in their respective languages Thucydides, Demosthenes, Dante,
Schiller, Gibbon, and Shakespeare.
Robert Hall, the eloquent English clergyman, was a remarkable instance
of early mental development. It is said that before he was ten years of
age he perused with interest and understanding Edwards's treatises on
the "Affections" and on the "Will." His sermons, essays, and writings
generally were eagerly read and admired by the public; but excessive
application at last brought on insanity. It was gracefully said of him
that his imperial fancy laid all nature under tribute. Even in madness
he did not lose his power of retort. A hypocritical condoler visited him
in the mad-house, and asked in a servile tone: "Pray, what brought you
here, Mr. Hall?" Hall touched his brow significantly with his finger,
and replied, "What'll never bring you, sir,--too much brains!"[34]
Macaulay had already won an exalted reputation for prose and poetry
before he was twenty-three, and N. P. Willis, before he left college,
had achieved enduring fame by his sacred poems,[35] which, in fact, he
never afterwards excelled in a long and successful literary career.
Schiller wrote and published in his fourteenth year a poem on Moses.
Klopstock began his "Messiah" at seventeen, and Tasso had produced his
"Rinaldo," and completed the first three cantos of "Jerusalem
Delivered," before he was nineteen. Milton was an unremitting student at
ten. Southey began to write verses before he was eleven, Chaucer and
Cowley at twelve, and Leigh Hunt at about the same age. Pope,[36] like
so many others, began to write poetry as a child, thus proving that
"poets are born and not made." Chatterton, the remarkable literary
prodigy, died at eighteen, but not until he had established a lasting
reputation. Bulwer-Lytton was a successful author at about the same age,
and so were Keats and Bayard Taylor. Dickens produced the "Pickwick
Papers" before he was twenty-five, and it may safely be said that in
wit, humor, and originality he never surpassed that delicious book.
These seem interesting facts to remember, though they do not establish
any actual criterion, since the thoughtful student of the past can
adduce many notable examples of mature development in art and
literature.
Among these is that of Edmund Burke, on the whole the greatest of
English philosophical statesmen. He is the most remarkable instance of a
number of men of genius who seem to have grown younger as they grew
older,--that is, mentally and morally. Macaulay has noticed that Bacon's
writings towards the close of his career exceeded those of his youth and
manhood "in eloquence, in sweetness and variety of expression, and in
richness of illustration."[37] He adds: "In this respect the history of
his mind bears some resemblance to the history of the mind of Burke. The
treatises on the 'Sublime and Beautiful,'[38] though written on a
subject which the coldest metaphysician could hardly treat without being
occasionally betrayed into florid writing, is the most unadorned of
Burke's works. It appeared when he was twenty-five or twenty-six. When,
at forty, he wrote the 'Thoughts on the Causes of the Present
Discontents,' his reason and judgment had reached their full maturity,
but his eloquence was in its splendid dawn. At fifty his rhetoric was as
rich as good taste would admit; and when he died, at almost seventy, it
had become ungracefully gorgeous. In his youth he wrote on the emotions
produced by mountains and cascades, by the masterpieces of painting and
sculpture, by the faces and necks of beautiful women, in the style of a
Parliamentary report. In his old age he discussed treaties and tariffs
in the most fervid and brilliant language of romance."
Socrates learned to play on musical instruments in his old age. Cato at
eighty first studied the Greek language, and Plutarch did not apply
himself to learn the Latin language until about the same age.
Theophrastus[39] began his "Character of Man" on his ninetieth birthday.
Peter Rusard, one of the fathers of French poetry, did not develop his
poetic faculty until nearly fifty. Arnauld, the learned French
theologian and philosopher, translated Josephus in his eightieth year.
Lope de Vega, one of the most learned men of the sixteenth century,
wrote his best at seventy years of age. Dr. Johnson applied himself to
learn the Dutch language at seventy. At seventy-three, when quite
feeble, he composed a Latin prayer to test to his own satisfaction the
loss or retention of his mental faculties. Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales"
were the work of the author's last years. Franklin's philosophical
pursuits were but fairly begun at fifty. La Mothe le Vayer's best
treatises were written after he was eighty years of age, and Izaak
Walton's when he was nearly ninety. Thomas Hobbes, the remarkable
English philosopher and author, published his version of the Odyssey in
his eighty-seventh year, and his Iliad in his eighty-eighth.
Winckelmann,[40] author of the "History of Ancient Art," lived in
ignorance and obscurity until the prime of his life, when he became
famous. Landor was busy with authorship until after he was eighty. The
Earl of Chatham made his most remarkable oratorical effort at seventy,
and our own American orator and statesman, Robert C. Winthrop, at a
still later period of his life. Fontenelle continued his literary
pursuits until he was ninety-nine, "blossoming in the winter of his
days," as Lord Orrery wrote of him. Ménage, the celebrated French critic
and scholar, wrote sonnets and epigrams at ninety. Julius Scaliger, the
renowned Italian scholar and poet, dictated to his son, at the age of
seventy, two hundred verses of his own composition from memory. Mr.
Gladstone and John Bright, the English statesmen, are more recent
examples of oratorical, mental, and physical powers in advanced years.
George Bancroft the American historian, in his eighty-sixth year is
still engaged in authorship, and Whittier and Holmes are writing with
unabated vigor at nearly eighty years of age. Miss Elizabeth Peabody at
eighty-four is still a vigorous writer and active philanthropist, and
the same may be said of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe at the age of sixty-six.
Mrs. Howe, indeed, is one of the foremost of American women, whether we
regard the ripeness of her scholarship, the breadth of her
understanding, the richness of her imagination, or the quiet intrepidity
with which she champions great reforms.