Our familiar gossip thus far concerning those whose lives by universal
consent, "rising above the deluge of years," bear the impress of genius,
has led us to speak of the hardships and vicissitudes to which they have
so often been subjected. At this sad yet interesting aspect of genius we
will continue to glance, observing, as hitherto, no chronological order,
but discussing the personalities of each character as they are unrolled
before us on the panorama of memory.
Handel, most original of composers, after losing his entire fortune in a
legitimate effort to further the interests of the art he loved so well,
passed the last of his life in the gloom of blindness. His glorious
oratorios were most of them produced under the stress of keen adversity,
loss of fortune, and failing health, quite sufficient to have
discouraged any one not truly inspired.[111] Mozart also labored under
the ban of poverty. He was glad to accept even the position of
chapel-master. It is well known that during the composition of some of
his masterpieces he and his family suffered for bread. The great
composer was so absorbed in music that he was but a child in matters of
business.[112] Whatever may be the true definition of genius,
perseverance and application form no inconsiderable part of it. "It is a
very great error," said Mozart, "to suppose that my art has been easily
acquired. I assure you that there is scarcely any one that has so worked
at the study of composition as I have. You could hardly mention any
famous composer whose writings I have not diligently and repeatedly
studied throughout." A boy came to Mozart wishing to compose something,
and inquiring the way to begin. Mozart told him to wait. "You composed
much earlier," said the youth. "But asked nothing about it," replied the
musician.[113] Willmott says very truly that genius finds its own road
and carries its own lamp.
We have seen that Goldsmith produced some of his finest literary work
under stress of circumstances. "Oh, gods! gods!" he exclaimed to his
friend Bryanton, "here in a garret, writing for bread and expecting to
be dunned for a milk-score!" Like so many other children of genius, he
was careless, extravagant, irregular, always in debt and difficulty, all
which hurried him to his grave. He died at the age of forty-five. When,
on his death-bed, the physician asked him if his mind was at ease, he
answered, "No, it is not!" and these were his last words. In that
exquisite story, the "Vicar of Wakefield,"[114] we have the explanation
of how he supported himself while on his travels. "I had some knowledge
of music," he says, "and now turned what was once my amusement into a
present means of subsistence. Whenever I approached a peasant's house
towards nightfall, I played one of my most merry tunes; and that
procured me not only a lodging, but subsistence for the next day."
Goldsmith's many faults were all on the amiable side, though he was
perhaps a little inclined to find fault with his ill-fortune in good set
phrases. Sometimes we are forced to remember that the misery which can
so readily find relief in words of complaint is not dissimilar to that
love which Thackeray thought quite a bearable malady when finding an
outlet in rhyme and prose. Real suffering and profound sorrow are nearly
always silent in proportion to their depth. It is evanescent afflictions
which most readily find tongue. "To write well," says Madame de Staël,
"we should feel truly; but not, as Corinne did, heartbreakingly." If
Goldsmith did grumble, he had bitter cause. At one time having pawned
everything that would bring money, he resorted to writing ballads at
five shillings apiece, going out secretly in the evening to hear them
sung in the streets. His five shillings were often shared with some
importunate beggar. One day he gave away his bed-clothes to a poor woman
who had none; and then, feeling cold at night, he ripped open his bed
and was found lying up to his chin in the feathers! The very name of
Goldsmith seems to us to ring with a generous tone of unselfishness and
human sympathy. The story is true of his leaving the card-table to
relieve a poor woman whose voice as she sang some ditty in passing on
the street came to his sensitive ear indicating distress. Not a line can
be found in all his productions where he has written severely against
any one, though he was himself the subject of bitter criticism and
literary abuse. He was not a very thorough reader of books, but owed his
ability as a writer more to the keenness of his observation. Nature and
life were the books he studied; which was simply going to the
fountain-head for his information.
Machiavelli, the renowned Italian statesman, philosopher, and
dramatist, whose picturesque history of Florence alone would have
entitled him to fame, was entirely misconstrued by the times in which he
lived, suffering imprisonment, torture, and banishment in the cause of
public liberty. Macaulay says of him: "The name of a man whose genius
has illumined all the dark places of policy, and to whose patriotic
wisdom an oppressed people owed their last chance of emancipation,
passed into a proverb of infamy." The victim of one age often becomes
the idol of the next. Dante,[115] expatriated, and exiled from wife and
children, is not forgotten. The greatest genius between the Augustan and
Elizabethan ages, an accomplished musician, a painter of no mean repute,
and a brilliant scholar, he yet enjoyed no contemporary fame. "The
inventor of the spinning-jenny is pretty sure of his reward in his own
day," says Carlyle; "but the writer of a true poem, like the apostle of
a true religion, is nearly as sure of the contrary." Dante poured out
the deep devotion of his youthful heart at the feet of that Beatrice
whose name he has rendered classic by the genius of his pen, though she
did not live to bless him. His later marriage was ill-assorted and
unhappy. The sublime and unique "Divine Comedy" was not even published
until after its author's death. Now the pilgrim bends with reverence
over the grave whither he was hurried by persecution. How absurd are the
transitions of which human appreciation is capable! Even the cool,
philosophical Carlyle was struck with admiration of the poet's devotion.
He says: "I know not in the world an affection equal to that of Dante.
It is a tenderness, a trembling, longing, pitying love, like the wail of
Æolian harps,--soft, soft, like a child's young heart; one likens it to
the song of angels; it is among the purest utterances of affection,
perhaps the very purest that ever came out of a human soul."
Hard indeed seems to have been the fate of the Italian dramatist and
poet, Bentivoglio, who, after impoverishing himself in acts of charity,
literally selling all and giving the proceeds to the poor, when old and
miserable was refused admission into a hospital which he had himself
founded in his days of prosperity. Kotzebue, the German author and
dramatist, who wrote that remarkable play "The Stranger," was a man
beset with morbid melancholy, causing him to pray for death, which came
at last by a murderous hand.[116] Philip Massinger, the creator of "Sir
Giles Overreach," a dramatic conception almost worthy of Shakespeare,
despite his rare and wondrous powers, was the child of adversity.
Massinger wrote in conjunction with Beaumont and Fletcher, they getting
whatever of credit was earned by the three. In those days, an
established writer for the stage would frequently utilize the brains of
others of less note, calling them to aid in productions which bore only
the employer's name. There seemed to be no sunshine in Massinger's life;
it was all in shadow.[117] Could anything be more pathetic than this
brief entry in the death chronicle of a London parish, under date of
March 20, 1639: "Buried--Philip Massinger--a stranger."
Erasmus, the Dutch scholar and philosopher, defrauded of his patrimony
while an orphan of tender years, devoted himself to learning, and
cheerfully submitted to every deprivation to secure it. While pursuing
his studies in Paris he was clothed in rags, and his form was cadaverous
from want of food. It was at this time that he wrote to a friend, "As
soon as I get any money, I will buy first Greek books and then clothes."
Thus nurtured in the school of adversity, he rose to a proud
distinction; and to him, more than to any other writer, was attributed
the success of the Reformation,--it being expressively remarked that he
laid the egg which Luther hatched. If it be true that an atmosphere of
hardship is necessary to the nurture of genius, then certainly Erasmus
encountered the requisite discipline; but as Dr. Johnson says in his
epigrammatic way, "there is a frightful interval between the seed and
the timber." Death is the dropping of the flower that the fruit may
ripen. Thus fame may follow, but seldom is contemporary; nor does true
genius fail to recognize this. Milton's ambition, to use his own words,
was, "to leave something, so written, to after ages that they should not
willingly let it die;" and Cato said he had rather posterity should
inquire why no statues were erected to him, than why they were.
Motherwell calls fame "a flower upon a dead man's heart." Were it
otherwise, were fame contemporary, it would be but the breath of popular
applause, the shallowest phase of reputation. "I always distrust the
accounts of eminent men by their contemporaries," says Samuel Rogers.
"None of us has any reason to slander Homer or Julius Caesar; but we
find it difficult to divest ourselves of prejudices when we are writing
about persons with whom we have been acquainted."
It is tears which wash the eyes of poor humanity, and enable it to see
the previously invisible land of beauty; it is threshing which separates
the wheat from the chaff; every ripened genius has passed its Gethsemane
hours. "The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is dark enough!" says
Carlyle. Izaak Walton, the delightful biographer and charming
miscellaneous writer, was an humble hosier in London in early life. It
was sorrow caused by the death of his wife and children in the stived
quarters of a poor city tradesman, which led him finally to turn his
back upon the great metropolis and seek a home in the country. What
seemed to him to be "dim funereal tapers," proved to be "heaven's
distant lamps." Influenced by the inspiring surroundings of Nature, he
produced his "Complete Angler;" of which Charles Lamb said, "It might
sweeten a man's temper at any time to read it," and which modern
criticism has pronounced one of the best pastorals in the English
language. Spenser, author of the "Faerie Queene," of whose birth little
is known, died in great destitution, though he was buried near Chaucer
in Westminster Abbey. Of his poetry Campbell says: "He threw the soul of
harmony into our verse, and made it more warmly, tenderly, and
magnificently descriptive than it ever was before, or, with a few
exceptions, it has ever been since." The best critics agree that the
originality and richness of his allegorical personages vie with the
splendor of ancient mythology.
Let us not forget to speak of Schiller in his early indigence and
distress, wanting friends and wanting bread, but yet bravely fighting
the battle of life. The humble cottage is still extant, near Leipsic,
where he wrote the "Song of Joy" in those trying days.[118] We recall
Crabbe, stern poet of life's strivings and hardships, reduced to the
verge of starvation, and only relieved by the noble charity of Edmund
Burke; and Otway, one of the most admirable of English dramatists,
author of "Venice Preserved," choked to death by the crust of bread he
eagerly swallowed when weakened by famine. Butler, the author of
"Hudibras,"[119] died in poverty in a London garret. Santara, the famous
French painter, died neglected and penniless in a pauper hospital.
Andrea del Sarto labored hard and patiently at a tailor's bench to
procure the means of pursuing art; and Benvenuto Cellini[120] languished
in the dungeons of San Angelo.
We have spoken of De Foe in prison, he who produced two hundred volumes,
yet died insolvent. Dr. Johnson said there was never anything written by
man that was wished longer by its readers, except "Don Quixote,"
"Robinson Crusoe," and "Pilgrim's Progress." The author of "Robinson
Crusoe" says of himself: "I have gone through a life of wonders, and am
the subject of a great variety of providences. I have been fed more by
miracles than Elijah when the ravens were his purveyors. In the school
of affliction I have learned more philosophy than at the academy, and
more divinity than from the pulpit. In prison I have learned that
liberty does not consist in open doors and the egress and regress of
locomotion. I have seen the rough side of the world as well as the
smooth, and have in less than half a year tasted the difference between
the closet of a king and the dungeon of Newgate." "Talent is often to be
envied," says Holmes, "and genius very commonly to be pitied; it stands
twice the chance of the other of dying in a hospital, in jail, in debt,
in bad repute."
The example of Robert Greene's life carries with it an impressive moral.
He was well educated, taking his degree at Cambridge, England, and was a
successful playwright and poet; but he was also improvident and reckless
in his life, exhibiting more than the usual eccentricities of genius. He
squandered his patrimony in dissipation, and died in great poverty. His
last book, "The Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance,"
is a book both curious and rare.[121]
With all his dissipated proclivities, Henry Fielding had much more
genius than Robert Greene. He too was constantly poor through his own
recklessness. Lady Montagu, who was a kinswoman of his, said: "He was
always wanting money, and would have wanted it had his hereditary lands
been as extensive as his imagination." And yet he was a marvel of
industry, ever slaving with the pen, writing often under excruciating
pain, and producing his most famous work, "Tom Jones," as has been said,
with an ache and a pain to every sentence. He was, as usual, very short
of money when this work was finished, and tried to sell it to a
second-class publisher for twenty-five pounds. Thomson the poet heard of
this from Fielding, and told him to come to Miller the book-publisher.
This individual gave it to his wife to read, and she bade him to secure
it by all means; so the publisher offered the impecunious author two
hundred guineas for it, and the bargain was closed, to the entire
satisfaction of both parties.[122] Critics have remarked upon the
similarity between Steele and Fielding, though attributing the greater
genius and learning to the latter. They were certainly alike in one
respect; namely, as regarded a chronic state of impecuniosity.
Fielding said of himself that he had no choice but to be a hackney
writer or a hackney coachman for a living. His genius deserved a better
fate. Owing to his poverty he was forced to throw upon the market many
productions which he had much better have thrown into the fire.
Fortunately, in literature it is the rule that the unworthy perishes,
and only the good remains. Many of Fielding's works have a just and
lasting fame, and no library is complete without them. In spite of his
many imperfections, which made brusque Dr. Johnson refuse to sit at
table with him, there was much that was fine and lovable in Harry
Fielding,--truthful, generous to a fault, and with wit and wisdom
marvellously combined. Gibbon, speaking of his own genealogy, refers to
the fact of Fielding being of the same family as the Earl of Denbigh,
who, in common with the imperial family of Austria, is descended from
the celebrated Rodolph of Hapsburg. "While one branch," he says, "have
contented themselves with being sheriffs of Leicestershire and justices
of the peace, the other has furnished emperors of Germany and kings of
Spain; but the magnificent romance of 'Tom Jones' will be read with
pleasure when the palace of the Escurial is in ruins and the imperial
eagle of Austria is rolling in the dust."
Justice, like the sword of Damocles, is ever suspended. Nemesis is not
dead, but sleepeth. Sometimes old age seizes upon an ill-spent life, and
gives us a striking example of the vicissitudes of genius. Dean Swift,
the great master of biting satire and felicitous analogy, possessing
the rarest qualities of wit, humor, and eloquence, was yet so
paradoxical and inconsistent withal, as to lie under the suspicion of
madness half of his life. Ambitious, talented, ever seeking preferment,
never satisfied, now a busy Whig and now a noisy Tory, he was a perfect
brigand in politics, and his motto was, "Stand and deliver." Swift's
bitterness, scorn, and subsequent misanthropy were the sequence of
disappointment. "All my endeavors to distinguish myself," he wrote to
Bolingbroke, "were only for want of a great title and fortune, that I
might be used like a lord by those who have an opinion of my parts;
whether right or wrong is no great matter." Coarse, sceptical, and
irreligious,[123] he was arrogant where he dared to be, and cautious
with his money, though having a reputation for charity. "If you were in
a strait," asks Thackeray, "would you like such a benefactor? I think I
would rather have had a potato and a friendly word from Goldsmith, than
be beholden to the Dean for a guinea and a dinner." Heartlessly
vibrating between Stella and Vanessa, to the misery and mortification of
both, he finally married the former, only to separate from her at the
church door. We are fain to abhor the man while we freely acknowledge
the lustre of his genius, and to see only providential justice in his
fate, when in the later years of his life, grown morose, misanthropic,
and solitary, watched at all times by a keeper, his memory and other
faculties failed him, and the great Dean became a picture of death in
life. He made many enemies, and was bitterly criticised by his
contemporaries, often not without ample justice. He has been stigmatized
as "the apostate politician, the perjured lover, and the ribald
priest,--a heart burning with hatred against the whole human race, a
mind richly laden with images from the gutter and the lazar-house."[124]
At complete antipodes to this portrait is that of Richard Steele, the
popular dramatist, essayist, and editor; the friend of Addison, and one
of the wittiest and most popular men of his day. His also was an erratic
career, alternating between vice and virtue; or, as he says of himself,
always sinning and repenting, until he finally outlived his relish for
society, his income, and his health. "He was the best-natured creature
in the world," says Young; "even in his worst state of health he seemed
to desire nothing but to please and be pleased." Worn out and forgotten
by his contemporaries, Steele retired into the country and left
posterity to appreciate his genius. With a warm heart overflowing with
love of wife and children, his checkered life was yet full of faults and
careless blunders, many of which were directly traceable to strong
drink. Little learned in books, but with a large knowledge of men and
the world, he wrote with captivating simplicity and in the most
colloquial style. Social and kindly in the extreme, his whole character
is in strong contrast with the harshness of Swift and the dignified
loneliness of Addison.[125] Somehow we forget about the sword of
Damocles, and ignore Nemesis altogether in connection with the name of
Steele; and while we do not forget his weaknesses, we recollect more
readily his loving nature, his appreciation of beauty and goodness, and
his warm sympathy and kindness of heart. It was Steele who said of a
noble lady of his time, that to love her was a liberal education.
Dr. Johnson spent much of his early life in penury, wandering in the
streets, sometimes all night, without the means to pay for a lodging. A
garret was a luxury to him in those days.[126] Alas! what a satire upon
learning and authorship! Notwithstanding his powerful intellect, he was
subject to such a singular and even superstitious dread of death, that
he could hardly be persuaded to execute his will in later years. When
Garrick showed Johnson his fine house and grounds at Hampton Court, the
mind of the great lexicographer reverted to his special weakness,
saying, "Ah! David, David, these are the things which make a death-bed
terrible." When he and Garrick both became famous, they used to chaff
each other about who came to London with two shillings, and who had
two-and-sixpence. Johnson was a confirmed hypochondriac; hence the gloom
and morbid irritability of his disposition. His disorder entailed upon
him perpetual fretfulness and mental despondency. Had it not been for
the wonderful vigor of his mind,--as in the case of Cowper, who was
similarly affected,--he would have been the inmate of a mad-house.
Macaulay says of Johnson grown old: "In the fulness of his fame, and in
the enjoyment of a competent fortune, he is better known to us than any
other man in history. Everything about him, his coat, his wig, his
figure, his face, his scrofula, his St. Vitus's dance, his rolling walk,
his blinking eye, the outward signs which too clearly marked his
approbation of his dinner, his insatiable appetite for fish-sauce and
veal-pie with plums, his inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick of
touching the posts as he walked, his mysterious practice of treasuring
up scraps of orange-peel, his morning slumbers, his midnight
disputations, his contortions, his mutterings, his gruntings, his
puffings, his vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence, his sarcastic wit,
his vehemence, his indolence, his fits of tempestuous rage, his queer
inmates, old Mr. Levitt and blind Mrs. Williams, the cat Hodge and the
negro Frank,--are all as familiar to us as the objects by which we have
been surrounded from childhood."
The greatest talents are usually coupled with the most acute
sensibility. Rousseau imagined a phantom ever by his side; Luther had
his demon, who frequented his study at all hours. So realistic was the
great reformer's imagination, that he was accustomed to throw at the
intruder any article nearest at hand. The confusion thus caused may
easily be conceived when on one such occasion he cast his inkstand, with
its contents, at the supposed demon. Cowper's weird and fatal messenger
will also be remembered. Tasso's spirits glided in the air,[127] and
Mozart's "man in black" induced him to write his own requiem. But
Johnson saw omens in the most trifling circumstances. If he chanced, in
passing out of the house, to place his left foot foremost, he would
return and start with the right, as promising immunity from accident and
a safe return. Strange as it may seem, this eminent and profound man put
faith in a long list of equally ridiculous omens in every-day life. He
was a most voluminous and versatile writer, and excelled in delineating
female characters; though Burke did say "all the ladies of his dramatis
personæ were Johnsons in petticoats." Few persons with means so limited
as his ever spent more for charitable purposes; and if his disposition
was irritable, his heart was kind. "He loved the poor," says Mrs.
Thrale, "as I never yet saw any one else love them. He nursed whole
nests of people in his house, where the lame, the blind, the sick, and
the sorrowful found a sure retreat." Now and then, throughout Johnson's
life, we get a glimpse that shows us the man, not as the world at large
knew him, but as his unmasked heart appeared. Does the reader recall the
incident of his kneeling by the dying bed of an aged woman, and giving
her a pious kiss, afterwards recording, "We parted firmly, hoping to
meet again"?
Melancholy has been the very demon of genius, the skeleton in the closet
of poets and philosophers. Burton composed his "Anatomy of Melancholy"
to divert his own depressed spirits.[128] Cowper is another example. He
says of himself, "I was struck with such a dejection of spirits as none
but they who have felt the same can have the least conception of." He
was tenderly attached, it will be remembered, to his cousin Theodora,
who returned his love; but disappointment was the lot of both, as her
parents, doubtless for good reasons, forbade the union. While the vastly
humorous and popular ballad of "John Gilpin" was delighting the
Londoners, and was being read to crowded audiences at high prices, the
poor unhappy author was confined as a lunatic, and, to use his own
words, was "encompassed by the midnight of absolute despair."[129] The
poet, like the clown in the ring, when he appears before the public must
be all smiles and jests, though concealing perhaps an agony of physical
or mental suffering. We know little of the real aspect which the face of
Harlequin presents beneath his mask. Be sure he has his sorrows, deep
and dark, in spite of the grinning features which he wears. Who does not
recall the words which Thackeray makes his old and faithful gold pen
utter:--
"I've help'd him to pen many a line for bread;
To joke, with sorrow aching in his head;
And make your laughter when his own heart bled."
Was there ever pleasanter or more genial reading than "Cowper's Familiar
Letters," full to the brim with sparkling humor? Yet these were coined
from his brain while in a state of hopeless dejection. "I wonder," he
writes to Mr. Newton, "that a sportive thought should ever knock at the
door of my intellect, and still more that it should gain admittance. It
is as if Harlequin should introduce himself into the gloomy chamber
where a corpse is deposited in state." He was one of the most amiable
and gifted, but also one of the unhappiest, of the children of genius.
Christopher Smart, poet, scholar, and prose writer, was an eccentric
individual, but of such undoubted ability as to challenge the admiration
and win the friendship of Dr. Johnson, who wrote his biography. His
habits finally became very bad, so that, delirium setting in, it was
found necessary to confine him in an asylum. While there he wrote a very
remarkable religious poem entitled the "Song of David," produced in his
rational moments, which exhibited sublimity and power, and is still
considered one of the curiosities of English literature. Smart improved
in health and was discharged with his full reason restored, but was soon
after committed to the King's Bench prison for debt; and there he died,
poverty-stricken and neglected, in 1770. Samuel Boyle was a contemporary
of Smart, and was possessed of equal genius whether with the pen or the
bottle. Poor fellow! he got an indifferent living as a fag author,
though he was capable of fine literary work. His poem entitled the
"Deity" fully proved this. Ogle, the London publisher, used to employ
Boyle to translate some of Chaucer's tales into modern English, which
he did with much excellence and spirit, and for which he received
threepence per printed line. The poor genius sank lower and lower, lived
in a miserable garret, wearing a blanket about his shoulders, having no
vest or coat, and was at last found famished to death with a pen in his
hand. "Hunger and nakedness," says Carlyle, "perils and revilings, the
prison, the cross, the poison-chalice, have in most times and countries
been the market price the world has offered for wisdom, the welcome with
which it has greeted those who have come to enlighten and purify it.
Homer and Socrates and the Christian apostles belong to old days; but
the world's Martyrology was not completed with them."
Richard Payne Knight, the Greek scholar and antiquary, was a remarkable
genius in his way. His gift of ancient coins, bronzes, and works of art
presented to the British Museum was valued at fifty thousand pounds. He
was a poet of more than ordinary ability, and wrote, among other prose
works, "An Analytical Enquiry into the Principles of Taste." He was for
a number of consecutive years a member of Parliament. He had singular
attacks of melancholy, and finally developed such a loathing of life
that he destroyed himself with poison.
Poverty has nearly always been the patrimony of the Muses. "An author
who attempts to live on the manufacture of his imagination," says
Whipple, "is constantly coquetting with starvation." A glance at the
brief life of Chatterton is evidence enough of the truth of this
remark. He began to write poems of extraordinary merit at an immature
age, and when a mere boy came up to London to seek for literary
employment as a means of support. He wrote sermons, poems, essays, and
political articles with an ability far beyond his years. He was indeed a
prodigy of genius, and probably would have stood in the front rank of
English poets had he lived to maturer years. No one ever equalled him at
the same age, and Tasso alone, says Campbell, can be compared to him as
a youthful prodigy. His life in the metropolis was one of great hardship
and deprivation, as he often suffered for want of the simplest
necessities of life, and grew so emaciated in appearance from the lack
of food that strangers, sometimes meeting him in the street, forced him
to accept a dinner which he was too proud to ask for. All this while,
with much more consideration for the feelings of the family at home than
thought for himself, he wrote cheerful letters to his mother, and even
sent small and acceptable presents to his sister, in order to content
them for his absence. Seeking only expression for the divine afflatus
within him, he had no thought of self, no care for the morrow. By
degrees, young as he was, he sank into utter despondency, and was
reduced to actual starvation. He was found at last upon his bed of
straw, having taken his own life in a fit of desperation. At the time he
swallowed the fatal poison he was not quite nineteen years of age.
George Combe, the English author, encountered a full share of the
vicissitudes of genius. He was capable of much theoretical goodness, but
was not practical in that respect. He wrote in his old age, "Few men
have enjoyed more of the pleasures and brilliance of life than myself;"
yet he died in the King's Bench, where he had taken refuge from his
creditors, not leaving enough to pay the expenses of his funeral.
Many a child of genius has been compelled to prostitute godlike powers
to repel the gnawings of hunger; as for instance Holzman, the sagacious
Oriental scholar and professor of Greek, who sold his notes on Dion
Cassius for a dinner. The record of this learned man's struggles with
dire want form a pathetic chapter in literary history. He tells us
himself that at the age of eighteen he studied to acquire glory, but at
twenty-five he studied to get bread.
While these pages are preparing for the press, Dr. Moshlech, a
scientist, and the master of ten languages, has died in the county
almshouse of Erie, Pennsylvania. He was a Prussian by birth, and
graduated with high honors from the University of Bonn; made medicine a
specialty, and practised the profession for several years in Paris, but
finally turned his attention to science, and afterwards to the
languages. He numbered among his friends many illustrious men, chief of
whom were Darwin and Victor Hugo. At the beginning of our late war he
visited this country, and accepted a position as Professor of Greek and
Hebrew in Bethany College, West Virginia, which he held but a short
time, owing to the war excitement. He subsequently practised medicine in
Ohio and Pennsylvania, and wrote for scientific publications. He was so
much interested in his work that he neglected to make provision for his
old age; and when he could no longer pursue his profession, this man,
who had associated with the most learned men of Europe, was compelled to
apply to a poorhouse for shelter and bread. Even after he entered the
almshouse he prepared a number of young men for college, and lectured
occasionally before the Erie Historical Society.
Few authors are so calm of spirit, or so assured of their position, as
not to shrink from well-expressed criticism, and especially when it
comes in the form of ridicule,--forgetting that although an ass may bray
at a classic statue, an ass cannot create one.[130] So sensitive was
even Newton to critical attacks, that Whiston, another English
philosopher, and a personal friend of Sir Isaac, said he was quite
unmanned when any declaration of his was called in question by the
reviewers; and further, that he (Whiston) lost Newton's favor, which he
had enjoyed for twenty years, by contradicting him on some point of his
printed works; "for," he adds, "no man was of a more fearful temper."
Some critics use the pen as the surgeon does the scalpel: they do not
analyze, but they dissect. The flowers of the imagination, like the life
of the body, vanish if too closely pressed. "Criticism," says Richter,
"often takes from the tree caterpillar and blossoms together."[131] Thus
was the heart of poor Keats crushed and broken by the malignant severity
of Gifford in the "Quarterly Review." One would have thought that this
captious critic, who by his own talent alone had worked his way from the
cobbler's bench to the editorial chair of the "Quarterly," would have
been more considerate towards a man[132] who, like himself, rose from
humble associations. It only proved that the man who had successfully
cast the slough of vulgar life, had still the heart of a clown. Gifford
was indignant and sensitive beyond measure at a published criticism on
his translation of Juvenal, which appeared in the "Critical Review;" and
he put forth a sharp, angry answer, in the form of a large quarto
pamphlet. No poet ever exhibited a more vivid perception of the
beautiful, or greater powers of fancy, than Keats; but the bitterness of
the criticism referred to was too much for his delicate health and
sensitive nature, hastening, if it did not actually develop, the seeds
of consumption, of which he died. Keats's father was a livery-stable
keeper, and it is said that the future poet was born in the most humble
quarters; but the irresistible fire of genius lighted his path, and had
he lived past the noon of life, he would have carved his way to the
highest fame. He finally went to Rome, in the hope of recuperating his
failing health; but that was not to be. In the last day of his illness a
companion who had called in, asked him how he was. "Better, my friend,"
he answered in a low voice. "I feel the daisies growing over me!" He
died at Rome in his twenty-sixth year, Feb. 23, 1821. His body lies in
the English burial-ground outside the gates of the ancient city, by the
Appian Way, and near to the pyramid of Cestius. The simple slab that
marks the spot interests one quite as much as many of the grand
historical monuments of the Via Appia.[133] We all remember the touching
epitaph from his own pen:--
"Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
As to the effect of criticism in general, we are told that Pope was
observed to writhe in his chair on hearing the letter of Cibber
mentioned, with other severe criticism on the product of his hand and
brain. The strictures, deserved and undeserved, which were publicly
made on Montesquieu are said to have hastened his death. Ritson's
extreme sensitiveness to criticism ended in lunacy, and Racine is
thought by many to have died from the same cause.
Surely disappointment tracks the path of genius. Thus Collins, the
eminent lyric poet, whose "Ode to the Passions" has made his name famous
and familiar in our day, did not live to enjoy his literary success;
indeed, his death is known to have been hastened by long neglect. The
last half of his brief life was darkened by melancholy,[134] and his
home was a lunatic asylum. The money received from his publishers as
copyright on his poems he voluntarily refunded, also paying the entire
expense of the edition, after which he made a bonfire of the sheets. As
we have seen in so many other instances, it was left for posterity to do
Collins justice. In the course of a single generation, without any
adventitious aid to bring them into notice, his poems have come to rank
among the best of their kind in the language. Poor Collins! unfortunate
in love, threatened with blindness, and harassed by bailiffs half his
life, his career was one of unrest, unhappiness, and despair; death,
the comforter of him whom time cannot console, gave the poet an early
grave.[135]
Small was the portion of happiness that fell to the share of these men
of genius; the lonely places they occupied were too lofty for
companionship. "The wild summits of the mountains are inaccessible,"
says Madame Necker; "only eagles and reptiles can get there." We have
seen how hard appears the fate of genius as a rule, and that its
possession is often at the cost of great deprivation and unhappiness. Is
it not difficult to recall an instance where a pronounced genius has
also enjoyed the quiet beauty of domestic life? Wordsworth's remark,
however, is applicable: namely, that men do not make their homes unhappy
because they have genius, but because they have not enough genius. The
conclusion would seem to be that we may envy talent, but must oftenest
pity genius.
About half a century since, the well-known indiscretions of Shelley
caused his name to be tabooed in London society, though in moral
attributes he stood immeasurably above his friend Byron. Still, he was
amenable enough to censure. His poetry is strikingly brilliant; each
line is a complete thought, and the whole sparkles like sunlight upon
the sea. After being expelled from college he made a "Gretna Green"
marriage with Harriet Westbrook, but eventually abandoned her with his
two children,--the woman who had given up all for him, and who in her
dark hour of sorrow and despair drowned herself.[136] We can describe
Shelley's character no better than by comparing it to his longest poem,
the "Revolt of Islam," which abounds in passages of surpassing beauty,
but which as a whole is deficient in connection and human interest. It
is as erratic as his own life.[137] There is so much of bad in the best,
and of good in the worst, that few of us are willing to sit in judgment
upon poor humanity. Time has softened the asperity of our feelings, and
the productions of Shelley's genius are now justly admired. When, after
his fatal accident, his body was washed on shore, a copy of Keats's
poems was found in his pocket. His ashes now rest near those of his
brother poet outside the gates of Rome. As a striking example of his
remarkable sensibility, we may mention the effect upon him when he
first listened to the reading of Coleridge's "Christabel"[138] in a
small social circle. Says one who was present, "Shelley was so affected
that he fainted dead away." He was consistent, and lived up to his
convictions. While listening to the organ in an Italian cathedral, he
sighed that charity instead of faith was not regarded as the substance
of religion. The maintenance of his opinion cost him a fine estate, so
constant and profuse were his charities towards impoverished men of
letters and the poor generally.
The author of an "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard"[139] was
absolutely a slave to diffidence and painful shyness,--a characteristic
which led to bitter persecution while he was a young student; nor could
he ever quite divest himself of this nervous timidity. Hazlitt says of
Gray that "he was terrified out of his wits at the bare idea of having
his portrait prefixed to his works, and probably died from nervous
agitation at the publicity into which his name had been forced by his
learning, taste, and genius." On the death of Cibber, the vacant
laureateship was offered to Gray, but his sensitiveness led him to
decline it.[140]