Egotism in eminent characters is often amusing to us, but extremely
undignified in them. It is almost always the betrayal of weakness,--the
tongue of vanity. He who talks of himself, however humble the words,
exposes a proud heart. Still, as Emerson says, "there are dull and
bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists." Carlyle was an
egotist of the first water, and so were many other famous authors.
Demosthenes expressed his pleasure when even a fishwoman pointed him out
in the streets of Athens. Margaret Fuller once wrote: "I have now met
all the minds of this country worth meeting, and find none comparable to
my own "! The admiration point is ours; the words evince most
insufferable vanity. No wonder Emerson complained of her "mountainous
me," or that Lowell called the whole of her being a "capital I." Even
the gentle, undemonstrative Hawthorne was obliged to denounce her
vanity; and yet Margaret was a woman full of kindly human instinct and
of remarkable culture. Dickens was vain,[158] egotistical, and
selfish,--traits which grew upon him as he advanced in years.
Thackeray, in his frank, open way, acknowledged his delight at being
recognized by street gamins as the author of "Vanity Fair." Hans
Andersen, like Dante, confidently predicted his own future greatness.
Kepler declared that "God has not sent in six thousand years an observer
like myself." Buffon's vanity was proverbial and ridiculous; and yet the
man was not ridiculous according to Pope's idea, that "every man has
just so much vanity as he lacks understanding," for we all know that
Buffon was a profound naturalist and scholar. "I am the greatest
historian that ever lived," wrote Gibbon in his private diary; and
Goethe said, "All I have had to do, I have done in kingly fashion."
Albert Dürer, in reviewing his own work, wrote, "It cannot be better
done." Though he had in his day many admirers, and has even some at the
present time, we confess that his pictures have no attraction for us.
However, he has unquestionable merit as an engraver, and was court
painter to Charles V. Ruskin's conceit peeps out everywhere in his
writings. Nothing could be more egotistical than Disraeli's
(Beaconsfield) novels. George Sand boastfully betrays her own liaison
with De Musset in her popular story of "Elle et Lui." "I shall be read,"
says Southey, "by posterity, if I am not read now,--read with Milton,
and Virgil, and Dante, when poets whose works are now famous will only
be known through a biographical dictionary."[159] Most of the eminent
men among the ancients were superlatively conceited and vain. Plato
quoted the oracle which pronounced him great; Cæsar frequently commends
himself, and so does Cicero. Pliny puts himself on record as one of this
class when he wrote to Venator: "The longer your letter was, so much the
more agreeable I thought it, especially as it turned entirely upon my
works. I am not surprised you should find a pleasure in them, since I
know you have the same affection for every composition of mine as you
have for the author." "A modern instance" occurs to us here. When a
certain distinguished lady asked Lord Brougham, the great English orator
and author, who was the _best_ debater in the House of Lords, his
lordship modestly replied, "Lord Stanley is the _second_ best, madam."
That some people who despise flatterers do not hesitate to flatter
themselves, is an axiom to the truth of which we must all subscribe.
In contradistinction to these, Whittier, the Quaker poet, wrote recently
to a correspondent in that gentle, modest manner which is so
characteristic of everything relating to him: "I have never thought of
myself as a poet in the sense in which we use the word when we speak of
the great poets. I have just said from time to time the things I had to
say, and it has been a series of surprises to me that people should pay
so much attention to them, and remember them so long." Voltaire betrayed
his conceit when he attempted to criticise Shakespeare. Balzac and
Victor Hugo were two egotists. "There are only three writers of the
French language," said Balzac,--"Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier, and
myself." Southey, Young, Pope, Dryden, and Wordsworth betrayed their
vanity in an egregious manner. Goldsmith was conspicuously vain at
times. Landor had a supreme estimate of his own productions, and wrote
to Wordsworth, concerning his "Imaginary Conversations," as follows: "In
two thousand years there have not been five volumes in prose equal in
their contents to these."[160] Voltaire's remark upon Dante served only
to illustrate his own spleen and jealousy. "His reputation," said the
sarcastic Frenchman, "will continually be growing greater, because there
is now nobody who reads him." As for Voltaire's tragedies, De
Tocqueville said he could not even read them through, and he doubted if
anybody else could. Scott said he read the "Henriade" through, and
_lived_, but it was when he was a young man, and then he read
everything. Dr. Johnson once acknowledged that he never read Milton
through until he was obliged to do so in compiling his dictionary.
Southey said he had read Spenser through about _thirty_ times, and that
he could not read Pope once. It was perhaps singular, but Southey,
Coleridge, and Wordsworth all failed to appreciate Virgil.
Hannah More tells us that on a certain occasion when she was visiting
the Garricks in 1776, David read aloud to herself and Mrs. Garrick her
(Hannah's) last poem. "After dinner Garrick read 'Sir Eldred' with all
his pathos and all his graces. I think I was never so ashamed in my
life; but he read it so superbly that I cried like a child. Only think
what a ridiculous thing to cry at the reading of one's own poetry." In
another place she says: "Whether my writings have promoted the spiritual
welfare of my readers, I know not; but they have enabled me to do good
by private charity and public beneficence. I am almost ashamed to say
that they have brought me thirty thousand pounds." Burns was affected
almost to tears when he heard for the first time George Lockhart, of
Glasgow, sing his verses. "I'll be hanged if I knew half their merit
until now!" he said. James Hogg, the "Ettrick Shepherd," wrote, "I
cannot express what my feelings were at first hearing a song of mine
sung by a beautiful young lady in Ettrick to her harpsichord." One
recalls in this connection the legend told in Rome of Canova's
disguising himself and mingling with the crowd of citizens that he
might hear their comments upon a newly unveiled statue just completed by
his own hands, and of the great satisfaction he bore away with him at
their commendations. Thomas Hood could not suppress his pleasure at
listening to the "Song of the Shirt"[161] as sung by the poor sorrowing
work-people in the London streets, adapted to rude airs of their own
composition. Béranger, the song-writer of France, acknowledged a similar
delight in hearing his verses sung upon the Parisian boulevards by the
common people. Francis Jacox speaks of the first visit of the old poet
Ducis to his beloved master, Louis XVIII., when that monarch graciously
recited to him some of his own verses. In an ecstasy of delight Ducis
exclaimed: "I am more fortunate than Boileau or Racine; they recited
their verses to Louis XIV., but my king recites my verses to me!"
Though people are said to be vainer of qualities which they fondly
believe they have than of those which they do really possess, still we
must allow to genius some latitude in the matter of conceit, since
common people exhibit so much of that spirit on no capital at all. Dr.
Holmes says of conceit, that "it is to character what salt is to the
ocean,--it keeps it sweet and renders it endurable." Perhaps the acme of
conceit is reached when Cicero says, "For all my toils and pains I have
no recompense here; but hereafter, in heaven, among the immortal gods, I
shall look back on my beloved city, and find my reward in seeing her
made glorious by my career." Horace, referring to his future fame, says,
"I shall not wholly die."
Vanity, says Shakespeare, keeps persons in favor with themselves who are
out of favor with all others. He was not himself without a portion of
that conceit which he says "in weakest bodies strongest works;" but
there is this difference in his share of vanity,--he had, indeed, a
genius the gods themselves might envy. He begins one of his sonnets,--
"Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme."
And again he says:--
"Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse
When all the breathers of this world are dead;
You still shall live--such virtue hath my pen--
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men."
Sydney Smith's definition occurs to us here, wherein he defines vanity
as "proceeding from the supposition of possessing something better than
the rest of the world possesses. Nobody is vain of possessing two legs
and two arms, because that is the precise quantity of either sort of
limb which everybody possesses." Fielding bluntly tells the truth when
he says, "There is scarcely any man, however much he may despise the
character of a flatterer, but will condescend, in the meanest manner,
to flatter himself." We have seen that even Diogenes was gratified by
popular praise, not to say flattered thereby; while the fact of his
occupying so notable and peculiar an abode argued a degree of pride and
vanity. Did not Thoreau also affect humility in his rudely built cabin
on the borders of Walden Pond? Certainly the idea of Diogenes and his
tub must have occurred to so classic a scholar as the Concord hermit.
Southey's appeal to posterity to do him justice, in his letter to his
publisher, will be remembered: "My day and popularity will come when I
shall have said good-night to the world." De Quincey remarks that
posterity is very hard to get at; and Swift thought the present age
altogether too free in laying taxes on the next. "Future ages shall talk
of this; they shall be famous to all posterity;" whereas their time and
thoughts, he believed, would be taken up with present things, as ours
are now. Carlyle thought Dr. Johnson's carelessness as to future fame a
very remarkable trait in his character.
The vanity of authors is their shame, and ought to be their secret.
While it does not necessarily detract from the merit of their excellent
productions, it prejudices all by belittling them in our estimation.
Oftentimes the career of these notables, as we have seen, has been one
of surmounted difficulties and hardships endured for the sake of their
chosen calling, embittering their nature, perhaps, yet at the same time
tincturing them with an exultant spirit of success.
There are examples in abundance, however, of an opposite
character--examples of true modesty and self-forgetfulness--among poets
and authors generally. The poet Rogers, as well as Whittier, is a happy
example of an equable life with a full share of reasonable blessings.
Referring to his irreproachable career, Sheridan told Rogers it was easy
for happy people to be good.
"How noiseless falls the foot of time
That only treads on flowers!"
says William Robert Spencer. A modest estimate of self sits gracefully
upon genius. Listen to Newton: "I do not know what I may appear to the
world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the
sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother
pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth
lay all undiscovered before me." Scott was very little tainted with
vanity; indeed, he wrote in his diary that no one disliked or despised
the "pap" of praise so heartily as he did. He said there was nothing he
scorned more, except those persons who seem to praise one in order to be
puffed in return. As a rule, he did not entertain a very high opinion of
literary people, or, as we have seen, desire to associate with them. He
said: "If I encounter men of the world, men of business, odd or striking
characters of professional excellence in any department, I am in my
element, for they cannot lionize me without my returning the compliment
and learning something of them."
Some people think praise so pleasant and agreeable that they cannot have
too much of it. Goldsmith said Garrick was a mere glutton of praise, who
swallowed all he came across and mistook it for renown,--the fluffy of
dunces. Not actors alone, but writers also, are endowed with a very
ravenous appetite for the same sort of nutriment. There is a nest of
vanity in almost every breast, and according to Burke it is omnivorous.
Rochefoucauld declared that men had little to say when not prompted by
vanity.
Another example of unbounded self-conceit occurs to us in the instance
of the French poet and dramatist Scudéri, the protégé of Cardinal
Richelieu. His genius was not to be doubted, but it was deeply shadowed
by his vanity, as made manifest in the preface to his literary works,
which abounds in gasconade pure and simple. Of his epic poem "Alaric" he
says: "I have such a facility in writing verses, and also in my
invention, that a poem of double its length would have cost me but
little trouble. Although it contains only eleven thousand lines, I
believe that longer epics do not exhibit more embellishment than mine."
Poor, self-satisfied Scudéri! both he and his works are very nearly
forgotten, though he was an honored member of the French Academy.[162]
John Heyward, poet and jester, a court favorite in the days of Queen
Mary, is another example of consummate vanity. He was among the earliest
who wrote English plays. In a work which he produced, in 1556, called
"The Spider and the Fly," a parable there are seventy-seven chapters,
and at the beginning of each is a portrait of the author in various
attitudes, either sitting or standing by a window hung with cobwebs.
Dryden honestly declared that it was better for him to own his failing
of vanity than for the world to do it for him; and adds: "For what other
reason have I spent my life in so unprofitable a study? Why am I grown
old in seeking so unprofitable a reward as fame? The same parts and
application which have made me a poet might have raised me to any honors
of the gown." Sometimes Goethe speaks with the true breath of humility,
and sometimes quite the reverse. He says, "Had I earlier known how many
excellent things have been in existence for hundreds and thousands of
years, I should have written no line; I should have had enough else to
do." And yet Goethe is not only the most illustrious name in German
literature, but one of the greatest poets of any age or nation.
Eugene Sue,[163] who was born in luxury, and who need never have
written for support, would sit down to write only in full dress, even
wearing, as we have seen, kid gloves,--an evidence of vanity which has a
precedent in Buffon, who when found engaged in literary work was always
curled, powdered, ruffled, and perfumed. N. P. Willis was as dainty in
his dress as in his style of writing; and Emerson's remark relative to
Nature would well apply to him, when he says, "She is never found in
undress." Ruskin, who lives in a glass house as it regards the matter of
self esteem, charges Goethe with self-complacency, and at the same time
adds that this quality marks a second-rate character. The reader will
not be long in determining which of the two was the more amenable to
such criticism. Before we dismiss Mr. Ruskin let us quote a letter of
his published not long since, and written so late as 1881, addressed to
Alexander Mitchell. "What in the devil's name," he writes, "have you to
do with either Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Gladstone? You are a student at the
university, and have no more business with politics than you have with
rat-catching. Had you ever read ten words of mine with understanding,
you would have known that I care no more for Mr. Disraeli or Mr.
Gladstone than for two old bagpipes with their drones going by steam;
but that I hate all Liberalism as I do Beelzebub, and that, with
Carlyle, I stand--we two alone now in England--for God and the Queen!"
So much for the vanity and conceit of Mr. John Ruskin.
Pope never saw the inside of a university, or indeed of a school worthy
of the name. Two Romish priests attempted at different times to do
something for him as personal tutors, but with little success. "This was
all the teaching I had," he says, "and God knows it extended a very
little way." And yet at the age of sixteen he thought himself, as he has
recorded, "to be the greatest genius that ever was;" and we are afraid
that this vanity and self-conceit never quite deserted him. Atterbury
compared him to Homer in a nutshell. Dr. Johnson pronounces Pope's Iliad
to be "the noblest version of poetry which the world has ever seen; and
its publication must therefore be considered as one of the great events
in the annals of learning." As soon as Pope was pecuniarily able he made
himself a comfortable home, and brought his aged parents into it and
made them happy. He calls his existence "a long disease;" but if he was
"sent into this breathing world but half made up," Nature compensated
him by the richness with which she endowed his brain. "In the streets he
was an object of pity," says Tuckerman; "at his desk, a king." Though
his life was embittered in a measure by his physical deformity and by
ill-health, he was not lacking in the tenderness of heart which forms
the key-note to all domestic happiness. "I never in my life knew," says
Bolingbroke, "a man who had so tender a heart for his particular
friends, or a more general friendship for mankind." As to his poetry
there has always been a great diversity of opinion, but we think it
reached the height of art. It is therefore difficult to realize the
egotism which could prompt the following couplet from his pen in the
ripeness of his fame:--
"I own I'm proud,--I must be proud, to see
Men not afraid of God afraid of me."
Colley Cibber was a sharp thorn in Pope's side; he was a witty actor, as
well as clever dramatist and mediocre poet. He was chosen poet-laureate
in 1730. His most popular comedy was "Love's Last Shift, or the Fool in
Fashion," though it divided the honors with the "Careless Husband," in
which Cibber himself enacted the principal role. Dr. Johnson disliked
him because, "though he was not a blockhead, he was pert, petulant, and
presumptuous." On the stage he excelled in almost the whole range of
light, fantastic, comic characters; but in poetry, which he much
affected, his lyrics were all so bad that his friends pretended he made
them so on purpose, and fully justified Johnson's remark that they were
"truly incomparable." He was the recipient of a pension of two hundred
pounds from George I.
There is a vein of vanity in most of us: few authors or artists are
without a share; and, singular to say, it most frequently arises from
trivial matters in which there would seem to be the least cause for
pride. William Mitford, the author of the "History of Greece," a
scholarly and admirable piece of literary work, was most proud of his
election to a captaincy in the Southampton militia. To be sure, his
literary work challenged some severe criticism; De Quincey said of it,
"It is as nearly perfect in its injustice as human infirmity will
allow." Carlyle certainly magnified his own calling when he wrote: "O
thou who art able to write a book, which once in the two centuries or
oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name
conqueror or city-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name
conqueror or city-burner." Great as he was in authorship, Macaulay in
one of his letters remarks, "I never read again the most popular
passages of my own works without painfully feeling how far my execution
has fallen short of the standard which is in my mind." He is undoubtedly
one of the noblest characters in English literature, and his mortal
remains very properly rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey,--a
favorite resort of the great historian during his life. As an example of
modest merit we recall the name of Robert Boyle, the Irish chemist and
linguist, the great experimental philosopher of the seventeenth
century,--he whom some wit called "the father of chemistry and the
brother of the Earl of Cork." He translated the Gospels into the Malay
language, and published the translation at his own expense; he was
besides a thorough Hebrew and Greek scholar. His many published works
are all profound and useful. He was chosen President of the Royal
Soceity, but refused the honor, from an humble estimate of his own
merit, and for the same reason declined a peerage which was tendered to
him. We owe to him, according to Boerhaave, "the secrets of fire, air,
water, animals, plants, and fossils." Boyle cared nothing for fame.
In realizing that genius is apt among its other foibles to be over
self-conscious, we should be careful not to confound conceit with
vanity, to which it is so nearly allied. The latter makes one sensitive
to the opinions of others, while the former renders us self-satisfied.
Few have possessed either genius or personal beauty without being
conscious of it; though Hazlitt declares that no great man ever thought
himself great,--an assertion which the reader will hardly be prepared to
indorse. A famous American philosopher was persuaded that vanity was
often the source of good to the possessor, and that among other comforts
of life, one might consistently thank God for his vanity. Still, when
evinced in social intercourse nothing is more derogatory to dignity; one
becomes not only his own, but everybody's fool. "Vanity is so anchored
in the heart of man," says Pascal, "that a soldier, sutler, cook, and
street porter vapor and wish to have their admirers; and philosophers
even wish the same."
Concerning localities rendered of special interest by association, Leigh
Hunt said: "I can no more pass through Westminster without thinking of
Milton, or the Borough without thinking of Chaucer and Shakespeare, or
Gray's Inn without calling Bacon to mind, or Bloomsbury Square without
Steele and Akenside, than I can prefer bricks and mortar to wit and
poetry, or not see a beauty upon it beyond architecture, in the
splendor of the recollection. I once had duties to perform which kept me
out late at night, and severely taxed my health and spirits. My path lay
through a neighborhood in which Dryden lived; and though nothing could
be more commonplace, and I used to be tired to the heart and soul of me,
I never hesitated to go a little out of the way, purely that I might
pass through Gold Street, to give myself the shadow of a pleasant
thought." Gibbon was twenty-three years in preparing the material for
and in writing his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;" that is to
say, he began it in 1764, and did not finish it until 1787. He says as
he "sat musing amidst the ruins of the capital, while the barefooted
friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, the idea of
writing the decline and fall of the city first occurred to his mind."
The writer of these pages has visited the garden and summer-house at
Lausanne, overlooking Lake Leman, where Gibbon completed his work, and
where he laid down his pen in triumph almost exactly a century since.
James Watt has localized a spot of interest in connection with himself
at Glasgow, where first flashed upon him the idea which resulted in the
improvement of the steam-engine. Leibnitz recalls the grove near Leipsic
where in his youth he first began to meditate and create. So Burns had
his favorite walk at Dumfries, secluded, and commanding a view of the
distant hills, where he composed, as was his wont, in the open air. He
says in a letter to Mr. Thomson, August, 1793, "Autumn is my propitious
season. I make more verses in it than all the year else." Luther tells
us of the spot, and the very tree, under which he argued with Dr.
Staupitz as to whether it was his true vocation to preach. Beethoven
wrote to Frau von Streicher, at Baden: "When you visit the ancient
ruins, do not forget that Beethoven has often lingered there; when you
stray through the silent pine forest, do not forget that Beethoven often
wrote poems there, or, as it is termed, 'composed.'" How readily we
pardon the conceit that peeps out from the words of the great magician
of harmony! Hawthorne writes in his note-book: "If ever I should have a
biographer, he ought to make great mention of this chamber in my
memoirs; because here my mind and character were formed, and here I sat
a long, long time, waiting for the world to know me, and sometimes
wondering why it did not know me sooner, or whether it would ever know
me at all,--at least until I were in my grave." Scott tells us of the
precise spot where at the age of thirteen he first read Percy's
"Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," beneath a huge platanus tree,
forgetting his dinner in the absorbing interest of the book, whose
influence upon the mind of the youth may easily be traced in the future
poet and romancer. Cowper, who was not blessed with a particularly good
memory with regard to what he was accustomed to read, yet possessed a
tenacious one for localities, and therefore used in summer to select
certain spots out of doors by pond or hedges where to read his favorite
books and chapters. The recalling of these spots brought back, he said,
the remembrance of the subjects and chapters read beside them. This was
certainly an original and remarkable mode of memorizing ideas. William
Ellery Channing localizes the clump of willows, a favorite retreat,
where the view of the dignity of human nature first broke upon him, and
of which he was ever after such a tenacious advocate. He often resorted
hither, and speaks of the place with grateful solemnity. It overlooked
the meadows and river west of Boston, with a background formed by the
Brookline hills.[164] Washington Irving used to point out to visitors
the spot, commanding the Hudson River, where he first read the "Lady of
the Lake," with a wild-cherry tree over his head. In his old age he
writes to a friend: "Come and see me, and I will give you a book and a
tree."
As an example of the perseverance of genius under discouraging
circumstances, we recall the trying experience of our own great
naturalist Audubon, who had stored in a pine box a thousand and more of
his drawings for his great work on "The Birds of America," while he
pursued his studies. On opening the box, after the lapse of a few
months, he found his carefully made illustrations destroyed and
converted into a nest for rats. The work of years was irreparably gone
to nought. After a brief period of bitter disappointment, he says: "I
took up my gun, my note-book, and my pencil, and went forth to the woods
as gayly as if nothing had happened. I felt pleased that I might now
make better drawings than before; and, ere a period not exceeding three
years had elapsed, my portfolio was again filled."[165] The destruction
of his first thousand drawings was a blessing in disguise, both to
science and to its modest disciple, since it confirmed him in the
resolve which culminated in producing what Cuvier denominated "the most
magnificent monument art had ever erected to ornithology." The
destruction of Sir Isaac Newton's papers by his favorite dog, embracing
the careful calculations of years of study, will occur to the reader in
this connection, as well as the loss of Carlyle's first manuscript copy
of the "French Revolution," burned by a maid-of-all-work to kindle the
fire. Having no draft or copy of the same, he was compelled to reproduce
it as nearly as possible from memory. There is positive pleasure in the
original production of a piece of literary work; but the reproduction
under such circumstances must have been agonizing.
The history of literature is full of instances wherein its votaries have
by patient perseverance finally achieved the much-desired fame which has
inspired them to endure deprivation and labor. We affirm this, though at
the same time recalling Douglas Jerrold's words,--"How much of what is
thought by idle people fame is really sought for as the representative
of so many legs of mutton! We may make Fame an angelic creature on the
tombs of poets, but how often do bards invoke her as a bouncing
landlady!" Pope made his way from obscurity, overcoming by sheer
perseverance obstacles that genius hardly ever before encountered. He
was not only deformed, as we have said, but he was diseased, "unable to
take his own stockings off--a woman nurse with him always." So far as we
know it, there was not much to love, or even respect, in his personal
character; but we must all admire the wonderful perseverance and genius
that enabled him to write what he did. His translation of the Iliad
alone was sufficient to give him lasting fame; and it did give him
plenty of money, as he received a little over five thousand three
hundred pounds from it. How Goldsmith would have scattered that generous
sum of money, and how securely Pope hoarded it!
Gifford showed wonderful perseverance and resolve in the right
direction, learning to write and to work out mathematical sums on scraps
of leather with an awl, for the want of better facilities. This was at
his native place, Ashburton in Devonshire, where he sat all day for
five years upon a cobbler's bench, earning just enough to support life.
But he conquered in the brave struggle with adverse fortune. "The nerve
that never relaxes, the eye that never blenches, the thought that never
wanders,--these are the masters of victory," says Burke. Gifford finally
came to the editorial chair of the "Quarterly Review," where he remained
for fifteen years, proving one of the severest critics of his day, as we
have had occasion to observe, and regarding authors, according to
Southey, as Izaak Walton did worms, slugs, and frogs. "Whatever may have
been his talents," says Mr. Whipple, "they were exquisitely unfitted for
his position; his literary judgment being contemptible where any sense
of beauty was required."
As an example of calm, determined resolve and patience to accomplish an
honorable end, we know of nothing more remarkable in connection with
authorship or literature than that of Sir Walter Scott's deliberately
sitting down to pay off a debt of one hundred and twenty-eight thousand
pounds with his pen. Scott considered it a debt of honor, though it was
not of his own contracting. Amid the pains and pressure of increasing
age he worked on to fulfil this honorable purpose, until in seven years
he had paid all but about twenty thousand pounds of this enormous load
of debt, when the overwrought brain and body gave out, and he was laid
to sleep forever. The great "Wizard of the North" says modestly: "It is
with the deepest regret that I recollect in my manhood the
opportunities of learning[166] which I neglected in my youth; through
every part of my literary career I have felt pinched and hampered by my
own ignorance, and I would at this moment give half the reputation I
have had the good fortune to acquire, if by so doing I could rest the
remaining part upon a sound foundation of learning and science."