There seems always to have been a natural attraction in literature which
draws from other and less captivating professions. Bryant, Longfellow,
and Washington Irving started early in life with the purpose of studying
law; so did Bailey the poet, and Prescott the historian,--though each
and all abandoned that profession for literature. Beaconsfield served an
apprenticeship in an attorney's office in London. Burke, Lockhart, John
Wilson, Shirley Brooks, Corneille, Layard, and Buffon began in life as
solicitors, but soon drifted into literature. Byron's first poetical
efforts were failures; so were those of Bulwer-Lytton and Beaconsfield,
both in literature and oratory. "I have begun several times many things,
and have succeeded in them at last," said the latter when he was hissed
down in the House of Commons. "I shall sit down now, but the time will
come when you will hear me." He toiled patiently, until the House
laughed with him instead of at him.[167] Sheridan broke down completely
on the occasion of his first effort at public speaking, but declared
that it was in him and should come out. Bulwer-Lytton worked his way
upwards by slow degrees, and acquired his later facility only by the
greatest assiduity and patient application. He wrote at first very
slowly and with great difficulty; but he resolved to overcome his
slowness of thought, and he succeeded. He was very systematic in his
literary work, and rarely wrote more than three hours each day; that is,
from ten o'clock in the morning until one. When regularly engaged, the
product of a day in latter years amounted to twenty pages of printed
matter, such as appear in the regular editions of his novels. Jean Paul
Richter's first efforts as a writer were failures; but he possessed
genius and the great element of success,--namely, patience. He fought
long and hard to attain a position in literature, supporting himself by
small contributions to the press, not all of which were accepted or paid
for. "I will succeed in making an honorable living by my pen," he said,
"or I will starve in the attempt." His triumph was near at hand.[168]
It is the overcoming of difficulties by heroic perseverance that in no
small degree serves to secure and to fix success. "Every noble work is
at first impossible," says Carlyle. "Even in social life it is
persistency," says Whipple, "which attracts confidence, more than
talents and accomplishments."
Thus it will be seen that the greatest geniuses have not commanded
success at the outset, but have finally achieved it by deserving it.
Voltaire was one of the most brilliant and popular of dramatists; but
when "Mariamne" was brought out, it was played but once. The question of
its merit was settled oddly enough. The farce which was given after
Voltaire's production was entitled "Mourning." "For the deceased play, I
suppose," said one of the critics, in the pit; and this decided the fate
of the piece. Again, when the "Semirarmis" of Voltaire was acted for the
first time, it was far from receiving all the praise which its author
anticipated for it. As he was coming from the theatre, he overtook
Piron, a less celebrated but brother dramatist, and asked him his
opinion of the piece. "I think," said Piron, "you would be very glad if
I had written it!"
Dr. Samuel Parr, whom Macaulay pronounced to be the greatest scholar of
his age, was a very hard-working literary genius, sensitive more
especially to the tender emotions, so that he would weep like a woman
when listening to any affecting story. He was very erratic and
imaginative, having a special horror of the east wind, which he believed
had both a moral and physical power over him. Sheridan knew this very
well, and kept the Doctor a prisoner in the house for a whole fortnight
by fixing the weathercock in that direction. The Doctor was not without
his share of conceit, founded upon the possession of acknowledged talent
and ability. He once said in a miscellaneous assembly, pertinent to the
subject before the company: "England has produced three great classical
scholars: the first was Bentley, the second was Porson, and the third
modesty forbids _me_ to mention."
In glancing through the records of the past no name upon the roll of
fame strikes the eye of appreciation more pleasantly than that of Sir
Philip Sidney, whose life has been called poetry put in action. He lived
amid contemporary applause, and his memory is the admiration of all. The
bravest of soldiers, he was also the gentlest of sons, equally
illustrious for moral qualities and for intellectual genius, controlled
by "that chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound." No incident
in history is more familiar than that of this exhausted warrior
resigning the cup of water to a fainting soldier, whose need, he said,
was greater than his own. Sidney was one of the brightest ornaments of
Queen Elizabeth's court. Lord Brooke, who was his intimate friend, says
of him: "Though I lived with him and knew him from a child, yet I never
knew him other than a man with such steadiness of mind, lovely and
familiar gravity, as carried grace and reverence above greater years.
His talk was ever of knowledge, and his very play tended to enrich the
mind." His death occurred at the age of thirty-two, from a wound in
battle, the result of his self-abnegation. He was in full armor, but
seeing the marshal of the camp unprotected, he took off his armor and
gave it to him, thus exposing himself to the mortal wound which he
received. Fuller says, "He was slain before Zutphen, in a small skirmish
which we may sadly term a great battle, considering our heavy loss
therein."
Victor Hugo was banished from France for his opposition to the _coup
d'état_. He was ever true to his convictions without counting the cost.
"If there is anything grander than Victor Hugo's genius," said Louis
Blanc, "it is the use which he has made of it." He affords us an
instance of the highest fame and the favor of fortune culminating in
ripe old age. When Hugo was but a rising man, he was still looked upon
by the elder littérateurs with considerable jealousy. At the time when
he was first an aspirant for the honors of the French Academy, and
called on M. Royer-Collard to solicit his vote, the sturdy veteran
professed entire ignorance of his name. "I am the author of 'Notre Dame
de Paris,' 'Marion Delorme,' 'Les Derniers Jours d'un Condamne,' etc."
"I never heard of them," said Collard. "Will you do me the honor of
accepting a copy of my works?" said Victor Hugo, with perfect urbanity.
"I never read new books," was the cutting reply.[169] But the time came
presently when not to know the author of "Les Misérables" was to argue
one's self unknown. When he had reached the age of sixty-three he wrote
on a bit of sketching paper accompanying a scene he wished to delineate
in the "Toilers of the Sea:" "On the face of this cardboard I have
sketched my own destiny,--a steamboat tossed by the tempest in the midst
of the monstrous ocean; almost disabled, assaulted by foaming waves, and
having nothing left but a bit of smoke which people call glory, which
the wind sweeps away, and which constitutes its strength."
Improvidence has ever been a distinctive and a common feature in the
lives of men of genius. Sir Thomas Lawrence, the celebrated English
portrait-painter, was an illustrious example. Of his natural genius
there was ample evidence even in childhood, when at the age of six years
he produced in crayon in a very few moments accurate likenesses of
eminent persons. At the age of twenty-three he succeeded Sir Joshua
Reynolds as first painter to the king. He received a hundred guineas
each for his portraits,--head and bust,--and one thousand if
full-length, which was a large price for those days; and yet he was
always embarrassed for money, and died deeply in debt while president of
the Royal Academy.
Thomas Moore was very improvident; and though he realized over thirty
thousand pounds from his literary productions, yet his family were
obliged to live in the most economical manner, often experiencing
serious deprivation of the ordinary comforts of life. "His excellent
wife," says Rogers, "contrived to maintain the whole family upon a
guinea a week; and he, when in London, thought nothing of throwing away
that sum weekly on hackney-coaches and gloves." In order to escape the
payment of his just debts, Moore was finally obliged to go to Paris,
where, Rogers tells us, he frittered away a thousand pounds a year.[170]
Lamartine and the elder Dumas are notable examples of gross
improvidence,--the first being reduced almost to beggary before his
death, and supported solely by the liberal contributions of his
admirers, while the latter was much of his life either squandering gold
profusely or dodging his honest creditors.
Richard Savage, the unfortunate poet and dramatist, passed his life
divided between beggary and extravagance. His undoubted genius and
ability as an author attracted the hearty friendship of Johnson and
Steele, both of whom made earnest efforts to save him from himself; but
dissolute habits had taken too firm a hold of him. It is also honorable
to Pope that he was his steady and consistent friend almost to the close
of his life. Savage's ill-conceived poem of "The Bastard" was intended
to expose the cruelty of his mother, who was responsible in the main
for the wreck of his life. He finally died a prisoner for debt in
Bristol jail. Undoubtedly Dr. Johnson was right when he said that the
miseries which Savage underwent were sometimes the consequence of his
faults, and his faults were often the effect of his misfortunes.
The period of which we are writing has been vividly described by
Macaulay, from whom we quote:--
"All that is squalid and miserable might now be summed up in the
word Poet. That word denoted a creature dressed like a scarecrow,
familiar with compters and sponging-houses, and perfectly competent
to decide on the comparative merits of the Common Side in the
King's Bench prison and of Mount Scoundrel in the Fleet. Even the
poorest pitied him; and they well might pity him. For if their
condition was equally abject, their aspirings were not equally
high, nor their sense of insult equally acute. To lodge in a garret
up four pair of stairs, to dine in a cellar among footmen out of
place, to translate ten hours a day for the wages of a ditcher, to
be hunted by bailiffs from one haunt of beggary and pestilence to
another,--from Grub Street to St. George's Field, and from St.
George's Field to the alleys behind St. Martin's church,--to sleep
on a bulk in June and amidst the ashes of a glass-house in
December, to die in a hospital and to be buried in a parish vault,
was the fate of more than one writer who, if he had lived thirty
years earlier, would have been admitted to the sittings of the
Kitcat or the Scriblerus club, would have sat in Parliament, and
would have been intrusted with embassies to the High Allies; who,
if he had lived in our time, would have found encouragement
scarcely less munificent in Albemarle Street or in Paternoster Row.
"As every climate has its peculiar diseases, so every walk of life
has its peculiar temptations. The literary character assuredly has
always had its share of faults, vanity, jealousy, morbid
sensibility. To these faults were now superadded the faults which
are commonly found in men whose livelihood is precarious, and whose
principles are exposed to the trial of severe distress. All the
vices of the gambler and of the beggar were blended with those of
the author. The prizes in the wretched lottery of book-making were
scarcely less ruinous than the blanks. If good fortune came, it
came in such a manner that it was almost certain to be abused.
After a month of starvation and despair, a full third night or a
well-received dedication filled the pocket of the lean, ragged,
unwashed poet with guineas. He hastened to enjoy those luxuries
with the images of which his mind had been haunted while he was
sleeping amidst the cinders and eating potatoes at the Irish
ordinary in Shoe Lane. A week of taverns soon qualified him for
another year of night-cellars. Such was the life of Savage, of
Boyse, and of a crowd of others. Sometimes blazing in gold-lace
hats and waistcoats; sometimes lying in bed because their coats had
gone to pieces, or wearing paper cravats because their linen was in
pawn; sometimes drinking champagne and Tokay with Betty Careless;
sometimes standing at the window of an eating-house in Porridge
island, to snuff up the scent of what they could not afford to
taste,--they knew luxury; they knew beggary; but they never knew
comfort. These men were irreclaimable. They looked on a regular and
frugal life with the same aversion which an old gypsy or a Mohawk
hunter feels for a stationary abode, and for the restraints and
securities of civilized communities."
Notwithstanding Douglas Jerrold received a thousand pounds per annum
from "Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper" alone, besides a respectable income
from "Punch" and other literary labor, he never had a guinea in his
pocket; every penny was forestalled, and he left his family in extreme
penury.
Goldsmith, as we have seen, was the most improvident of men, and died
owing two thousand pounds; which led Dr. Johnson to say, "Was ever poet
so trusted before?" It was at this time that Boswell, who was always a
little jealous of Goldsmith's intimacy with Johnson, made some
disparaging remarks about the dead poet; whereupon Johnson promptly
replied, "Dr. Goldsmith was wild, sir, but he is so no more!" "Cover the
good man who has been vanquished," says Thackeray,--"cover his face and
pass on!" Some families seem to inherit impecuniosity; Goldsmith came
thus rightfully, so to speak, by his weakness in this respect.[171]
Sheridan, according to Byron, wrote the best comedy, the "School for
Scandal;" the best opera, the "Duenna;" the best farce, the "Critic;"
and delivered the most famous oration of modern times. With genius and
talents which entitled him to the highest station, he yet sank into
difficulties, mostly through inexcusable improvidence, outraging every
principle of justice and of truth, finally dying in neglect. The reader
will be apt to recall the anecdote illustrative of Sheridan's
impecuniosity. As he was hacking his face one day with a dull razor, he
turned to his son and said, "Tom, if you open any more oysters with my
razor, I'll cut you off with a shilling." "Very well, father," was the
reply; "but where is the shilling to come from?" Sheridan thought if he
had stuck to the law he might have done as well as his friend Erskine;
"but," he added, "I had no time for such studies; Mrs. Sheridan and
myself were often obliged to keep writing for our daily leg or shoulder
of mutton, otherwise we should have had no dinner; yes, it was a _joint_
concern."
All authorities combine in pronouncing the great speech of Sheridan on
the impeachment of Warren Hastings to be one of the grandest oratorical
efforts known to us. But the persuasive power of eloquence was never
better illustrated than in the instance of Mirabeau when he pleaded his
own case. His liaison with the Marchioness de Mounier surpasses, in
fact, all stories of romance. Mirabeau induced her to run away with him,
for which she was seized and thrown into a convent, while he escaped to
Switzerland.[172] He was brought to trial, was convicted of contumacy,
and sentenced to lose his head. The lady escaped and once more joined
him; together they passed into Holland, where they were a second time
arrested, she being again immured in a convent and he confined in the
Castle of Vincennes, where he remained for more than three years. After
his liberation he obtained a new trial, pleaded his own case, and by the
impassioned power of his all-commanding eloquence he terrified the court
and the prosecutor, melted the audience to tears, obtained a prompt
reversal of his sentence, and even threw the whole cost of the suit upon
the prosecution.[173]
When the stupid, ill-bred Judge Robinson insulted Curran by reflecting
upon his poverty while he was arguing a case before him, saying to him
that he "suspected his law library was rather contracted," Curran
answered the servile office-holder in words of aptest eloquence and
cutting irony. "It is true, my lord," said Curran, with dignified
respect, "that I am poor, and the circumstance has somewhat curtailed my
library; my books are not numerous, but they are select, and I hope they
have been perused with proper disposition. I have prepared myself for
this high profession rather by the study of a few good works than by the
composition of a great many bad ones. I am not ashamed of my poverty,
but I should be ashamed of my wealth could I have stooped to acquire it
by servility and corruption. If I rise not to rank, I shall at least be
honest; and should I ever cease to be so, many an example shows me that
ill-gained reputation, by making me the more conspicuous, would only
make me the more universally and the more notoriously contemptible!"
[174]
Speaking of eloquence, Hazlitt describes how he walked ten miles to hear
Coleridge the poet preach, and declared that he could not have been more
delighted if he had heard the music of the spheres. The names of Fox,
Pitt, Grattan, Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Wendell Phillips, and
Rufus Choate, with many others, crowd upon the mind as we dwell upon the
theme of eloquence in oratory. There is eloquence of the pen as well as
of the tongue; Socrates of old, celebrated for his noble oratorical
compositions, was of so timid a disposition that he rarely ventured to
speak in public. He compared himself to a whetstone, which will not cut,
but which readily enables other things to do so; for his productions
served as models to other orators.
We have myriads of examples showing us that accident has often
determined the bent and development of genius. Accident may not,
however, create genius; it is innate, or it is not at all. Cowley tells
us that when quite young he chanced upon a copy of the "Faerie
Queene,"[175] nearly the only book at hand, and becoming interested he
read it carefully and often, until enchanted thereby he became
irrevocably a poet. The apple that fell on Newton's head with a force
apparently out of all proportion to its size, led him to ponder upon the
fact, until he deduced the great law of gravitation and laid the
foundation of his philosophy. It was Shakespeare's youthful roguery
which drove him from his trade of wool-carding and necessitated his
leaving Stratford. A company of strolling actors became his first new
associates, and he took up with their business for a while; but
dissatisfied with his own success as an actor he turned to writing
plays, and thus arose the greatest dramatist the world has produced.
Molière, who was of very low birth, being often taken as a lad to the
theatre by his grandfather, was thus led to study the usages of the
stage, and came to be the greatest dramatic author of France.
"Tartuffe," which he wrote a hundred and twenty years ago, still holds
the stage, as well as many others of his inimitable productions. He was
the Shakespeare of France. Hallam says that Shakespeare had the greater
genius, but Molière has perhaps written the better comedies. Corneille
fell in love, and was thus incited to pour out his feelings in verse,
developing rapidly into a poet and dramatist. He was intended for the
law; but love tripped up his heels and made him a poet.
The chance perusal of De Foe's "Essay on Projects," Dr. Franklin tells
us, influenced the principal events and course of his life; so the
reading of the "Lives of the Saints" caused Ignatius Loyola to form the
purpose of creating a new religious order,--which purpose eventuated in
the powerful society of the Jesuits. Benjamin West says, "A kiss from my
mother made me a painter."[176] La Fontaine read by chance a volume of
Malherbe's poems,--he who was called "the poet of princes and the prince
of poets,"--whereby he became so impressed, that ever after his mind
sought expression through the same medium. Rousseau's eccentric genius
was first aroused by an advertisement offering a prize for the best
essay on a certain theme, which brought out his "Declamation against the
Arts and Sciences" (winning the prize thereby), and determined his
future career. The husband and father of the woman who nursed Michael
Angelo were stone-masons, and the chisel thus became the first and most
common plaything put into the child's hands; hence his earliest efforts
were made to apply the hammer and chisel to marble, and the seed was
planted which blossomed into art. It was the accidental observation of
steam, lifting by its expansive power the heavy iron cover of a boiling
pot, that suggested to the mind of James Watt thoughts which led to the
invention of the steam-engine. The "Pickwick Papers," Dickens's earliest
and best literary work, owes its origin to the publisher of a magazine
upon which he was doing job-work desiring him to write a serial story to
fit some comic pictures which were in the publisher's possession. The
genius was in Dickens, but it slept.
The sight of Virgil's tomb, just above the Grotto of Posilippo, at
Naples, determined Giovanni's literary vocation for life. So Gibbon was
struck with the idea of writing his "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire,"
as he sat dreaming amid the ruins of the Forum.[177] When Scott was a
mere boy he chanced upon a copy of Percy's "Reliques of Ancient Poetry,"
which he read with eagerness again and again. As soon as he could get
the necessary sum of money, he purchased a copy; and thus the taste for
poetry was early instilled into his soul and found after expression in
his charming poems. Scott's first literary effort was the translation of
"Götz von Berlichengen," to which Carlyle ascribes large influence on
the great novelist's future career. He says this translation was "the
prime cause of 'Marmion' and the 'Lady of the Lake,' with all that has
followed from the same creative hand. Truly a grain of seed that had
lighted in the right soil. For if not firmer and fairer, it has grown to
be taller and broader than any other tree; and all nations of the earth
are still yearly gathering of its fruit."
While in England, not long since, the writer of these pages was told an
anecdote relating to Mrs. Siddons which was new to him, and which
illustrates how often accident has directed the future bent of genius.
When quite a young lady, Sarah Siddons saw in some private gallery an
antique statue of great excellence, which had a most electrifying effect
upon her. It suggested to her at once the most effective position and
manner in which to express intensity of feeling. The arms were close
down at the sides, and the hands nervously clenched, while the head was
erect, the chest expanded, and the face half in profile. "I cannot
express how indelibly the pose took effect upon my imagination," said
the great actress many years afterwards, "or the force of the lesson
taught me by the marble." If memory serves us correctly, we recall an
old engraving of Mrs. Siddons in the character of Lady Macbeth, which
would be nearly a reproduction of the pose described.[178]
Accident developed one of the greatest vocalists the world has ever
known. Jenny Lind was at the beginning of her life a poor neglected
little girl, homely and uncouth, living in a single room of a
tumble-down house in a narrow street at Stockholm. When the humble woman
who had her in charge went out to her daily labor, she was accustomed to
lock Jenny in with her sole companion, a cat. One day the little girl,
who was always singing to herself like a canary-bird, "because," as she
said, "the song was in her and would come out," sat with her dumb
companion at the window warbling her sweet childlike notes. She was
overheard by a passing lady, who paused and listened, struck by the
clearness and trill of the untutored notes. She made careful inquiries
about the child and became the patroness of little Jenny, who was at
once supplied with a music-teacher. She loved the art of song, and had
the true genius for it. Jenny made rapid progress, surprising both
patroness and teachers, and presently became the great Queen of Song.
The world knows of Jenny Lind's splendid fortune, of her professional
triumphs, and of her noble charities; but few, perhaps, have ever
pictured her humble girlhood, cooped up in a cheerless room, with only
her cat for a companion, in a dull quarter of the Swedish capital. The
plain, awkward girl grew up under favorable culture to be a graceful,
lovely woman. The courts of Europe treated her as a revered guest; she
was covered with laurels and with jewels, but she was ever in
disposition and character the same pure, simple Swedish girl. Adulation
had no power to spoil this child of Nature and of art. The Swedish
public cherish her name as that of their most favored daughter, and
honor her for the noble educational institution which she has so
liberally founded in her native Stockholm.
Christina Nilsson, another Scandinavian vocalist, was the daughter of an
humble Swedish peasant, born in so lowly a cabin that it was difficult
to conceive of the name of "home" being applied to it. While yet a child
she was obliged to work with the rest of the family in the fields and on
the mountain-side. Her sweet voice was first heard at the fairs and
peasant weddings, where her simple Scandinavian melodies delighted the
assembled crowds. At one of these public gatherings a man of taste and
means heard the child's voice, and realized the hidden possibilities it
indicated. He was a magistrate, and became her patron, taking her from
her humble surroundings and supplying her with suitable teachers. She
was carefully taught instrumental as well as vocal music, and became
both an eminent pianist and singer, developing like her fair
countrywoman, Jenny Lind, into a vocalist of grandest genius, and of
such ability as the world affords but few examples.
Taglioni was also Scandinavian by birth, having been born at Stockholm,
in 1804, of humble parentage, her father being a dancing-master. She had
the genius of an artist, which she patiently developed through many dark
hours of toil and deprivation, until she made herself acknowledged as
queen of the ballet in the great cities of Europe. Her purity of
character added a charm to her public performances, giving her a
prestige never before enjoyed by any exponent of her art. She finally
amassed a large fortune, and retiring from the stage married Count
Gilbert de Voisins. Doubtless many of our readers have paused in their
gondolas beneath the windows of her marble palace on the Grand Canal at
Venice, to recall the story of the great danseuse, or have looked with
pleasure upon her elegant villa on the Lake of Como.