Genius has its hours of sunshine as well as of shadow, and when it finds
expression in wit and humor it is undoubtedly most popular. The Emperor
Titus thought he had lost a day if he had passed it without laughing.
Coleridge tells us men of humor are in some degree men of genius; wits
are rarely so, although a man of genius may, among other gifts, possess
wit. As in pathos and tenderness "one touch of nature makes the whole
world kin," so is it in true wit and humor with the appreciative.
Obtuseness will be unsympathetic under any circumstances. "It is not in
the power of every one to taste humor," says Sterne, "however much he
may wish it; it is the gift of God! and a true feeler always brings half
the entertainment with him." Bruyere has somewhere said very finely that
"wit is the god of moments, but genius is the god of ages." Some men of
genius have found their most natural exponent to be the pen; others
indulge in practical humor. Sheridan[190] belonged to this latter
class; he was full of fun and frolic, ever on the alert for an
opportunity to exercise his humor. When on a certain occasion he had
been driving about the town for three or four hours in a hackney-coach,
he chanced to see his friend Richardson, whom he hailed, and invited
into the vehicle. When they were seated together he at once introduced a
subject upon which he and Richardson always differed, and a controversy
naturally ensued. At last, affecting to be mortified at Richardson's
argument, Sheridan said abruptly, "You are really too bad; I cannot bear
to listen to such things: I will not stay in the coach with you." And
accordingly he opened the door and sprang out, Richardson hallooing
triumphantly, "Ah, you're beat, you're beat!" Nor was it until the heat
of the victory had a little cooled that he realized he was left in the
lurch to pay for Sheridan's three hours' coaching.[191]
Sheridan, profligate and unprincipled as he was, still was capable of
fine expression of sentiment and true poetic fire. In a poem called
"Clio's Protest; or, the Picture Varnished," we find the following
really beautiful lines:--
"Marked you her cheek of rosy hue?
Marked you her eye of sparkling blue?
That eye in liquid circles moving;
That cheek abashed at man's approving;
The one Love's arrows darting round;
The other blushing at the wound:
Did she not speak, did she not move,
Now Pallas, now the Queen of Love?"
The poets have frequently made satire an auxiliary of their wit; and
when the proportions are properly adhered to, a favorable result is
produced. Satire, like many subtle poisons used as a medicine, may be
safely taken in small quantities, while an overdose is liable to be
fatal. In Chaucer's[192] Canterbury Pilgrims he draws his portraits to
the life. While he exposes the weakness of human nature, he does not do
so in surliness; a pleasant smile wreathes his lips all the while. There
is slyness, but no bitterness in his satire. He would not chastise, he
would only reform his fellow-men. As illustrating exactly the opposite
spirit, we may instance Pope, Dryden, and Byron, who, descending from
their high estate, often prostituted their genius to attacks upon
personal enemies or rivals, with keenest weapons, while their opponents
had no means of defence. The "Dunciad" is a monument of satiric wit, or
genius belittled.
Swift, who wrote "cords" of worthless rhymes, squibs, songs, and verses,
which live as much by their vulgar smartness as for the slight portion
of true wit which tinctures them, says: "Satire is a sort of glass
wherein beholders generally discover everybody's face but their own;
which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets with in
the world, and that so few are offended with it." Hawthorne gave the
Dean a merited thrust when he said, "the person or thing on which his
satire fell shrivelled up as if the Devil had spit on it." The _double
entendre_ to be found in nearly all of Swift's effusions, epigrams, and
verses, comes with ill grace from a dignitary of the Church. He was
always ready with an epigram on all occasions. One "lives in our memory"
which he addressed to Mrs. Houghton of Bormount, who took occasion one
day to praise her husband in Swift's presence:--
"You always are making a god of your spouse;
But this neither reason nor conscience allows:
Perhaps you will say 'tis in gratitude due,
And you adore him because he adores you.
Your argument's weak, and so you will find;
For you, by this rule, must adore all mankind."
The wit and humor of Shakespeare endear him to our hearts; and what a
rich harvest does the gleaner obtain from his pages! Take "Love's
Labor's Lost," for instance, a play produced in his youth, so full of
quips and quiddity as to live in the memory by whole scenes. There is no
lack of scathing sarcasm in the play, but it leaves no bitter taste in
the mouth, like the "doses" of Swift or the more unscrupulous
productions of Pope in the same line. Ben Jonson,[193] who ranked so
high as a dramatist, has been pronounced to be, next to Shakespeare, the
greatest wit and humorist of his time. His expression was through the
pen, not by the tongue: no man was more taciturn in society. Much of
Jonson's matter was better adapted to his time than to ours; words which
seem to us so coarse and vulgar passed unchallenged in the period which
gave them birth.
Here are five lines from Jonson, with which he closes a play directed
against plagiarists and libellers generally. He sums up thus:--
"Blush, folly, blush! here's none that fears
The wagging of an ass's ears,
Although a wolfish case he wears.
Detraction is but baseness' varlet,
And apes are apes, though clothed in scarlet."
It is said that Jonson was a "sombre" man. We have seen that it is by no
means always sunshine with those who brighten others' spirits by their
pen. The great luminary is not always above the horizon.
A friend remarked to the wife of one of our wittiest poets, "What an
atmosphere of mirth you must live in, to share a home with one who
writes always so sportively and wittily!" The answer was a most
significant shake of the head.
We spoke of Dryden as a satirist; perhaps no writer ever went further in
the line of bitterness and personality. His portrait of the Duke of
Buckingham will occur to the reader in this connection:--
"A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon."
When a boy at school in Westminster, Dryden more than once showed the
budding promise of the genius that was in him. When put with other
classmates to write a composition on the miracle of the conversion of
water into wine, he remained idle and truant, as usual, up to the last
moment, when he had only time to produce one line in Latin and two in
English; but they were of such excellence as to presage his future
greatness as a poet, and elicit hearty praise from his tutor. They were
as follows:--
_Videt et erubit lympha pudica Deum!_
"The modest water, awed by power divine,
Beheld its God, and blushed itself to wine."
Dryden's complete works form the largest amount of poetical composition
from the pen of one writer, in the English language; and yet he
published scarcely anything until he was nearly thirty years of age.
From that period he was actively engaged in authorship for forty years,
and gave us some of the finest touches of his genius in his second
spring of life. Addison wrote of Dryden at this period the following
lines:--
"But see where artful Dryden next appears,
Grown old in rhyme, but charming e'en in years;
Great Dryden next, whose tuneful Muse affords
The sweetest numbers and the fittest words.
Whether in comic sounds or tragic airs
She forms her voice, she moves our smiles or tears;
If satire or heroic strains she writes,
Her hero pleases and her satire bites;
From her no harsh, unartful numbers fall,
She wears all dresses, and she charms in all."
Richard Porson, the profound scholar, linguist, and wit, reared many
monuments of classic learning, which have however crumbled away, leaving
his name familiar to us only as a writer of _jeux d'esprit_; but these
are admirable. He was full of the sunshine of wit; and though sarcastic
and personal, as the nature of his _bon-mots_ compelled, he had no
bitterness in his reflections, and uttered them with a good-natured
laugh. Wonderful stories are told of his powers of memory. He could
repeat several consecutive pages of a book after reading them once. It
was he who wrote a hundred epigrams in one night on the subject of
Pitt's drinking habit, one of which occurs to us:--
"When Billy found he scarce could stand,
'Help, help!' he cried, and stretched his hand,
To faithful Harry calling.
Quoth he, 'My friend, I'm sorry for't,
'Tis not my practice to support
A minister that's falling.'"
The "faithful Harry" was Dundas, Viscount Melville.
The reply of Pitt to Walpole, March 6, 1741, is one of the finest, most
polished, and biting retorts on record: "The atrocious crime of being a
young man, which the honorable gentleman has, with such spirit and
decency, charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny,
but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies
may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in
spite of experience."
Dr. Gilles, the historian of Greece, and Dr. Porson used often to meet
and discuss matters of mutual interest relating to the classics. These
interviews were certain to lead to very earnest arguments; Porson was
much the better scholar of the two. Dr. Gilles was one day speaking to
him of the Greek tragedies and of the Odes of Pindar. "We know nothing,"
said Gilles, emphatically, "of the Greek metres." Porson answered: "If,
Doctor, you will put your observation in the singular number, I believe
it will be quite correct." In repartee he was remarkable. "Dr. Porson,"
said a gentleman with whom he had been disputing,--"Dr. Porson, my
opinion of you is most contemptible." "Sir," responded the Doctor
promptly, "I never knew an opinion of yours that was not contemptible."
Porson was a natural wit, so to speak. Being once at a dinner-party
where the conversation turned upon Captain Cook and his celebrated
voyages, an ignorant person in order to contribute something towards the
conversation asked, "Pray, was Cook killed on his first voyage?" "I
believe he was," answered Porson, "though he did not mind it much, but
immediately entered upon a second."
The sharpest repartee is both witty and satirical. James II., when Duke
of York, made a visit to Milton, prompted by curiosity. In the course of
his conversation the Duke said to the poet that he thought his blindness
was a judgment of Heaven on him because he had written against Charles
I., the Duke's father; whereupon the immortal poet replied: "If your
Highness thinks that misfortunes are indexes of the wrath of Heaven,
what must you think of your father's tragical end? I have lost my
eyes--he lost his head."
Few men equalled Coleridge in the matter of prompt readiness of retort,
and few have so misused the lavish gifts of Providence.[194] On a
certain occasion he was riding along a Durham turnpike road, in his
awkward fashion,--for he was no horseman,--when a wag, noticing his
peculiarity, approached him. Quite mistaking his man, he thought the
rider a good subject for a little sport, and so accosted him: "I say,
young man, did you meet a _tailor_ on the road?" "Yes," replied
Coleridge, "I did, and he told me if I went a little further I should
meet a _goose_!" The assailant was struck dumb, while the traveller
jogged leisurely on.
Lord Bolingbroke, the ardent friend of Pope, was often bitterly
satirical, and notably quick at retort. Being at Aix-la-Chapelle during
the treaty of peace at that place, he was asked impertinently by a
Frenchman whether he came there in any public character. "No, sir,"
replied Bolingbroke, very deliberately; "I come like a French minister,
with no character at all." Bolingbroke's talents were more brilliant
than solid, but the style of his literary work is admirable. It is
generally believed that he wrote the "Essay on Man" in prose, and that
Pope put it into verse, with such additions as would naturally occur in
such an adaptation.
Painters, like poets, are equal at times to producing the keenest
epigrams. Salvator Rosa's opinion of Michael Angelo's "Last Judgment" is
an instance of this. The brother artist wrote not unkindly as follows:--
"My Michael Angelo, I do not jest;
Thy pencil a great judgment has expressed;
But in that judgment thou, alas! hast shown
But very little judgment of thine own!"
We have already spoken of Molière[195] in these pages, though only too
briefly when his just fame is considered. England has her Shakespeare,
Spain her Cervantes, Germany her Goethe, and France her Molière. We have
seen how triumphantly his powerful genius made its way amid adverse
circumstances, until it enabled him, as Disraeli says, "to give his
country a Plautus in farce, a Terence in composition, and a Menander in
his moral truths." In short, Molière showed that the most successful
reformer of the manners and morals of the people is a great comic poet.
Did not Cervantes "laugh Spain's chivalry away"? It is a curious fact,
worthy of note, that Molière, who was so great a comic writer, and such
an admirable comedian upon the stage, should have been socially one of
the most serious of men and of a melancholic temperament. It was a
considerable time before his genius struck out in the right direction
and became self-reliant. At the beginning of his dramatic authorship he
"borrowed bravely" from the Italian, as Shakespeare did; and Spanish
legends were also adapted by his facile pen to dramatic purposes,
himself enacting chosen comedy parts of his own plays.
This course, however, did not satisfy the genius of Molière; he felt
that he was capable of greater originality and of more truly artistic
work. After much communing with himself he sought a new and more
legitimate field of inspiration and employed fresher material. Having
now the entrée to the Hôtel de Rambouillet, he began to study with
critical eye the court life about him, soon producing his "Précieuses
Ridicules," which was a biting satire upon the follies of the day,
though delicately screened. The author skilfully parried in the prologue
any application to his court associates, by averring that the satire was
aimed at their imitators in the provinces. The _ruse_ was sufficient,
and the play was performed without offence; but its significance was
nevertheless realized, and had its reformative influence without
producing too great a shock. It was almost his first grand and original
effort, and from thenceforth his career was a triumphal march. He is
said to have exclaimed, "I need no longer study Plautus and Terence, nor
poach on the fragments of Menander, I have only to study the world about
me." Subsequently the brilliant success of his "Tartuffe," his
"Misanthrope," and his "Bourgeois Gentilhomme" confirmed him in his
conviction. Although society felt itself arraigned, it was also humbled
and powerless. The author had become too great a power to be suppressed.
Molière's domestic life, like that of only too many men of genius, and
especially of authors, was a wreck.[196]
It may be doubted if such persons ought to marry at all. Rousseau is
another instance of domestic infelicity; and so are Milton, Dryden,
Addison, Steele; indeed, the list could be indefinitely extended. A
young painter of great promise once told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he had
taken a wife. "Married!" responded the great master; "then you are
ruined as an artist." Michael Angelo's answer when he was asked why he
never married will be remembered: "I have espoused my art, and that
occasions me sufficient domestic cares; my works shall be my children."
The marriage of men of genius forms a theme of no little interest in the
history of literature. It is herein that genius has oftenest found its
sunshine or its shadow. Even Emerson has said, "Is not marriage an open
question, when it is alleged from the beginning of the world that such
as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to
get in?" Rousseau married a kitchen-girl, and Raphael allied himself for
the last eleven years of his life with a common girl of Rome, whom he
first saw washing her feet in the Tiber. Judging from her portrait,
which he painted, and which still hangs in the Barberini Gallery, she
was by no means beautiful, though the ensemble of head, face, and neck
strikes the eye as forming a very attractive whole. Margarita belonged
to the lower classes of the Eternal City, and when Raphael died she went
back to her former obscurity. There must have been many noble qualities
in this young Roman girl, to have held the consistent devotion of so
great an artist for an entire decade. She must have possessed some
inspiring influence over him other than forming his mere physical model.
Sympathetic she undoubtedly was, or else no such union could have
lasted; and one feels that he must have imparted to her a portion of the
glowing aspirations which fired his own genius.
Goethe married to legitimize his offspring; Niebuhr, to please a
mistress; Churchill, because he was dispirited and lonely; Napoleon, to
obtain influence; Wilkes, to oblige a friend; Lamartine, in gratitude
for a fortune which was offered to him, and which he rapidly squandered;
Wycherly married his servant to spite his relations. And so we might
fill pages with brief mention of the influences which have led men of
note to assume matrimonial relations. Balzac's marriage forms a curious
example. He met by chance, when travelling, a youthful married lady, who
told him, without knowing who he was, how much she admired Balzac's
writings. "I never travel without a volume of his," she added, producing
a copy. Greatly flattered, the author made himself known to the lady,
who was a princess by birth, and who became his constant correspondent
until the death of her husband, when she gave him her hand and fortune.
They were married, and settled to domestic life in a château on the
Rhine.
But we have wandered away from Molière before quite concluding the
consideration of himself and his works. One of his most popular
productions, "L'Impromptu de Versailles," has often been borrowed from;
indeed, the general idea has been appropriated bodily both on the
English and American stage. In this piece Molière appears in his own
person and in the midst of his whole theatrical company, apparently
taken quite aback because there is no suitable piece prepared for the
occasion. The characters are the actors as though congregated in the
Green Room, with whom the manager is consulting, now reprimanding and
now advising. In the course of his remarks he throws out hints of plots
designed for plays, criticises his own productions, gives amusing
sketches of character, and in short presents a humorous, realistic, and
unique scene which formed as a whole a very complete comedy, and which
proved a grand success. Louis XIV. was his friend and patron; being
himself particularly fond of theatrical performances, he often made
shrewd suggestions, which the actor and dramatist took good care
faithfully to adopt. Indeed, it was said that this then unique idea of
the Green Room brought before the curtain was from his Majesty's own
brain, though greatly improved upon by Molière. Some of the plots hinted
at by the manager before his company in this play were afterwards
amplified and perfected so as to become popular dramas, not only by
Molière, but by other dramatists. This is notably the case with
Beaumarchais' "Barber of Seville," which is but the elaboration of one
of these incipient plots. However, Molière was himself so liberal a
borrower, like Montesquieu, Racine, and Corneille, he could well afford
to lend to others. Bruyère embodies whole passages from Publius Syrus in
his printed works; and La Fontaine borrowed his style and much of his
matter from Mazot and Rabelais. Though we have referred to this subject
before, we will add that Voltaire looked upon everything as imitation;
saying that the instruction which we gather from books is like fire: we
fetch it from our neighbor's, kindle it at home, and communicate it to
others, till it becomes the property of all.