Every thoughtful person must often have realized how close is the
natural sympathy between artists in literature and artists of the pencil
and brush; between painters and poets. Belori informs us of a curious
volume in manuscript by the hand of Rubens, which contained among other
topics descriptions of the passions and actions of men, drawn from the
poets and delineated by the artist's own graphic pencil. Here were
represented battles, shipwrecks, landscapes, and various casualties of
life, copied and illustrated from Virgil and other classic poets,
showing clearly whence Rubens often got his inspiration and ideas of
detail. The painter and the poet are the Siamese-twins of genius. The
finest picture ever produced is but poetry realized, though each art has
its distinct province. The same may be said as to sculpture and poetry.
It has long been a mooted question whether the Laocoön in sculpture
preceded or was borrowed from the idea expressed in poetry. Lessing
believed that the sculptor borrowed from the poet. All the sister
arts[197]--music, sculpture, poetry, and painting--are most intimately
allied. When great composers, like Mozart, were contemplating a grand
expression of their genius, they endeavored to inspire themselves with
lofty ideas by reading the poets; while masters in literature and
oratory have sought for a similar purpose the elevating and soothing
influence of music.
Orators have not infrequently depended upon more material stimulus, as
we have seen in the instances of Pitt and Sheridan. The biographer of
More tells us that when Sir Thomas was sent by Henry VIII. on an embassy
to the Emperor of Germany, before he delivered his important remarks he
ordered one of his servants to fill him a goblet of wine, which he drank
off at once, and in a few moments repeated it, still demanding another.
This his faithful servant, knowing his master's temperate habits, feared
to furnish, and even at first declined to do so, lest he should expose
him thereby before the Emperor. Still, upon a reiterated order, he
brought the wine, which was rapidly swallowed by Sir Thomas, who then
made his address to the sovereign in Latin, like one inspired, and to
the intense admiration of all the auditors, the Emperor himself
complimenting him upon his eloquence. More was a strange medley of
character. Devout in his religious convictions, he was yet as
light-hearted as a child,--at times wise as Solomon in his discourse,
and anon descending almost to buffoonery; a truly good man at heart, and
yet often espousing the worst of causes. Though a pronounced reformer,
he predicted that the Reformation would result in universal vice. He is
represented to have had a supreme contempt for money and a true
generosity of spirit. With the most solemn convictions of the realities
of death, he yet died upon the scaffold with a joke upon his lips.
That imaginative English artist Barry, the great historical painter,
advised his pupils as follows: "Go home from the Academy, light your
lamps, and exercise yourselves in the creative part of your art, with
Homer, with Livy, and all the great characters ancient and modern, for
your companions and counsellors." Barry has left behind him works upon
art which should not be read except with care, unbiassed judgment, and
honest appreciation. His own eccentricities, all arising from a passion
for art, led his contemporaries to criticise the man and ignore his
work. He was wildly enthusiastic in all things relating to art, but yet
sometimes exhibited the coarseness of his early associations. He was
born at Cork, from whence his father sailed as a foremast hand aboard a
coasting vessel, and designed his son for the same humble occupation;
but the lad had other and higher aspirations, until finally he attracted
the notice of people able to advise and help him. Humbly born and
self-educated as he was, he presented some of the highest aspects of
genius. By the generosity of Edmund Burke he was sent to Rome, where he
studied art for three or four years under favorable circumstances. On
his return to England he took high rank, and was engaged by the Academy
as a professor. At times in his lectures before the students he would
burst into such vehement enthusiasm as to electrify his listeners, and
they in turn would rise to their feet and shout applauses long and deep,
entirely heedless of the great turmoil which they created. Then Barry
would exclaim: "Go it, go it, boys; they did so at Athens!"
Literature and art should be wedded together. The careful reader and the
keen observer gather up a mental harvest and store it for use. What many
conceive to be genius is often but reproduction. Hosts of ideas have
passed through the crucible of the author's mind and have been refined
by the process, coming forth individualized by the stamp of his
personality. He is none the less an originator, a creator; originality
is after all but condensed and refined observation.
There is a great deal of nonsense written and credited by the world at
large as to the inspiration of authorship. Some of the very best poetic
turns of thought are the children of purest accident. Sir Joshua
Reynolds, calling upon Goldsmith one day, opened his door without
knocking, and found him engaged in the double occupation of authorship
and teaching a pet dog to sit upon his haunches, now casting a glance at
his writing-table, and now shaking his finger at the dog to make him
retain his upright position. The last lines upon the paper were still
wet,--as Sir Joshua[198] said when he afterwards told the story,--and
formed a part of the description of Italy:--
"By sports like these are all their cares beguiled:
The sports of children satisfy the child."
Goldsmith, with his usual good humor, joined in the laugh caused by his
whimsical employment, and acknowledged to the great painter that his
boyish sport with the dog suggested the lines.
Goldsmith was always the wayward and erratic being whom we have
represented in these pages. His habit on retiring at night was to read
in bed until overcome by somnolence; and he was so little inclined to
sleep, that his candle was kept burning until the last moment. His mode
of extinguishing it finally, when it was out of immediate reach, was
characteristic of his indolence and carelessness: he threw his slipper
at it, which consequently was found in the morning covered with grease
beside the overturned candlestick.
If, as we have attempted to show, authors exhibit oftentimes a spirit of
vanity, it must be admitted that readers as frequently exhibit evidence
of captiousness.
Those who sit down to peruse a book without a good and wholesome
appetite for reading are very much in the same condition as one who
approaches a table loaded with food, without a sense of hunger. In
neither case can one be a proper judge of what is before him; mental or
physical pabulum requires for just appreciation a wholesome appetite.
Unjust criticism often grows out of an attempt to force the appetite,
the censor coming to his task in a wrong humor. The author is usually
severely judged; he is solus, his critics are many: if he satisfies one
class of readers he is sure to dissatisfy another. Swift's definition of
criticism, in his "Tale of a Tub," is pertinent. "A true critic," he
says, "in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose
thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and
consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones."
Edgar A. Poe's sarcasm upon the "North American Review," in the matter
of criticism, will long be remembered. It was generally considered at
the time not only a keen but a just retort. Our erratic genius writes:
"I cannot say that I ever fairly comprehended the force of the term
'insult,' until I was given to understand, one day, by a member of the
'North American Review' clique, that this journal was not only willing
but anxious to render me that justice which had been already accorded me
by the 'Revue Française,' and the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' but was
restrained from doing so by my 'invincible spirit of antagonism.' I
wish the 'North American Review' to express no opinion of me
whatever,--for I have none of it. In the mean time, as I see no motto on
its titlepage, let me recommend it one from 'Sterne's Letter from
France.' Here it is: 'As we rode along the valley, we saw a herd of
asses on the top of one of the mountains: how they viewed and _reviewed_
us!'" No one can deny that Poe possessed remarkable genius; but his best
friends could not approve either his temper or his habits.
Balzac complained of lack of appreciation; though, as has just been
shown, he captivated one of his readers to such a degree as to bring him
a wife and a fortune. "A period," he says, "shall have cost us the labor
of a day; we shall have distilled into an essay the essence of our mind;
it may be a finished piece of art, and they think they are indulgent
when they pronounce it to contain some pretty things, and that the style
is not bad!" Montaigne said that he found his readers too learned or too
ignorant, and that he could please only a middle class who possessed
just knowledge enough to understand him. To read well and to a
consistent purpose is as much of an art as to write well. It was said of
Dr. Johnson by Mrs. Knowles that "he knows how to read better than any
other one; he gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the
heart of it."
A literary friend of the writer has long adopted an effective aid to
memory in connection with reading. After perusing a book he writes down
the date, the place, and under what circumstances it was read, and in a
few concise lines gives the impression it has left upon his mind. This
he does not design as a criticism; it is intended for himself only. At a
future day he can take up the volume, since perusing which he may have
read a hundred in a similar manner, and by turning to his brief comment
at the close, the power of association enables him to recall the subject
of the volume and virtually to remember the contents. He assures us that
the circumstances under which he became familiar with the book, if
fairly remembered, recall even its detail. For our own part, we have
trusted solely to a retentive memory, and the choice of such lines of
reading as inclination has suggested. The books which we consult
lovingly will long remain with us, requiring very little effort to
impress their contents upon the brain.
How suggestive is this theme of books and the reading of them! Whipple
eulogizes them thus appropriately: "Books,--light-houses erected in the
great sea of time; books,--the precious depositories of the thoughts and
creations of genius; books,--by whose sorcery time past becomes time
present, and the whole pageantry of the world's history moves in solemn
procession before our eyes. These were to visit the fireside of the
humble, and lavish the treasures of the intellect upon the poor. Could
we have Plato and Shakespeare and Milton in our dwellings, in the full
vigor of their imaginations, in the full freshness of their hearts, few
scholars would be affluent enough to afford them physical support; but
the living images of their minds are within the reach of all. From their
pages their mighty souls look out upon us in all their grandeur and
beauty, undimmed by the faults and follies of earthly existence,
consecrated by time."
Poets have been more addicted to building castles upon paper than
residences upon the more substantial earth. Though the old axiom of
"genius and a garret" has passed away, both as a saying and in the
experiences of real life, still it had its pertinency in the early days
of literature and art. Ariosto, who was addicted to castle-building with
the pen, was asked why he was so modestly lodged when he prepared a
permanent home for himself. He replied that palaces are easier built
with words than with stones. But the poet, nevertheless, had a snug and
pretty abode at Ferrara, Italy, a few leagues from Bologna, which is
still extant. Leigh Hunt says: "Poets love nests from which they can
take their flights, not worlds of wood and stone to strut in." The
younger Pliny was more of a substantial architect, whose villa, devoted
to literary leisure, was magnificent, surrounded by gardens and parks.
Tycho Brahe, the great Danish astronomer, built a grand castle and
observatory combined on an island of the Baltic, opposite Copenhagen,
which he named the "Castle of the Heavens."
Many of our readers have doubtless visited the house which Shakespeare
built for himself in his native town on Red-Lion Street. In passing
through its plain apartments one receives with infinite faith the
stereotyped revelations of the local cicerone. Buffon was content to
locate himself for his literary work and study in an old half-deserted
tower, and Gibbon, as we have seen, to write his great work in the
summer-house of a Lausanne garden. Chaucer lived and wrote in a grand
palace, because he was connected with royalty; but he never dilated upon
such surroundings,--his fancy ran to outdoor nature, to the flowers and
the trees. Milton[199] sought an humble "garden house" to live in; that
is, a small house in the environs of the city, with a pleasant little
garden attached. Addison wrote his "Campaign" "up two pair of back
stairs in the Hay-market." Johnson tells us that much of his literary
work was produced from a garret in Exeter Street. Paul Jovius,[200] the
Italian author, who wrote three hundred concise eulogies of statesmen,
warriors, and literary men of the fourteenth century, built himself an
elegant château on the Lake of Como, beside the ruins of the villa of
Pliny, and declared that when he sat down to write he was inspired by
the associations of the place. In his garden he raised a marble statue
to Nature, and his halls contained others of Apollo and the Muses.
The traveller visits with eager interest Rubens' house in his native
city of Antwerp, a veritable museum within, but plain and unpretentious
without. Rubens is to the Belgian capital what Thorwaldsen is to
Copenhagen. Spenser lived in an Irish castle (Kilcolman Castle), which
was burned over his head by a mob; and, sad to say, his child was burned
with it. In his verses Spenser was always depicting "lowly cots," and it
was on that plane that his taste rested. Moore's vine-clad cottage at
Sloperton is familiar to all. In the environs of Florence we still see
the cottage home where Landor lived and wrote, and in the city itself
the house of Michael Angelo,--plain and unadorned externally, but with a
few of the great artist's household gods duly preserved in the several
apartments. The historic home of the poet Longfellow, in Cambridge, has
become a Mecca to lovers of poetry and genius; while Tennyson's
embowered cottage at the Isle of Wight is equally attractive to
travellers from afar.
Pope[201] had a modest nest at Twickenham, and Wordsworth at Rydal
Mount, the beauties of both being more dependent upon the surrounding
scenery than upon any architectural attraction. Pope declared all
gardens to be landscape-paintings, and he loved them. Scott made
himself a palatial home at Abbotsford, which was quite an exception to
that of his brother poets. Dr. Holmes's unpretentious town house in the
Trimountain city overlooks the broad Charles, and affords him a glorious
view of the setting sun. Emerson's Concord home was and is the picture
of rural simplicity. Hawthorne's biographer makes us familiar with his
red cottage at Lenox. Bryant made himself an embowered summer cottage at
Roslyn, New York State. Lowell has a fine but plain residence
overlooking the beautiful grounds of Mount Auburn. Nothing could be more
simple and lovely than Whittier's Danvers home. None of these poets have
built castles of stone, whatever they may have done under poetical
license.
"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness,"
says the poet Cowley, "as that I might be master at least of a small
house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to
them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of
them and study of Nature, and then, with no desire beyond my wall,--
'----Whole and entire to lie,
In no unactive ease, and no unglorious poverty.'"
Cowley at last got what he so ardently desired, but it was not until he
was too old and broken in health to find that active enjoyment which he
had so fondly anticipated. He died in the forty-ninth year of his age.
We spoke of the contrast which was manifest between the private and
public life of Molière. These paradoxes are strange, but by no means
uncommon in the character of men of genius. It will be remembered that
Grimaldi, the cleverest and most mirth-provoking clown of his day in
England, was often under medical treatment on account of his serious
attacks of melancholy. It seems almost incredible that men of such
profound judgment in most matters, as were Dr. Johnson and Addison,
should have been so inexcusably weak as to entertain a belief in
ghosts,--an eccentricity which neither of them denied. Byron,[202] who
as a rule was noted for his shrewd common-sense, was so superstitious
that he would not help a person at table to salt, nor permit himself to
be served with it by another's hand. There were other equally absurd
"omens" which he strenuously regarded. Cowper, who was a devoutly
religious man, deliberately attempted to hang himself,--an act entirely
at variance with his serious convictions. So also Hugh Miller, one of
the most wholesome writers upon the true principles of life, wrested his
own life from his Maker's hands.
Pope, who was such a bravado with his pen, boldly denouncing an army of
scholars and wits in his "Dunciad," was personally an arrant coward, who
could not summon sufficient self-possession to make a statement before a
dozen of his personal friends. The paradox which existed between
Goldsmith's pen and tongue passed into an axiom: with the one he was all
eloquence and grace; with the other, as foolish as a parrot. Douglas
Jerrold, whose forte was as clearly that of wit and humor as it is the
sun's province to shine, was ever wishing to write a profound essay on
natural philosophy. Newton, highest authority in algebra, could not make
the proper change for a guinea without assistance, and while he was
master of the Mint was hourly put to shame by the superior practical
arithmetic of the humblest clerks under him. Another peculiarity of
Newton was that he fancied himself a poet; but who ever saw a verse of
his composition? Judged by all accepted rules, Charles Lamb experienced
ills sufficient to have driven him to commit suicide; whereas the truth
shows that with "his sly, shy, elusive, ethereal humor" he was
ordinarily the most genial and contented of beings.
Curious beyond expression are the many-sided phases of genius, and
indeed of all humanity. Let us therefore have a care how we judge our
fellow-men, since what they truly are within themselves we cannot know,
and may only infer by what they seem to be relatively to ourselves.
Undoubtedly the germs of virtue and of vice are born within the soul of
every human being; their development is contingent upon how slight a
cause! Nor in our readiness to censure should we forget in whose image
we are all created,--"a little lower than the angels, a little higher
than the brutes." It is the nature of man, like the harp, to give forth
beautiful or discordant sounds according to the delicacy and skill with
which it is touched. We find what we come to find,--what, indeed, we
bring with us. Richard Baxter, the prolific author upon theology, at the
close of a long life said: "I now see more good and more evil in all men
than heretofore I did. I see that good men are not so good as I once
thought they were; and I find that few are so bad as either malicious
enemies or censorious professors do imagine."
INDEX.
Adams, John, 28.
Addison, Joseph, 38, 42, 78, 86, 116 and note, 118, 202, 277, 283, 296,
299.
Æschylus, 77.
Æsop, 4.
Agassiz, Louis, 103 and note.
Akenside, Mark, 7.
Alexander the Great, 27.
Alfieri, Vittorio, 136, 266.
Allston, Washington, 45, 97 and note.
Ames, Fisher, 26, 45.
Amyot, Jacques, 6.
Andersen, Hans Christian, 22 and note, 63, 84, 205.
André, Major John, 43.
Angelo, Michael, 14, 242, 283.
Arago, Dominique François, 184.
Arc, Joan of, 29, 188.
Ariosto, Lodovico, 295.
Aristippus, 118.
Aristo, 115.
Aristophanes, 2, 3.
Arkwright, Sir Richard, 18.
Arnauld, Antoine, 33.
Astor, John Jacob, 26 and note.
Astor, William B., 26 note.
Auber, Daniel François Esprit, 82.
Audubon, John James, 222, 223 and note.
Bacon, Francis, 32, 57 and note, 77, 124.
Bailey, Philip James, 227.
Ball, Thomas, 21 and note.
Balzac, de (Honoré), 46, 207, 284, 293.
Bancroft, George, 35, 203, 227.
Bandoccin, 6.
Barbauld, Anna Lætitia, 269.
Barrow, Isaac, 116.
Barry, James, 7, 32 note, 289.
Baxter, Richard, 301.
Beaconsfield, Lord (Disraeli), 13 note, 87 note, 117 note, 135, 205, 227
and note.
Beaufort, Cardinal Henry, 266.
Beaumarchais, de (Pierre Auguste Caron), 21.
Beckford, William, 68.
Beecher, H. W., 38.
Beethoven, van, Ludwig, 127 and note, 221.
Bellini, Vincenzo, 29.
Bentham, Jeremy, 137 and note.
Bentivoglio, Ercole, 149.
Bentley, Richard, 40.
Béranger, de (Pierre Jean), 8, 139 and note, 194, 209.
Betterton, Thomas, 260.
Beveridge, Bishop, 57.
Bewick, Thomas, 24.
Bide, 266.
Biglow, Hosea, 20 note.
Blackstone, Sir William, 77.
Blessington, Lady Margaret, 67 note.
Bloomfield, Robert, 23.
Boccaccio, Giovanni, 9.
Boëthius, 131 note.
Boffin, ----, 24.
Boleyn, Anne, 268.
Bolingbroke, Lord (Henry Saint John), 280.
Bousard, ----, 135.
Bowditch, Nathaniel, 16.
Boyle, Robert, 281.
Boyle, Samuel, 164.
Bracegirdle, 262.
Bright, John, 15, 35.
Brindley, James, 19.
Britton, John, 21.
Bronté, Anne, 192.
Bronté, Charlotte, 56, 62, 192.
Bronté, Emily, 192.
Bronté, Rev. Patrick, 192.
Brooks, Shirley, 227.
Brougham, Lord, 32 note, 206.
Browning, Mrs., 163 note.
Bruyère, de la (Jean), 270, 286.
Bryant, William C., 29, 227, 298.
Brydges, Sir Samuel Egerton, 201.
Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte, 48, 61, 83, 89, 205, 215, 227,
296.
Bulwer Lytton, 31, 37, 46, 63, 106, 108, 227, 228.
Bunyan, John, 15 and note, 131, 268.
Burgundy, Duke of, 119.
Burke, Edmund, 32 and note, 33, 38, 40, 55, 77, 78, 86, 225, 227.
Burns, Robert, 77, 79 and note, 106, 108, 117, 122, 185, 186, 208, 220.
Burritt, Elihu, 16, 112.
Burton, Robert, 120, 162 and note.
Butler, Samuel, 153 and note.
Buxton, Sir Thomas Fowell, 19.
Byron, George Gordon Noel, 37, 44, 50, 62, and note, 63, 90, 106, 116,
117, 142, 176, 177 and note, 200, 227, 266, 273, 299 and note.
Byron, Thomas, 115.
Cæsar, Julius, 60, 206.
Cæsar, Octavius, 28 note.
Calhoun, John C., 22, 28.
Calvart, Denis, 251.
Camoens, Luis, 129 and note.
Campbell, Thomas, 152, 287 note.
Cano, Alonzo, 265.
Canova, Antonio, 6, 208, 255, 256.
Carlyle, Thomas, 36, 41, 58, 63, 79, 89, 108, 128, 130, 138, 148, 149,
151, 165, 204, 218, 223, 229.
Carneades, 73.
Cato, 33, 151.
Cellini, Benvenuto, 153 and note.
Cervantes, Miguel, 12, 13 and note, 129, 131 note, 132 and note, 206.
Channing, Dr. William E., 47, 222 and note.
Chantrey, Sir Francis, 21.
Chapin, E. H., 38.
Charlemagne, 28.
Charles, Duke of Orleans, 132.
Charles I. of England, 267.
Charles II. of England, 267.
Charles XII. of Sweden, 27 and note.
Châteaubriand, François Auguste, 124 and note.
Chatham, Earl of, 34.
Chatterton, Thomas, 31, 129, 166.
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 10, 31, 34, 131 note, 265, 273, 296.
Choate, Rufus, 45, 114.
Churchill, Charles, 87 and note, 284.
Cibber, Colley, 217.
Cicero, 21, 206, 209.
Cimarosa, Domenico, 62.
Clare, John, 137.
Clark, Samuel, 100.
Cleanthes the Stoic, 5.
Clive, Robert, Lord, 28.
Clyde, Lord, 15.
Cobbett, William, 12, 32 note, 133.
Cobden, Richard, 15.
Coleridge, S. T., 2 note, 18, 38, 39, 52, 53 note, 62, 77, 104, 105 and
note, 115, 123, 139, 152 note, 208, 239, 270, 279 and note.
Colletet, Guillaume, 135.
Collier, John Payne, 125.
Collins, William, 171 and note.
Colorden, 267.
Colton (Lacon), 91, 182, 183.
Columbus, Christopher, 10, 11 and note.
Combe, George, 166.
Congreve, William, 29, 124, 125 and note, 138, 201.
Condé, de (Louis II. de Bourbon), Prince, 28.
Cook, James, Capt., 19.
Cormontaigne, Louis de, 76.
Corneille, Peter, 43, 44, 128, 227, 241.
Correggio, Antonio Allegri da, 254.
Correra, ----, 17.
Cortes, Hernando, 28.
Cowley, Abraham, 31, 37, 239, 298.
Cowper, William, 137 and note, 161, 162, 221, 299.
Crabbe, George, 92, 129, 153.
Crassus, Roman triumvir, 5 note.
Cratinus, 77.
Crébillon, Prosper Jolyot, 84, 267.
Cromwell, Oliver, 13, 122.
Cruden, Alexander, 137.
Cunningham, Allan, 22.
Curran, John Philpot, 40, 57, 238, 267.
Cushing, Caleb, 45.
D'Alembert, Jean le Rond, 7.
Dalrymple, Sir David (Lord Hailes), 75.
Dante, Allighieri, 40, 51, 128, 148 and note, 205.
D'Arblay, Madame (Frances Burney), 269.
Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, 99.
Davenant, Sir William, 131 note.
Da Vinci, Leonardo, 121 and note.
Davy, Sir Humphry, 7, 106.
Decker, Thomas, 140.
DeFoe, Daniel, 11, 132, 153.
Demosthenes, 204.
De Quincey, Thomas, 77, 129, 136, 137 and note, 199, 211.
De Tocqueville, Alexis Charles Henry Clerel, 52, 207.
Dibdin, Charles, 53.
Dick, Robert, 24.
Dickens, Charles, 31, 46, 62, 77, 91, 109, 110, 114, 197, 204 and note,
242.
Diogenes, 211.
Dodsley, Robert, 23.
Domenichino, Zampieri, 96.
Drew, Samuel, 23.
Dryden, John, 10, 40 and note, 73, 74 and note, 106, 115, 214, 273, 276,
283.
Ducis, Jean François, 209.
Dumas, Alexandre, 13, 84 and note, 109, 194, 233.
Durer, Albert, 205.
Edgeworth, Maria, 43 and note.
Edwards, President Jonathan, 268.
Edwards, Thomas, 23.
Elizabeth, Queen, 266.
Elliott, Ebenezer, 17 and note.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 4, 23, 27, 38, 63 note, 69 note, 200, 204, 283,
298.
Ennius, 77.
Epictetus, 5, 110.
Erasmus, Désiré, 150.
Ereilla, Alonzo de, 133.
Eupolis, 77.
Euripides, 126.
Evarts, William, 98 and note.
Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe, 94.
Fielding, Henry, 45 note, 155 and note, 156, 210.
Fields, James T., 109, 182.
Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun, 8 note.
Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier, 34.
Foote, Samuel, 261.
Fordyce, Dr. George, 115.
Forrest, Edwin, 189.
Foster, John, 48, 58.
Fox, Charles James, 40.
Franklin, Dr. Benjamin, 16 and note, 34, 124, 241.
Frederick V. of Denmark, 267.
Fuller, Margaret, 41, 42 and note, 45, 204.
Fuller, Thomas, 40 and note, 123.
Galileo, 126, 127 and note.
Garfield, James A., 22.
Garrick, David, 42 and note, 43, 65, 213, 258, 259 and note, 263 note.
Garrison, William Lloyd, 18 and note.
Gaskell, Mrs. Elizabeth C., 57.
Gay, John, 24 and note, 114, 202.
Gelli, Giovanni Battista, 6.
Gibbon, Edward, 91, 94, 123 and note, 156, 205, 220, 242 and note.
Gibson, John, 19.
Gifford, William, 21, 169, 224.
Gilles, Dr., 278.
Giotto, Angiolotto, 14.
Giovanni, 242.
Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., 35.
Glück, von (Johann Christoph), 80.
Godeau, Antoine, Bishop of Venice, 95.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 27, 71 note, 85, 111, 122, 136, 180 note, 205,
214, 284.
Goldsmith, Oliver, 2 note, 37, 40, 45, 48, 58, 63, 66, 109, 117, 146 and
note, 147, 207, 236 and note, 290, 300.
Grattan, Henry, 116 note.
Gray, Thomas, 40, 174 and note, 175 note.
Greeley, Horace, 23.
Greene, General Nathanael, 23.
Greene, Robert, 154.
Gregory VII., Pope, 268.
Grey, Lady Jane, 269.
Grimaldi, Joseph, 299.
Guizot, François Pierre Guillaume, 30.
Guyon, Madame, Jeanne Bouvier de la Motte, 134.
Gwynn, Nell, 262, 267.
Hall, Robert, 30 and note, 77, 108.
Hallam, Arthur, 153 note.
Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 11, 29, 139.
Hamilton, Alexander, 28.
Hampden, John, 122.
Handel, George Frederick, 29, 37, 80, 81 and note, 127, 144 and note.
Hannibal, 28.
Hardy, ----, 49.
Hawkins, Sir John, 54.
Hawksworth, Dr. John, 168 note.
Haydn, Joseph, 83 and note, 117.
Haydon, Benjamin Robert, 253 note.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 193, 221, 298.
Hazlitt, William, 3 note, 9 note, 39, 45, 53, 90, 174 and note, 207, 233
note.
Heller, Joseph, 267.
Hemans, Mrs. Felicia Dorothea, 191 and note.
Henry of Navarre, 110.
Henry V. of France, 119.
Herbert, George, 106.
Herder, von (Johann Gottfried), 267.
Hermand, Lord, 268.
Heron, Robert, 140.
Hesiod, 126.
Heyward, John, 214.
Hobbes, Thomas, 34, 99.
Hobson, ----, 24.
Hoffman, Charles Fenno, 137, 193.
Hogarth, William, 61, 251.
Hogg, James, 14 note, 93, 208.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 35, 71, 88, 154, 209.
Holzmann, Adolf, 129, 167.
Homer, 2 and note.
Hood, Thomas, 76, 141, 209 and note.
Hook, Theodore, 133 and note.
Horace, 52, 210.
Horne, Dr. Thomas Hartwell, 120.
Horsley, Bishop Samuel, 77.
Howard, John, 14.
Howe, Mrs. Julia Ward, 35.
Howell, James, 133.
Hughes, John, 201.
Hugo, Victor, 207, 231.
Hume, David, 55 and note, 94 and note.
Hunt, Leigh, 16 note, 31, 38, 134, 144 note, 145 note, 219, 295.
Hunter, John, 19.
Hunter, William, 268.
Huntington, William, 24.
Irving, Washington, 97, 100, 139, 227.
Jackson, Andrew, 22.
Jasmin, Jacques, 22.
Jeffrey, Lord Francis, 43 note.
Jerrold, Douglas, 23, 29 note, 101, 102, 110, 196, 224, 236, 300.
Johnson, Andrew, 22.
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 23, 24, 33, 36 note, 38, 42, 54, 58, 66, 74, 92,
116, 140 note, 151, 155 note, 159-162, 180 note, 202, 208, 211, 216,
236, 293, 296, 299.
Jonson, Ben, 10, 40 and note, 68, 131 and note, 275 and note.
Jovius, Paul, 296.
Keats, John, 13, 31, 115 and note, 169, 170 and note.
Kepler, Johann, 18, 205.
Kimball, Moses, 21 note.
King, Thomas Starr, 60.
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 31.
Knight, Richard Payne, 165.
Knox, John, 268.
Kotzebue, von, August Friedrich Ferdinand, 149 and note.
Lafayette, General Marie Jean Paul, 28.
Lafayette, Madame de, 48 note.
La Fontaine, Jean, 70, 241, 286.
Lamartine, Alphonse de, 85, 115, 136, 233, 284.
Lamb, Charles, 38, 39, 44, 46, 104, 105, 107 and note, 113 and note,
115, 152, 178-181, 182, 300.
Lamb, Mary, 178.
Landon, Miss Letitia Elizabeth, 190, 191 and note.
Landor, Walter Savage, 34, 67 and note, 207, 297.
Latimer, Hugh, 269.
Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 232, 253.
Layard, Austen Henry, 227.
Lee, Prof. Samuel, 19.
Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Baron, 220.
Lenau, Nikolaus, 138.
Leon, Ponce de, 132.
Le Sage (Gil Blas), 129.
Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 120.
Lincoln, Abraham, 22.
Lind, Jenny, 244.
Linnæus (Karl von Linné), 25.
Liston, John, 260.
Livingston, Dr. David, 14.
Locke, John, 122 and note, 201.
Lockhart, John Gibson, 227.
Longfellow, Henry W., 38 note, 47, 52, 142, 227, 297.
Lorraine, Claude, 11.
Louis XIII. of France, 12
Louis XIV. of France, 268.
Louis XVI. of France, 119.
Lovelace, Richard, 133.
Lowell, James Russell, 203, 298.
Loyola, Ignatius, 241.
Lucan, 126.
Luther, Martin, 86, 161, 221.
Lydiat, Thomas, 131.
Macaulay, Lord (Thomas Babington), 30, 32, 39, 55, 68, 74, 109, 137
note, 148, 160, 176, 218, 234.
Macready, William Charles, 114.
Machiavelli, Niccolò di Bernardo, 148.
Malherbe, de (François), 266.
Mann, Horace, 19.
Marlborough, Duke of (John Churchill), 268.
Maria Theresa, 268.
Massinger, Philip, 149.
Matthews, Charles, Sr, 29.
Maturin, Charles Robert, 110.
Maurice of Saxony, 28 note.
Mazarin, Cardinal Giulio, 119.
McMahon, ----, 119.
Méhul, Étienne Henri, 72.
Ménage, Gilles, 34.
Menander, 33 note.
Metternich, von (Clemens Wenzel), 41.
Miller, Dr. Isaac, Dean of Carlisle, 22.
Miller, Hugh, 13 and note, 299.
Milton, John, 31, 59, 62, 92, 114, 119, 128, and note, 151, 279, 283,
296.
Mirabeau, de (Honoré Gabriel de Riquetti), 237, 267.
Mitford, Mary Russell, 51, 90, 200.
Mitford, William, 217.
Molière, Jean Baptiste Pocquelin, 11, 12, 15, 69, 240, 281, 282, 285.
Montague, Edward, 202.
Montaigne, Michel Eyquem, 52, 91, 104, 123, 293.
Montesquieu, Charles, 171.
Montgomery, James, 133.
Moore, Thomas, 29, 48 and note, 91, 114, 232, 297.
More, Hannah, 208.
More, Sir Thomas, 37, 288.
Morphy, Paul, 60.
Moshlech, Dr., 167.
Motherwell, William, 151.
Mounier, Marchioness de, 237.
Mozart, Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus, 29, 37, 81, 82 and note, 144
and note, 145 and note, 161.
Murphy, Arthur, 268.
Musset, Alfred de, 77, 194.
Napoleon Bonaparte, 28, 108, 284.
Necker, Madame Albertine Adrienne, 172.
Nelson, Lord, Horatio, 267.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 115, 168, 202, 212, 223, 240, 300.
Niebuhr, Barthold Georg, 284.
Nilsson, Christina, 245.
North, Christopher, 77.
Oakley, Henry, 133.
Offenbach, Isaac, 82.
Opie, Amelia, 248.
Opie, John, 6, 247 and note.
Orrery, Lord, 93.
Otway, Thomas, 153.
Paganini, Niccolò, 14.
Paine, Thomas, 55, 56 and note.
Paley, Dr. William (Archdeacon of Carlisle), 106.
Parmigiano, Girolamo Francesco Maria (Mazzola), 95.
Parr, Dr., 107, 226 note, 229.
Pascal, Blaise, 219.
Patti, Adelina, 190.
Paul, Jean, 130, 138.
Peabody, Elizabeth, 35.
Peabody, George, 26.
Pellico, Silvio, 132.
Penn, William, 133.
Perugino, Pietro Venucci, 14.
Petavius, Denis, 100.
Petrarch, Francesco, 266.
Petronius, 70.
Phillips, Ambrose, 201.
Phillips, Wendell, 55, 69.
Pierce, Franklin, 193.
Pisistratus, 2.
Pitt, William, 28, 117, 266, 278.
Plato, 206.
Plautus, 69, 126.
Pliny, 206, 295.
Plutarch, 33, 118.
Poe, Edgar A., 45, 77, 117, 198, 292.
Pope, Alexander, 12, 31 and note, 86, 89, 100, 114, 170, 176, 205, 215,
234, 261 note, 273, 297, 300.
Porson, Richard, 277, 278.
Poussin, Nicolas, 97.
Powers, Hiram, 16.
Prideaux, Dr. John, Bishop of Worcester, 22.
Prior, Matthew, 7, 135, 136 and note.
Protagoras, 5.
Prynne, William, 50.
Psalmanazar, George, 77.
Pygmalion and Galatea, 70, 71.
Quin, James, 266.
Rachel, Elisabeth Félix, 8, 9 and note, 188.
Racine, Jean, 44, 169 note, 171.
Radcliffe, Dr. John, 78.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 131 and note.
Rame, Louise de la (Ouida), 76 and note.
Raphael, Sanzio, 122, 136, 283.
Reni, Guido, 95.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 88, 283, 291.
Rhondelet, Dr. Guillaume, 116.
Richelieu, Cardinal Armand Jean du Plessis, 100.
Richter, Jean Paul, 169 and note, 228 and note.
Ridley, Nicholas, 269.
Ritson, Joseph, 171.
Rochefoucauld, Duc François, 48 and note, 213.
Rogers, Samuel, 36, 39, 49, 61 note, 87, 88, 151, 212.
Roland, Madam Marie Jeanne, 268.
Rollin, Charles, 7.
Romney, George, 19.
Rosa, Salvator, 248-250, 280.
Roscommon, Earl of (Wentworth Dillon), 99, 266.
Rossini, Gioacchimo, 14, 73, 82.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 99, 161, 241, 266, 283.
Rowe, Nicholas, 201.
Royer-Collard, 231 note.
Rubens, Peter Paul, 250, 287, 297.
Rusard, Peter, 33.
Ruskin, John, 71, 205, 215.
Sacchini, Antonio Maria Gasparo, 82.
St. Pierre, de (Jacques Henri Bernardin), 59 note.
Salieri, Antonio, 73.
Sallust, 37.
Sand, George, 57, 136, 194, 205.
Santara, 153.
Sargent, Epes, 191.
Sarpi, Father Paolo, 72.
Sarti, Giuseppe, 73.
Sarto, Andrea del, 14, 153.
Saunders, Chief Justice Sir Edmund, 119.
Savage, Richard, 94, 140, 233.
Scaliger, Julius, 34, 94
Schiller, von (Johann Christoph Friedrich), 31, 72 and note, 111, 120,
152 and note, 269.
Schumann, Robert, 136.
Scipio, 27.
Scipio the Younger, 28.
Scott, Sir Walter, 7 note, 38, 43 note, 58, 62, 75, 104, 108, 111, 114,
200, 207, 212, 221, 225, 226 and note, 242, 298.
Scudéri, George, 213.
Scudéri, Mlle. de (Madeleine), 213 note.
Seldon, John, 131.
Seneca, 118, 126.
Seward, Miss Anna, 42.
Shadwell, Thomas, 77.
Shakespeare, Wm., 2 and note, 3, 9, 19, 29, 40, 106 note, 125, 210, 240,
265, 274, 296.
Shaw, Dr., 117.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 58, 109, 112, 114, 172, 173 and note, 174.
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley Butler, 40, 77, 92, 211, 226 note, 227, 229,
236, 271, 272.
Shuter, Edward, 264.
Siddons, Mrs. Sarah, 243, 244 and note.
Sidney, Sir Philip, 230.
Smart, Christopher, 140, 164.
Smith, Adam, 94.
Smith, Sir Sydney, 20, 37 note, 39, 81 note, 89, 106, 107, 197 note,
210.
Smollett, Tobias George, 37, 62.
Sneyd, Miss Honora, 43.
Socrates, 33, 126, 239.
Sophocles, 126.
Southey, Robert, 12, 31, 44 and note, 104, 138, 205, 208, 211.
Spagnoletto, 256-258 and note.
Spencer, James, 252.
Spencer, William Robert, 212.
Spenser, Edmund, 128, 152, 240 note, 297.
Spontini, Gasparo Luigi Pacifico, 82.
Staël, Madame de (Anne Louise), 39, 147.
Steele, Richard, 158, 202, 283.
Stephens, James Francis, 75.
Stephenson, George, 26.
Stepney, George, 202.
Sterne, Laurence, 10, 64, 67, 270.
Stuart, Gilbert Charles, 45.
Sturgeon, William, 23.
Sue, Eugène, 83, 214 and note.
Sumner, Charles, 45.
Swift, Dean (Jonathan) 40, 90, 98, 108, 114, 136 note, 156-158, 202 and
note, 211, 274, 292.
Sydenham, Floyer, 130.
Syrus, Publius, 4 and note.
Taglioni, Marie, 246.
Talfourd, Thomas Noon, 39.
Talma, François Joseph, 21.
Tannahill, Robert, 14 and note.
Tasso, Torquato, 31, 40, 52, 126, 161 and note.
Taylor, Bayard, 31.
Taylor, Father, 107, 198.
Taylor, Jane, 100.
Taylor, Jeremy, 123, 131.
Tell, William, 70.
Tencin, Madame de Claudine Alexandrine Guérin, 7 and note.
Teniers, David, 251.
Tennyson, Alfred, 46, 47, 48, 108, 297.
Tenterden, Justice (Abbott), Charles, 19.
Terence, 5 and note.
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 24 note, 62, 108, 109, 114, 118, 125 note,
142, 157 and note, 159 note, 163, 195, 197, 205.
Theophrastus, 33.
Thom, William, 141.
Thoreau, Henry David, 186, 187, 211.
Thorwaldsen, Albert Bertel, 25.
Thrale, Mrs. Esther Lynch (Salusbury), 162.
Thurlow, Chancellor Edward, 268.
Titus, Emperor, 271.
Tooke, Horne, 17 note.
Trenck, Baron, von der (Friedrich), 132.
Turner, Joseph Mallord William, 19, 109, 287 note.
Tyndale, William, 269.
Vaga, Perius del, 14.
Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 26.
Vandyke, Sir Anthony, 251.
Vaugelas, Claude Favre, 49, 129, 138.
Vayer, La Mothe le, François, 34.
Vega, Lope de, 33, 49 and note.
Victor Emmanuel, 119.
Virgil, 52, 99.
Voltaire, de (François Marie Arouet), 88, 132, 207, 229, 286.
Vondel, Joost van den, 15.
Wakefield, Gilbert, 135.
Waller, Edmund, 29 note, 128 note.
Walpole, Horace, 200.
Walton, Izaak, 12, 34, 152.
Warburton, Bishop William, 57, 92.
Warton, Dr. Joseph, 109.
Washington, George, 28.
Watt, James, 22, 29, 220, 242.
Webster, Daniel, 26 and note, 45.
Wellington, Duke of, Arthur (Wellesley), 9 note, 76.
West, Benjamin, 20 and note, 241 and note.
Whipple, Edwin Percy, 17 note, 28 note, 46, 103 note, 130, 165, 225,
229, 270 note, 294.
White, Henry Kirke, 11, 29.
Whitefield, George, 16.
Whitney, Eli, 22, 23.
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 35, 206, 212, 298.
Wicquefort, de (Abraham), 132.
Wilkes, John, 284.
William of Orange, 28 note.
William the Conqueror, 119.
Williams, Roger, 133.
Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 30, 31 note, 93, 114, 215.
Wilson, Henry, 22.
Wilson, John, 14, 227.
Wilson, Richard, 96.
Winckelmann, 34 and note.
Winthrop, Robert C., 34.
Wither, George, 87 and note.
Woffington, Margaret (Peg), 263, 264 and note.
Wolcott, Dr. John, 247 note.
Wolsey, Cardinal Thomas, 11, 17.
Woodworth, Samuel, 15.
Wordsworth, William, 39, 48, 53, 181, 182, 208, 297.
Wotton, Henry, 106.
Wycherly, William, 284.
Zoroaster, 17.
University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Goldsmith makes his Chinese philosopher recount the name of
Homer as the first poet and beggar among the ancients,--a blind man
whose mouth was more frequently filled with verses than with bread.]
[Footnote 2: Shakespeare's line expired in his daughter's only daughter.
Several of the descendants of Shakespeare's sister Joan, bearing a
strong family likeness to the great poet, were, so late as 1852, living
in and about Stratford, chiefly in a state of indigence.]
[Footnote 3: I have no doubt whatever that Homer is a mere concrete name
for the rhapsodies of the Iliad. Of course there was a Homer, and twenty
besides. I will engage to compile twelve books, with characters just as
distinct and consistent as those of the Iliad, from the metrical ballads
and other chronicles of England, about Arthur and the Knights of the
Round Table.--_Coleridge._]
[Footnote 4: They must needs be men of lofty stature, whose shadows
lengthen out to remote posterity.--_Hazlitt._]
[Footnote 5: The Edinburgh "Review," once the most formidable of
critical journals, took its motto from Publius Syrus:--
"Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvetur."]
[Footnote 6: The kindly human sympathy exhibited by Terence contributed
largely to the popularity of his dramas. Whenever the often-quoted
words, "I am a man; and I have an interest in everything that concerns
humanity," were spoken upon the Roman stage, they were received with
tumultuous applause by all classes.]
[Footnote 7: Crassus, a Roman triumvir, noted for his great wealth, who
lived about a hundred years before the Christian Era, bought and sold
slaves. These he educated, and taught the highest accomplishments of the
day, sparing no labor or expense for the purpose. These educated slaves
were then sold for large sums of money, so that any rich man could own
his private poet and scholar. We are told by Plutarch that some of these
slaves brought enormous prices into the treasury of Crassus.]
[Footnote 8: "What can they see in the longest kingly line in Europe,"
asks Sir Walter Scott, "save that it runs back to a successful
soldier?"]
[Footnote 9: When approached by Madame de Tencin, who was finally eager
to acknowledge so distinguished a son, he replied:--
"Je ne connais qu'une mère, c'est la vitrière."]
[Footnote 10: I knew a very wise man that believed if a man were
permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the
laws of a nation.--_Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun._]
[Footnote 11: Rachel made her debut at the Théâtre Français of Paris, in
1838. She came to this country in 1855, and performed in our Eastern
cities. Three years later she died of consumption, near Cannes, in the
South of France. When she was giving one of her readings before the Duke
of Wellington, she perceived that all her audience were ignorant of the
French language except the Duke himself. She went on, however, at her
best, consoling herself that he at least understood her. After it was
over, the Duke approached the great actress, and said: "Mademoiselle,
our guests have had a great advantage over me; they have had the
happiness of hearing you: I am as deaf as a post."]
[Footnote 12: Hazlitt, after remarking that Shakespeare's play of "All's
Well that Ends Well" is taken from Boccaccio, adds: "The poet has
dramatized the original novel with great skill and comic spirit, and has
preserved all the beauty of character and sentiment without improving
upon it, which is impossible." In the town of Certaldo, Tuscany, the
house in which Boccaccio was born is shown to curious travellers. On the
façade is an inscription speaking of the small house and a name which
filled the world. "Before seven years of age," says Boccaccio, "when as
yet I had met with no stories, was without a master, and hardly knew my
letters, I had a natural talent for fiction, and produced some small
tales."]
[Footnote 13: The author has stood upon the Bridge of Pinos, at Granada,
from whence Columbus, discouraged and nearly heart-broken, was recalled
by Isabella, after having been denied and dismissed, as he supposed, for
the last time. The messenger of the relenting queen overtook the great
pilot at the bridge, and conducted him back to the Hall of the
Ambassadors, in the Alhambra.]
[Footnote 14: Disraeli tells us that the French ambassador to Spain,
meeting Cervantes, congratulated him on the great success and reputation
gained by his "Don Quixote;" whereupon the author whispered in his ear:
"Had it not been for the Inquisition, I should have made my book much
more entertaining." When Cervantes was a captive, and in prison at
Algiers, he concerted a plan to free himself and his comrades. One of
them traitorously betrayed the plot. They were all conveyed before the
Dey of Algiers, who promised them their lives if they would betray the
contriver of the plot. "I was that person," replied Cervantes; "save my
companions, and let me perish." The Dey, struck with his noble
confession, spared his life and permitted them all to be ransomed.]
[Footnote 15: "The Testimony of the Rocks," a noble and monumental work,
by Hugh Miller, was published in 1857. The night following its
completion its author shot himself through the heart. The overworked
brain had given out, and all was chaos. He had sense enough left to
write a few loving lines to his wife and children, and to say farewell.]
[Footnote 16: Falling into a state of morbid despondency and mental
derangement, Tannahill committed suicide, by drowning, in his
thirty-sixth year. James Hogg, the "Ettrick Shepherd," visited him a
short time before his death. "Farewell," said Tannahill, as he grasped
his brother poet's hand; "we shall never meet again!"]
[Footnote 17: One of Bunyan's biographers tells us his library consisted
of two books,--the Bible and Fox's "Book of Martyrs." The latter work,
in three volumes, is preserved in the Bedford town library, and contains
Bunyan's name at the foot of the titlepages written by himself. Bunyan's
crime, for which he was imprisoned twelve years, was teaching plain
country people the knowledge of the Scriptures and the practice of
virtue.]
[Footnote 18: Is it generally known that among the accomplishments of
his after years was that of music and an instrumental performer? Leigh
Hunt says that "Dr. Franklin offered to teach my mother the guitar, but
she was too bashful to become his pupil. She regretted this afterwards,
possibly from having missed so illustrious a master. Her first child,
who died, was named after him."
In his Autobiography Franklin says: "At ten years of age I was called
home to assist my father in his occupation, which was that of a
soap-boiler and tallow-chandler, a business to which he had served no
apprenticeship, but which he embraced on his arrival in New England,
because he found his own, that of a dyer, in too little request. I was
accordingly employed in cutting the wicks, filling the moulds," etc.]
[Footnote 19: His original name was John Horne, but being adopted and
educated by William Tooke, he assumed his name. His humble birth being
suspected by the proud striplings at Eton, when he was questioned as to
his father he replied, "He was a Turkey merchant!" He was imprisoned for
a year because he said that certain Americans were "murdered" by the
king's troops at Lexington!]
[Footnote 20: Elliott, the Corn-Law Rhymer, was no pander to popular
cries unless they were founded on reason. Being asked, "What is a
communist?" he answered, "One who has yearnings for equal division of
unequal earnings. Idler or bungler, he is willing to fork out his penny
and pocket your shilling." Whipple says: "His poetry could hardly be
written by a man who was not physically strong. You can hear the ring of
his anvil, and see the sparks fly off from his furnace, as you read his
verses."]
[Footnote 21: While these notes are writing, the city of Boston is
erecting a bronze statue to the memory of Garrison, which is to adorn
one of its finest and largest public parks,--a fitting tribute to the
honored philanthropist.]
[Footnote 22: Hosea Biglow's words are specially applicable here:--
"An' yit I love th' unhighschooled way
Ol' farmers hed when I wuz younger;
Their talk wuz meatier, an' 'ould stay,
While book-froth seems to whet your hunger."]
[Footnote 23: His "Death on the Pale Horse," now in the Academy of Fine
Arts at Philadelphia, is the most remarkable of his productions in this
country. The Pennsylvania Hospital, in the same city, has also "Christ
Healing the Sick," by West,--a truly noble conception, a vigorous work
of art, and a generous gift from the author.]
[Footnote 24: His old employer, Moses Kimball, paid Ball twenty thousand
dollars for the bronze group now standing in Park Square. It represents
President Lincoln Freeing the Slaves. The purchaser presented it to the
city of Boston.]
[Footnote 25: Hans Christian Andersen was one of the most gifted of
modern authors. In his story entitled "Only a Fiddler," he has given
many striking pictures from the experience of his own life. His best
books are his fairy-tales, of which he has published several volumes.]
[Footnote 26: Any one who could place the tragedy of "Cleone" before
that of "Venice Preserved," by Otway, in point of merit, must have been
singularly prejudiced.]
[Footnote 27: Thackeray says: "He was lazy, kindly, uncommonly idle;
rather slovenly, forever eating and saying good things. A little French
abbé of a man, sleek, soft-handed, and soft-hearted." A Mr. Rich was the
manager of the theatre in which Gay's "Beggar's Opera" was brought out.
Its unprecedented success suggested the epigram that "it made Rich gay,
and Gay rich."]
[Footnote 28: Among his liberal bequests were four hundred thousand
dollars for the establishment of a public library in New York, to which
his son, William B. Astor, subsequently added as much more. The Astor
Library is therefore one of the best endowed institutions of the kind in
America.]
[Footnote 29: Webster, when told that there was no room for new lawyers
in a profession already overcrowded, answered, with the proud
consciousness of genius and character, "There is always room at the
top."]
[Footnote 30: Charles XII. put his whole soul into the cause of Sweden
at the time when she was threatened with extinction by her enemies. He
fought all Europe,--Danes, Russians, Poles, Germans,--and gave away a
kingdom before he was twenty. At his coronation at Upsala, he snatched
the crown from the hands of the archbishop and set it proudly on his
head with his own hands.]
[Footnote 31: Whipple speaks of three characters "who seem to have been
statesmen from the nursery." These were: "Octavius Cæsar, more
successful in the arts of policy than even the great Julius, never
guilty of youthful indiscretion, or, we are sorry to say, of youthful
virtue; Maurice of Saxony, the preserver of the Reformed religion in
Germany, in that memorable contest in which his youthful sagacity proved
more than a match for the veteran craft of Charles V.; and the second
William of Orange, the preserver of the liberties of Europe against the
ambition of Louis XIV., who, as a child, may be said to have prattled
treaties and lisped despatches."]
[Footnote 32: Nothing is so beneficial to a young author as the advice
of a man whose judgment stands constitutionally at the freezing
point.--_Douglas Jerrold._]
[Footnote 33: The life of Jeanne d'Arc is like a legend in the midst of
history.--_Waller._]
[Footnote 34: After a couple of years Hall was restored to the full
possession of his faculties, and for twenty years thereafter maintained
his high reputation as a pulpit orator. He died in 1831.]
[Footnote 35: Fifty years after these poems were published, as we are
informed by the publishers, there is a steady demand for from two to
three hundred copies annually. Of how many American books, of a similar
character, can this be said?]
[Footnote 36: I wrote things, I'm ashamed to say how soon. Part of an
epic poem when about twelve. The scene of it lay at Rhodes and some of
the neighboring islands; and the poem opened under water, with a
description of the Court of Neptune.--_Pope._]
[Footnote 37: Lord Brougham hoped to see the day when every man in the
United Kingdom could read Bacon. "It would be much more to the purpose,"
said Cobbett, "if his lordship could use his influence to see that every
man in the kingdom could _eat_ bacon."]
[Footnote 38: On a certain occasion when Barry, the eminent painter,
exhibited one of his admirable pictures, some one present doubted that
it was his work, so remarkable was its excellence, and Barry at the time
had not established any special fame. The artist was so affected by the
remark that he burst into tears and retired. Burke, who was present,
followed him to pacify his grief. The painter by chance quoted some
passages of the newly published essay on the "Sublime and Beautiful." It
appeared anonymously, and Burke took occasion to sneer at it, when Barry
showed more feeling than he had done about his picture. He commended the
essay in the most earnest language. Burke, smiling, acknowledged its
authorship. "I could not afford to buy it," replied the astonished
artist, "but I transcribed every line with my own hands;" at the same
time pulling the manuscript from his pocket. This was commendation so
sincere and appreciative, that the great author and the great painter
clasped hands in mutual friendship.]
[Footnote 39: Menander, the poet, was Theophrastus's favorite pupil.]
[Footnote 40: Winckelmann, one of the most distinguished writers on
classic antiquities and the fine arts, was the son of a shoemaker. He
contrived, by submitting to all sorts of personal deprivation, to fit
himself for college, and to go through with the studies there by
teaching young and less advanced fellow-students, at the same time
supporting a bedridden and helpless father.]
[Footnote 41: "People may be taken in once, who imagine that an author
is greater in private life than other men," says Dr. Johnson.]
[Footnote 42: Such incongruities do exist: nothing is infallible;
phrenologists even find the crania of some men to exhibit contradictory
evidences. When Sydney Smith with some friends submitted his head to be
examined by a phrenologist who did not know him, the party were amused
at the examiner declaring him to be a great naturalist,--"never happier
than when arranging his birds and fishes." "Sir," said the divine, "I
don't know a fish from a bird!"]
[Footnote 43: "Men of genius," says Longfellow, "are often dull and
inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is
only a stone."]
[Footnote 44: Dryden said of himself: "My conversation is slow and dull,
my humor saturnine and reserved. In short, I am none of these who
endeavor to break jests in company, or make repartees." And yet at
Will's Coffee-House, where the wits of the town met, his chair in winter
was always in the warmest nook by the fire, and in summer was placed in
the balcony. "To bow to him, and to hear his opinion of Racine's last
tragedy or of Bossuet's treatise on epic poetry was thought a privilege.
A pinch from his snuff-box was an honor sufficient to turn the head of a
young enthusiast." Every one must remember how, in Scott's novel of the
"Pirate," Claud Halcro is continually boasting of having obtained at
least that honor from "Glorious John."]
[Footnote 45: Jonson was a bricklayer, like his father before him. "Let
them blush not that have, but those who have not, a lawful calling,"
says Thomas Fuller as he records this fact; and goes on to say that
"Jonson helped in the construction of Lincoln's Inn, with a trowel in
his hand and a book in his pocket. Some gentlemen pitying that his parts
should be buried under the rubbish of so mean a calling, did by their
bounty manumise him freely to follow his own ingenious inclinations."]
[Footnote 46: Margaret Fuller by marriage became the Marchioness of
Ossoli, and with her husband and child perished in the wreck of the brig
"Elizabeth," from Leghorn, near Fire Island, in 1850. She was one of the
most gifted literary women of America.]
[Footnote 47: Garrick was so popular that it was impossible for him to
respond to half the social invitations which he received from the
nobility. Even royalty itself honored him by private interviews, often
listening to his readings in the domestic circle of the palace. Though
he was always rewarded by the hearty approval of the king and queen, he
said its effect upon him was like a "wet blanket" compared with the
thunders of applause which he usually received in public.]
[Footnote 48: Sir Walter Scott greatly admired Maria Edgeworth's novels,
complimenting "her wonderful power of vivifying all her persons and
making them live as beings in your mind." Lord Jeffrey honored "their
singular union of sober sense and inexhaustible invention." She died in
1849, in her eighty-second year.]
[Footnote 49: Southey was marvellously industrious, as over one hundred
published volumes testify. Few men have been students so long and
consecutively. He possessed one of the largest private libraries in
England. He says: "Having no library within reach, I live upon my own
stores, which are, however, more ample perhaps than were ever before
possessed by one whose whole estate was in his inkstand." He generously
supported the family of Coleridge, who were left destitute. His first
wife was a sister of Coleridge's wife.]
[Footnote 50: "To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous,"
says Hazlitt; "even if he did, you would find fault with him as a
pedant."]
[Footnote 51: There is a sort of knowledge beyond the power of learning
to bestow, and this is to be had in conversation: so necessary is this
to understanding the characters of men, that none are more ignorant of
them than those learned pedants whose lives have been entirely consumed
in colleges and among books.--_Fielding._]
[Footnote 52: His publishers paid Moore three thousand guineas for the
copyright of "Lalla Rookh," his favorite production; and the liberal
purchasers, Longman & Co., had no reason to regret their bargain. When
Moore's "Lalla Rookh" first appeared, the author was terribly taken
aback in company by Lady Holland, who said to him, "Mr. Moore, I don't
intend to read your Larry O'Rourke; I don't like Irish stories!"]
[Footnote 53: Madame de Lafayette was a warm friend of Rochefoucauld.
She was intimately allied to the clever men of the time, and was
respected and loved by them. The author of the "Maxims" owed much to
her, while she also was under obligations to him. Their friendship was
of mutual benefit. "He gave me intellect," she said, "and I reformed his
heart."]
[Footnote 54: His enemies having declared that De Vega's dramas were not
judged upon their merit, but were popular because they bore his
name,--to try the public taste he wrote and published a book of poems
anonymously, entitled "Soliloquies on God." Their merit was undisputed,
and they were vastly popular, until the carping critics threatened him
with the unknown author as a rival. His triumph when he claimed them as
his own was complete.]
[Footnote 55: Coleridge tells us how he was once cured of infidelity by
his teacher. "I told Boyer that I hated the thought of becoming a
clergyman. 'Why so?' said he. 'Because, to tell you the truth, sir,' I
said, 'I'm an infidel!' For this, without further ado, Boyer flogged
me,--wisely, as I think, soundly, as I know. Any whining or sermonizing
would have gratified my vanity, and confirmed me in my absurdity; as it
was, I was laughed at, and got heartily ashamed of my folly."]
[Footnote 56: When Hume was in Paris receiving the homage of the
philosophers, three little boys were brought before him, who
complimented him after the fashion of grown persons, expressing their
admiration for his beautiful history. These children afterwards
succeeded to the throne as Louis XVI., his brother, Louis XVIII., and
Charles X.]
[Footnote 57: This was the Tom Paine on whom was written one of the most
felicitous of epitaphs:--
"Here lies Tom Paine, who wrote in Liberty's defence,
But in his 'Age of Reason' lost his 'Common Sense.'"]
[Footnote 58: Bacon was full of crotchets, so to speak. In spring, he
would go out for a drive in an open coach while it rained, to receive
"the benefit of irrigation," which, he contended, was "most wholesome
because of the nitre in the air, and the universal spirit of the world."
He had extraordinary notions and indulged them freely, such as dosing
himself with chemicals, rhubarb, nitre, saffron, and many other
medicines. At every meal his table was abundantly strewn with flowers
and sweet herbs.]
[Footnote 59: It is curious that St. Pierre's story of Paul and
Virginia, which has since proved one of the most popular tales ever
written, was at first listened to by the author's friends so coldly that
after it was finished he laid it by for months; but when it once got
into print the public indorsed it immediately, and fresh editions
followed each other in rapid succession.]
[Footnote 60: Poor, dear Rogers! Smith was disposed to be a little too
hard on him. Some one having asked after Rogers's health in Smith's
presence, he replied, "He's not very well." "Why, what's the matter?"
rejoined the querist. "Oh, don't you know," said Smith, "he's produced a
couplet;" and added: "When our friend is delivered of a couplet with
infinite labor and pain, he takes to his bed, has straw laid down, the
knocker tied up, expects his friends to call and make inquiries, and the
answer at the door invariably is, 'Mr. Rogers and his little couplet are
as well as can be expected'!"]
[Footnote 61: That excellent and conservative critic, Epes Sargent, says
of the author of "Don Juan," "He may have been overrated in his day; but
his place in English literature must ever be in the front rank of the
immortals." "Byron," said Emerson once, "had large utterance, but little
to say,"--a half-truth pointedly expressed; but, alluding to Byron's
poems in his later life, acknowledging their captivating energy, Emerson
denied having uttered, even in conversation, so derogatory a remark of
him who was, with all his limitations, a bard palpably inspired.]
[Footnote 62: "I had learned from his works," remarks Lady Blessington,
after meeting Landor at Florence, in May, 1825, "to form a high opinion
of the man as well as the author. But I was not prepared to find in him
the courtly, polished gentleman of high breeding, of manners,
deportment, and demeanor, that one might expect to meet with in one who
had passed the greater part of his life in courts."]
[Footnote 63: This man scornfully renounces your civil
organizations,--county and city, or governor or army; is his own navy
and artillery, judge and jury, legislature and executive. He has learned
his lessons in a bitter school.--_Emerson._]
[Footnote 64: "Every one of my writings," says Goethe, "has been
furnished to me by a thousand different persons, by a thousand different
things. The learned and the ignorant, the wise and the foolish, infancy
and age, have come in turn, generally without having been the least
suspicious of it, to bring me the offering of their thoughts, their
faculties, their experience; often have they sown the harvest I have
reaped. My work is that of an aggregation of human beings taken from the
whole of nature; it bears the name of Goethe."]
[Footnote 65: When only eighteen years of age, in 1777, he wrote "The
Robbers," a tragedy of extraordinary power, though he characterized it
at a later day as "a monster for which fortunately there was no
original." During a few years after its first publication it was
translated into various languages and read all over Europe.]
[Footnote 66: Such facts as the following lead us to draw rather
disparaging conclusions as to Dryden's character. He was short of money
at a certain time, and sent to Jacob Tonson, his publisher, asking him
to advance him some, which Tonson declined to do; whereupon Dryden sent
him these lines, adding, "Tell the dog that he who wrote these can write
more":--
"With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled skin,
With two left legs, and Judas-colored hair,
And frowzy pores, that taint the ambient air!"
The bookseller felt the force of the description, and to avoid trouble
immediately sent the insulting poet the money.]
[Footnote 67: The real name of this lady is Louise de la Rame. Her
father was a Frenchman and her mother of English birth. The name of
"Ouida" is an infantine corruption of her baptismal name Louise. Her
first episode in love occurred when she was a maiden of forty years,
resulting finally in a most embittering disappointment.]
[Footnote 68: Burns realized his own unfortunate lack of self-control,
but he gives good advice to others, as follows:--
"Reader, attend! Whether thy soul
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole,
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole
In low pursuit,--
Know, prudent, cautious self-control
Is wisdom's root."]
[Footnote 69: It is said to have been when Handel's great appetite was
being spoken of as rather at antipodes with his glorious musical
conceptions, that Sydney Smith remarked, "his own idea of heaven was
eating _foie gras_ to the sound of trumpets!"]
[Footnote 70: The overture to "Don Giovanni," generally considered to be
the best portion of the opera, was written by Mozart in _two hours_, he
having overslept himself. It was copied in great haste by the scribes,
and actually played for the first time without rehearsal.]
[Footnote 71: The poet Carpani once asked his friend Haydn how it
happened that his church music was of so animating and cheerful a
character. "I cannot make it otherwise," replied the composer; "I write
according to the thoughts which I feel. When I think of God, my heart is
so full of joy that the notes dance and leap as it were from my pen."]
[Footnote 72: Dumas was a charming story-teller in society. Being at a
large party one evening, the hostess tried to draw him out to exhibit
his powers in this line. At last, weary of being importuned, he said:
"Every one to his trade, madam. The gentleman who entered your
drawing-room just before me is a distinguished artillery officer. Let
him bring a cannon here and fire it; then I will tell one of my little
stories."]
[Footnote 73: Churchill was a spendthrift of fame, and enjoyed all his
revenue while he lived; posterity owes him little, and pays him
nothing.--_Disraeli._]
[Footnote 74: Wither had a strange career. He was imprisoned for some
published satire in 1613, at the age of twenty-five, but lived to his
eightieth year, dying finally in misery and obscurity.]
[Footnote 75: Dr. Johnson was not particularly inclined to "smash
images;" but when he looked for the first time upon Callcott's picture
of "Milton and his Daughters," one of whom holds a pen as if about to
write from his dictation, the doctor coolly remarked, "The daughters
were never taught to write!"]
[Footnote 76: Such a superiority do the pursuits of literature possess
over other occupation, that even he who attains but a mediocrity merits
pre-eminence above those that excel the most in the common and vulgar
professions.--_Hume._]
[Footnote 77: Allston's death was peculiar. It occurred in 1843, after a
cheerful evening passed in the midst of his friends. He had just laid
his hand on the head of a favorite young friend, and after begging her
to live as near perfection as she could, he blessed her with fervent
solemnity, and with that blessing on his lips, died.]
[Footnote 78: The farm of William M. Evarts is situated in Vermont. He
once, in eulogizing that State, declared that no criminal was allowed to
enter its prisons unless he furnished evidence of good moral character
before he committed his crime!]
[Footnote 79: E. P. Whipple said of Agassiz in 1866: "He is not merely a
scientific thinker, he is a scientific force; and no small portion of
the immense influence he exerts is due to the energy, intensity, and
geniality which distinguish the nature of the man. In personal
intercourse he inspires as well as informs; communicates not only
knowledge, but the love of knowledge."]
[Footnote 80: On the fly-leaf of a volume of Anderson's "British Poets"
he wrote the following lines:--
"Ye autograph-secreting thieves,
Keep scissors from these precious leaves,
And likewise thumbs, profane and greasy,
From pages hallowed by S. T. C."]
[Footnote 81:
The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait.--_Shakespeare._]
[Footnote 82: When Lamb was once asked by a friend why he did not leave
off smoking, he humorously replied that he could find no equivalent
_vice_.]
[Footnote 83: A patient who had been an inveterate smoker of tobacco for
years, on entering the hospital was placed in a hot water bath, and here
he remained for half an hour. A frog and other aqueous animals placed in
the same water after it had become cool, died instantly; showing that
the patient had exuded by the pores of the skin sufficient nicotine to
impregnate the water.]
[Footnote 84: At another time, having been greatly annoyed by the
persistent crying and screaming of some infant children, Lamb tried to
bear it patiently; but finally he quietly ejaculated, "B-b-blessed b-be
the m-memory of g-good King Herod!"]
[Footnote 85: Hayden, the painter, says of Keats, that at dinner he
would swallow some grains of red pepper in order that he might enjoy the
more the "delicious coolness of claret."]
[Footnote 86: It was at Holland House, of which he became possessed by
marriage, that Addison
"Taught us how to live; and (oh! too high
A price for knowledge) taught us how to die."]
[Footnote 87: Those were days when people drank freely. "How I should
like," said Grattan one day to Rogers, "to spend my whole life in a
small neat cottage! I could be content with very little; I should need
only cold meat, and bread, and beer, and _plenty of claret_."]
[Footnote 88: The blemishes of great men are not the less blemishes; but
they are, unfortunately, the easiest part for imitation.--_Disraeli._]
[Footnote 89: Occupied, the last time the author visited Milan, as
barracks for a cavalry regiment. Time and exposure are fast obliterating
the original work of Da Vinci. In 1520 Leonardo da Vinci visited France
at the urgent solicitation of Francis I. His health was feeble, and the
king often came to Fontainebleau to see him. One day when the king
entered, Leonardo rose up in bed to receive him, but in the effort
fainted. Francis hastened to support him; but the eyes of the artist
closed forever, and he lay encircled in the arms of the monarch.]
[Footnote 90: The original copy of this work is still preserved, dated
1671, though it was not published until 1690,--an evidence of the
author's great caution in offering his views to the public. Three of his
works were not published until after his death.]
[Footnote 91: Rogers says that Gibbon took very little exercise. He had
been staying some time with Lord Sheffield in the country; and when he
was about to go away, the servants could not find his hat. "Bless me,"
said Gibbon, "I certainly left it in the hall on my arrival here." He
had not stirred out of the house during the whole of the visit.]
[Footnote 92: Châteaubriand was the most famous French author of the
First Empire. It will be remembered that he visited this country in
1791. He wrote, relative to dining with Washington at Philadelphia:
"There is a virtue in the look of a great man. I felt myself warmed and
refreshed by it during the rest of my life." His career was full of
remarkable vicissitudes. He was once left for dead on the battlefield,
suffered banishment, and was for a time imprisoned in the Bastile.]
[Footnote 93: Thackeray says of Congreve: "He loved, conquered, and
jilted the beautiful Bracegirdle, the heroine of all his plays, the
favorite of all the town of her day."]
[Footnote 94: Galileo was remarkable, even in his youth, for mechanical
genius, and also for his accomplishments in painting, poetry, music, and
song. In early childhood, it is said of him, "while other boys were
whipping their tops, he was scientifically considering the cause of the
motion."]
[Footnote 95: "I was nigh taking my life with my own hands," he wrote,
"but art held me back. I could not leave the world until I had revealed
what was within me." In view of his great misfortune, his dying words
are very touching: "I shall be able to hear in heaven!"]
[Footnote 96: When "Paradise Lost" was first published, in 1667, Edmund
Waller, himself a poet, politician, and critic, said: "The old blind
schoolmaster, John Milton, has published a tedious poem on the fall of
man; if its length be not considered a merit, it has no other." The
second edition was not brought out until seven years later, 1674, the
year in which Milton died. This edition was prefaced by two short poems,
the first by Andrew Marvell in English, and the second by Samuel Barrow
in Latin, in which Milton's poem is placed "above all Greek, above all
Roman fame."]
[Footnote 97: When a friend complained to Camoens that he had not
furnished some promised verses for him, the disheartened poet replied:
"When I wrote verses I was young, had sufficient food, was a lover, and
beloved by many friends, and by the ladies; then I felt poetical ardor;
now I have no spirits to write, no peace of mind or of body."]
[Footnote 98: The county jail in which Bunyan spent the twelve years of
his life from 1660 to 1672 was taken down in 1801. It stood on what is
now the vacant piece of land at the corner of the High Street and Silver
Street, used as a market-place, in Bedford. Silver Street was so named
because it was the quarter where the Jews in early times trafficked in
the precious metals.]
[Footnote 99: Ben Jonson tried his fortune as an actor, but did not
succeed. A duel with a brother actor, whom unhappily he killed, caused
him to be imprisoned by the sentence of the court. He was ten years
younger than Shakespeare, and survived him twenty-one years, dying in
1637.]
[Footnote 100: Imprisonment could not deprive Boëthius of the
consolation of philosophy, nor Raleigh of his eloquence, nor Davenant of
his grace, nor Chaucer of his mirth: nor five years of slavery at
Algiers deaden the wit of Cervantes.--_Willmott._]
[Footnote 101: Urged by the King of Spain to punish Raleigh for his
attack on the town of St. Thomas, James I. basely resolved to carry into
execution a sentence sixteen years old, which had been followed by an
imprisonment of thirteen years, and then a release. So Raleigh was
brought up before the Court of King's Bench to receive sentence, and was
beheaded the next morning.]
[Footnote 102: Philip III., King of Spain, saw a student one day at a
distance on the banks of the river Manzanares, reading a book, and from
time to time breaking off to roar with laughter and show other signs of
delight. "That person is either mad or is reading 'Don Quixote,'" said
the king,--a volume of panegyric in a few words. Cervantes did not have
to wait the verdict of posterity as to his incomparable history of the
famous Knight La Mancha; it sprung at once into unbounded popularity,
while "it laughed Spain's chivalry away."]
[Footnote 103: During Theodore Hook's confinement in a sponging-house in
London he was visited by an old friend. Astonished at the comparative
spaciousness of the apartment, the latter observed by way of
consolation, "Really, Hook, you are not so badly lodged, after all. This
is a cheerful room enough." "Oh, yes," replied Theodore, pointing
significantly to the iron defences outside; "remarkably so--barring the
windows."]
[Footnote 104:
"Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.
"True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
"Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more."]
[Footnote 105: Swift and Prior were very intimate, and he is frequently
mentioned in the "Journal to Stella." "Mr. Prior," says Swift, "walks to
make himself fat, and I to keep myself lean. We often walk round the
Park together."]
[Footnote 106: De Quincey was often very happily delivered of witty
ideas. He said on one occasion, "If once a man indulges himself in
murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing
he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to
incivility and procrastination. Once being upon this downward path, you
never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from
some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time."]
[Footnote 107: "I cannot bear much thinking," said Cowper. "The meshes
of the brain are composed of such mere spinner's threads in me, that
when a long thought finds its way into them, it buzzes and twangs and
bustles about at such a rate as seems to threaten the whole
contexture."]
[Footnote 108: Macaulay spoke with great admiration of Bentham, and
placed him in the same rank with Galileo and Locke, designating him as
"the man who found jurisprudence a gibberish, and left it a science."]
[Footnote 109: Béranger's first collection of songs was published in
1815 and received with great favor by the people; but the bold,
patriotic, and often satirical tone of these songs gave offence to the
Government; and as the author did not abate the freedom of his criticism
in future poems, he was condemned to imprisonment and to pay a heavy
fine.]
[Footnote 110: "In a cellar, or the meanest haunt of the casual
wanderer, was to be found," as Dr. Johnson says, "the man whose
knowledge of life might have aided the statesman, whose eloquence might
have influenced senates, and whose conversation might have polished
courts."]
[Footnote 111: Mozart said of him that he struck you, whenever he
pleased, with a thunderbolt. Leigh Hunt also said he was the Jupiter of
music; nor is the title the less warranted from his including in his
genius the most affecting tenderness as well as the most overpowering
grandeur.]
[Footnote 112: His biographer tells us that the King of Prussia offered
him three thousand crowns a year, to attract him to Berlin; but he
declined to quit the service of the Emperor Joseph, who paid him only
eight hundred florins; and that he was often reduced to painful distress
for want of money while he lived in Vienna.]
[Footnote 113: We see that which we bring eyes to see, and appreciation
presupposes a degree of the same genius in ourselves. Mozart's wife said
of him that he was a better dancer than musician. Leigh Hunt tells us
that when Mozart became a great musician, a man in distress accosted him
in the street, and as the composer had no money to give him, he bade him
wait a little, while he went into a coffee-house, where he wrote a
beautiful minuet extempore, and, sending the poor man to the nearest
music-dealer's, made him a present of the handsome sum gladly paid by
the publisher.]
[Footnote 114: This book, which none of us fail to read and read again
with delight, was at first very coldly received, and severely attacked
by the reviewers; until Lord Holland, being ill, sent to his bookseller
for some amusing book to read, and received the "Vicar of "Wakefield."
He read it, and was so much pleased with it that he mentioned it
wherever he visited. The consequence was, the first edition was rapidly
exhausted, and the fame of the book established.]
[Footnote 115: Perhaps the cause of Dante's struggle through life lay in
that reckless sarcasm which prompted his answer to the Prince of Verona,
who asked him how he could account for the fact, that in the household
of princes the court fool was in greater favor than the philosopher.
"Similarity of mind," said the fierce genius, "is all over the world the
source of friendship."]
[Footnote 116: Kotzebue was fifty-eight years of age when he was
assassinated at Mannheim, in 1819, by Karl Ludwig Sand, who was actuated
by a fanatical zeal against one whom he considered a traitor to liberty.
Kotzebue was a prolific writer, and has left several dramas.]
[Footnote 117: The sad lines in his last poem, entitled "Waiting for
Death," will long be remembered:--
"Deformed and wrinkled; all that I can crave
Is quiet in my grave.
Such as live happy hold long life a jewel;
But to me thou art cruel
If thou end not my tedious misery,
And I soon cease to be.
Strike, and strike home then; pity unto me,
In one short hour's delay, is tyranny!"]
[Footnote 118: "Schiller," says Coleridge, "has the material sublime to
produce an effect; he sets a whole town on fire, and throws infants with
their mothers into the flames, or locks up a father in an old tower. But
Shakespeare drops a handkerchief, and the same or greater effect
follows."]
[Footnote 119: "'Hudibras,'" says Hallam, "was incomparably more popular
than 'Paradise Lost.' No poem in our language rose at once to so great
reputation; nor can this remarkable popularity be called ephemeral, for
it is looked upon to-day as a classic." Butler died in 1680.]
[Footnote 120: "Benvenuto Cellini, the jeweller, engraver, poet,
musician, soldier, sculptor, and lover: and in all so truly admirable!"
His autobiography remained in dusty oblivion for the period of two
hundred years after his death before it met the public eye.]
[Footnote 121: "We quote a verse from his "Death-Bed Lament," contained
in this volume:--
"Deceiving world, that with alluring toys
Hast made my life the subject of thy scorn,
And scornest now to lend thy fading joys,
To out-length my life, whom friends have left forlorn;--
How well are they that die ere they are born,
And never see thy slights, which few men shun,
Till unawares they helpless are undone!"]
[Footnote 122: Before Miller died, he had cleared over eighteen thousand
pounds by the publication of "Tom Jones." The number of editions that
has been published is almost fabulous. The popularity of Fielding may be
judged of from what Dr. Johnson says of his "Amelia": "It was, perhaps,
the only book, of which, being printed off betimes one morning, a new
edition was called for before night."]
[Footnote 123: Swift has had many biographers; his life has been
told by the kindest and most good-natured of men, Scott, who admired
but could not bring himself to love him; and by stout old Johnson, who,
forced to admit him into the company of poets, receives the famous
Irishman, and takes off his hat to him with a bow of surly recognition,
scans him from head to foot, and passes over to the other side of the
street.--_Thackeray._]
[Footnote 124: Swift at one time in his subtle way declared with
elaborate reasons, that on the whole it would be impolitic to abolish
the Christian religion in England. We have yet to discover a finer piece
of irony. His exquisitely ridiculous proposition to utilize for _food_
the babies born in Ireland, so as to prevent their becoming a burden to
the country, will also be remembered.]
[Footnote 125: It is in the nature of such lords of intellect to be
solitary; they are in the world, but not of it; and our minor struggles,
brawls, successes, pass over them.--_Thackeray._]
[Footnote 126: "In London," says Dawson, "Johnson suffered a great deal
from poverty, and made use of many little artifices to eke out his
scanty means. All the great kindly acts which his large manly heart
prompted him to do cost him much self-denial. When he said that a man
could live very well in a garret for one-and-sixpence a week, the
statement was not a speculative but an experimental one."]
[Footnote 127: Tasso was often obliged to borrow a crown from a friend
to pay for his month's lodging. He has left us a pretty sonnet to his
cat, in which he begs the light of her eyes to write by, being too poor
to purchase a candle.]
[Footnote 128: Burton is said to have been, in the intervals of his
vapors, the most facetious companion in the university where he was
educated. So great was the demand for his "Anatomy of Melancholy," when
published, that his publisher is said to have acquired an estate by the
sale of it.]
[Footnote 129: How appropriate are the lines by Mrs. Browning, dedicated
to Cowper's grave:--
"O poets! from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing!
O Christians! at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging!
O men! this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling,
Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while we were
smiling!"]
[Footnote 130: According to Disraeli, Dr. Hawksworth, who was employed
by the English Government to write an account of Captain Cook's first
voyage, and who was the intimate friend of Dr. Johnson, absolutely died
from the effects of severe criticism. He was an extremely graceful,
effective, and ready writer.]
[Footnote 131: Racine encountered much harsh criticism, which rendered
him very unhappy. He told his son in after years that he suffered far
more pain from the fault found with his productions than he ever
experienced pleasure from their success.]
[Footnote 132: Richter's remark that "some souls fall from heaven like
flowers, but ere the pure fresh buds have had time to open, they are
trodden in the dust of the earth, and lie soiled and crushed beneath the
foul tread of some brutal hoof," has been aptly applied to Keats.]
[Footnote 133: Keats modestly admitted the shortcomings of his early
compositions. He said, "I have written independently, without judgment;
I may write independently and with judgment hereafter. The genius of
poetry must work out its own salvation in a man."]
[Footnote 134: Collins was deeply attached to a young lady, who did not
return his passion, and there is little doubt that the consequent
disappointment preyed upon his mind to such an extent as finally to
dethrone his reason. Dr. Johnson says nothing of this, but tells us how
"he loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters," and how "he delighted
to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence
of golden palaces, and to repose by waterfalls of Elysian gardens."]
[Footnote 135: Johnson met Collins one day with a book under his arm, at
which the former looked inquiringly. "I have but one book," said the
melancholy poet; "it is the Bible." After his death, which occurred in
his thirty-sixth year, there was found among his papers an ode on the
"Superstitions of the Highlands." In his last days he committed many
manuscript poems to the flames.]
[Footnote 136: Shelley's favorite amusement had been boating and
sailing. While returning one day--July 8, 1822--from Leghorn, whither he
had been to welcome Leigh Hunt to Italy, his boat was struck by a squall
and he was drowned. Thus he met the same fate as his deserted wife.]
[Footnote 137: As to Shelley's mode of composition, he said: "When my
brain gets heated with thought, it soon boils and throws off images and
words faster than I can skim them off. In the morning, when cooled down,
out of that rude sketch, as you justly call it, I shall attempt a
drawing."]
[Footnote 138: This production was circulated in manuscript only for the
first three or four years after it was completed. Lockhart says that it
was hearing it read from manuscript that led Scott to produce the "Lay
of the Last Minstrel."]
[Footnote 139: "Genius is rarely conscious of its power," says Hazlitt;
"our own idea is that if Gray had had an eye to his posthumous fame, had
cast a sidelong glance to the approbation of posterity, he would have
failed in producing a work of lasting texture like this."]
[Footnote 140: It is not many years since the auctioneer in a public
salesroom in London, in the course of his advertised list of objects to
be disposed of, held up two small half sheets of paper, all written
over, torn, and mutilated. He called these scraps most interesting, but
apologized for their condition. There was present a highly intelligent
company of amateurs in autographs, attracted by the sale. The first
offer for these scraps of paper was ten pounds. The bids rose rapidly
until sixty-five was reached, when they were knocked off; but as there
proved to be two bidders at that price, it was necessary to put them up
again. They were finally closed at one hundred pounds. These scraps of
paper, which were almost a hundred years old to a day, were the original
copy of "Gray's Elegy."]
[Footnote 141: Speaking of Byron's mother, Dawson, the brilliant English
lecturer, says: "She was a shrieking, howling, red-faced, passionate,
self-indulgent person; now spoiling him by ridiculous indulgence, now
subjecting him to her extravagant wrath. A ridiculous person, an absurd
person, short and fat. What a sight it was to see her in a rage, running
round the room after the lame boy, and he mocking, and dodging, and
hopping about! Although that may be droll to hear, it was tragical to
suffer from; and there is much mercy to be bestowed upon a man whose
father was a blackguard and whose mother was a fool!"]
[Footnote 142: We quote from one of his sister's letters to a
confidential friend: "Charles is very busy at the office; he will be
kept there to-day until seven or eight o'clock. He came home very smoky
and drinky last night, so that I am afraid a hard day's work will not
agree very well with him. I have been eating a mutton-chop all alone,
and I have just been looking into the pint porter-pot, which I find
quite empty, and yet I am still very dry; if you were with me, we would
have a glass of brandy and water, but it is quite impossible to drink
brandy and water by one's self." Is not this a quiet peep behind the
curtain?]
[Footnote 143: It was singular that with his acute sensibility and
tenderness of nature Lamb never cared for music. But this was the case
with Dr. Johnson, Fox, Pitt, and Sir James Mackintosh. Johnson was
observed by a friend to be extremely inattentive at a concert, while a
celebrated solo player was running up the divisions and subdivisions of
notes upon the violin. The friend desiring to induce the Doctor to give
his attention, remarked how difficult the performance was. "Difficult,
do you call it, sir?" replied Johnson. "I wish it were impossible." It
will also be remembered that Goethe was not particularly fond of music.
Once at a court concert in Weimar, when a pianist was in the middle of a
very long sonata, the poet suddenly rose up, and, to the horror of the
assembled ladies and gentlemen, exclaimed, "If this lasts three minutes
longer, I shall confess everything!"]
[Footnote 144: Leigh Hunt tells us that Lamb was under the middle size,
and of fragile make, but with a head as fine as if it had been carved on
purpose. He had a very weak stomach. Three glasses of wine would put him
in as lively a condition as can be wrought in some men only by as many
bottles.]
[Footnote 145: In his volume of wise sayings, which has passed through
many editions, we find this paragraph: "The gamester, if he dies a
martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined. He adds his soul to every
other loss, and by the act of suicide renounces earth to forfeit
heaven!"]
[Footnote 146: When the last scene came, those who had neglected him in
life, at least paid their respects to his remains; twelve thousand
people followed the body of Robert Burns to its resting-place in the
grave.]
[Footnote 147: We find these two verses in Thoreau's published journal:
I.
Canst thou love with thy mind,
And reason with thy heart?
Canst thou be kind,
And from thy darling part?
II.
Canst thou range earth, sea, and air,
And so meet me everywhere?
Through all events I will pursue thee,
Through all persons I will woo thee.]
[Footnote 148: In battle, the maiden displayed a spirit of almost
reckless bravery, leading her followers into the thickest of the fight.
"She was benign," says Michelet, "in the fiercest conflict, good among
the bad, gentle even in war. She wept after the victories, and relieved
with her own hands the necessities of the wounded."]
[Footnote 149: Her husband, George Maclean, was Governor of Cape Coast
Castle, and, as is well known, treated her with marked disrespect, even
going so far as to introduce a favorite mistress into the castle. Some
envious people circulated vile reports as to "L. E. L.," but no one of
intelligence ever heeded them.]
[Footnote 150: "Her gladness was like a burst of sunlight," says one of
her own sex who knew her well; "and if in her sadness she resembled the
night, it was night wearing her stars. She was a Muse, a Grace, a
variable child, a dependent woman, the Italy of human beings."]
[Footnote 151: Charlotte married her father's curate, Mr. Nicholls. The
other two sisters died young and unmarried. "The bringing out of our
book of poems," writes Charlotte, "was hard work. As was to be expected,
neither we nor our poems were at all wanted."]
[Footnote 152: Longfellow was a classmate of Hawthorne in college, and
Franklin Pierce was his most intimate friend. When Pierce was chosen
President, he at once appointed our author to the Consulship at
Liverpool, which lucrative office he held for four years.]
[Footnote 153: Thackeray testifies to his hearty admiration of the elder
Dumas in these words: "I think of the prodigal banquets to which this
Lucullus of a man has invited me, with thanks and wonder."]
[Footnote 154: Jerrold was but twenty-five years of age when he wrote
this the first of his dramas. It was a great success from the start, and
had a run of three hundred consecutive nights, though the author
received but seventy pounds for the copyright.]
[Footnote 155: Sydney Smith, when talking of the bad effect of late
hours, said of a distinguished diner-out, that it should be written on
his tomb, "He dined late,"--to which Luttrell added, "And died early."]
[Footnote 156: Some one told Father Taylor, the well-known seamen's
clergyman of Boston, that a certain individual who was under discussion
was a very good citizen, except for an amiable weakness. "But I have
found," said the practical old preacher, "that weakness of character is
nearly the only defect which cannot be remedied."]
[Footnote 157: The prejudice excited in Queen Anne's mind by the
Archbishop of York, on account of the alleged infidelity in the "Tale of
a Tub," is supposed to be the reason why Swift's aspirations were not
granted by his royal mistress. His final unsatisfactory appointment as
Dean of St. Patrick was awarded to him instead of the coveted
bishopric.]
[Footnote 158: The author remembers him well on the occasion of his
first appearance in this country as a lecturer and public reader. His
style at that time (which was afterwards changed) was that of a modern
dude, wearing flash waistcoats, double watch-chains, gold eye-glasses
and rings.]
[Footnote 159: No father or mother thinks their own children ugly; and
this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the
mind.--_Cervantes._]
[Footnote 160: No one can anticipate the suffrages of posterity. Every
man in judging of himself is his own contemporary. He may feel the gale
of popularity, but he cannot tell how long it will last. His opinion of
himself wants distance, wants time, wants numbers, to set off and
confirm it. He must be indifferent to his own merits before he can feel
a confidence in them. Besides, every one must be sensible of a thousand
weaknesses and deficiencies in himself, whereas genius only leaves
behind it the monuments of its strength.--_Hazlitt._]
[Footnote 161: The "Song of the Shirt" first appeared in "Punch," in
1844; and was Hood's favorite piece of all his published compositions,
though the "Bridge of Sighs" was perhaps more popular with the public.
Hood died in 1845, at the age of forty-seven.]
[Footnote 162: His sister, Mlle. de Scudéri, is better known to us in
literature than himself. She was a distinguished member of the society
which met at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and which has been made so famous
by Molière in his "Précieuses ridicules." She survived her brother some
years.]
[Footnote 163: Sue studied medicine at first, and was with the French
army in Spain (1823) as military surgeon. After inheriting his father's
fortune, he studied painting, but renounced that art finally to engage
in literature. His romances were for a time as popular as those of
Dumas, and in their character as immoral as those of Paul de Kock.]
[Footnote 164: He possessed a diminutive figure, with a pale, attenuated
face, eyes of spiritual brightness, an expansive and calm brow, and his
movements were characterized by a nervous alacrity. Until he reached the
years of middle life he was embarrassed by restricted means and
necessary habits of self-denial.]
[Footnote 165: With gun in hand, and note-book and drawing material by
his side, Audubon explored the coast, lakes, and rivers from Labrador
and Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. As early as 1810 he explored alone the
primeval forests of North America, impelled more by a love of Nature
than a desire to make himself famous. His original and finely
hand-colored illustrated work sold in folio at a thousand dollars a
volume, and is now rare and valuable.]
[Footnote 166: Like Milton, Swift, and other great geniuses, Scott was,
as Swift says of himself at school, "very justly celebrated for his
stupidity." But one is inclined to think that it was largely owing to a
want of talent in his master rather than in the pupil. It will be
remembered that it was the illustrious Samuel Parr, when an undermaster
at Harrow School, who first discovered the latent talent and genius of
Sheridan, and who by judicious cultivation brought it forth and
developed it.]
[Footnote 167: In five or six years subsequent to that failure of his
maiden speech, Disraeli, as he was then known, became leader of the
Opposition in the House, and Chancellor of the Exchequer soon after,
rising rapidly, until in 1868 he became Premier of England.]
[Footnote 168: Richter was a Bavarian, and of very humble birth. During
his youthful career he was reduced to extreme indigence. He became a
tutor in a private family, and afterwards taught school, all the while
striving with his pen both for fame and money, until at last he
"compelled" public appreciation. He is one of the few geniuses of that
period who were happy in their domestic relations. He died at Baireuth
in 1825.]
[Footnote 169: Royer-Collard was an eminent philosopher and statesman,
the founder of a school called the "Doctrinaire," of which Cousin was a
disciple. He was President of the Chamber of Deputies in 1828. His
father's family name was Royer, to which he joined the name of his wife,
Mademoiselle Collard.]
[Footnote 170: Hazlitt was a just but merciless critic. It was he who
designated Moore's productions "the poetry of the toilet-table, of the
saloon, and of the fashionable world,--not the poetry of nature, of the
heart, or of human life;" and the force of the criticism lay in the fact
of its truth.]
[Footnote 171: Goldsmith himself tells us: "My father, the younger son
of a good family, was possessed of a small living in the Church. His
education was above his fortune, and his generosity greater than his
education. Poor as he was, he had his flatterers; for every dinner he
gave them they returned him an equivalent in praise, and this was all he
wanted."]
[Footnote 172: It happened that a certain lady became charmed with
Mirabeau by reading his writings, and wrote him rather a tender letter,
asking him to describe himself to her. He did so by return of post as
follows: "Figure to yourself a tiger that has had the small-pox."
History has not handed down the sequel.]
[Footnote 173: Mirabeau and the Marchioness had agreed on mutual
destruction, by exchanging poisoned locks of hair, if he failed to be
acquitted.]
[Footnote 174: To make the appropriateness of this retort clear, it
should be known that Judge Robinson was the author of many stupid,
slavish, and scurrilous political pamphlets; and by his servility to the
ruling powers he had been raised to the eminence which he thus
shamefully disgraced.]
[Footnote 175: The effect the poem had upon the Earl of Southampton when
he first read it will be remembered. Spenser took it to this noble
patron of poets as soon as it was finished, and sent it up to him. The
earl read a few pages and said to a servant, "Take the writer twenty
pounds." Reading on, he presently cried in rapture, "Carry that man
twenty pounds more." Still he read on; but at length he shouted, "Go
turn that fellow out of the house, for if I read further I shall be
ruined!"]
[Footnote 176: When a boy, West secretly pursued his first attempts at
art, absenting himself from school to do so. Being one day surprised at
his work in the garret of the house by his mother, he expected to be
seriously reproved; but Mrs. West saw incipient genius in her son's work
at the age of ten; so she kissed and congratulated him, promising to
intercede with his father in his behalf that he would forgive him for
his truancy.]
[Footnote 177: It was not without difficulty that Gibbon could obtain a
publisher for his famous History. After it had been declined by several
houses, it was finally undertaken by Thomas Cadell, "on easy terms," as
the author expresses it. It was thought best to publish only five
hundred copies at first; this edition being soon exhausted, edition
after edition followed in rapid succession, until, as Gibbon says, "my
book was on every table and on almost every toilet."]
[Footnote 178: Sydney Smith said of Mrs. Siddons: "What a face she had!
The gods do not bestow such a face as hers on the stage more than once
in a century. I knew her very well, and she had the good taste to laugh
at my jokes; she was an excellent person, but she was not remarkable out
of her profession, and never got out of tragedy even in common life. She
used to _stab_ the potatoes; and said 'Boy, give me a knife!' as she
would have said 'Give me a dagger!'"]
[Footnote 179: "I first discovered Opie," says Dr. Wolcott, "in a little
hovel in the Parish of St. Agnes, Cornwall. He was the son of a poor
sawyer. I was first led to notice him by some drawings which he had
made." The good Doctor gave him material aid, took him to his house, and
finally introduced him into London society.]
[Footnote 180: He fought under Masaniello, and after the final defeat at
Naples he escaped to Florence, where he was befriended by the Grand
Duke, who was a liberal patron of art. His masterpiece is considered to
be the "Conspiracy of Catiline," though he excelled in wild mountain
scenery rather than in the grouping of human figures.]
[Footnote 181: Haydon, the historical painter, had power but not
popularity. Sir Arthur Shea, a man who rose to the height of his
profession as regarded popularity, was Haydon's special aversion. "He
is," Haydon once began, "the most impotent painter in--" His listeners
supposed he would add "the world." That did not satisfy Haydon's
antipathy, and his conclusion was,--"in the solar system!"]
[Footnote 182: Many of our readers will remember a remarkable picture by
Correggio in the Dresden Gallery, representing a "Penitent Magdalen,"
the ineffable and almost divine beauty of which no one can fail to
appreciate. One of the Saxon kings paid six thousand louis-d'ors
($30,000) for this painting, which is only about eighteen inches square.
Twice that sum would not purchase it to-day.]
[Footnote 183: Canova executed a statue of Washington, which ornaments
the State House in Boston, and is known to have produced during his life
fifty statues and as many busts, besides numerous groups in marble. He
died in 1822, having the reputation of being the greatest sculptor of
his age.]
[Footnote 184: Spagnoletto was finally appointed court painter in Spain,
and some of his best paintings still adorn the Madrid Gallery. His
"Adoration of the Shepherds" is familiar to us all, and remains
unsurpassed in power of conception and execution. In the Madrid Museo is
another of his masterpieces, a "Mater Dolorosa."]
[Footnote 185: "Mr. Murphy, sir, you knew Mr. Garrick?" asked Rogers the
poet of that individual. "Yes, sir, I did, and no man better." "Well,
sir, what did you think of his acting?" After a pause: "Well, sir, _off_
the stage he was a mean, sneaking little fellow. But _on_ the
stage"--throwing up his hands and eyes--"oh, my great God!"]
[Footnote 186: In the broad grounds of Abington Abbey, in
Northamptonshire, stands Garrick's mulberry-tree, with this inscription
upon copper attached to one of the limbs: "This tree was planted by
David Garrick, Esq., at the request of Ann Thursby, as a growing
testimony of their friendship, 1778."]
[Footnote 187: Pope was younger than Betterton, but they were very warm
personal friends, and it is thought that the poet aided the actor in the
adaptations which he published from Chaucer, and for which he received
hearty if not merited commendation.]
[Footnote 188: Garrick was for a long time at her feet, and indeed was
at one time engaged to be married to her, but the nuptials were not
consummated. It was generally believed that the engagement was broken
from disinclination on her part.]
[Footnote 189: During the vacation season Miss Woffington went to Bath,
and on her return was telling Quin how much she had been pleased by the
excursion. "And pray, madam," he inquired, "what made you go to Bath?"
"Mere wantonness," she replied. "And pray, madam, did it cure you?"]
[Footnote 190: From the volatility of his mind and conduct, it would be
a misuse of language to say that he had good principles or bad
principles. He had no principles at all. His life was a life of
expedients and appearances, in which he developed a shrewdness and
capacity made up of talent and mystification, of ability and trickery,
which were found equal to almost all emergencies.--_Whipple._]
[Footnote 191: Sheridan probably had not a penny in his pocket. He never
did have for more than a few minutes at a time; yet this was the man of
whose famous speech in the House of Commons Burke said: "It was the most
astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which
there was any record or tradition." And of which Fox said, "All that he
had ever heard, all that he had ever read, when compared with it,
dwindled into nothing, and vanished like vapor before the sun."]
[Footnote 192: "A perpetual fountain of good sense," Dryden calls him;
"and of good humor, too, and wholesome thought," adds Lowell. He was
scholar, courtier, soldier, ambassador, one who had known poverty as a
housemate, and who had been the companion of princes.]
[Footnote 193: Jonson died on the 6th of August, 1637, at the age of
sixty-three. He survived both wife and children. He was buried in
Westminster Abbey. A common slab laid over his grave bears the
inscription, "O Rare Ben Jo_h_nson!"--not Jonson, as it is always
printed. Jonson was a heavy drinker, and it has been said that every
line of his poetry cost him a cup of sack. Canary was his favorite
drink; of which he partook so immoderately that his friends called him
familiarly the Canary Bird.]
[Footnote 194: Coleridge says sadly in his "Literary Life," "I have laid
too many eggs in the hot sands of this wilderness the world, with
ostrich carelessness and ostrich oblivion. The greater part, indeed,
have been trodden under foot and are forgotten. But yet no small number
have crept forth into life, some to furnish feathers for the caps of
others, and still more to plume the shafts in the quiver of my
enemies,--of them that, unprovoked, have lain in wait against my soul."]
[Footnote 195: So disgusted was the paternal upholsterer, Pocquelin, at
his son's choice of the stage for a profession, that he virtually
disowned him. Molière was an assumed name, to save the family honor; but
how rapidly that name became famous.]
[Footnote 196: Molière was fascinated by his young wife; her lighter
follies charmed him. He was a husband who was always a lover. The actor
on the stage was the very man he personated. Mademoiselle Molière, as
she was called by the public, was the Lucile in "Le Bourgeois
Gentilhomme." With what a fervor the poet feels her neglect! with what
eagerness he defends her from the animadversions of the friend who would
have dissolved the spell!--_Disraeli._]
[Footnote 197: Campbell the poet and Turner the artist were dining
together on a certain occasion with a large party. The poet was called
upon for a toast, and by way of a joke on the great professor of the
"sister art" gave, "The Painters and Glaziers." After the laughter had
subsided, the artist was of course summoned to propose a toast also. He
rose, and with admirable tact and ready wit responded to the author of
"Pleasures of Memory" by giving "The Paper-stainers."]
[Footnote 198: Sir Joshua Reynolds was inclined to tell stories about
Goldsmith's negligence in his habits, his want of neatness in dress, his
unkempt appearance at all times, and his absolute want of cleanliness.
No doubt the reflection was merited by the careless author; but the
famous artist was himself such a gross consumer of snuff that his
shirt-bosom, collars, and vest were never in a respectable condition.]
[Footnote 199: Milton was a London boy in his eighth year when
Shakespeare died (1616); he was seventeen years old when Fletcher died
(in 1625); and twenty-nine when Ben Jonson died (in 1637).]
[Footnote 200: Paul Jovius was from an ancient Italian family. He wrote
altogether in Latin. Clement VII. made him a bishop, and he enjoyed the
favor of Charles V. and Francis I., which enabled him to amass great
wealth. He died at Florence in 1552.]
[Footnote 201: "Pope died in 1744," says Lowell, "at the height of his
renown, the acknowledged monarch of letters, as supreme as Voltaire when
the excitement and exposure of his coronation-ceremonies at Paris
hastened his end, a generation later."]
[Footnote 202: No other man presented within himself such a bundle of
contradictions. "He seems an embodied antithesis," says Whipple,--"a
mass of contradictions, a collection of opposite frailties and powers.
Such was the versatility of his mind and morals, that it is hardly
possible to discern the connection between the giddy goodness and the
brilliant wickedness which he delighted to exhibit." In all his
relations he was consistently inconsistent.]