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LITERARY CHARACTER OF MEN OF GENIUS
Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions
by
ISAAC DISRAELI
A New Edition
Edited by His Son
THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD.
London:
Frederick Warne and Co.,
Bedford Street, Strand.
London:
Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., Printers, Whitefriars.
1850
PREFACE.
The following Preface is of interest for the expression of the author's
own view of these works.
This volume comprises my writings on subjects chiefly of our vernacular
literature. Now collected together, they offer an unity of design, and
afford to the general reader and to the student of classical antiquity
some initiation into our national Literature. It is presumed also, that
they present materials for thinking not solely on literary topics; authors
and books are not alone here treated of,--a comprehensive view of human
nature necessarily enters into the subject from the diversity of the
characters portrayed, through the gradations of their faculties, the
influence of their tastes, and those incidents of their lives prompted by
their fortunes or their passions. This present volume, with its brother
"CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE," now constitute a body of reading
which may
awaken knowledge in minds only seeking amusement, and refresh the deeper
studies of the learned by matters not unworthy of their curiosity.
The LITERARY CHARACTER has been an old favourite with many of my
contemporaries departed or now living, who have found it respond to their
own emotions.
THE MISCELLANIES are literary amenities, should they be found to deserve
the title, constructed on that principle early adopted by me, of
interspersing facts with speculation.
THE INQUIRY INTO THE LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST
has surely corrected some general misconceptions, and thrown light on some
obscure points in the history of that anomalous personage. It is a
satisfaction to me to observe, since the publication of this tract, that
while some competent judges have considered the "evidence
irresistible," a
material change has occurred in the tone of most writers. The subject
presented an occasion to exhibit a minute picture of that age of
transition in our national history.
The titles of CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS and QUARRELS OF AUTHORS do not wholly
designate the works, which include a considerable portion of literary
history.
Public favour has encouraged the republication of these various works,
which often referred to, have long been difficult to procure. It has been
deferred from time to time with the intention of giving the subjects a
more enlarged investigation; but I have delayed the task till it cannot be
performed. One of the Calamities of Authors falls to my lot, the delicate
organ of vision with me has suffered a singular disorder,[A]--a disorder
which no oculist by his touch can heal, and no physician by his experience
can expound; so much remains concerning the frame of man unrevealed to
man!
In the midst of my library I am as it were distant from it. My unfinished
labours, frustrated designs, remain paralysed. In a joyous heat I wander
no longer through the wide circuit before me. The "strucken
deer" has the
sad privilege to weep when he lies down, perhaps no more to course amid
those far-distant woods where once he sought to range.
[Footnote A: I record my literary calamity as a warning to my sedentary
brothers. When my eyes dwell on any object, or whenever they are closed,
there appear on a bluish film a number of mathematical squares, which are
the reflection of the fine network of the retina, succeeded by blotches
which subside into printed characters, apparently forming distinct words,
arranged in straight lines as in a printed book; the monosyllables are
often legible. This is the process of a few seconds. It is remarkable that
the usual power of the eye is not injured or diminished for distant
objects, while those near are clouded over.]
Although thus compelled to refrain in a great measure from all mental
labour, and incapacitated from the use of the pen and the book, these
works, notwithstanding, have received many important corrections, having
been read over to me with critical precision.
Amid this partial darkness I am not left without a distant hope, nor a
present consolation; and to HER who has so often lent to me the light of
her eyes, the intelligence of her voice, and the careful work of her hand,
the author must ever owe "the debt immense" of paternal
gratitude.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION
3
CHAPTER I.
Of literary characters, and of the lovers of literature and
art. 11
CHAPTER II.
Of the adversaries of literary men among themselves.--Matter-of-fact
men, and men of wit.--The political economists.--Of those who
abandon their studies.--Men in office.--The arbiters of public
opinion.--Those who treat the pursuits of literature with
levity. 14
CHAPTER III.
Of artists, in the history of men of literary genius.--Their habits
and pursuits analogous.--The nature of their genius is similar in
their distinct works.--Shown by their parallel areas, and by a
common end pursued by
both.
20
CHAPTER IV.
Of natural genius.--Minds constitutionally different cannot have an
equal aptitude.--Genius not the result of habit and education.--
Originates in peculiar qualities of the mind.--The predisposition
of genius.--A substitution for the white paper of
Locke.
24
CHAPTER V.
Youth of genius.--Its first impulses may be illustrated by its
subsequent actions.--Parents have another association of the man
of genius than we.--Of genius, its first habits.--Its melancholy.
--Its reveries.--Its love of solitude.--Its disposition to repose.
--Of a youth distinguished by his equals.--Feebleness of its first
attempts.--Of genius not discoverable even in manhood.--The
education of the youth may not be that of his genius.--An unsettled
impulse, querulous till it finds its true occupation.--With some,
curiosity as intense a faculty as invention.--What the youth first
applies to is commonly his delight afterwards.--Facts of the
decisive character of
genius.
31
CHAPTER VI.
The first studies.--The self-educated are marked by stubborn
peculiarities.--Their errors.--Their improvement from the neglect
or contempt they incur.--The history of self-education in Moses
Mendelssohn.--Friends usually prejudicial in the youth of genius.
--A remarkable interview between Petrarch in his first studies,
and his literary
adviser.--Exhortation.
55
CHAPTER VII.
Of the irritability of genius.--Genius in society often in a state
of suffering.--Equality of temper more prevalent among men of
letters.--Of the occupation of making a great name.--Anxieties of
the most successful.--Of the inventors.--Writers of learning.--
Writers of taste.
--Artists.
69
CHAPTER VIII.
The spirit of literature and the spirit of society.--The inventors.
--Society offers seduction and not reward to men of genius.--The
notions of persons of fashion of men of genius.--The habitudes of
the man of genius distinct from those of the man of society.--
Study, meditation, and enthusiasm, the progress of genius.--The
disagreement between the men of the world and the literary
character.
89
CHAPTER IX.
Conversations of men of genius.--Their deficient agreeableness may
result from qualities which conduce to their greatness.--Slow-minded
men not the dullest.--The conversationists not the ablest writers.
--Their true excellence in conversation consists of associations
with their
pursuits.
99
CHAPTER X.
Literary solitude.--Its necessity.--Its pleasures.--Of visitors
by profession.--Its
inconveniences.
109
CHAPTER XI.
The meditations of Genius.--A work on the Art of Meditation not yet
produced.--Predisposing the mind.--Imagination awakens imagination.
--Generating feelings by music.--Slight habits.--Darkness and
silence, by suspending the exercise of our senses, increase the
vivacity of our conceptions.--The arts of memory.--Memory the
foundation of genius.--Inventions by several to preserve their own
moral and literary character.--And to assist their studies.--The
meditations of genius depend on habit.--Of the night-time.--A
day of meditation should precede a day of composition.--Works of
magnitude from slight conceptions.--Of thoughts never written.--The
art of meditation exercised at all hours and places.--Continuity of
attention the source of philosophical discoveries. --Stillness of
meditation the first state of existence in
genius.
116
CHAPTER XII.
The enthusiasm of genius.--A state of mind resembling a waking
dream distinct from reverie.--The ideal presence distinguished
from the real presence.--The senses are really affected in the
ideal world, proved by a variety of instances.--Of the rapture
or sensation of deep study in art, science, and literature.
--Of perturbed feelings, in delirium.--In extreme endurance
of attention.--And in visionary illusions.--Enthusiasts in
literature and art.--Of their
self-immolations.
136
CHAPTER XIII.
Of the jealousy of genius.--Jealousy often proportioned to the
degree of genius.--A perpetual fever among authors and artists.
--Instances of its incredible excess among brothers and
benefactors.--Of a peculiar species, where the fever consumes
the sufferer without its
malignancy.
154
CHAPTER XIV.
Want of mutual esteem among men of genius often originates in
a deficiency of analogous ideas.--It is not always envy or
jealousy which induces men of genius to undervalue each
other. 159
CHAPTER XV.
Self-praise of genius.--The love of praise instinctive in the
nature of genius.--A high opinion of themselves necessary for
their great designs.--The ancients openly claimed their own
praise.--And several moderns.--An author knows more of his merits
than his readers.--And less of his defects.--Authors versatile
in their admiration and their
malignity.
162
CHAPTER XVI.
The domestic life of genius.--Defects of great compositions
attributed to domestic infelicities.--The home of the literary
character should be the abode of repose and silence.--Of the
father.--Of the mother.--Of family genius.--Men of genius not
more respected than other men in their domestic circle.--The
cultivators of science and art do not meet on equal terms with
others, in domestic life.--Their neglect of those around them.
--Often accused of imaginary
crimes.
173
CHAPTER XVII.
The poverty of literary men.--Poverty, a relative quality.--Of
the poverty of literary men in what degree desirable.--Extreme
poverty.--Task-work.--Of gratuitous works.--A project to provide
against the worst state of poverty among literary
men.
186
CHAPTER XVIII.
The matrimonial state of literature.--Matrimony said not to be
well-suited to the domestic life of genius.--Celibacy a concealed
cause of the early querulousness of men of genius.--Of unhappy
unions.--Not absolutely necessary that the wife should be a
literary woman.--Of the docility and susceptibility of the higher
female character.--A picture of a literary
wife.
198
CHAPTER XIX.
Literary friendships.--In early life.--Different from those of
men of the world.--They suffer in unrestrained communication of
their ideas, and bear reprimands and exhortations.--Unity of
feelings.--A sympathy not of manners but of feelings.--Admit of
dissimilar characters.--Their peculiar glory.--Their
sorrow. 209
CHAPTER XX.
The literary and the personal character.--The personal
dispositions of an author may be the reverse of those which
appear in his writings.--Erroneous conceptions of the character
of distant authors.--Paradoxical appearances in the history of
genius.--Why the character of the man may be opposite to that
of his
writings.
217
CHAPTER XXI.
The man of letters.--Occupies an intermediate station between
authors and readers.--His solitude described.--Often the father
of genius.--Atticus, a man of letters of antiquity.--The perfect
character of a modern man of letters exhibited in Peiresc.--
Their utility to authors and
artists.
226
CHAPTER XXII.
Literary old age still learning.--Influence of late studies in
life.--Occupations in advanced age of the literary character.
--Of literary men who have died at their
studies.
238
CHAPTER XXIII.
Universality of genius.--Limited notion of genius entertained
by the ancients.--Opposite faculties act with diminished force.
--Men of genius excel only in a single
art.
244
CHAPTER XXIV.
Literature an avenue to glory.--An intellectual nobility not
chimerical, but created by public opinion.--Literary honours
of various nations.--Local associations with the memory of the
man of
genius.
248
CHAPTER XXV.
Influence of authors on society, and of society on authors.
--National tastes a source of literary prejudices.--True
genius always the organ of its nation.--Master-writers preserve
the distinct national character.--Genius the organ of the state
of the age.--Causes of its suppression in a people.--Often
invented, but neglected.--The natural gradations of genius.--Men
of genius produce their usefulness in privacy--The public mind
is now the creation of the public writer.--Politicians affect to
deny this principle.--Authors stand between the governors and
the governed.--A view of the solitary author in his study.--They
create an epoch in history.--Influence of popular authors.--The
immortality of thought.--The family of genius illustrated by
their
genealogy.
258
LITERARY MISCELLANIES.
Miscellanists
281
Prefaces
286
Style
291
Goldsmith and
Johnson
294
Self-characters
295
On
reading
298
On habituating ourselves to an individual
pursuit
302
On novelty in
literature
305
Vers de Société
308
The genius of Molière
310
The sensibility of
Racine
325
Of Sterne
332
Hume, Robertson, and
Birch
340
Of voluminous works incomplete by the deaths of the
authors 350
Of domestic novelties at first
condemned
355
Domesticity; or a dissertation on
servants
364
Printed letters in the vernacular
idiom
375
CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST.
Advertisement
383
Of the first modern assailants of the character of
James I., Burnet, Bolingbroke and Pope, Harris, Macaulay,
and
Walpole
386
His
pedantry
388
His polemical
studies
389
--how these were
political
392
The Hampton Court
conference
393
Of some of his
writings
398
Popular superstitions of the
age
400
The King's habits of life those of a man of
letters
402
Of the facility and copiousness of his
composition
404
Of his
eloquence
405
Of his
wit
406
Specimens of his humour, and observations on human
life
407
Some evidences of his sagacity in the discovery of
truth
410
Of his "Basilicon Doron"
413
Of his idea of a tyrant and a
king
414
Advice to Prince Henry in the choice of his servants
and
associates
415
Describes the Revolutionists of his
time
416
Of the nobility of
Scotland
417
Of colonising
_ib._
Of
merchants
418
Regulations for the prince's manners and
habits
_ib._
Of his idea of the royal
prerogative
421
The lawyers' idea of the
same
_ib._
Of his elevated conception of the kingly
character
425
His design in issuing "The Book of Sports" for the
Sabbath-day 426
The Sabbatarian
controversy
428
The motives of his aversion to
war
430
James acknowledges his dependence on the Commons; their
conduct 431
Of certain scandalous
chronicles
434
A picture of the age from a manuscript of the
times
437
Anecdotes of the manners of the
age
441
James I. discovers the disorders and discontents of a peace
of more than twenty
years
449
The King's private life in his occasional
retirements
450
A detection of the discrepancies of opinion among the
decriers of James
I
451
Summary of his
character
455
TO
ROBERT SOUTHEY, LL.D.,
&c. &c. &c.
In dedicating this Work to one of the most eminent literary characters of
the age, I am experiencing a peculiar gratification, in which few, perhaps
none, of my contemporaries can participate; for I am addressing him, whose
earliest effusions attracted my regard, near half a century past; and
during that awful interval of time--for fifty years is a trial of life of
whatever may be good in us--you have multiplied your talents, and have
never lost a virtue.
When I turn from the uninterrupted studies of your domestic solitude to
our metropolitan authors, the contrast, if not encouraging, is at least
extraordinary. You are not unaware that the revolutions of Society have
operated on our literature, and that new classes of readers have called
forth new classes of writers. The causes and the consequences of the
present state of this fugitive literature might form an inquiry which
would include some of the important topics which concern the PUBLIC MIND,
--but an inquiry which might be invidious shall not disturb a page
consecrated to the record of excellence. They who draw their inspiration
from the hour must not, however, complain if with that hour they pass
away.
I. DISRAELI.
INTRODUCTION.
For the fifth time I revise a subject which has occupied my inquiries from
early life, with feelings still delightful, and an enthusiasm not wholly
diminished.
Had not the principle upon which this work is constructed occurred to me
in my youth, the materials which illustrate the literary character could
never have been brought together. It was in early life that I conceived
the idea of pursuing the history of genius by the similar events which had
occurred to men of genius. Searching into literary history for the
literary character formed a course of experimental philosophy in which
every new essay verified a former trial, and confirmed a former truth. By
the great philosophical principle of induction, inferences were deduced
and results established, which, however vague and doubtful in speculation,
are irresistible when the appeal is made to facts as they relate to
others, and to feelings which must be decided on as they are passing in
our own breast.
It is not to be inferred from what I have here stated that I conceive that
any single man of genius will resemble every man of genius; for not only
man differs from man, but varies from himself in the different stages of
human life. All that I assert is, that every man of genius will discover,
sooner or later, that he belongs to the brotherhood of his class, and that
he cannot escape from certain habits, and feelings, and disorders, which
arise from the same temperament and sympathies, and are the necessary
consequence of occupying the same position, and passing through the same
moral existence. Whenever we compare men of genius with each other, the
history of those who are no more will serve as a perpetual commentary on
our contemporaries. There are, indeed, secret feelings which their
prudence conceals, or their fears obscure, or their modesty shrinks from,
or their pride rejects; but I have sometimes imagined that I have held
the clue as they have lost themselves in their own labyrinth. I know
that many, and some of great celebrity, have sympathised with the
feelings which inspired these volumes; nor, while I have elucidated the
idiosyncrasy of genius, have I less studied the habits and characteristics
of the lovers of literature.
It has been considered that the subject of this work might have been
treated with more depth of metaphysical disquisition; and there has since
appeared an attempt to combine with this investigation the medical
science. A work, however, should be judged by its design and its
execution, and not by any preconceived notion of what it ought to be
according to the critic, rather than the author. The nature of this work
is dramatic rather than metaphysical. It offers a narration or a
description; a conversation or a monologue; an incident or a scene.
Perhaps I have sometimes too warmly apologised for the infirmities of men
of genius. From others we may hourly learn to treat with levity the man of
genius because he is _only_ such. Perhaps also I may have been too fond of
the subject, which has been for me an old and a favourite one--I may have
exalted the literary character beyond the scale by which society is
willing to fix it. Yet what is this Society, so omnipotent, so all
judicial? The society of to-day was not the society of yesterday. Its
feelings, its thoughts, its manners, its rights, its wishes, and its
wants, are different and are changed: alike changed or alike created by
those very literary characters whom it rarely comprehends and often would
despise. Let us no longer look upon this retired and peculiar class as
useless members of our busy race. There are mental as well as material
labourers. The first are not less necessary; and as they are much rarer,
so are they more precious. These are they whose "published labours"
have
benefited mankind--these are they whose thoughts can alone rear that
beautiful fabric of social life, which it is the object of all good men to
elevate or to support. To discover truth and to maintain it,--to develope
the powers, to regulate the passions, to ascertain the privileges of man,
--such have ever been, and such ever ought to be, the labours of AUTHORS!
Whatever we enjoy of political and private happiness, our most necessary
knowledge as well as our most refined pleasures, are alike owing to this
class of men; and of these, some for glory, and often from benevolence,
have shut themselves out from the very beings whom they love, and for whom
they labour.
Upwards of forty years have elapsed since, composed in a distant county,
and printed at a provincial press, I published "An Essay on the
Manners
and Genius of the Literary Character." To my own habitual and
inherent
defects were superadded those of my youth. The crude production was,
however, not ill received, for the edition disappeared, and the subject
was found more interesting than the writer.
During a long interval of twenty years, this little work was often
recalled to my recollection by several, and by some who have since
obtained celebrity. They imagined that their attachment to literary
pursuits had been strengthened even by so weak an effort. An extraordinary
circumstance concurred with these opinions. A copy accidentally fell into
my hands which had formerly belonged to the great poetical genius of our
times; and the singular fact, that it had been more than once read by him,
and twice in two subsequent years at Athens, in 1810 and 1811, instantly
convinced me that the volume deserved my renewed attention.
It was with these feelings that I was again strongly attracted to a
subject from which, indeed, during the course of a studious life, it
had never been long diverted. The consequence of my labours was the
publication, in 1818, of an octavo volume, under the title of "The
Literary Character, illustrated by the History of Men of Genius, drawn
from their own feelings and confessions."
In the preface to this edition, in mentioning the fact respecting Lord
Byron, which had been the immediate cause of its publication, I added
these words: "I tell this fact assuredly not from any little vanity
which
it may appear to betray;--for the truth is, were I not as liberal and as
candid in respect to my own productions, as I hope I am to others, I could
not have been gratified by the present circumstance; for the marginal
notes of the noble author convey no flattery;--but amidst their pungency,
and sometimes their truth, the circumstance that a man of genius could
reperuse this slight effusion at two different periods of his life, was a
sufficient authority, at least for an author, to return it once more to
the anvil."
Some time after the publication of this edition of "The Literary
Character," which was in fact a new work, I was shown, through the
kindness of an English gentleman lately returned from Italy, a copy of it,
which had been given to him by Lord Byron, and which again contained
marginal notes by the noble author. These were peculiarly interesting, and
were chiefly occasioned by observations on his character, which appeared
in the work.
In 1822 I published a new edition of this work, greatly enlarged, and in
two volumes. I took this opportunity of inserting the manuscript Notes of
Lord Byron, with the exception of one, which, however characteristic of
the amiable feelings of the noble poet, and however gratifying to my own,
I had no wish to obtrude on the notice of the public.[A]
[Footnote A: As everything connected with the reading of a mind like Lord
BYRON'S interesting to the philosophical inquirer, this note may now be
preserved. On that passage of the Preface of the second Edition which I
have already quoted, his Lordship was thus pleased to write:
"I was wrong, but I was young and petulant, and probably wrote down
anything, little thinking that those observations would be betrayed to the
author, whose abilities I have always respected, and whose works in
general I have read oftener than perhaps those of any English author
whatever, except such as treat of Turkey."]
Soon after the publication of this third edition, I received
the following letter from his lordship:--
_"Montenero, Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, June 10, 1822._
"DEAR SIR,--If you will permit me to call you so,--I had some time
ago
taken up my pen at Pisa, to thank you for the present of your new edition
of the 'Literary Character,' which has often been to me a consolation, and
always a pleasure. I was interrupted, however, partly by business, and
partly by vexation of different kinds,--for I have not very long ago lost
a child by fever, and I have had a good deal of petty trouble with the
laws of this lawless country, on account of the prosecution of a servant
for an attack upon a cowardly scoundrel of a dragoon, who drew his sword
upon some unarmed Englishmen, and whom I had done the honour to mistake
for an officer, and to treat like a gentleman. He turned out to be
neither,--like many other with medals, and in uniform; but he paid for his
brutality with a severe and dangerous wound, inflicted by nobody knows
whom, for, of three suspected, and two arrested, they have been able to
identify neither; which is strange, since he was wounded in the presence
of thousands, in a public street, during a feast-day and full promenade.
--But to return to things more analogous to the 'Literary Character,' I
wish to say, that had I known that the book was to fall into your hands,
or that the MS. notes you have thought worthy of publication would have
attracted your attention, I would have made them more copious, and perhaps
not so careless.
"I really cannot know whether I am, or am not, the genius you are
pleased
to call me,--but I am very willing to put up with the mistake, if it be
one. It is a title dearly enough bought by most men, to render it
endurable, even when not quite clearly made out, which it never _can_ be,
till the Posterity, whose decisions are merely dreams to ourselves, have
sanctioned or denied it, while it can touch us no further.
"Mr. Murray is in possession of a MS. memoir of mine (not to be
published
till I am in my grave), which, strange as it may seem, I never read over
since it was written, and have no desire to read over again. In it I have
told what, as far as I know, is the _truth_--_not the whole_ truth--for if
I had done so, I must have involved much private, and some dissipated
history: but, nevertheless, nothing but truth, as far as regard for others
permitted it to appear.
"I do not know whether you have seen those MSS.; but, as you are
curious
in such things as relate to the human mind, I should feel gratified if you
had. I also sent him (Murray), a few days since, a Common-place Book, by
my friend Lord Clare, containing a few things, which may perhaps aid his
publication in case of his surviving me. If there are any questions which
you would like to ask me, as connected with your philosophy of the
literary mind (_if_ mine be a literary mind), I will answer them fairly,
or give a reason for _not_, good--bad--or indifferent. At present, I am
paying the penalty of having helped to spoil the public taste; for, as
long as I wrote in the false exaggerated style of youth and the times in
which we live, they applauded me to the very echo; and within these few
years, when I have endeavoured at better things, and written what I
suspect to have the principle of duration in it: the Church, the
Chancellor, and all men, even to my grand patron, Francis Jeffrey, Esq.,
of the _Edinburgh Review_, have risen up against me, and my later
publications. Such is Truth! men dare not look her in the face, except by
degrees; they mistake her for a Gorgon, instead of knowing her to be
Minerva. I do not mean to apply this mythological simile to my own
endeavours, but I have only to turn over a few pages of your volumes to
find innumerable and far more illustrious instances. It is lucky that I am
of a temper not to be easily turned aside, though by no means difficult to
irritate. But I am making a dissertation, instead of writing a letter. I
write to you from the Villa Dupuy, near Leghorn, with the islands of Elba
and Corsica visible from my balcony, and my old friend the Mediterranean
rolling blue at my feet. As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for
Nature, I can partly soften or subdue my other passions, and resist or
endure those of others.
"I have the honour to be, truly,
"Your obliged and faithful servant,
"NOEL BYRON.
"To I. D'Israeli, Esq."
The ill-starred expedition to Greece followed this letter.
*
*
*
* *
This work, conceived in youth, executed by the research of manhood, and
associated with the noblest feelings of our nature, is an humble but
fervent tribute, offered to the memory of those Master Spirits from whose
labours, as BURKE eloquently describes, "their country receives
permanent
service: those who know how to make the silence of their closets more
beneficial to the world than all the noise and bustle of courts, senates,
and camps."
LITERARY CHARACTER.
CHAPTER I.
Of Literary Characters, and of the Lovers of Literature and Art.
Diffused over enlightened Europe, an order of men has arisen, who,
uninfluenced by the interests or the passions which give an impulse to the
other classes of society, are connected by the secret links of congenial
pursuits, and, insensibly to themselves, are combining in the same common
labours, and participating in the same divided glory. In the metropolitan
cities of Europe the same authors are now read, and the same opinions
become established: the Englishman is familiar with Machiavel and
Montesquieu; the Italian and the Frenchman with Bacon and Locke; and the
same smiles and tears are awakened on the banks of the Thames, of the
Seine, or of the Guadalquivir, by Shakspeare, Molière, and Cervantes--
Contemporains de tous les hommes,
Et citoyens de tous les lieux.
A khan of Tartary admired the wit of Molière, and discovered the Tartuffe
in the Crimea; and had this ingenious sovereign survived the translation
which he ordered, the immortal labour of the comic satirist of France
might have laid the foundation of good taste even among the Turks and the
Tartars. We see the Italian Pignotti referring to the opinion of an
English critic, Lord Bolingbroke, for decisive authority on the peculiar
characteristics of the historian Guicciardini: the German Schlegel writes
on our Shakspeare like a patriot; and while the Italians admire the noble
scenes which our Flaxman has drawn from their great poet, they have
rejected the feeble attempts of their native artists. Such is the wide and
the perpetual influence of this living intercourse of literary minds.
Scarcely have two centuries elapsed since the literature of every nation
was limited to its fatherland, and men of genius long could only hope for
the spread of their fame in the single language of ancient Rome; which for
them had ceased to be natural, and could never be popular. It was in the
intercourse of the wealth, the power, and the novel arts of the nations of
Europe, that they learned each other's languages; and they discovered
that, however their manners varied as they arose from their different
customs, they participated in the same intellectual faculties, suffered
from the same wants, and were alive to the same pleasures; they perceived
that there were no conventional fashions, nor national distinctions, in
abstract truths and fundamental knowledge. A new spirit seems to bring
them nearer to each other: and, as if literary Europe were intent to form
but one people out of the populace of mankind, they offer their reciprocal
labours; they pledge to each other the same opinions; and that knowledge
which, like a small river, takes its source from one spot, at length
mingles with the ocean-stream common to them all.
But those who stand connected with this literary community are not always
sensible of the kindred alliance; even a genius of the first order has not
always been aware that he is the founder of a society, and that there will
ever be a brotherhood where there is a father-genius.
These literary characters are partially, and with a melancholy colouring,
exhibited by JOHNSON. "To talk in private, to think in solitude, to
inquire or to answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar. He wanders
about the world without pomp or terror; and is neither known nor valued
but by men like himself." Thus thought this great writer during those
sad
probationary years of genius when
Slow rises worth, by _poverty_ depress'd;
not yet conscious that he himself was devoting his days to cast the minds
of his contemporaries and of the succeeding age in the mighty mould of his
own; JOHNSON was of that order of men whose individual genius becomes that
of a people. A prouder conception rose in the majestic mind of MILTON, of
"that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise which God and good men
have
consented shall be the reward of those whose PUBLISHED LABOURS advanced
the good of mankind."
The LITERARY CHARACTER is a denomination which, however vague, defines the
pursuits of the individual, and separates him from other professions,
although it frequently occurs that he is himself a member of one.
Professional characters are modified by the change of manners, and are
usually national; while the literary character, from the objects in which
it concerns itself, retains a more permanent, and necessarily a more
independent nature.
Formed by the same habits, and influenced by the same motives,
notwithstanding the contrast of talents and tempers, and the remoteness of
times and places, the literary character has ever preserved among its
followers the most striking family resemblance. The passion for study, the
delight in books, the desire of solitude and celebrity, the obstructions
of human life, the character of their pursuits, the uniformity of their
habits, the triumphs and the disappointments of literary glory, were as
truly described by CICERO and the younger PLINY as by PETRARCH and
ERASMUS, and as they have been by HUME and GIBBON. And this similarity,
too, may equally be remarked with respect to that noble passion of the
lovers of literature and of art for collecting together their mingled
treasures; a thirst which was as insatiable in ATTICUS and PEIRESC as in
our CRACHERODE and TOWNLEY.[A] We trace the feelings of our literary
contemporaries in all ages, and among every people who have ranked with
nations far advanced in civilization; for among these may be equally
observed both the great artificers of knowledge and those who preserve
unbroken the vast chain of human acquisitions. The one have stamped the
images of their minds on their works, and the others have preserved the
circulation of this intellectual coinage, this
--Gold of the dead,
Which Time does still disperse, but not devour.
[Footnote A: The Rev. C.M. Cracherode bequeathed at his death, in 1799, to
the British Museum, the large collection of literature, art, and virtu he
had employed an industrious life in collecting. His books numbered nearly
4500 volumes, many of great rarity and value. His drawings, many by early
Italian masters, and all rare or curious, were deposited in the print-room
of the same establishment; his antiquities, &c. were in a similar way
added to the other departments. The "Townley Gallery" of classic
sculpture
was purchased of his executors by Government for 28,200_l_. It had been
collected with singular taste and judgment, as well as some amount of good
fortune also; Townley resided at Rome during the researches on the site of
Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli; and he had for aids and advisers Sir William
Hamilton, Gavin Hamilton, and other active collectors; and was the friend
and correspondent of D'Haucarville and Winckelmann.--ED.]
CHAPTER II.
Of the Adversaries of Literary Men among themselves.--Matter-of-fact
Men, and Men of Wit.--The Political Economist.--Of those who abandon
their studies.--Men in office.--The arbiters of public opinion.--Those
who treat the pursuits of literature with levity.
The pursuits of literature have been openly or insidiously lowered by
those literary men who, from motives not always difficult to penetrate,
are eager to confound the ranks in the republic of letters, maliciously
conferring the honours of authorship on that "Ten Thousand"
whose recent
list is not so much a muster-roll of heroes as a table of population.[A]
Matter-of-fact men, or men of knowledge, and men of wit and taste, were
long inimical to each other's pursuits.[B] The Royal Society in its origin
could hardly support itself against the ludicrous attacks of literary
men,[C] and the Antiquarian Society has afforded them amusement.[D] Such
partial views have ceased to contract the understanding. Science yields a
new substance to literature; literature combines new associations for the
votaries of knowledge. There is no subject in nature, and in the history
of man, which will not associate with our feelings and our curiosity,
whenever genius extends its awakening hand. The antiquary, the naturalist,
the architect, the chemist, and even writers on medical topics, have in
our days asserted their claims, and discovered their long-interrupted
relationship with the great family of genius and literature.
[Footnote A: We have a Dictionary of "Ten Thousand living
Authors" of our
own nation. The alphabet is fatal by its juxtapositions. In France, before
the Revolution, they counted about twenty thousand writers. When David
would have his people numbered, Joab asked, "Why doth my lord delight
in
this?" In political economy, the population returns may be useful,
provided they be correct; but in the literary republic, its numerical
force diminishes the strength of the empire. "There you are numbered,
we
had rather you were weighed." Put aside the puling infants of
literature,
of whom such a mortality occurs in its nurseries; such as the writers of
the single sermon, the single law-tract, the single medical dissertation,
&c.; all writers whose subject is single, without being singular;
count
for nothing the inefficient mob of mediocrists; and strike out our
literary _charlatans_; and then our alphabet of men of genius will not
consist, as it now does, of the four-and-twenty letters.]
[Footnote B: The cause is developed in the chapter on "Want of Mutual
Esteem."]
[Footnote C: See BUTLER, in his "Elephant in the Moon." SOUTH,
in his
oration at the opening of the theatre at Oxford, passed this bitter
sarcasm on the naturalists,--"_Mirantur nihil nisi pulices, pediculos--et
se ipsos_;"--nothing they admire but fleas, lice, and themselves! The
illustrious SLOANE endured a long persecution from the bantering humour of
Dr. KING. One of the most amusing declaimers against what he calls _les
Sciences des faux Sçavans_ is Father MALEBRANCHE; he is far more severe
than Cornelius Agrippa, and he long preceded ROUSSEAU, so famous for his
invective against the sciences. The seventh chapter of his fourth book is
an inimitable satire. "The principal excuse," says he,
"which engages men
in _false studies_, is, that they have attached the _idea of learned_
where they should not." Astronomy, antiquarianism, history, ancient
poetry, and natural history, are all mowed down by his metaphysical
scythe. When we become acquainted with the _idea_ Father Malebranche
attaches to the term _learned_, we understand him--and we smile.]
[Footnote D: See the chapter on "Puck the Commentator," in the
"Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii.; also p. 304 of the same
volume.]
A new race of jargonists, the barbarous metaphysicians of political
economy, have struck at the essential existence of the productions of
genius in literature and art; for, appreciating them by their own
standard, they have miserably degraded the professors. Absorbed in the
contemplation of material objects, and rejecting whatever does not enter
into their own restricted notion of "utility," these cold
arithmetical
seers, with nothing but millions in their imagination; and whose choicest
works of art are spinning-jennies, have valued the intellectual tasks of
the library and the studio by "the demand and the supply." They
have sunk
these pursuits into the class of what they term "unproductive labour;"
and
by another result of their line and level system, men of letters, with
some other important characters, are forced down into the class "of
buffoons, singers, opera-dancers, &c." In a system of political
economy it
has been discovered that "that _unprosperous race_ of men, called
_men of
letters_, must _necessarily_ occupy their present _forlorn state_ in
society much as formerly, when a scholar and a beggar seem to have been
terms very nearly synonymous."[A] In their commercial, agricultural,
and
manufacturing view of human nature, addressing society by its most
pressing wants and its coarsest feelings, these theorists limit the moral
and physical existence of man by speculative tables of population, planing
and levelling society down in their carpentry of human nature. They would
yoke and harness the loftier spirits to one common and vulgar destination.
Man is considered only as he wheels on the wharf, or as he spins in the
factory; but man, as a recluse being of meditation, or impelled to action
by more generous passions, has been struck out of the system of our
political economists. It is, however, only among their "unproductive
labourers" that we shall find those men of leisure, whose habitual
pursuits are consumed in the development of thought and the gradual
accessions of knowledge; those men of whom the sage of Judea declares,
that "It is he who hath little business who shall become wise: how
can he
get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and whose talk is of bullocks? But
THEY,"--the men of leisure and study,--"WILL MAINTAIN THE STATE
OF THE
WORLD!" The prosperity and the happiness of a people include
something
more evident and more permanent than "the Wealth of a Nation."[B]
[Footnote A: "Wealth of Nations," i. 182.]
[Footnote B: Since this murmur has been uttered against the degrading
views of some of those theorists, it afforded me pleasure to observe that
Mr. Malthus has fully sanctioned its justness. On this head, at least, Mr.
Malthus has amply confuted his stubborn and tasteless brothers. Alluding
to the productions of genius, this writer observes, that, "to
estimate the
value of NEWTON'S discoveries, or the delight communicated by SHAKSPEAKE
and MILTON, by the _price_ at which their works have sold, would be but a
poor measure of the degree in which they have elevated and enchanted their
country."--_Principles of Pol. Econ._ p. 48. And hence he
acknowledges,
that "_some unproductive labour is of much more use and importance_
than
productive labour, but is incapable of being the subject of the gross
calculations which relate to national wealth; contributing to _other
sources of happiness_ besides those which are derived from matter."
Political economists would have smiled with contempt on the querulous
PORSON, who once observed, that "it seemed to him very hard, that
with all
his critical knowledge of Greek, he could not get a hundred pounds."
They
would have demonstrated to the learned Grecian, that this was just as it
ought to be; the same occurrence had even happened to HOMER in his own
country, where Greek ought to have fetched a higher price than in England;
but, that both might have obtained this hundred pounds, had the Grecian
bard and the Greek professor been employed at the same stocking-frame
together, instead of the "Iliad."]
There is a more formidable class of men of genius who are heartless to the
interests of literature. Like CORNELIUS AGRIPPA, who wrote on "the
vanity
of the arts and sciences," many of these are only tracing in the arts
which they have abandoned their own inconstant tempers, their feeble
tastes, and their disordered judgments. But, with others of this class,
study has usually served as the instrument, not as the object, of their
ascent; it was the ladder which they once climbed, but it was not the
eastern star which guided and inspired. Such literary characters were
WARBURTON,[A] WATSON, and WILKES, who abandoned their studies when their
studies had served a purpose.
[Footnote A: For a full disquisition of the character and career of
Warburton, see the essay in "Quarrels of Authors."]
WATSON gave up his pursuits in chemistry the instant he obtained their
limited reward, and the laboratory closed when the professorship was
instituted. Such was the penurious love he bore for the science which he
had adopted, that the extraordinary discoveries of thirty years subsequent
to his own first essays could never excite even an idle inquiry. He tells
us that he preferred "his larches to his laurels:" the wretched
jingle
expressed the mere worldliness that dictated it. In the same spirit of
calculation with which he had at first embraced science and literature, he
abandoned them; and his ingenuous confession is a memorable example of
that egotistic pride which betrayed in the literary character the creature
of selfism and political ambition.
We are accustomed to consider WILKES merely as a political adventurer, and
it may surprise to find this "city chamberlain" ranked among
professed
literary characters: yet in his variable life there was a period when he
cherished the aspirations of a votary. Once he desired Lloyd to announce
the edition of Churchill, which he designed to enrich by a commentary; and
his correspondence on this subject, which has never appeared, would, as he
himself tells us, afford a variety of hints and communications. Wilkes was
then warmed by literary glory; for on his retirement into Italy, he
declared, "I mean to give myself entirely to our friend's work, and
to my
History of England. I wish to equal the dignity of Livy: I am sure the
greatness and majesty of our nation demand an historian equal to
him."
They who have only heard of the intriguing demagogue, and witnessed the
last days of the used voluptuary, may hardly imagine that Wilkes had ever
cherished such elevated projects; but mob-politics made this adventurer's
fortune, which fell to the lot of an epicurean: and the literary glory he
once sought he lived to ridicule, in the immortal diligence of Lord
Chatham and of Gibbon. Dissolving life away, and consuming all his
feelings on himself, Wilkes left his nearest relatives what he left the
world--the memory of an anti-social being! This wit, who has bequeathed to
us no wit; this man of genius, who has formed no work of genius; this
bold advocate for popular freedom, who sunk his patriotism in the
chamberlainship; was indeed desirous of leaving behind him some trace of
the life of an _escroc_ in a piece of autobiography, which, for the
benefit of the world, has been thrown to the flames.
Men who have ascended into office through its gradations, or have been
thrown upwards by accident, are apt to view others in a cloud of passions
and politics. They who once commanded us by their eloquence, come at
length to suspect the eloquent; and in their "pride of office"
would now
drive us by that single force of despotism which is the corruption of
political power. Our late great Minister, Pitt, has been reproached even
by his friends for the contemptuous indifference with which he treated
literary men. Perhaps BURKE himself, long a literary character, might
incur some portion of this censure, by involving the character itself in
the odium of a monstrous political sect. These political characters
resemble Adrian VI., who, obtaining the tiara as the reward of his
studies, afterwards persecuted literary men, and, say the Italians,
dreaded lest his brothers might shake the Pontificate itself.[A]
Worst fares it with authors when minds of this cast become the arbiters of
public opinion; for the greatest of writers may unquestionably be forced
into ridiculous attitudes by the well-known artifices practised by modern
criticism. The elephant, no longer in his forest struggling with his
hunters, but falling entrapped by a paltry snare, comes at length, in the
height of ill-fortune, to dance on heated iron at the bidding of the
pantaloon of a fair. Whatever such critics may plead to mortify the
vanity of authors, at least it requires as much vanity to give effect to
their own polished effrontery.[B] Scorn, sarcasm, and invective, the
egotism of the vain, and the irascibility of the petulant, where they
succeed in debilitating genius of the consciousness of its powers, are
practising the witchery of that ancient superstition of "tying the
knot,"
which threw the youthful bridegroom into utter despair by its ideal
forcefulness.[C]
[Footnote A: It has been suspected that Adrian VI. has been calumniated,
for that this pontiff was only too sudden to begin the reform he
meditated. But Adrian VI. was a scholastic whose austerity turned away
with contempt from all ancient art, and was no brother to contemporary
genius. He was one of the _cui bono_ race, a branch of our political
economists. When they showed him the Laocoön, Adrian silenced their
raptures by the frigid observation, that all such things were _idola
antiquorum_: and ridiculed the _amena letteratura_ till every man of
genius retreated from his court. Had Adrian's reign extended beyond its
brief period, men of taste in their panic imagined that in his zeal the
Pontiff would have calcined the fine statues of ancient art, to expedite
the edifice of St. Peter.]
[Footnote B: Listen to a confession and a recantation of an illustrious
sinner; the Coryphæus of the amusing and new-found art, or artifice, of
modern criticism. In the character of BURNS, the Edinburgh Reviewer, with
his peculiar felicity of manner, attacked the character of the man of
genius; but when Mr. Campbell vindicated his immortal brother with all the
inspiration of the family feeling, our critic, who is one of those great
artists who acquire at length the utmost indifference even for their own
works, generously avowed that, "a certain tone of exaggeration is
incidental _we fear to the sort of writing in which we are engaged_.
Reckoning a little too much on the dulness of our readers, we are often
led to _overstate our sentiments_: when a little _controversial warmth_ is
added to a little _love of effect_, an excess of colouring steals over the
canvas, which ultimately offends no eye so much as our own." But what
if
this _love of effect_ in the critic has been too often obtained at the
entire cost of the literary characters, the fruits of whose studious days
at this moment lie withering in oblivion, or whose genius the critic has
deterred from pursuing the career it had opened for itself! To have
silenced the learned, and to have terrified the modest, is the barbarous
triumph of a Hun or a Vandal; and the vaunted freedom of the literary
republic departed from us when the vacillating public blindly consecrated
the edicts of the demagogues of literature, whoever they may be.
A reaction appears in the burlesque or bantering spirit. While one faction
drives out another, the abuse of extraordinary powers is equally fatal.
Thus we are consoled while we are afflicted, and we are protected while we
are degraded.]
[Footnote C: _Nouer l'aiguillette_, of which the extraordinary effect is
described by Montaigne, is an Oriental custom still practised.--_Mr.
Hobhouse's Journey through Albania_, p. 528.]
That spirit of levity which would shake the columns of society, by
detracting from or burlesquing the elevating principles which have
produced so many illustrious men, has recently attempted to reduce the
labours of literature to a mere curious amusement: a finished composition
is likened to a skilful game of billiards, or a piece of music finely
executed; and curious researches, to charades and other insignificant
puzzles. With such, an author is an idler who will not be idle, amusing or
fatiguing others who are completely so. The result of a work of genius
is contracted to the art of writing; but this art is only its last
perfection. Inspiration is drawn from a deeper source; enthusiasm is
diffused through contagious pages; and without these movements of the
soul, how poor and artificial a thing is that sparkling composition which
flashes with the cold vibrations of mere art or artifice! We have been
recently told, on critical authority, that "a great genius should
never
allow himself to be sensible to his own celebrity, nor deem his pursuits
of much consequence, however important or successful." A sort of
catholic
doctrine, to mortify an author into a saint, extinguishing the glorious
appetite of fame by one Lent all the year, and self-flagellation every
day! BUFFON and GIBBON, VOLTAIRE and POPE,[A] who gave to literature
all the cares, the industry, and the glory of their lives, assuredly
were too "sensible to their celebrity, and deemed their pursuits of
much consequence," particularly when "important and
successful." The
self-possession of great authors sustains their own genius by a sense of
their own glory.
Such, then, are some of the domestic treasons of the literary character
against literature--"Et tu, Brute!" But the hero of literature
outlives
his assassins, and might address them in that language of poetry
and affection with which a Mexican king reproached his traitorous
counsellors:--"You were the feathers of my wings, and the eyelids of
my
eyes."
[Footnote A: The claims of Pope to the title of a great poet were denied
in the days of Byron; and occasioned a warm and noble defence of him by
that poet. It has since been found necessary to do the same for Byron,
whom some transcendentalists have attacked.--ED.]
CHAPTER III.
Of artists, in the history of men of literary genius.--Their habits and
pursuits analogous.--The nature of their genius is similar in their
distinct works.--Shown by their parallel eras, and by a common end pursued
by both.
Artists and literary men, alike insulated in their studies, pass through
the same permanent discipline; and thus it has happened that the same
habits and feelings, and the same fortunes, have accompanied men who have
sometimes unhappily imagined their pursuits not to be analogous.
Let the artist share
The palm; he shares the peril, and dejected
Faints o'er the labour unapproved--alas!
Despair and genius!--
The congenial histories of literature and art describe the same periodical
revolutions and parallel eras. After the golden age of Latinity, we
gradually slide into the silver, and at length precipitately descend into
the iron. In the history of painting, after the splendid epoch of Raphael,
Titian, and Correggio, we meet with pleasure the Oarraccis, Domenichino,
Guido, and Albano; as we read Paterculus, Quintilian, Seneca, Juvenal, and
Silius Italicus, after their immortal masters, Cicero, Livy, Virgil, and
Horace.
It is evident that MILTON, MICHAEL ANGELO, and HANDEL, belong to the same
order of minds; the same imaginative powers, and the same sensibility, are
only operating with different materials. LANZI, the delightful historian
of the _Storia Pittorica_, is prodigal of his comparisons of the painters
with the poets; his delicacy of perception discerned the refined analogies
which for ever unite the two sisters, and he fondly dwelt on the
transplanted flowers of the two arts: "_Chi sente che sia Tibullo nel
poetare sente chi sia Andrea (del Sarto) nel dipingere_;" he who
feels
what TIBULLUS is in poetry, feels what ANDREA is in painting. MICHAEL
ANGELO, from his profound conception of the terrible and the difficult in
art, was called its DANTE; from the Italian poet the Italian sculptor
derived the grandeur of his ideas; and indeed the visions of the bard had
deeply nourished the artist's imagination; for once he had poured about
the margins of his own copy their ethereal inventions, in the rapid
designs of his pen. And so Bellori informs us of a very curious volume in
manuscript, composed by RUBENS, which contained, among other topics
concerning art, descriptions of the passions and actions of men, drawn
from the poets, and demonstrated to the eye by the painters. Here were
battles, shipwrecks, sports, groups, and other incidents, which were
transcribed from Virgil and other poets, and by their side RUBENS had
copied what he had met with on those subjects from Raphael and the
antique.[A]
The poet and the painter are only truly great by the mutual influences of
their studies, and the jealousy of glory has only produced an idle
contest. This old family-quarrel for precedence was renewed by our
estimable President, in his brilliant "Rhymes on Art;" where he
maintains
that "the narrative of an action is not comparable to the action
itself
before the eyes;" while the enthusiast BARRY considers painting
"as poetry
realised."[B] This error of genius, perhaps first caught from
Richardson's
bewildering pages, was strengthened by the extravagant principle adopted
by Darwin, who, to exalt his solitary talent of descriptive poetry,
asserted that "the essence of poetry was picture." The
philosophical
critic will find no difficulty in assigning to each, sister-art her
distinct province; and it is only a pleasing delirium, in the enthusiasm
of artists, which has confused the boundaries of these arts. The dread
pathetic story of Dante's "Ugolino," under the plastic hand of
Michael
Angelo, formed the subject of a basso-relievo; and Reynolds, with his
highest effort, embodied the terrific conception of the poet as much as
his art permitted: but assuredly both these great artists would never have
claimed the precedence of the Dantesc genius, and might have hesitated at
the rivalry.
[Footnote A: Rubens was an ardent collector of works of antique art; and
in the "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 398, will be
found an
interesting account of his museum at Antwerp.--ED.]
[Footnote B: The late Sir Martin Archer Shee, P.R.A. This accomplished
artist, who possessed a large amount of poetical and literary power, asks,
"What is there of _intellectual_ in the operations of the poet which
the
painter does not equal? What is there of _mechanical_ which he does not
surpass? The advantage which poetry possesses over painting in continued
narration and successive impression, cannot be advanced as a peculiar
merit of the poet, since it results from the nature of language, and is
common to prose." Poetry he values as the earliest of arts, painting
as
the latest and most refined.--ED.]
Who has not heard of that one common principle which unites the
intellectual arts, and who has not felt that the nature of their genius is
similar in their distinct works? Hence curious inquiries could never
decide whether the group of the Laocoön in sculpture preceded or was
borrowed from that in poetry. Lessing conjectures that the sculptor copied
the poet. It is evident that the agony of Laocoön was the common end
where
the sculptor and the poet were to meet; and we may observe that the
artists in marble and in verse skilfully adapted their variations to their
respective art: the one having to prefer the _nude_, rejected the veiling
fillet from the forehead, that he might not conceal its deep expression,
and the drapery of the sacrificial robe, that he might display the human
form in visible agony; but the other, by the charm of verse, could invest
the priest with the pomp of the pontifical robe without hiding from us the
interior sufferings of the human victim. We see they obtained by different
means, adapted to their respective arts, that common end which each
designed; but who will decide which invention preceded the other, or who
was the greater artist?
This approximation of men apparently of opposite pursuits is so natural,
that when Gesner, in his inspiring letter on landscape-painting,[A]
recommends to the young painter a constant study of poetry and literature,
the impatient artist is made to exclaim, "Must we combine with so
many
other studies those which belong to literary men? Must we read as well as
paint?" "It is useless to reply to this question; for some
important
truths must be instinctively felt, perhaps the fundamental ones in the
arts." A truly imaginative artist, whose enthusiasm was never absent
when
he meditated on the art he loved, BARRY, thus vehemently broke forth:
"Go
home from the academy, light up 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."
This
genial intercourse of literature with art may be proved by painters who
have suggested subjects to poets, and poets who have selected them for
painters. GOLDSMITH suggested the subject of the tragic and pathetic
picture of Ugolino to the pencil of REYNOLDS.
All the classes of men in society have their peculiar sorrows and
enjoyments, as they have their peculiar habits and characteristics. In
the history of men of genius we may often open the secret story of their
minds, for they have above others the privilege of communicating their
own feelings; and every life of a man of genius, composed by himself,
presents us with the experimental philosophy of the mind. By living with
their brothers, and contemplating their masters, they will judge from
consciousness less erroneously than from discussion; and in forming
comparative views and parallel situations, they will discover certain
habits and feelings, and find these reflected in themselves.
SYDENHAM has beautifully said, "Whoever describes a violet exactly as
to
its colour, taste, smell, form, and other properties, will find the
description agree in most particulars with all the violets in the
universe."
[Footnote A: Few writers were so competent to instruct in art as Gesner,
who was not only an author and a poet, but an artist who decorated his
poems by designs as graceful as their subject.--ED.]
CHAPTER IV.
Of natural genius.--Minds constitutionally different cannot have an equal
aptitude.--Genius not the result of habit and education.--Originates in
peculiar qualities of the mind.--The predisposition of genius.--A
substitution for the white paper of Locke.[A]
[Footnote A: In the second edition of this work in 1818, I touched on some
points of this inquiry in the second chapter: I almost despaired to find
any philosopher sympathise with the subject, so invulnerable, they
imagine, are the entrenchments of their theories. I was agreeably
surprised to find these ideas taken up in the _Edinburgh Review_ for
August, 1820, in an entertaining article on Reynolds. I have, no doubt,
profited by the perusal, though this chapter was prepared before I met
with that spirited vindication of "an inherent difference in the
organs or
faculties to receive impressions of any kind."]
That faculty in art which individualises the artist, belonging to him and
to no other, and which in a work forms that creative part whose likeness
is not found in any other work--is it inherent in the constitutional
dispositions of the Creator, or can it be formed by patient acquisition?
Astonished at their own silent and obscure progress, some have imagined
that they have formed their genius solely by their own studies; when they
generated, they conceived that they had acquired; and, losing the
distinction between nature and habit, with fatal temerity the idolatry of
philosophy substituted something visible and palpable, yet shaped by the
most opposite fancies, called a Theory, for Nature herself! Men of genius,
whose great occupation is to be conversant with the inspirations of
Nature, made up a factitious one among themselves, and assumed that they
could operate without the intervention of the occult original. But Nature
would not be mocked; and whenever this race of idolaters have worked
without her agency, she has afflicted them with the most stubborn
sterility.
Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our own philosophical
times; ages of genius had passed away, and they left no other record than
their works; no preconcerted theory described the workings of the
imagination to be without imagination, nor did they venture to teach how
to invent invention.
The character of genius, viewed as the effect of habit and education, on
the principle of the equality of the human mind, infers that men have an
equal aptitude for the work of genius: a paradox which, with a more fatal
one, came from the French school, and arose probably from an equivocal
expression.
Locke employed the well-known comparison of the mind with "white
paper
void of all characters," to free his famous "Inquiry" from
that powerful
obstacle to his system, the absurd belief of "innate ideas," of
notions of
objects before objects were presented to observation. Our philosopher
considered that this simple analogy sufficiently described the manner in
which he conceived the impressions of the senses write themselves on the
mind. His French pupils, the amusing Helvetius, or Diderot, for they
were equally concerned in the paradoxical "L'Esprit," inferred
that this
blank paper served also as an evidence that men had _an equal aptitude for
genius_, just as the blank paper reflects to us whatever characters we
trace on it. This _equality of minds_ gave rise to the same monstrous
doctrine in the science of metaphysics which that of another verbal
misconception, _the equality of men_, did in that of politics. The
Scottish metaphysicians powerfully combined to illustrate the mechanism of
the mind,--an important and a curious truth; for as rules and principles
exist in the nature of things, and when discovered are only thence drawn
out, genius unconsciously conducts itself by a uniform process; and
when this process had been traced, they inferred that what was done by
some men, under the influence of fundamental laws which regulate the
march of the intellect, must also be in the reach of others, who, in the
same circumstances, apply themselves to the same study. But these
metaphysicians resemble anatomists, under whose knife all men are alike.
They know the structure of the bones, the movement of the muscles, and
where the connecting ligaments lie! but the invisible principle of life
flies from their touch. It is the practitioner on the living body who
studies in every individual that peculiarity of constitution which forms
the idiosyncrasy.
Under the influence of such novel theories of genius, JOHNSON defined it
as "A Mind of large general powers ACCIDENTALLY determined by some
_particular direction_." On this principle we must infer that the
reasoning LOCKE, or the arithmetical DE MOIVRE, could have been the
musical and fairy SPENSER.[A] This conception of the nature of genius
became prevalent. It induced the philosophical BECCARIA to assert that
every individual had an equal degree of genius for poetry and eloquence;
it runs through the philosophy of the elegant Dugald Stewart; and
REYNOLDS, the pupil of Johnson in literature, adopting the paradox,
constructed his automatic system on this principle of _equal aptitude_. He
says, "this excellence, however expressed by genius, taste, or the
gift of
Heaven, I am confident may be _acquired_." Reynolds had the modesty
to
fancy that so many rivals, unendowed by nature, might have equalled the
magic of his own pencil: but his theory of industry, so essential to
genius, yet so useless without it, too long stimulated the drudges of art,
and left us without a Correggio or a Raphael! Another man of genius caught
the fever of the new system. CURRIE, in his eloquent "Life of
Burns,"
swells out the scene of genius to a startling magnificence; for he asserts
that, "the talents necessary to the construction of an 'Iliad,' under
different discipline and application, might have led armies to victory or
kingdoms to prosperity; might have wielded the thunder of eloquence, or
discovered and enlarged the sciences." All this we find in the
_text_; but
in the clear intellect of this man of genius a vast number of intervening
difficulties started up, and in a copious _note_ the numerous exceptions
show that the assumed theory requires no other refutation than what the
theorist has himself so abundantly and so judiciously supplied. There is
something ludicrous in the result of a theory of genius which would
place HOBBES and ERASMUS, those timid and learned recluses, to open a
campaign with the military invention and physical intrepidity of a
Marlborough; or conclude that the romantic bard of the "Fairy
Queen,"
amidst the quickly-shifting scenes of his visionary reveries, could have
deduced, by slow and patient watchings of the mind, the system and the
demonstrations of Newton.
[Footnote A: It is more dangerous to define than to describe: a dry
definition excludes so much, an ardent description at once appeals to our
sympathies. How much more comprehensible our great critic becomes when he
nobly describes genius, "as the power of mind that collects,
combines,
amplifies, and animates; the energy without which judgment is cold, and
knowledge is inert!" And it is this POWER OF MIND, this primary
faculty
and native aptitude, which we deem may exist separately from education and
habit, since these are often found unaccompanied by genius.]
Such theorists deduce the faculty called genius from a variety of exterior
or secondary causes: zealously rejecting the notion that genius may
originate in constitutional dispositions, and be only a mode of the
individual's existence, they deny that minds are differently constituted.
Habit and education, being more palpable and visible in their operations,
and progressive in the development of the intellectual faculties, have
been imagined fully sufficient to make the creative faculty a subject of
acquirement.
But when these theorists had discovered the curious fact, that we have
owed to _accident_ several men of genius, and when they laid open some
sources which influenced genius in its progress, they did not go one step
further, they did not inquire whether such sources and such accidents had
ever supplied the _want of genius_ in the individual. Effects were here
again mistaken for causes. Could Spenser have kindled a poet in Cowley,
Richardson a painter in Reynolds, and Descartes a metaphysician in
Malebranche, if those master-minds, pointed out as having been such from
_accident_, had not first received the indelible mint-stamp struck by the
hand of Nature, and which, to give it a name, we may be allowed to call
the _predisposition_ of genius? The _accidents_ so triumphantly held
forth, which are imagined to have created the genius of these men, have
occurred to a thousand who have run the same career; but how does it
happen that the multitude remain a multitude, and the man of genius
arrives alone at the goal?
This theory, which long dazzled its beholders, was in time found to stand
in contradiction with itself, and perpetually with their own experience.
Reynolds pared down his decision in the progress of his lectures, often
wavered, often altered, and grew more confused as he lived longer to look
about him.[A] The infirm votaries of the new philosophy, with all their
sources of genius open before them, went on multiplying mediocrity, while
inherent genius, true to nature, still continued rare in its solitary
independence.
[Footnote A: I transcribe the last opinions of Mr. Edgeworth. "As to
original genius, and the effect of education in forming taste or directing
talent, the last revisal of his opinions was given by himself, in the
introduction to the second edition of 'Professional Education.' He was
strengthened in his belief, that many of the great differences of
intellect which appear in men, depend more upon the early cultivating the
habit of attention than upon any disparity between the powers of one
individual and another. Perhaps, he latterly allowed that there is more
difference than he had formerly admitted between the _natural powers_ of
different persons; but not so great as is generally supposed."--
_Edgeworth's Memoirs_, ii. 388.]
Others have strenuously denied that we are born with any peculiar species
of mind, and resolve the mysterious problem into _capacity_, of which men
only differ in the degree. They can perceive no distinction between the
poetical and the mathematical genius; and they conclude that a man of
genius, possessing a general capacity, may become whatever he chooses, but
is determined by his first acquired habit to be what he is.[A]
In substituting the term _capacity_ for that of _genius_, the origin or
nature remains equally occult. How is it acquired, or how is it inherent?
To assert that any man of genius may become what he wills, those most
fervently protest against who feel that the character of genius is such
that it cannot be other than it is; that there is an identity of minds,
and that there exists an interior conformity as marked and as perfect as
the exterior physiognomy. A Scotch metaphysician has recently declared
that "Locke or Newton might have been as eminent poets as Homer or
Milton,
had they given themselves early to the study of poetry." It is well
to
know how far this taste will go. We believe that had these philosophers
obstinately, against nature, persisted in |
